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• SharePoint Upgrade Global Nav Quirks?

  - by elorg

  We're working on a parallel install/upgrade of SharePoint. The client has WSS 2003 on some old hardware. We've installed MOSS 2007 in a medium farm environment. They want to use this as an opportunity to not just upgrade and use the new features, but to also better organize their content and categorize between different site collections. To accommodate, we've created a few site collections per their specifications in the new environment, and when we ran an upgrade test run we ran into a few .. quirks. We made a backup of the old content database, copied it over to the new environment and restored it as a new database. Created a new web app and attached the migrated data to do an in-place upgrade in this new "test" area. This seems pretty standard - no issues. We have to do a little bit of cleanup (e.g. reset pages to site definition, reset themes, and inherit the global nav / top link bar, etc.). Once that's done, we're using stsadm export/import to copy the individual sites over to their ultimate destinations in the various different site collections. So far so good. But then we ran into one particular site that has a link to an .aspx page in the top link bar in WSS 2003 that's not behaving properly after the upgrade. It's just a link to a "dashboard" .aspx page in a doc library - nothing special. It doesn't seem to matter what we do, or what order we do it (in the "test" web app, in the destination web app, or both). In the end, this ONE site will not allow us to create a link/tab in the global nav. It can inherit the global nav just fine. We can break the inheritance just fine. But if we want to manually add a link in the top link bar - we go through the steps that I've done 1,000x before and click OK - and the tab never appears. It doesn't matter if it's to a page within the site itself, or to Google. We can migrate over other sites into the same site collection and add a tab without issue. If we migrate this quirky site over to another site collection we run into the same issue. Yet, in the "test" web app that we're using to upgrade the data we can add a tab? If we add the tab before we export/import to the final destination, the tab is lost during the process? Has anyone run into anything like this? Any ideas? I've tried every combination of everything that I can think of and nothing works. Unless we can figure out how to get this to work, we're going to just add this tab to the global nav for the entire site collection and inherit it for this site (but that adds the link to all of the site that will inherit, which is both a pro & con for them).

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• How accurate is "Business logic should be in a service, not in a model"?

  - by Jeroen Vannevel

  Situation Earlier this evening I gave an answer to a question on StackOverflow. The question: Editing of an existing object should be done in repository layer or in service? For example if I have a User that has debt. I want to change his debt. Should I do it in UserRepository or in service for example BuyingService by getting an object, editing it and saving it ? My answer: You should leave the responsibility of mutating an object to that same object and use the repository to retrieve this object. Example situation: class User { private int debt; // debt in cents private string name; // getters public void makePayment(int cents){ debt -= cents; } } class UserRepository { public User GetUserByName(string name){ // Get appropriate user from database } } A comment I received: Business logic should really be in a service. Not in a model. What does the internet say? So, this got me searching since I've never really (consciously) used a service layer. I started reading up on the Service Layer pattern and the Unit Of Work pattern but so far I can't say I'm convinced a service layer has to be used. Take for example this article by Martin Fowler on the anti-pattern of an Anemic Domain Model: There are objects, many named after the nouns in the domain space, and these objects are connected with the rich relationships and structure that true domain models have. The catch comes when you look at the behavior, and you realize that there is hardly any behavior on these objects, making them little more than bags of getters and setters. Indeed often these models come with design rules that say that you are not to put any domain logic in the the domain objects. Instead there are a set of service objects which capture all the domain logic. These services live on top of the domain model and use the domain model for data. (...) The logic that should be in a domain object is domain logic - validations, calculations, business rules - whatever you like to call it. To me, this seemed exactly what the situation was about: I advocated the manipulation of an object's data by introducing methods inside that class that do just that. However I realize that this should be a given either way, and it probably has more to do with how these methods are invoked (using a repository). I also had the feeling that in that article (see below), a Service Layer is more considered as a façade that delegates work to the underlying model, than an actual work-intensive layer. Application Layer [his name for Service Layer]: Defines the jobs the software is supposed to do and directs the expressive domain objects to work out problems. The tasks this layer is responsible for are meaningful to the business or necessary for interaction with the application layers of other systems. This layer is kept thin. It does not contain business rules or knowledge, but only coordinates tasks and delegates work to collaborations of domain objects in the next layer down. It does not have state reflecting the business situation, but it can have state that reflects the progress of a task for the user or the program. Which is reinforced here: Service interfaces. Services expose a service interface to which all inbound messages are sent. You can think of a service interface as a façade that exposes the business logic implemented in the application (typically, logic in the business layer) to potential consumers. And here: The service layer should be devoid of any application or business logic and should focus primarily on a few concerns. It should wrap Business Layer calls, translate your Domain in a common language that your clients can understand, and handle the communication medium between server and requesting client. This is a serious contrast to other resources that talk about the Service Layer: The service layer should consist of classes with methods that are units of work with actions that belong in the same transaction. Or the second answer to a question I've already linked: At some point, your application will want some business logic. Also, you might want to validate the input to make sure that there isn't something evil or nonperforming being requested. This logic belongs in your service layer. "Solution"? Following the guidelines in this answer, I came up with the following approach that uses a Service Layer: class UserController : Controller { private UserService _userService; public UserController(UserService userService){ _userService = userService; } public ActionResult MakeHimPay(string username, int amount) { _userService.MakeHimPay(username, amount); return RedirectToAction("ShowUserOverview"); } public ActionResult ShowUserOverview() { return View(); } } class UserService { private IUserRepository _userRepository; public UserService(IUserRepository userRepository) { _userRepository = userRepository; } public void MakeHimPay(username, amount) { _userRepository.GetUserByName(username).makePayment(amount); } } class UserRepository { public User GetUserByName(string name){ // Get appropriate user from database } } class User { private int debt; // debt in cents private string name; // getters public void makePayment(int cents){ debt -= cents; } } Conclusion All together not much has changed here: code from the controller has moved to the service layer (which is a good thing, so there is an upside to this approach). However this doesn't look like it had anything to do with my original answer. I realize design patterns are guidelines, not rules set in stone to be implemented whenever possible. Yet I have not found a definitive explanation of the service layer and how it should be regarded. Is it a means to simply extract logic from the controller and put it inside a service instead? Is it supposed to form a contract between the controller and the domain? Should there be a layer between the domain and the service layer? And, last but not least: following the original comment Business logic should really be in a service. Not in a model. Is this correct? How would I introduce my business logic in a service instead of the model?

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• Cannot Start MySQL Server on Fresh MAMP Install

  - by alexpelan

  I'm using Mac OS X 10.6.2 on my Macbook Pro. I can get the apache server to start, but not the mysql server, on both the default apache and default MAMP ports. When I try to go to my start page, I get the message "Error: Could not connect to MySQL server!" . Here's what's in my mysql error log: 00513 02:00:07 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.pid ended 100513 02:00:16 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /Applications/MAMP/db/mysql 100513 2:00:16 [Warning] The syntax '--log_slow_queries' is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use '--slow_query_log'/'--slow_query_log_file' instead. 100513 2:00:16 [Warning] You have forced lower_case_table_names to 0 through a command-line option, even though your file system '/Applications/MAMP/db/mysql/' is case insensitive. This means that you can corrupt a MyISAM table by accessing it with different cases. You should consider changing lower_case_table_names to 1 or 2 100513 2:00:16 [Warning] One can only use the --user switch if running as root 100513 2:00:16 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled. 100513 2:00:16 [Note] Plugin 'ndbcluster' is disabled. InnoDB: Error: log file /usr/local/mysql/data/ib_logfile0 is of different size 0 5242880 bytes InnoDB: than specified in the .cnf file 0 16777216 bytes! 100513 2:00:16 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error. 100513 2:00:16 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed. 100513 2:00:16 [ERROR] /Applications/MAMP/Library/libexec/mysqld: unknown option '--skip-bdb' 100513 2:00:16 [ERROR] Aborting 100513 2:00:16 [Note] /Applications/MAMP/Library/libexec/mysqld: Shutdown complete 100513 02:00:16 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.pid ended A couple of things: 1) There are a bunch of different .cnf files that come with MAMP (my-huge, my-medium, etc.)...how can I tell which one is actually being used? 2) I deleted the ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 as recommended by another post on serverfault, and then ended up with more errors: 100519 16:01:30 InnoDB: Log file /usr/local/mysql/data/ib_logfile0 did not exist: new to be created InnoDB: Setting log file /usr/local/mysql/data/ib_logfile0 size to 16 MB InnoDB: Database physically writes the file full: wait... 100519 16:01:30 InnoDB: Log file /usr/local/mysql/data/ib_logfile1 did not exist: new to be created InnoDB: Setting log file /usr/local/mysql/data/ib_logfile1 size to 16 MB InnoDB: Database physically writes the file full: wait... InnoDB: The log sequence number in ibdata files does not match InnoDB: the log sequence number in the ib_logfiles! 100519 16:01:31 InnoDB: Database was not shut down normally! InnoDB: Starting crash recovery. InnoDB: Reading tablespace information from the .ibd files... InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite InnoDB: buffer... 100519 16:01:31 InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 44556 100519 16:01:31 [ERROR] /Applications/MAMP/Library/libexec/mysqld: unknown option '--skip-bdb' 100519 16:01:31 [ERROR] Aborting And then I got this the next time I tried to run it: InnoDB: Unable to lock /usr/local/mysql/data/ibdata1, error: 35 InnoDB: Check that you do not already have another mysqld process InnoDB: using the same InnoDB data or log files. Sorry that this is a lot of information, but I don't want to leave anything out. Thanks.

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• ASP.NET WebAPI Security 3: Extensible Authentication Framework

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  In my last post, I described the identity architecture of ASP.NET Web API. The short version was, that Web API (beta 1) does not really have an authentication system on its own, but inherits the client security context from its host. This is fine in many situations (e.g. AJAX style callbacks with an already established logon session). But there are many cases where you don’t use the containing web application for authentication, but need to do it yourself. Examples of that would be token based authentication and clients that don’t run in the context of the web application (e.g. desktop clients / mobile). Since Web API provides a nice extensibility model, it is easy to implement whatever security framework you want on top of it. My design goals were: Easy to use. Extensible. Claims-based. ..and of course, this should always behave the same, regardless of the hosting environment. In the rest of the post I am outlining some of the bits and pieces, So you know what you are dealing with, in case you want to try the code. At the very heart… is a so called message handler. This is a Web API extensibility point that gets to see (and modify if needed) all incoming and outgoing requests. Handlers run after the conversion from host to Web API, which means that handler code deals with HttpRequestMessage and HttpResponseMessage. See Pedro’s post for more information on the processing pipeline. This handler requires a configuration object for initialization. Currently this is very simple, it contains: Settings for the various authentication and credential types Settings for claims transformation Ability to block identity inheritance from host The most important part here is the credential type support, but I will come back to that later. The logic of the message handler is simple: Look at the incoming request. If the request contains an authorization header, try to authenticate the client. If this is successful, create a claims principal and populate the usual places. If not, return a 401 status code and set the Www-Authenticate header. Look at outgoing response, if the status code is 401, set the Www-Authenticate header. Credential type support Under the covers I use the WIF security token handler infrastructure to validate credentials and to turn security tokens into claims. The idea is simple: an authorization header consists of two pieces: the schema and the actual “token”. My configuration object allows to associate a security token handler with a scheme. This way you only need to implement support for a specific credential type, and map that to the incoming scheme value. The current version supports HTTP Basic Authentication as well as SAML and SWT tokens. (I needed to do some surgery on the standard security token handlers, since WIF does not directly support string-ified tokens. The next version of .NET will fix that, and the code should become simpler then). You can e.g. use this code to hook up a username/password handler to the Basic scheme (the default scheme name for Basic Authentication). config.Handler.AddBasicAuthenticationHandler( (username, password) => username == password); You simply have to provide a password validation function which could of course point back to your existing password library or e.g. membership. The following code maps a token handler for Simple Web Tokens (SWT) to the Bearer scheme (the currently favoured scheme name for OAuth2). You simply have to specify the issuer name, realm and shared signature key: config.Handler.AddSimpleWebTokenHandler(     "Bearer",     http://identity.thinktecture.com/trust,     Constants.Realm,     "Dc9Mpi3jaaaUpBQpa/4R7XtUsa3D/ALSjTVvK8IUZbg="); For certain integration scenarios it is very useful if your Web API can consume SAML tokens. This is also easily accomplishable. The following code uses the standard WIF API to configure the usual SAMLisms like issuer, audience, service certificate and certificate validation. Both SAML 1.1 and 2.0 are supported. var registry = new ConfigurationBasedIssuerNameRegistry(); registry.AddTrustedIssuer( "d1 c5 b1 25 97 d0 36 94 65 1c e2 64 fe 48 06 01 35 f7 bd db", "ADFS"); var adfsConfig = new SecurityTokenHandlerConfiguration(); adfsConfig.AudienceRestriction.AllowedAudienceUris.Add( new Uri(Constants.Realm)); adfsConfig.IssuerNameRegistry = registry; adfsConfig.CertificateValidator = X509CertificateValidator.None; // token decryption (read from configuration section) adfsConfig.ServiceTokenResolver = FederatedAuthentication.ServiceConfiguration.CreateAggregateTokenResolver(); config.Handler.AddSaml11SecurityTokenHandler("SAML", adfsConfig); Claims Transformation After successful authentication, if configured, the standard WIF ClaimsAuthenticationManager is called to run claims transformation and validation logic. This stage is used to transform the “technical” claims from the security token into application claims. You can either have a separate transformation logic, or share on e.g. with the containing web application. That’s just a matter of configuration. Adding the authentication handler to a Web API application In the spirit of Web API this is done in code, e.g. global.asax for web hosting: protected void Application_Start() {     AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();     ConfigureApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);     RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);     RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);     BundleTable.Bundles.RegisterTemplateBundles(); } private void ConfigureApis(HttpConfiguration configuration) {     configuration.MessageHandlers.Add( new AuthenticationHandler(ConfigureAuthentication())); } private AuthenticationConfiguration ConfigureAuthentication() {     var config = new AuthenticationConfiguration     {         // sample claims transformation for consultants sample, comment out to see raw claims         ClaimsAuthenticationManager = new ApiClaimsTransformer(),         // value of the www-authenticate header, // if not set, the first scheme added to the handler collection is used         DefaultAuthenticationScheme = "Basic"     };     // add token handlers - see above     return config; } You can find the full source code and some samples here. In the next post I will describe some of the samples in the download, and then move on to authorization. HTH

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• How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 for Custom Code Exception Logging?

  - by venkatx5

  What is ULS in SharePoint 2010? ULS stands for Unified Logging Service which captures and writes Exceptions/Logs in Log File(A Plain Text File with .log extension). SharePoint logs Each and every exceptions with ULS. SharePoint Administrators should know ULS and it's very useful when anything goes wrong. but when you ask any SharePoint 2007 Administrator to check log file then most of them will Kill you. Because read and understand the log file is not so easy. Imagine open a plain text file of 20 MB in NotePad and go thru line by line. Now Microsoft developed a tool "ULS Viewer" to view those Log files in easily readable format. This tools also helps to filter events based on exception priority. You can read on this blog to know in details about ULS Viewer . Where to get ULS Viewer? ULS Viewer is developed by Microsoft and available to download for free. URL : http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3308 Note: Eventhought this tool developed by Microsoft, it's not supported by Microsoft. Means you can't support for this tool from Microsoft and use it on your own Risk. By the way what's the risk in viewing Log Files?! How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 Custom Code? ULS can be extended to use in user solutions to log exceptions. In Detail, Developer can use ULS to log his own application errors and exceptions on SharePoint Log files. So now all in Single Place (That's why it's called "Unified Logging"). Well in this article I am going to use Waldek's Code (Reference Link). However the article is core and am writing container for that (Basically how to implement the code in Detail). Let's see the steps. Open Visual Studio 2010 -> File -> New Project -> Visual C# -> Windows -> Class Library -> Name : ULSLogger (Make sure you've selected .net Framework 3.5)   In Solution Explorer Panel, Rename the Class1.cs to LoggingService.cs   Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint"   Right Click on the Project -> Properties. Select "Signing" Tab -> Check "Sign the Assembly".   In the below drop down select <New> and enter "ULSLogger", uncheck the "Protect my key with a Password" option.   Now copy the below code and paste. (Or Just refer.. :-) ) using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace ULSLogger { public class LoggingService : SPDiagnosticsServiceBase { public static string vsDiagnosticAreaName = "Venkats SharePoint Logging Service"; public static string CategoryName = "vsProject"; public static uint uintEventID = 700; // Event ID private static LoggingService _Current; public static LoggingService Current {  get   {    if (_Current == null)     {       _Current = new LoggingService();     }    return _Current;   } }private LoggingService() : base("Venkats SharePoint Logging Service", SPFarm.Local) {}protected override IEnumerable<SPDiagnosticsArea> ProvideAreas() { List<SPDiagnosticsArea> areas = new List<SPDiagnosticsArea>  {   new SPDiagnosticsArea(vsDiagnosticAreaName, new List<SPDiagnosticsCategory>    {     new SPDiagnosticsCategory(CategoryName, TraceSeverity.Medium, EventSeverity.Error)    })   }; return areas; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try  {   SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName];   LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, TraceSeverity.Unexpected, errorMessage);   strExecutionResult = "Message Logged"; } catch (Exception ex) {  strExecutionResult += ex.Message; } return strExecutionResult; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage, TraceSeverity tsSeverity) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try  {  SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName];  LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, tsSeverity, errorMessage);  strExecutionResult = "Message Logged";  } catch (Exception ex)  {   strExecutionResult += ex.Message;   } return strExecutionResult;  } } }   Just build the solution and it's ready to use now. This ULS solution can be used in SharePoint Webparts or Console Application. Lets see how to use it in a Console Application. SharePoint Server 2010 must be installed in the same Server or the application must be hosted in SharPoint Server 2010 environment. The console application must be set to "x64" Platform target.   Create a New Console Application. (Visual Studio -> File -> New Project -> C# -> Windows -> Console Application) Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint" Open Program.cs add "using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;" Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under "Browse" tab select the "ULSLogger.dll" which we created first. (Path : ULSLogger\ULSLogger\bin\Debug\) Right Click on Project -> Properties -> Select "Build" Tab -> Under "Platform Target" option select "x64". Open the Program.cs and paste the below code. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using ULSLogger; namespace ULSLoggerClient {  class Program   {   static void Main(string[] args)     {     Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Started.");     string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application is Working Fine.");      Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Info. Result : " + strResult);     string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application got an Exception.", TraceSeverity.High);     Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Waring Result : " + strResult);      Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Completed.");      Console.ReadLine();     }   } } Just build the solution and execute. It'll log the message on the log file. Make sure you are using Farm Administrator User ID. You can play with Message and TraceSeverity as required. Now Open ULS Viewer -> File -> Open From -> ULS -> Select First Option to open the default ULS Log. It's Uls RealTime and will show all log entries in readable table format. Right Click on a row and select "Filter By This Item". Select "Event ID" and enter value "700" that we used in the application. Click Ok and now you'll see the Exceptions/Logs which logged by our application.   If you want to see High Priority Messages only then Click Icons except Red Cross Icon on the Toolbar. The tooltip will tell what's the icons used for.

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• Creating a Training Lab on Windows Azure

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2013/06/17/153149.aspxThis week we are preparing for a training course that Alan Smith will be running for the support teams at one of my customers around Windows Azure. In order to facilitate the training lab we have a few prerequisites we need to handle. One of the biggest ones is that although the support team all have MSDN accounts the local desktops they work on are not ideal for running most of the labs as we want to give them some additional developer background training around Azure. Some recent Azure announcements really help us in this area: MSDN software can now be used on Azure VM You don't pay for Azure VM's when they are no longer used  Since the support team only have limited experience of Windows Azure and the organisation also have an Enterprise Agreement we decided it would be best value for money to spin up a training lab in a subscription on the EA and then we can turn the machines off when we are done. At the same time we would be able to spin them back up when the users need to do some additional lab work once the training course is completed. In order to achieve this I wanted to create a powershell script which would setup my training lab. The aim was to create 18 VM's which would be based on a prebuilt template with Visual Studio and the Azure development tools. The script I used is described below The Start & Variables The below text will setup the powershell environment and some variables which I will use elsewhere in the script. It will also import the Azure Powershell cmdlets. You can see below that I will need to download my publisher settings file and know some details from my Azure account. At this point I will assume you have a basic understanding of Azure & Powershell so already know how to do this. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestrictedcls $startTime = get-dateImport-Module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\Azure.psd1"# Azure Publisher Settings $azurePublisherSettings = '<Your settings file>.publishsettings'  # Subscription Details $subscriptionName = "<Your subscription name>" $defaultStorageAccount = "<Your default storage account>"  # Affinity Group Details $affinityGroup = '<Your affinity group>' $dataCenter = 'West Europe' # From Get-AzureLocation  # VM Details $baseVMName = 'TRN' $adminUserName = '<Your admin username>' $password = '<Your admin password>' $size = 'Medium' $vmTemplate = '<The name of your VM template image>' $rdpFilePath = '<File path to save RDP files to>' $machineSettingsPath = '<File path to save machine info to>'    Functions In the next section of the script I have some functions which are used to perform certain actions. The first is called CreateVM. This will do the following actions: If the VM already exists it will be deleted Create the cloud service Create the VM from the template I have created Add an endpoint so we can RDP to them all over the same port Download the RDP file so there is a short cut the trainees can easily access the machine via Write settings for the machine to a log file  function CreateVM($machineNo) { # Specify a name for the new VM $machineName = "$baseVMName-$machineNo" Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName"       # Get the Azure VM Image      $myImage = Get-AzureVMImage $vmTemplate   #If the VM already exists delete and re-create it $existingVm = Get-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName if($existingVm -ne $null) { Write-Host "VM already exists so deleting it" Remove-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName }   "Creating Service" $serviceName = "bupa-azure-train-$machineName" Remove-AzureService -Force -ServiceName $serviceName New-AzureService -Location $dataCenter -ServiceName $serviceName   Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName" New-AzureQuickVM -Windows -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -ImageName $myImage.ImageName -InstanceSize $size -AdminUsername $adminUserName -Password $password  Write-Host "Updating the RDP endpoint for $machineName" Get-AzureVM -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName ` | Add-AzureEndpoint -Name RDP -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 3389 -PublicPort 550 ` | Update-AzureVM    Write-Host "Get the RDP File for machine $machineName" $machineRDPFilePath = "$rdpFilePath\$machineName.rdp" Get-AzureRemoteDesktopFile -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -LocalPath "$machineRDPFilePath"   WriteMachineSettings "$machineName" "$serviceName" }    The delete machine settings function is used to delete the log file before we start re-running the process.  function DeleteMachineSettings() { Write-Host "Deleting the machine settings output file" [System.IO.File]::Delete("$machineSettingsPath"); }    The write machine settings function will get the VM and then record its details to the log file. The importance of the log file is that I can easily provide the information for all of the VM's to our infrastructure team to be able to configure access to all of the VM's    function WriteMachineSettings([string]$vmName, [string]$vmServiceName) { Write-Host "Writing to the machine settings output file"   $vm = Get-AzureVM -name $vmName -ServiceName $vmServiceName $vmEndpoint = Get-AzureEndpoint -VM $vm -Name RDP   $sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder $sb.Append("Service Name: "); $sb.Append($vm.ServiceName); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("VM: "); $sb.Append($vm.Name); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("RDP Public Port: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Port); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("Public DNS: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Vip); $sb.AppendLine(""); [System.IO.File]::AppendAllText($machineSettingsPath, $sb.ToString());  } # end functions    Rest of Script In the rest of the script it is really just the bit that orchestrates the actions we want to happen. It will load the publisher settings, select the Azure subscription and then loop around the CreateVM function and create 16 VM's  Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile $azurePublisherSettings Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName -CurrentStorageAccount $defaultStorageAccount Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName  DeleteMachineSettings    "Starting creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" $numberOfVMs = 16  for ($index=1; $index -le $numberOfVMs; $index++) { $vmNo = "$index" CreateVM($vmNo); }    "Finished creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" # Give it a Minute Start-Sleep -s 60  $endTime = get-date "Script run time " + ($endTime - $startTime)    Conclusion As you can see there is nothing too fancy about this script but in our case of creating a small isolated training lab which is not connected to our corporate network then we can easily use this to provision the lab. Im sure if this is of use to anyone you can easily modify it to do other things with the lab environment too. A couple of points to note are that there are some soft limits in Azure about the number of cores and services your subscription can use. You may need to contact the Azure support team to be able to increase this limit. In terms of the real business value of this approach, it was not possible to use the existing desktops to do the training on, and getting some internal virtual machines would have been relatively expensive and time consuming for our ops team to do. With the Azure option we are able to spin these machines up for a temporary period during the training course and then throw them away when we are done. We expect the costing of this test lab to be very small, especially considering we have EA pricing. As a ball park I think my 18 lab VM training environment will cost in the region of $80 per day on our EA. This is a fraction of the cost of the creation of a single VM on premise.

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• COPSSH RSA only authentication connection problem

  - by Siriss

  Hello all- I am trying to setup an RSA Authentication only SSH/SFTP server. The SSH will be used primarily for RDC. Everything works just fine if I use password authentication. I am using Putty Key Generator to create he keys and I have pasted the key into authorized_keys file and restarted the OpenSSH server. I am using FileZilla to test the SFTP connection as that is the most important. For my tests I have created the keys without password correction. It will not work with a standard SSH connection either. It says "Server refused our key". I have recreated the key twice double checking with a guide on google, and I am pretty sure I did it correctly. I load the key file into FileZilla under settings/SFTP and try to connect and I get the following error: Disconnected: No supported authentication methods available. I have been playing with the different settings all night and I cannot figure it out. Here is my sshd_config file: # $OpenBSD: sshd_config,v 1.80 2008/07/02 02:24:18 djm Exp $ # This is the sshd server system-wide configuration file. See # sshd_config(5) for more information. # This sshd was compiled with PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin # The strategy used for options in the default sshd_config shipped with # OpenSSH is to specify options with their default value where # possible, but leave them commented. Uncommented options change a # default value. #Port 22 #AddressFamily any #ListenAddress 0.0.0.0 #ListenAddress :: # Disable legacy (protocol version 1) support in the server for new # installations. In future the default will change to require explicit # activation of protocol 1 Protocol 2 # HostKey for protocol version 1 #HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key # HostKeys for protocol version 2 #HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key #HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key # Lifetime and size of ephemeral version 1 server key #KeyRegenerationInterval 1h #ServerKeyBits 1024 # Logging # obsoletes QuietMode and FascistLogging #SyslogFacility AUTH #LogLevel INFO # Authentication: #LoginGraceTime 2m PermitRootLogin no #StrictModes yes #MaxAuthTries 6 #MaxSessions 10 RSAAuthentication yes PubkeyAuthentication yes AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys # For this to work you will also need host keys in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts RhostsRSAAuthentication no # similar for protocol version 2 #HostbasedAuthentication no # Change to yes if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts for # RhostsRSAAuthentication and HostbasedAuthentication #IgnoreUserKnownHosts no # Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts files #IgnoreRhosts yes # To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here! PasswordAuthentication no PermitEmptyPasswords no # Change to no to disable s/key passwords #ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes # Kerberos options #KerberosAuthentication no #KerberosOrLocalPasswd yes #KerberosTicketCleanup yes #KerberosGetAFSToken no # GSSAPI options #GSSAPIAuthentication no #GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes # Set this to 'yes' to enable PAM authentication, account processing, # and session processing. If this is enabled, PAM authentication will # be allowed through the ChallengeResponseAuthentication and # PasswordAuthentication. Depending on your PAM configuration, # PAM authentication via ChallengeResponseAuthentication may bypass # the setting of "PermitRootLogin without-password". # If you just want the PAM account and session checks to run without # PAM authentication, then enable this but set PasswordAuthentication # and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to 'no'. UsePAM no #AllowAgentForwarding yes #AllowTcpForwarding yes #GatewayPorts no #X11Forwarding no #X11DisplayOffset 10 #X11UseLocalhost yes #PrintMotd yes #PrintLastLog yes #TCPKeepAlive yes UseLogin no #UsePrivilegeSeparation yes #PermitUserEnvironment no #Compression delayed #ClientAliveInterval 0 #ClientAliveCountMax 3 #UseDNS yes #PidFile /var/run/sshd.pid #MaxStartups 10 #PermitTunnel no #ChrootDirectory none # no default banner path #Banner none # override default of no subsystems Subsystem sftp /bin/sftp-server # Example of overriding settings on a per-user basis #Match User anoncvs # X11Forwarding no # AllowTcpForwarding no # ForceCommand cvs server Thank you so much for your help!

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• The Faces in the Crowdsourcing

  - by Applications User Experience

  By Jeff Sauro, Principal Usability Engineer, Oracle Imagine having access to a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of people who can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately. Distributing simple tasks not easily done by computers to the masses is called "crowdsourcing" and until recently was an interesting concept, but due to practical constraints wasn't used often. Enter Amazon.com. For five years, Amazon has hosted a service called Mechanical Turk, which provides an easy interface to the crowds. The service has almost half a million registered, global users performing a quarter of a million human intelligence tasks (HITs). HITs are submitted by individuals and companies in the U.S. and pay from $.01 for simple tasks (such as determining if a picture is offensive) to several dollars (for tasks like transcribing audio). What do we know about the people who toil away in this digital crowd? Can we rely on the work done in this anonymous marketplace? A rendering of the actual Mechanical Turk (from Wikipedia) Knowing who is behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is fitting, considering the history of the actual Mechanical Turk. In the late 1800's, a mechanical chess-playing machine awed crowds as it beat master chess players in what was thought to be a mechanical miracle. It turned out that the creator, Wolfgang von Kempelen, had a small person (also a chess master) hiding inside the machine operating the arms to provide the illusion of automation. The field of human computer interaction (HCI) is quite familiar with gathering user input and incorporating it into all stages of the design process. It makes sense then that Mechanical Turk was a popular discussion topic at the recent Computer Human Interaction usability conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery in Atlanta. It is already being used as a source for input on Web sites (for example, Feedbackarmy.com) and behavioral research studies. Two papers shed some light on the faces in this crowd. One paper tells us about the shifting demographics from mostly stay-at-home moms to young men in India. The second paper discusses the reliability and quality of work from the workers. Just who exactly would spend time doing tasks for pennies? In "Who are the crowdworkers?" University of California researchers Ross, Silberman, Zaldivar and Tomlinson conducted a survey of Mechanical Turk worker demographics and compared it to a similar survey done two years before. The initial survey reported workers consisting largely of young, well-educated women living in the U.S. with annual household incomes above $40,000. The more recent survey reveals a shift in demographics largely driven by an influx of workers from India. Indian workers went from 5% to over 30% of the crowd, and this block is largely male (two-thirds) with a higher average education than U.S. workers, and 64% report an annual income of less than $10,000 (keeping in mind $1 has a lot more purchasing power in India). This shifting demographic certainly has implications as language and culture can play critical roles in the outcome of HITs. Of course, the demographic data came from paying Turkers $.10 to fill out a survey, so there is some question about both a self-selection bias (characteristics which cause Turks to take this survey may be unrepresentative of the larger population), not to mention whether we can really trust the data we get from the crowd. Crowds can perform tasks or provide feedback on a design quickly and almost immediately for usability testing. (Photo attributed to victoriapeckham Flikr While having immediate access to a global workforce is nice, one major problem with Mechanical Turk is the incentive structure. Individuals and companies that deploy HITs want quality responses for a low price. Workers, on the other hand, want to complete the task and get paid as quickly as possible, so that they can get on to the next task. Since many HITs on Mechanical Turk are surveys, how valid and reliable are these results? How do we know whether workers are just rushing through the multiple-choice responses haphazardly answering? In "Are your participants gaming the system?" researchers at Carnegie Mellon (Downs, Holbrook, Sheng and Cranor) set up an experiment to find out what percentage of their workers were just in it for the money. The authors set up a 30-minute HIT (one of the more lengthy ones for Mechanical Turk) and offered a very high $4 to those who qualified and $.20 to those who did not. As part of the HIT, workers were asked to read an email and respond to two questions that determined whether workers were likely rushing through the HIT and not answering conscientiously. One question was simple and took little effort, while the second question required a bit more work to find the answer. Workers were led to believe other factors than these two questions were the qualifying aspect of the HIT. Of the 2000 participants, roughly 1200 (or 61%) answered both questions correctly. Eighty-eight percent answered the easy question correctly, and 64% answered the difficult question correctly. In other words, about 12% of the crowd were gaming the system, not paying enough attention to the question or making careless errors. Up to about 40% won't put in more than a modest effort to get paid for a HIT. Young men and those that considered themselves in the financial industry tended to be the most likely to try to game the system. There wasn't a breakdown by country, but given the demographic information from the first article, we could infer that many of these young men come from India, which makes language and other cultural differences a factor. These articles raise questions about the role of crowdsourcing as a means for getting quick user input at low cost. While compensating users for their time is nothing new, the incentive structure and anonymity of Mechanical Turk raises some interesting questions. How complex of a task can we ask of the crowd, and how much should these workers be paid? Can we rely on the information we get from these professional users, and if so, how can we best incorporate it into designing more usable products? Traditional usability testing will still play a central role in enterprise software. Crowdsourcing doesn't replace testing; instead, it makes certain parts of gathering user feedback easier. One can turn to the crowd for simple tasks that don't require specialized skills and get a lot of data fast. As more studies are conducted on Mechanical Turk, I suspect we will see crowdsourcing playing an increasing role in human computer interaction and enterprise computing. References: Downs, J. S., Holbrook, M. B., Sheng, S., and Cranor, L. F. 2010. Are your participants gaming the system?: screening mechanical turk workers. In Proceedings of the 28th international Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2399-2402. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753688 Ross, J., Irani, L., Silberman, M. S., Zaldivar, A., and Tomlinson, B. 2010. Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in mechanical turk. In Proceedings of the 28th of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA, April 10 - 15, 2010). CHI EA '10. ACM, New York, NY, 2863-2872. Link: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753846.1753873

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• postfix: Temporary lookup failure for FQDN

  - by Thufir

  I'm using the FQDN of dur.bounceme.net which I want to resolve(?) to localhost. That is, I want mail to [email protected] to get delivered to user@localhost. I've tried following the Ubuntu guide on this and seem to be going in circles a bit. root@dur:~# root@dur:~# postfix stop postfix/postfix-script: stopping the Postfix mail system root@dur:~# postfix start postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system root@dur:~# telnet dur.bounceme.net 25 Trying 127.0.1.1... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused root@dur:~# root@dur:~# telnet localhost 25 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 220 dur.bounceme.net ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu) ehlo dur 250-dur.bounceme.net 250-PIPELINING 250-SIZE 10240000 250-VRFY 250-ETRN 250-STARTTLS 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES 250-8BITMIME 250 DSN mail from:[email protected] 250 2.1.0 Ok rcpt to:[email protected] 451 4.3.0 <[email protected]>: Temporary lookup failure rcpt to:thufir@localhost 451 4.3.0 <thufir@localhost>: Temporary lookup failure quit 221 2.0.0 Bye Connection closed by foreign host. root@dur:~# root@dur:~# grep telnet /var/log/mail.log Aug 28 00:24:45 dur postfix/smtpd[18256]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 451 4.3.0 <thufir@localhost>: Temporary lookup failure; from=<[email protected]> to=<thufir@localhost> proto=ESMTP helo=<dur> Aug 28 00:24:58 dur postfix/smtpd[18256]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 451 4.3.0 <[email protected]>: Temporary lookup failure; from=<[email protected]> to=<[email protected]> proto=ESMTP helo=<dur> Aug 28 00:54:55 dur postfix/smtpd[18825]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 451 4.3.0 <[email protected]>: Temporary lookup failure; from=<[email protected]> to=<[email protected]> proto=ESMTP helo=<dur> Aug 28 00:55:08 dur postfix/smtpd[18825]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from localhost[127.0.0.1]: 451 4.3.0 <thufir@localhost>: Temporary lookup failure; from=<[email protected]> to=<thufir@localhost> proto=ESMTP helo=<dur> root@dur:~# root@dur:~# postconf -n alias_database = hash:/etc/aliases alias_maps = hash:/etc/aliases, hash:/var/lib/mailman/data/aliases append_dot_mydomain = no biff = no broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes config_directory = /etc/postfix default_transport = smtp home_mailbox = Maildir/ inet_interfaces = loopback-only mailbox_command = /usr/lib/dovecot/deliver -c /etc/dovecot/conf.d/01-mail-stack-delivery.conf -m "${EXTENSION}" mailbox_size_limit = 0 mailman_destination_recipient_limit = 1 mydestination = dur, dur.bounceme.net, localhost.bounceme.net, localhost myhostname = dur.bounceme.net mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128 readme_directory = no recipient_delimiter = + relay_domains = lists.dur.bounceme.net relay_transport = relay relayhost = smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache smtp_use_tls = yes smtpd_banner = $myhostname ESMTP $mail_name (Ubuntu) smtpd_recipient_restrictions = reject_unknown_sender_domain, reject_unknown_recipient_domain, reject_unauth_pipelining, permit_mynetworks, permit_sasl_authenticated, reject_unauth_destination smtpd_sasl_auth_enable = yes smtpd_sasl_authenticated_header = yes smtpd_sasl_local_domain = $myhostname smtpd_sasl_path = private/dovecot-auth smtpd_sasl_security_options = noanonymous smtpd_sasl_type = dovecot smtpd_tls_auth_only = yes smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-mail.pem smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/ssl/private/ssl-mail.key smtpd_tls_mandatory_ciphers = medium smtpd_tls_mandatory_protocols = SSLv3, TLSv1 smtpd_tls_received_header = yes smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache smtpd_use_tls = yes tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom transport_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/transport root@dur:~#

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• DRY and SRP

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/06/11/dry-and-srp.aspxKent Beck’s XP Simplicity Rules (aka Four Rules of Simple Design) are a prioritized list of rules that when applied to your code generally yield a great design.  As you’ll see from the above link the list has slightly evolved over time.  I find today they are usually listed as: All Tests Pass Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) Express Intent Minimalistic These are prioritized.  If your code doesn’t work (rule 1) then everything else is forfeit.  Go back to rule one and get the code working before worrying about anything else. Over the years the community have debated whether the priority of rules 2 and 3 should be reversed.  Some say a little duplication in the code is OK as long as it helps express intent.  I’ve debated it myself.  This recent post got me thinking about this again, hence this post.   I don’t think it is fair to compare “Expressing Intent” against “DRY”.  This is a comparison of apples to oranges.  “Expressing Intent” is a principal of code quality.  “Repeating Yourself” is a code smell.  A code smell is merely an indicator that there might be something wrong with the code.  It takes further investigation to determine if a violation of an underlying principal of code quality has actually occurred. For example “using nouns for method names”, “using verbs for property names”, or “using Booleans for parameters” are all code smells that indicate that code probably isn’t doing a good job at expressing intent.  They are usually very good indicators.  But what principle is the code smell of Duplication pointing to and how good of an indicator is it? Duplication in the code base is bad for a couple reasons.  If you need to make a change and that needs to be made in a number of locations it is difficult to know if you have caught all of them.  This can lead to bugs if/when one of those locations is overlooked.  By refactoring the code to remove all duplication there will be left with only one place to change, thereby eliminating this problem. With most projects the code becomes the single source of truth for a project.  If a production code base is inconsistent with a five year old requirements or design document the production code that people are currently living with is usually declared as the current reality (or truth).  Requirement or design documents at this age in a project life cycle are usually of little value. Although comparing production code to external documentation is usually straight forward, duplication within the code base muddles this declaration of truth.  When code is duplicated small discrepancies will creep in between the two copies over time.  The question then becomes which copy is correct?  As different factions debate how the software should work, trust in the software and the team behind it erodes. The code smell of Duplication points to a violation of the “Single Source of Truth” principle.  Let me define that as: A stakeholder’s requirement for a software change should never cause more than one class to change. Violation of the Single Source of Truth principle will always result in duplication in the code.  However, the inverse is not always true.  Duplication in the code does not necessarily indicate that there is a violation of the Single Source of Truth principle. To illustrate this, let’s look at a retail system where the system will (1) send a transaction to a bank and (2) print a receipt for the customer.  Although these are two separate features of the system, they are closely related.  The reason for printing the receipt is usually to provide an audit trail back to the bank transaction.  Both features use the same data:  amount charged, account number, transaction date, customer name, retail store name, and etcetera.  Because both features use much of the same data, there is likely to be a lot of duplication between them.  This duplication can be removed by making both features use the same data access layer. Then start coming the divergent requirements.  The receipt stakeholder wants a change so that the account number has the last few digits masked out to protect the customer’s privacy.  That can be solve with a small IF statement whilst still eliminating all duplication in the system.  Then the bank wants to take a picture of the customer as well as capture their signature and/or PIN number for enhanced security.  Then the receipt owner wants to pull data from a completely different system to report the customer’s loyalty program point total. After a while you realize that the two stakeholders have somewhat similar, but ultimately different responsibilities.  They have their own reasons for pulling the data access layer in different directions.  Then it dawns on you, the Single Responsibility Principle: There should never be more than one reason for a class to change. In this example we have two stakeholders giving two separate reasons for the data access class to change.  It is clear violation of the Single Responsibility Principle.  That’s a problem because it can often lead the project owner pitting the two stakeholders against each other in a vein attempt to get them to work out a mutual single source of truth.  But that doesn’t exist.  There are two completely valid truths that the developers need to support.  How is this to be supported and honour the Single Responsibility Principle?  The solution is to duplicate the data access layer and let each stakeholder control their own copy. The Single Source of Truth and Single Responsibility Principles are very closely related.  SST tells you when to remove duplication; SRP tells you when to introduce it.  They may seem to be fighting each other, but really they are not.  The key is to clearly identify the different responsibilities (or sources of truth) over a system.  Sometimes there is a single person with that responsibility, other times there are many.  This can be especially difficult if the same person has dual responsibilities.  They might not even realize they are wearing multiple hats. In my opinion Single Source of Truth should be listed as the second rule of simple design with Express Intent at number three.  Investigation of the DRY code smell should yield to the proper application SST, without violating SRP.  When necessary leave duplication in the system and let the class names express the different people that are responsible for controlling them.  Knowing all the people with responsibilities over a system is the higher priority because you’ll need to know this before you can express it.  Although it may be a code smell when there is duplication in the code, it does not necessarily mean that the coder has chosen to be expressive over DRY or that the code is bad.

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• Securing WebSocket applications on Glassfish

  - by Pavel Bucek

  Today we are going to cover deploying secured WebSocket applications on Glassfish and access to these services using WebSocket Client API. WebSocket server application setup Our server endpoint might look as simple as this: @ServerEndpoint("/echo") public class EchoEndpoint { @OnMessage   public String echo(String message) {     return message + " (from your server)";   } } Everything else must be configured on container level. We can start with enabling SSL, which will require web.xml to be added to your project. For starters, it might look as following: <web-app version="3.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee">   <security-constraint>     <web-resource-collection>       <web-resource-name>Protected resource</web-resource-name>       <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>       <http-method>GET</http-method>     </web-resource-collection>     <!-- https -->     <user-data-constraint>       <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>     </user-data-constraint>   </security-constraint> </web-app> This is minimal web.xml for this task - web-resource-collection just defines URL pattern and HTTP method(s) we want to put a constraint on and user-data-constraint defines that constraint, which is in our case transport-guarantee. More information about these properties and security settings for web application can be found in Oracle Java EE 7 Tutorial. I have some simple webpage attached as well, so I can test my endpoint right away. You can find it (along with complete project) in Tyrus workspace: [webpage] [whole project]. After deploying this application to Glassfish Application Server, you should be able to hit it using your favorite browser. URL where my application resides is https://localhost:8181/sample-echo-https/ (may be different, depends on other configuration). My browser warns me about untrusted certificate (I use what freshly built Glassfish provides - self signed certificates) and after adding an exception for this site, I can see my webpage and I am able to securely connect to wss://localhost:8181/sample-echo-https/echo. WebSocket client Already mentioned demo application also contains test client, but execution of this is skipped for normal build. Reason for this is that Glassfish uses these self-signed "random" untrusted certificates and you are (in most cases) not able to connect to these services without any additional settings. Creating test WebSocket client is actually quite similar to server side, only difference is that you have to somewhere create client container and invoke connect with some additional info. Java API for WebSocket allows you to use annotated and programmatic way to construct endpoints. Server side shows the annotated case, so let's see how the programmatic approach will look. final WebSocketContainer client = ContainerProvider.getWebSocketContainer(); client.connectToServer(new Endpoint() {   @Override   public void onOpen(Session session, EndpointConfig EndpointConfig) {     try {       // register message handler - will just print out the       // received message on standard output.       session.addMessageHandler(new MessageHandler.Whole<String>() {       @Override         public void onMessage(String message) {          System.out.println("### Received: " + message);         }       });       // send a message       session.getBasicRemote().sendText("Do or do not, there is no try.");     } catch (IOException e) {       // do nothing     }   } }, ClientEndpointConfig.Builder.create().build(),    URI.create("wss://localhost:8181/sample-echo-https/echo")); This client should work with some secured endpoint with valid certificated signed by some trusted certificate authority (you can try that with wss://echo.websocket.org). Accessing our Glassfish instance will require some additional settings. You can tell Java which certificated you trust by adding -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore property (and few others in case you are using linked sample). Complete command line when you are testing your service might need to look somewhat like: mvn clean test -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=$AS_MAIN/domains/domain1/config/cacerts.jks\ -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=changeit -Dtyrus.test.host=localhost\ -DskipTests=false Where AS_MAIN points to your Glassfish instance. Note: you might need to setup keyStore and trustStore per client instead of per JVM; there is a way how to do it, but it is Tyrus proprietary feature: http://tyrus.java.net/documentation/1.2.1/user-guide.html#d0e1128. And that's it! Now nobody is able to "hear" what you are sending to or receiving from your WebSocket endpoint. There is always room for improvement, so the next step you might want to take is introduce some authentication mechanism (like HTTP Basic or Digest). This topic is more about container configuration so I'm not going to go into details, but there is one thing worth mentioning: to access services which require authorization, you might need to put this additional information to HTTP headers of first (Upgrade) request (there is not (yet) any direct support even for these fundamental mechanisms, user need to register Configurator and add headers in beforeRequest method invocation). I filed related feature request as TYRUS-228; feel free to comment/vote if you need this functionality.

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• H1 Visa interview tips–What you must know before attending the interview?

  - by Gopinath

  USA’s H1 visa allows highly qualified professionals from other countries to work in America. Many IT professionals in India aspire to go to USA on H1 and work for their clients. Recently I had a chance to study H1 visa process to help one of my friends and I would like to share what I learned. With the assumption that your H1 petition is approved and you got an interview scheduled at US Embassy for your visa stamping, here are tips you must know before attending the interview Dress Code – Formals Say no to casuals or any fancy dress when you attend the interview. It’s not a party or friends home you are visiting. Consider H1 Visa interview as your job interview and dress up in formals. There is no option B for your, you must be in formals. A plain formal shirt with a matching pant is suggested for men. Tie and Suit would not be required, but if you are a professional at management level you can consider wearing suit. Women can wear either formal Salwar or formal pant-shirt. Avoid heavy jewellery, wear what is must as per your tradition or culture. Body Language -  Smile on your face Your body language reflects what you are and what’s going on in your mind. Don’t be nervous or restless, be relaxed and wear a beautiful smile on your face. A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. When you are called for the interview, greet the interviewer with a beautiful smile. Say Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening depending on time you are visiting them. Whenever appropriate say Thank You. Generally American professionals are very friendly people and they reciprocate for your greetings. Make sure that you make them comfortable to start the interview. Carry original documents in a separate folder I don’t want to talk much about the documents that are required for your H1B interview as it’s big subject on it’s own and it requires a separate post. I assume that your consultant or employer helped you in gathering all the required documents like – petition, DS 160 forms, education & job related documents, resume, interview call letters, client letters, etc. For all the documents you are going to submit at the interview make sure that you have originals in a separate folder.  If required interviewer may ask you show the originals of any of the document you submitted for visa processing. Don’t mix the original documents with the documents you need to submit for interview. Have a separate folder for them. For those who are going to stamping along with their spouse and children, they need to carry few extra original documents like – marriage certificate, marriage photos(30 numbers)/album, birth certificates, passports, education and profession related certificates of the spouse and children. Know your role & responsibilities The interviewer will ask you questions on your roles and responsibilities at client location. Be clear what is your day to day tasks at client place and prepared to face detailed questions on the same. When asked explain clearly and also make sure what you say is inline with what is mentioned in your petition and client invitation letter. At times they may ask you questions specific to the project/technology you are going to work. So doing some homework in this area will help you easily answer the questions. Failing to answer basic questions on your role & responsibilities may result in rejection. You work for your Employer at Client location but NOT FOR CLIENT One of the important things to keep in mind that you work for your employer and you are being deputed to client location on a work visa.  Your employer is going to be solely responsible for your salary, work, promotion, pay hikes or what so ever during your stay at USA. Your client will not be responsible for anything. Lets say you are employed with Company X in India and they are applying for H1B to work at your client(ex: Microsoft) in USA, you must keep in my mind that Microsoft is not your employer. Microsoft will not pay your salaries or responsible for any employment related activities. Company X will be solely responsible for all your employer related activities. If you don’t get this correctly and say to Visa interviewer that your client is responsible, then you may get into troubles. Know your client It’s always good to know the clients with whom you are going to work in USA and their business. If your client is a well know organisation then you may not get many questions from interviewer else you need to be well prepared to provide details like – nature of business, location, size of the organisation, etc.  Get to know the basic details about your client and be confident while providing those details to the interviewer. Also make sure that you never talk about any confidential details of your client projects and business. Revealing confidential details of your client may land your job itself in soup. Make sure that your spouse is also in sync with you If you’ve applied a H4 visa for your spouse along with your H1, make sure that spouse is in sync with you. Your spouse also should know the basic details of your job, your employer, client and location where you will be travelling. Your spouse should also be prepared to answers questions related to marriage, their profession(if working), kids, education, etc. Interviewers will try to asses your spouse communication skills, whereabouts while staying in USA and would they prefer to work USA or not. On H4, which is a dependent visa, your spouse is not allowed to work in USA and at any point your spouse should not show the intentions to search for work in USA. Less luggage more comfort You would have definitely heard that there are lot of restrictions on what you can carry along with you to an US Embassy while attending the interview. To be frank it’s not good to say there are many restrictions, but there are a hell a lot of restrictions. There are unbelievable restrictions and it’s for the safety of everyone. You are not allowed to carry mobile phones, CD/DVDs, USBs, bank cards, cameras, cosmetics, food(except baby food), water, wallets, backpacks, sealed covers, etc. Trust me most of the things we carry with us regularly every day are not allowed inside. As there are 100s of restrictions, it would be easier if you understand what you can carry along with you and just carry them alone. Ask your employer/consultant to provide you a checklist of items that you can carry. Most what you would require are H1B related documents provided by the employer/consultant Photographs All original documents supporting your H1B Passports Some cash for your travel expenses (avoid coins) Any important phone number / details written in a paper(like your cab driver number, etc.) If you carry restricted stuff then you will be stopped at security checks, you have to find people who can safely keep all the restricted items. Due to heavy restrictions in and around the US Embassy you will not find any  place to keep your luggage. So just carry the bare minimum things required so that you feel more comfortable. Useful Links THE U.S. NON IMMIGRANT VISA APPLICATION PROCESS U.S VISA SECURITY REGULATIONS GENERAL FAQS Hope this information is helpful to you and best of luck for your interview. Creative commons Image credit: Flickr/ alexfrance, vinothchandar. hughelectronic, architratan, striatic

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• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 1)

  - by Simon Cooper

  SQL Compare is one of Red Gate's most successful SQL Server tools; it allows developers and DBAs to compare and synchronize the contents of their databases. Although similar tools exist for Oracle, they are quite noticeably lacking in the usability and stability that SQL Compare is known for in the SQL Server world. We could see a real need for a usable schema comparison tools for Oracle, and so the Schema Compare for Oracle project was born. Over the next few weeks, as we come up to release of v1, I'll be doing a series of posts on the development of Schema Compare for Oracle. For the first post, I thought I would start with the main pitfalls that we stumbled across when developing the product, especially from a SQL Server background. 1. Schemas and Databases The most obvious difference is that the concept of a 'database' is quite different between Oracle and SQL Server. On SQL Server, one server instance has multiple databases, each with separate schemas. There is typically little communication between separate databases, and most databases are no more than about 1000-2000 objects. This means SQL Compare can register an entire database in a reasonable amount of time, and cross-database dependencies probably won't be an issue. It is a quite different scene under Oracle, however. The terms 'database' and 'instance' are used interchangeably, (although technically 'database' refers to the datafiles on disk, and 'instance' the running Oracle process that reads & writes to the database), and a database is a single conceptual entity. This immediately presents problems, as it is infeasible to register an entire database as we do in SQL Compare; in my Oracle install, using the standard recommended options, there are 63975 system objects. If we tried to register all those, not only would it take hours, but the client would probably run out of memory before we finished. As a result, we had to allow people to specify what schemas they wanted to register. This decision had quite a few knock-on effects for the design, which I will cover in a future post. 2. Connecting to Oracle The next obvious difference is in actually connecting to Oracle – in SQL Server, you can specify a server and database, and off you go. On Oracle things are slightly more complicated. SIDs, Service Names, and TNS A database (the files on disk) must have a unique identifier for the databases on the system, called the SID. It also has a global database name, which consists of a name (which doesn't have to match the SID) and a domain. Alternatively, you can identify a database using a service name, which normally has a 1-to-1 relationship with instances, but may not if, for example, using RAC (Real Application Clusters) for redundancy and failover. You specify the computer and instance you want to connect to using TNS (Transparent Network Substrate). The user-visible parts are a config file (tnsnames.ora) on the client machine that specifies how to connect to an instance. For example, the entry for one of my test instances is: SC_11GDB1 = (DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = simonctest)(PORT = 1521)) ) (CONNECT_DATA = (SID = 11gR1db1) ) ) This gives the hostname, port, and SID of the instance I want to connect to, and associates it with a name (SC_11GDB1). The tnsnames syntax also allows you to specify failover, multiple descriptions and address lists, and client load balancing. You can then specify this TNS identifier as the data source in a connection string. Although using ODP.NET (the .NET dlls provided by Oracle) was fine for internal prototype builds, once we released the EAP we discovered that this simply wasn't an acceptable solution for installs on other people's machines. Due to .NET assembly strong naming, users had to have installed on their machines the exact same version of the ODP.NET dlls as we had on our build server. We couldn't ship the ODP.NET dlls with our installer as the Oracle license agreement prohibited this, and we didn't want to force users to install another Oracle client just so they can run our program. To be able to list the TNS entries in the connection dialog, we also had to locate and parse the tnsnames.ora file, which was complicated by users with several Oracle client installs and intricate TNS entries. After much swearing at our computers, we eventually decided to use a third party Oracle connection library from Devart that we could ship with our program; this could use whatever client version was installed, parse the TNS entries for us, and also had the nice feature of being able to connect to an Oracle server without having any client installed at all. Unfortunately, their current license agreement prevents us from shipping an Oracle SDK, but that's a bridge we'll cross when we get to it. 3. Running synchronization scripts The most important difference is that in Oracle, DDL is non-transactional; you cannot rollback DDL statements like you can on SQL Server. Although we considered various solutions to this, including using the flashback archive or recycle bin, or generating an undo script, no reliable method of completely undoing a half-executed sync script has yet been found; so in this case we simply have to trust that the DBA or developer will check and verify the script before running it. However, before we got to that stage, we had to get the scripts to run in the first place... To run a synchronization script from SQL Compare we essentially pass the script over to the SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery method. However, when we tried to do the same for an OracleConnection we got a very strange error – 'ORA-00911: invalid character', even when running the most basic CREATE TABLE command. After much hair-pulling and Googling, we discovered that Oracle has got some very strange behaviour with semicolons at the end of statements. To understand what's going on, we need to take a quick foray into SQL and PL/SQL. PL/SQL is not T-SQL In SQL Server, T-SQL is the language used to interface with the database. It has DDL, DML, control flow, and many other nice features (like Turing-completeness) that you can mix and match in the same script. In Oracle, DDL SQL and PL/SQL are two completely separate languages, with different syntax, different datatypes and different execution engines within the instance. Oracle SQL is much more like 'pure' ANSI SQL, with no state, no control flow, and only the basic DML commands. PL/SQL is the Turing-complete language, but can only do DML and DCL (i.e. BEGIN TRANSATION commands). Any DDL or SQL commands that aren't recognised by the PL/SQL engine have to be passed back to the SQL engine via an EXECUTE IMMEDIATE command. In PL/SQL, a semicolons is a valid token used to delimit the end of a statement. In SQL, a semicolon is not a valid token (even though the Oracle documentation gives them at the end of the syntax diagrams) . When you execute the command CREATE TABLE table1 (COL1 NUMBER); in SQL*Plus the semicolon on the end is a command to SQL*Plus to execute the preceding statement on the server; it strips off the semicolon before passing it on. SQL Developer does a similar thing. When executing a PL/SQL block, however, the syntax is like so: BEGIN INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (1); INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (2); END; / In this case, the semicolon is accepted by the PL/SQL engine as a statement delimiter, and instead the / is the command to SQL*Plus to execute the current block. This explains the ORA-00911 error we got when trying to run the CREATE TABLE command – the server is complaining about the semicolon on the end. This also means that there is no SQL syntax to execute more than one DDL command in the same OracleCommand. Therefore, we would have to do a round-trip to the server for every command we want to execute. Obviously, this would cause lots of network traffic and be very slow on slow or congested networks. Our first attempt at a solution was to wrap every SQL statement (without semicolon) inside an EXECUTE IMMEDIATE command in a PL/SQL block and pass that to the server to execute. One downside of this solution is that we get no feedback as to how the script execution is going; we're currently evaluating better solutions to this thorny issue. Next up: Dependencies; how we solved the problem of being unable to register the entire database, and the knock-on effects to the whole product.

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• 5 Ways Android Still Disappoints (Me)

  - by TStewartDev

  Let me make this clear: I'm annoyed with Apple. I don't like their current policies and I don't like where Steve Jobs is taking the company. In general, I don't like it when any one company gets too much control in a market. When that happens, the leading company dictates the game and as consumers, our options all but disappear. That said, I'm still going to buy a new iPhone next week. My Apple-hating friends seem to desperately want me to go Android instead, but frankly, it's not good enough for me, and here are the reasons why. The Modern WinMo One of the reasons that Microsoft has identified for Windows Mobile's rapid decline is the breadth of hardware. They exercised little control over manufacturer's implementations. In theory, that sounds great. We as consumers have lots of choice. In practice, though, it meant among other things that updates to the devices were left up to the manufacturers. As a result, that rarely happened. (I'm still bitter at Toshiba for leaving me hanging back in 2002.) And now, Google is doing the same thing with Android. Case in point: my wife has a Motorola Backflip that we bought in April. It was released in March. Motorola says it will get Android 2.1 "sometime in Q3". Great. Meanwhile, I pull down the latest version of iPhone OS (now iOS) and install it the same day it's released. You may say that I can't judge Android by one lazy manufacturer. Yup, I sure can. With Apple, my original iPhone has been supported perfectly for 3 years. With Android, I will have to wait for upgrades after Google releases them, possibly indefinitely. Not cool. AT&T We signed a new contract with AT&T in April to get my wife's phone. I've had a reasonable experience with them. I don't imagine my experience with Verizon would be any better, and I'm relatively confident that Sprint doesn't have the coverage it takes to work well for us. The fact is, AT&T, for whatever reason, doesn't have jack for Android phones. May not be Android's fault, but it's still a shortcoming that prevents me from having it just like the iPhone's exclusivity keeps some folks on other networks from having it. Innovation? What Innovation? Android has a nice dashboard and a great notification system and… nothing else original. I keep reading about how disappointing the iPhone is nowadays. "It has no innovation," people say. Who does? Android has modeled its behavior after the iPhone. That's fine, but if all you've got is a similar product and I'm invested both skill-wise and app-wise in my current platform, why should I change? Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 looks somewhat innovative, and I'm pretty excited to see what they'll bring to the table, but that's another six months away, at least. I've got a 3 year old phone that has some annoying issues now (thanks to recent encounters with water). I need a new phone now. Is This Going to Work? There's no shortage of criticism of Apple over its App Store policies, and I've vented my own anger about it. However, I will give them credit: their screening of apps has done a great job of weeding out the crap and gives an excellent indication that the app will work on my device. How about Android? Nope. It might work on your phone. Maybe. You'll have to try it to see. Get burned by it? Well, write a nasty review to try to keep others from making the mistake you did. If you don't mind doing that stuff, then Android is the platform for you. Personally, I'd rather have a receptionist screening out the telemarketing and survey calls than hang up on them myself, but that's your call. Slow, Slowing, Slower All this yapping about multitasking. This is an area I've been on Apple's side from the beginning. Sorry folks, but this is the number one reason I hated Windows Mobile: the longer you use it, the slower it gets because it doesn't kill apps. I'm with Steve Jobs on this one: if you see a task manager, we're doing it wrong. I don't want to have to manually kill apps. I hate doing that on Windows let alone on a mobile device. To me, priority one should be keeping the device speedy. Waiting for your device to respond is unacceptable. Bonus! Taken from iPhone Letdown? 8 Things Apple Didn't Announce, here are my responses: 4G Yeah, let me know if your area actually has it. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. No carrier is going to have 4G here for at least 3 years. Meanwhile, you still get to pay for it. Yay! Cloud iTunes/OTA Sync You got me here. Of course, whether or not your Android device will be able to do it is always a good question. 3G Video Chat You got me here, too. I'm sure you spent countless hours in front of your phone with video chat. Also, I can't wait for the "No Video Chat While Driving" laws. Mobile Hotspot This is a neat feature, but as the author points out, it's left up to the carrier whether to implement it or not. Pretty sure any Android phones that come to AT&T won't have this enabled in the foreseeable future. Is Verizon even allowing this? I just figured Sprint was because they're failing so hard at keeping customers. Free MobileMe I use Google's services with my iPhone. The only people I know who use MobileMe are Apple fanboys and fangirls. If you choose to pay for a service that you can get for free, that's your decision, not Apple's. Voice Input Voice input has been available on phones (even "dumb" phones) for years now. iPhone does have the ability, though limited. Why don't I hear people telling their phones what to do? Maybe because it's still easier to use your fingers than talk to it. Get back to me when this becomes an important feature. Free Navigation Maybe this will be a bigger deal to me now that I'm getting a phone with GPS, but when using my buddy's 3gs, Google maps has worked just fine. Maybe I just don't trust turn-by-turn navigation enough to want it. Dashboard The only legitimate complaint on this list, to me. iPhone's home screen is pathetic, doubly so for the iPad. What a waste of perfectly usable space. I also want to add notifications to this list. Android's notification panel is far superior to the iPhone's. I don't want to hunt all over my screen to find little red dots. Put 'em in one place, Apple.

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• Can Google Employees See My Saved Google Chrome Passwords?

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Storing your passwords in your web browser seems like a great time saver, but are the passwords secure and inaccessible to others (even employees of the browser company) when squirreled away? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader MMA is curious if Google employees have (or could have) access to the passwords he stores in Google Chrome: I understand that we are really tempted to save our passwords in Google Chrome. The likely benefit is two fold, You don’t need to (memorize and) input those long and cryptic passwords. These are available wherever you are once you log in to your Google account. The last point sparked my doubt. Since the password is available anywhere, the storage must in some central location, and this should be at Google. Now, my simple question is, can a Google employee see my passwords? Searching over the Internet revealed several articles/messages. Do you save passwords in Chrome? Maybe you should reconsider: Talks about your passwords being stolen by someone who has access to your computer account. Nothing mentioned about the central storage security and vulnerability. There is even a response from Chrome browser security tech lead about the first issue. Chrome’s insane password security strategy: Mostly along the same line. You can steal password from somebody if you have access to the computer account. How to Steal Passwords Saved in Google Chrome in 5 Simple Steps: Teaches you how to actually perform the act mentioned in the previous two when you have access to somebody else’s account. There are many more (including this one at this site), mostly along the same line, points, counter-points, huge debates. I refrain from mentioning them here, simply carry a search if you want to find them. Coming back to my original query, can a Google employee see my password? Since I can view the password using a simple button, definitely they can be unhashed (decrypted) even if encrypted. This is very different from the passwords saved in Unix-like OS’s where the saved password can never be seen in plain text. They use a one-way encryption algorithm to encrypt your passwords. This encrypted password is then stored in the passwd or shadow file. When you attempt to login, the password you type in is encrypted again and compared with the entry in the file that stores your passwords. If they match, it must be the same password, and you are allowed access. Thus, a superuser can change my password, can block my account, but he can never see my password. So are his concerns well founded or will a little insight dispel his worry? The Answer SuperUser contributor Zeel helps put his mind at ease: Short answer: No* Passwords stored on your local machine can be decrypted by Chrome, as long as your OS user account is logged in. And then you can view those in plain text. At first this seems horrible, but how did you think auto-fill worked? When that password field gets filled in, Chrome must insert the real password into the HTML form element – or else the page wouldn’t work right, and you could not submit the form. And if the connection to the website is not over HTTPS, the plain text is then sent over the internet. In other words, if chrome can’t get the plain text passwords, then they are totally useless. A one way hash is no good, because we need to use them. Now the passwords are in fact encrypted, the only way to get them back to plain text is to have the decryption key. That key is your Google password, or a secondary key you can set up. When you sign into Chrome and sync the Google servers will transmit the encrypted passwords, settings, bookmarks, auto-fill, etc, to your local machine. Here Chrome will decrypt the information and be able to use it. On Google’s end all that info is stored in its encrpyted state, and they do not have the key to decrypt it. Your account password is checked against a hash to log in to Google, and even if you let chrome remember it, that encrypted version is hidden in the same bundle as the other passwords, impossible to access. So an employee could probably grab a dump of the encrypted data, but it wouldn’t do them any good, since they would have no way to use it.* So no, Google employees can not** access your passwords, since they are encrypted on their servers. * However, do not forget that any system that can be accessed by an authorized user can be accessed by an unauthorized user. Some systems are easier to break than other, but none are fail-proof. . . That being said, I think I will trust Google and the millions they spend on security systems, over any other password storage solution. And heck, I’m a wimpy nerd, it would be easier to beat the passwords out of me than break Google’s encryption. ** I am also assuming that there isn’t a person who just happens to work for Google gaining access to your local machine. In that case you are screwed, but employment at Google isn’t actually a factor any more. Moral: Hit Win + L before leaving machine. While we agree with zeel that it’s a pretty safe bet (as long as your computer is not compromised) that your passwords are in fact safe while stored in Chrome, we prefer to encrypt all our logins and passwords in a LastPass vault. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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• TGIF: Engagement Wrap-up

  - by Michael Snow

  We've had a very busy week here at Oracle and as we build up to Oracle OpenWorld starting in less than 10 days - it doesn't look like things will be slowing down. Engagement is definitely in the air this week. Our friend, John Mancini published a great article entitled: "The World of Engagement" on his Digital Landfill blog yesterday and we hosted a great webcast with R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research yesterday on the "9 C's of Engagement". 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} I wanted to wrap-up the week with some key takeaways from our webcast yesterday with Ray Wang. If you missed the webcast yesterday, fear not - it is now available  On-Demand. We'll leave you this week with lots of questions about how to navigate these churning waters of engagement. Stay tuned to the Oracle WebCenter Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series as we fuel this dialogue. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Company Culture Does company support a culture of putting customer satisfaction ahead of profits? Does culture promote creativity and cross functional employee collaboration? Does culture accept different views of multi-generational workforce? Does culture promote employee training and skills development Does culture support upward mobility and long term retention? Does culture support work-life balance? Does the culture provide rewards for employee for outstanding customer support? Channels What are the current primary channels for customer communications? What do you think will be the primary channels in two years? Is company developing support model for emerging channels? Do all channels consistently deliver the same level of customer support? Do you know the cost per transaction across all channels? Do you engage customers proactively across multiple channels? Do all channels have access to the same customer information? Community Does company extend customer support into virtual communities of interest? Does company facilitate educating users through its virtual communities? Does company mine its customer’s experience into useful data? Does company increase the value for customers through using data to deliver new products and services? Does company support two way interactions with its customers through communities of interest? Does company actively support social CRM, online communities and social media markets? Credibility Does company market its trustworthiness through external certificates such as business licenses, BBB certificates or other validations? Does company promote trust through customer testimonials and case studies on ethical business practices? Does company promote truthful market campaigns Does company make it easy for customers to complain? Does company build its reputation for standing behind its products with guarantees for satisfaction? Does company protect its customer data with high security measures> Content What sources do you use to create customer content? Does company mine social media and blogs for customer content? How does your company sort, store and retain its customer content? How frequently does content get updated? What external sources do you use for customer content? How many responses are typically received from a knowledge management system inquiry? Does your company use customer content to design and develop new product and services? Context Does your company market to customers in clusters or individually? Does your company customize its messages and personalize them to specific needs of each individual customer? Does your company store customer data based on their past behaviors, purchases, sentiment analysis and current activities? Does your company manage customer context according to channels used? For example identify personal use channels versus business channels? What is your frequency of collecting customer activities across various touch points? How is your customer data stored and analyzed? Is contextual data used for future customer outreach? Cadence Which channels does your company measure-web site visits, phone calls, IVR, store visits, face to face, social media? Does company make effective use of cross channel marketing to promote more frequent customer engagement? Does your company rate the patterns relevant for your product or service and monitor usage against this pattern? Does your company measure the frequency of both online and offline channels? Does your company apply metrics to the frequency of customer engagements with product or services revenues? Does your company consolidate data for customer engagement across various channels for a complete view of its customer? Catalyst Does company offer coupon discounts? Does company have a customer loyalty program or a VIP membership program? Does company mine customer data to target specific groups of buyers? Do internal employees serve as ambassadors for customer programs? Does company drive loyalty through social media loyalty programs? Does company build rewards based on using loyalty data? Does company offer an employee incentive program to drive customer loyalty?

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• Choice and setup of version control

  - by Peter M

  I am about to set up an new laptop and in the process transition to a new version control system as part of a general cleanup. Currently I use a centralized version control system (yes it is VSS, and yes I know all the pro's and con's of that system, but as a single user system it works well for me). I have very little requirements for a new system and I am free to choose among any of the current mainstream players, but cost constraints will push me towards oss. Some of my requirements are: Runs on a single machine (ie the laptop in question) under windows I am not sharing things with other developers or workers - this is more for my own historical benefits. I want to version source code, documentation and binary files I have a large hierarchy of projects that are unrelated (see below) I have files within the hierarchy that don't need to be controlled (but could be) Some projects use Visual Studio, so some integration there could be nice. There could be some sharing of files between jobs. I generally only need a small about of branching in code files The directory hierarchy that I have at the moment is somewhat like: Root | |--Customer #1 | | | |--Job #1 | | | | | |--Data files received from Customer for Job (not controlled) | | |--Documentation files (controlled) | | |--Project information files (not controlled - but could be) | | |--Software Project Files (controlled) | | |--Scratch dir for job (not controlled) | | | |--Job #2 | | (same structure as above) | |--Customer #2 | |.. | |--Cusmtomer #n |.. Currently I have about 22 customers with differing numbers of projects underneath them. At the moment I have a single VSS repository based at the root of the directory structure. If I kept with a centralized system (ie SVN) I believe that I should keep the same approach and continue with a single repository based from the root dir. Is this a valid approach? However if I move to a distributed tool then I am unsure of how I should handle the situation. My initial guess is that I should not have a repository based on the root of my entire directory structure - but that is a guess so I really don't know how valid it is. Should I pitch a distributed approach at the Root, Customer, Job or sub-Job directory level? Also what I am not clear on with distributed tools (and perhaps with SVN as well), is if I can branch parts of a repository. For example, I can see branching source code in software projects as being useful, but branching my documentation as not being useful. So if I pitch a repository at the Job level, can I just branch the Software Project Files? Or would all files in that Job be branched? Every time I look at distributed tools I get a nagging feeling that they are not suited to my style of setup. I am uncomfortable with idea of having to manually set up something like 50 to 80 separate repositories (if I pitch at the Job level, or 20+ if at the Customer level) within my directory hierarchy. This feeling also extends to having all those repositories scattered around as well - however I do have a backup strategy that I trust, so this latter feeling is pretty well unfounded. So what advice can you all give me? Thanks in advance!

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives Part 2 - Jumpstarting your IAM program with R2

  - by Tanu Sood

  Identity and access management (IAM) isn’t a new concept. Over the past decade, companies have begun to address identity management through a variety of solutions that have primarily focused on provisioning. . The new age workforce is converging at a rapid pace with ever increasing demand to use diverse portfolio of applications and systems to interact and interface with their peers in the industry and customers alike. Oracle has taken a significant leap with their release of Identity and Access Management 11gR2 towards enabling this global workforce to conduct their business in a secure, efficient and effective manner. As companies deal with IAM business drivers, it becomes immediately apparent that holistic, rather than piecemeal, approaches better address their needs. When planning an enterprise-wide IAM solution, the first step is to create a common framework that serves as the foundation on which to build the cost, compliance and business process efficiencies. As a leading industry practice, IAM should be established on a foundation of accurate data for identity management, making this data available in a uniform manner to downstream applications and processes. Mature organizations are looking beyond IAM’s basic benefits to harness more advanced capabilities in user lifecycle management. For any organization looking to embark on an IAM initiative, consider the following use cases in managing and administering user access. Expanding the Enterprise Provisioning Footprint Almost all organizations have some helpdesk resources tied up in handling access requests from users, a distraction from their core job of handling problem tickets. This dependency has mushroomed from the traditional acceptance of provisioning solutions integrating and addressing only a portion of applications in the heterogeneous landscape Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) 11gR2 solves this problem by offering integration with third party ticketing systems as “disconnected applications”. It allows for the existing business processes to be seamlessly integrated into the system and tracked throughout its lifecycle. With minimal effort and analysis, an organization can begin integrating OIM with groups or applications that are involved with manually intensive access provisioning and de-provisioning activities. This aspect of OIM allows organizations to on-board applications and associated business processes quickly using out of box templates and frameworks. This is especially important for organizations looking to fold in users and resources from mergers and acquisitions. Simplifying Access Requests Organizations looking to implement access request solutions often find it challenging to get their users to accept and adopt the new processes.. So, how do we improve the user experience, make it intuitive and personalized and yet simplify the user access process? With R2, OIM helps organizations alleviate the challenge by placing the most used functionality front and centre in the new user request interface. Roles, application accounts, and entitlements can all be found in the same interface as catalog items, giving business users a single location to go to whenever they need to initiate, approve or track a request. Furthermore, if a particular item is not relevant to a user’s job function or area inside the organization, it can be hidden so as to not overwhelm or confuse the user with superfluous options. The ability to customize the user interface to suit your needs helps in exercising the business rules effectively and avoiding access proliferation within the organization. Saving Time with Templates A typical use case that is most beneficial to business users is flexibility to place, edit, and withdraw requests based on changing circumstances and business needs. With OIM R2, multiple catalog items can now be added and removed from the shopping cart, an ecommerce paradigm that many users are already familiar with. This feature can be especially useful when setting up a large number of new employees or granting existing department or group access to a newly integrated application. Additionally, users can create their own shopping cart templates in order to complete subsequent requests more quickly. This feature saves the user from having to search for and select items all over again if a request is similar to a previous one. Advanced Delegated Administration A key feature of any provisioning solution should be to empower each business unit in managing their own access requests. By bringing administration closer to the user, you improve user productivity, enable efficiency and alleviate the administration overhead. To do so requires a federated services model so that the business units capable of shouldering the onus of user life cycle management of their business users can be enabled to do so. OIM 11gR2 offers advanced administrative options for creating, managing and controlling business logic and workflows through easy to use administrative interface and tools that can be exposed to delegated business administrators. For example, these business administrators can establish or modify how certain requests and operations should be handled within their business unit based on a number of attributes ranging from the type of request or the risk level of the individual items requested. Closed-Loop Remediation Security continues to be a major concern for most organizations. Identity management solutions bolster security by ensuring only the right users have the right access to the right resources. To prevent unauthorized access and where it already exists, the ability to detect and remediate it, are key requirements of an enterprise-grade proven solution. But the challenge with most solutions today is that some of this information still exists in silos. And when changes are made to systems directly, not all information is captured. With R2, oracle is offering a comprehensive Identity Governance solution that our customer organizations are leveraging for closed loop remediation that allows for an automated way for administrators to revoke unauthorized access. The change is automatically captured and the action noted for continued management. Conclusion While implementing provisioning solutions, it is important to keep the near term and the long term goals in mind. The provisioning solution should always be a part of a larger security and identity management program but with the ability to seamlessly integrate not only with the company’s infrastructure but also have the ability to leverage the information, business models compiled and used by the other identity management solutions. This allows organizations to reduce the cost of ownership, close security gaps and leverage the existing infrastructure. And having done so a multiple clients’ sites, this is the approach we recommend. In our next post, we will take a journey through our experiences of advising clients looking to upgrade to R2 from a previous version or migrating from a different solution. Meet the Writers:   Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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• First PC Build (Part 1)

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tonyt/archive/2014/08/05/157959.aspxA couple of months ago I made the decision to build myself a new computer. The intended use is gaming and for using the last real version of Photoshop. I was motivated by the poor state of console gaming and a simple desire to do something I haven’t done before – build a PC from the ground up. I’ve been using PCs for more than two decades. I’ve replaced a component hear and there, but for the last 10 years or so I’ve only used laptops. Therefore, this article will be written from the perspective of someone familiar with PCs, but completely new at building. I’m not an expert and this is not a definitive guide for building a PC, but I do hope that it encourages you to try it yourself. Component List Research There was a lot of research necessary, because building a PC is completely new to me, and I haven’t kept up with what’s out there. The first thing you want to do is nail down what your goals are. Your goals are going to be driven by what you want to do with your computer and personal choice. Don’t neglect the second one, because if you’re doing this for fun you want to get what you want. In my case, I focused on three things: performance, longevity, and aesthetics. The performance aspect is important for gaming and Photoshop. This will drive what components you get. For example, heavy gaming use is going to drive your choice of graphics card. Longevity is relevant to me, because I don’t want to be changing things out anytime soon for the next hot game. The consequence of performance and longevity is cost. Finally, aesthetics was my next consideration. I could have just built a box, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for me. Aesthetics might not be important to you. They are for me. I also like gadgets and that played into at least one purchase for this build. I used PC Part Picker to put together my component list. I found it invaluable during the process and I’d recommend it to everyone. One caveat is that I wouldn’t trust the compatibility aspects. It does a pretty good job of not steering you wrong, but do your own research. The rest of it isn’t really sexy. I started out with what appealed to me and then I made changes and additions as I dived deep into researching each component and interaction I could find. The resources I used are innumerable. I used reviews, product descriptions, forum posts (praises and problems), et al. to assist me. I also asked friends into gaming what they thought about my component list. And when I got near the end I posted my list to the Reddit /r/buildapc forum. I cannot stress the value of extra sets of eyeballs and first hand experiences. Some of the resources I used: PC Part Picker Tom’s Hardware bit-tech Reddit Purchase PC Part Picker favors certain vendors. You should look at others too. In my case I found their favorites to be the best. My priorities were out-the-door price and shipping time. I knew that once I started getting parts I’d want to start building. Luckily, I timed it well and everything arrived within the span of a few days. Here are my opinions on the vendors I ended up using in alphabetical order. Amazon.com is a good, reliable choice. They have excellent customer service in my experience, and I knew I wouldn’t have trouble with them. However, shipping time is often a problem when you use their free shipping unless you order expensive items (I’ve found items over $100 ship quickly). Ultimately though, price wasn’t always the best and their collection of sales tax in my state turned me off them. I did purchase my case from them. I ordered the mouse as well, but I cancelled after it was stuck four days in a “shipping soon” state. I purchased the mouse locally. Best Buy is not my favorite place to do business. There’s a lot of history with poor, uninterested sales representatives and they used to have a lot of bad anti-consumer policies. That’s a lot better now, but the bad taste is still in my mouth. I ended up purchasing the accessories from them including mouse (locally) and headphones. NCIX is a company that I’ve never heard of before. It popped up as a recommendation for my CPU cooler on PC Part Picker. I didn’t do a lot of research on the company, because their policy on you buying insurance for your orders turned me off. That policy makes it clear to me that the company finds me responsible for the shipment once it leaves their dock. That’s not right, and may run afoul of state laws. Regardless they shipped my CPU cooler quickly and I didn’t have a problem. NewEgg.com is a well known company. I had never done business with them, but I’m glad I did. They shipped quickly and provided good visibility over everything. The prices were also the best in most cases. My main complaint is that they have a lot of exchange only return policies on components. To their credit those policies are listed in the cart underneath each item. The visibility tells me that they’re not playing any shenanigans and made me comfortable dealing with that risk. The vast majority of what I ordered came from them. Coming Next In the next part I’ll tackle my build experience.

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• Nginx Subdomain Problem

  - by user292299

  i can't access my subdomain on localhost. my localdomain is localhost.dev and it's work.but i want to auto subdomain for php script (username.localhost.dev) i try this server { listen 80 default_server; listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on; access_log /var/www/access.log; error_log /var/www/error.log; root /var/www; index index.php index.html index.htm; # Make site accessible from http://localhost/ server_name localhost.dev ***.localhost.dev**; location / { # First attempt to serve request as file, then # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404. try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules } location /f2/public/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /f2/public/index.php?$args; } location /doc/ { alias /usr/share/doc/; autoindex on; allow 127.0.0.1; allow ::1; deny all; } # Only for nginx-naxsi used with nginx-naxsi-ui : process denied requests #location /RequestDenied { # proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080; #} #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # #error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; #location = /50x.html { # root /usr/share/nginx/html; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { # fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$; # # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini # # # With php5-cgi alone: # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # # With php5-fpm: # fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; # fastcgi_index index.php; # include fastcgi_params; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # #location ~ /\.ht { # deny all; #} } it's not working.i change server_name for testing server_name localhost.dev asd.localhost.dev; i can't access asd.localhost.dev and i try this double server{} section # You may add here your # server { # ... # } # statements for each of your virtual hosts to this file ## # You should look at the following URL's in order to grasp a solid understanding # of Nginx configuration files in order to fully unleash the power of Nginx. # http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls # http://wiki.nginx.org/QuickStart # http://wiki.nginx.org/Configuration # # Generally, you will want to move this file somewhere, and start with a clean # file but keep this around for reference. Or just disable in sites-enabled. # # Please see /usr/share/doc/nginx-doc/examples/ for more detailed examples. ## server { listen 80 default_server; listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on; access_log /var/www/access.log; error_log /var/www/error.log; root /var/www; index index.php index.html index.htm; # Make site accessible from http://localhost/ server_name localhost.dev; location / { # First attempt to serve request as file, then # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404. try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules } location /f2/public/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /f2/public/index.php?$args; } location /doc/ { alias /usr/share/doc/; autoindex on; allow 127.0.0.1; allow ::1; deny all; } # Only for nginx-naxsi used with nginx-naxsi-ui : process denied requests #location /RequestDenied { # proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080; #} #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # #error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; #location = /50x.html { # root /usr/share/nginx/html; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { # fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$; # # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini # # # With php5-cgi alone: # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # # With php5-fpm: # fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; # fastcgi_index index.php; # include fastcgi_params; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # #location ~ /\.ht { # deny all; #} } ############################### server { access_log /var/www/access.log; error_log /var/www/error.log; root /var/www; index index.php index.html index.htm; # Make site accessible from http://localhost/ server_name asd.localhost.dev; location / { # First attempt to serve request as file, then # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404. try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules } location /f2/public/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /f2/public/index.php?$args; } location /doc/ { alias /usr/share/doc/; autoindex on; allow 127.0.0.1; allow ::1; deny all; } # Only for nginx-naxsi used with nginx-naxsi-ui : process denied requests #location /RequestDenied { # proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080; #} #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # #error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; #location = /50x.html { # root /usr/share/nginx/html; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { # fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$; # # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini # # # With php5-cgi alone: # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # # With php5-fpm: # fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; # fastcgi_index index.php; # include fastcgi_params; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params; try_files $uri =404; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # #location ~ /\.ht { # deny all; #} } # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration # #server { # listen 8000; # listen somename:8080; # server_name somename alias another.alias; # root html; # index index.html index.htm; # # location / { # try_files $uri $uri/ =404; # } #} # HTTPS server # #server { # listen 443; # server_name localhost; # # root html; # index index.html index.htm; # # ssl on; # ssl_certificate cert.pem; # ssl_certificate_key cert.key; # # ssl_session_timeout 5m; # # ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1; # ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv3:+EXP; # ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; # # location / { # try_files $uri $uri/ =404; # } #} i can't success

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• Metrics - A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing (or 'Why you're not clever enough to interpret metrics data')

  - by Jason Crease

  At RedGate Software, I work on a .NET obfuscator  called SmartAssembly.  Various features of it use a database to store various things (exception reports, name-mappings, etc.) The user is given the option of using either a SQL-Server database (which requires them to have Microsoft SQL Server), or a Microsoft Access MDB file (which requires nothing). MDB is the default option, but power-users soon switch to using a SQL Server database because it offers better performance and data-sharing. In the fashionable spirit of optimization and metrics, an obvious product-management question is 'Which is the most popular? SQL Server or MDB?' We've collected data about this fact, using our 'Feature-Usage-Reporting' technology (available as part of SmartAssembly) and more recently our 'Application Metrics' technology: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 28 19.0 8115 8115 MDB 114 77.6 1449 1449 (As a disclaimer, please note than SmartAssembly has far more than 132 users . This data is just a selection of one build) So, it would appear that SQL-Server is used by fewer users, but more often. Great. But here's why these numbers are useless to me: Only the original developers understand the data What does a single 'usage' of 'MDB' mean? Does this happen once per run? Once per option change? On clicking the 'Obfuscate Now' button? When running the command-line version or just from the UI version? Each question could skew the data 10-fold either way, and the answers only known by the developer that instrumented the application in the first place. In other words, only the original developer can interpret the data - product-managers cannot interpret the data unaided. Most of the data is from uninterested users About half of people who download and run a free-trial from the internet quit it almost immediately. Only a small fraction use it sufficiently to make informed choices. Since the MDB option is the default one, we don't know how many of those 114 were people CHOOSING to use the MDB, or how many were JUST HAPPENING to use this MDB default for their 20-second trial. This is a problem we see across all our metrics: Are people are using X because it's the default or are they using X because they want to use X? We need to segment the data further - asking what percentage of each percentage meet our criteria for an 'established user' or 'informed user'. You end up spending hours writing sophisticated and dubious SQL queries to segment the data further. Not fun. You can't find out why they used this feature Metrics can answer the when and what, but not the why. Why did people use feature X? If you're anything like me, you often click on random buttons in unfamiliar applications just to explore the feature-set. If we listened uncritically to metrics at RedGate, we would eliminate the most-important and more-complex features which people actually buy the software for, leaving just big buttons on the main page and the About-Box. "Ah, that's interesting!" rather than "Ah, that's actionable!" People do love data. Did you know you eat 1201 chickens in a lifetime? But just 4 cows? Interesting, but useless. Often metrics give you a nice number: '5.8% of users have 3 or more monitors' . But unless the statistic is both SUPRISING and ACTIONABLE, it's useless. Most metrics are collected, reviewed with lots of cooing. and then forgotten. Unless a piece-of-data could change things, it's useless collecting it. People get obsessed with significance levels The first things that lots of people do with this data is do a t-test to get a significance level ("Hey! We know with 99.64% confidence that people prefer SQL Server to MDBs!") Believe me: other causes of error/misinterpretation in your data are FAR more significant than your t-test could ever comprehend. Confirmation bias prevents objectivity If the data appears to match our instinct, we feel satisfied and move on. If it doesn't, we suspect the data and dig deeper, plummeting down a rabbit-hole of segmentation and filtering until we give-up and move-on. Data is only useful if it can change our preconceptions. Do you trust this dodgy data more than your own understanding, knowledge and intelligence?  I don't. There's always multiple plausible ways to interpret/action any data Let's say we segment the above data, and get this data: Post-trial users (i.e. those using a paid version after the 14-day free-trial is over): Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 13 9.0 1115 1115 MDB 5 4.2 449 449 Trial users: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 15 10.0 7000 7000 MDB 114 77.6 1000 1000 How do you interpret this data? It's one of: Mostly SQL Server users buy our software. People who can't afford SQL Server tend to be unable to afford or unwilling to buy our software. Therefore, ditch MDB-support. Our MDB support is so poor and buggy that our massive MDB user-base doesn't buy it.  Therefore, spend loads of money improving it, and think about ditching SQL-Server support. People 'graduate' naturally from MDB to SQL Server as they use the software more. Things are fine the way they are. We're marketing the tool wrong. The large number of MDB users represent uninformed downloaders. Tell marketing to aggressively target SQL Server users. To choose an interpretation you need to segment again. And again. And again, and again. Opting-out is correlated with feature-usage Metrics tends to be opt-in. This skews the data even further. Between 5% and 30% of people choose to opt-in to metrics (often called 'customer improvement program' or something like that). Casual trial-users who are uninterested in your product or company are less likely to opt-in. This group is probably also likely to be MDB users. How much does this skew your data by? Who knows? It's not all doom and gloom. There are some things metrics can answer well. Environment facts. How many people have 3 monitors? Have Windows 7? Have .NET 4 installed? Have Japanese Windows? Minor optimizations.  Is the text-box big enough for average user-input? Performance data. How long does our app take to start? How many databases does the average user have on their server? As you can see, questions about who-the-user-is rather than what-the-user-does are easier to answer and action. Conclusion Use SmartAssembly. If not for the metrics (called 'Feature-Usage-Reporting'), then at least for the obfuscation/error-reporting. Data raises more questions than it answers. Questions about environment are the easiest to answer.

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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• Mongodb Slave replication lag

  - by Leonid Bugaev

  We using standard mongo setup: 2 replicas + 1 arbiter. Both replica servers use same AWS m1.medium with RAID10 EBS. We experiencing constantly growing replication lag on secondary replica. I tried to do full-resync, you can see it on graph, but it helped only for some hours. Our mongo usage is really low now, and frankly i can't understan why it can be. iostat 1 for secondary: avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 80.39 0.00 2.94 0.00 16.67 0.00 Device: tps kB_read/s kB_wrtn/s kB_read kB_wrtn xvdap1 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 xvdb 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 xvdfp4 12.75 0.00 189.22 0 193 xvdfp3 12.75 0.00 189.22 0 193 xvdfp2 7.84 0.00 40.20 0 41 xvdfp1 7.84 0.00 40.20 0 41 md127 19.61 0.00 219.61 0 224 mongostat for secondary (why 100% locks? i guess its the problem): insert query update delete getmore command flushes mapped vsize res faults locked % idx miss % qr|qw ar|aw netIn netOut conn set repl time *10 *0 *16 *0 0 2|4 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.65g 0 107 0 0|0 0|0 198b 1k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:37 *4 *0 *8 *0 0 12|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.65g 0 91.7 0 0|0 0|0 837b 5k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:38 *4 *0 *7 *0 0 3|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.64g 0 110 0 0|0 0|0 342b 1k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:39 *4 *0 *8 *0 0 1|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.64g 0 82.9 0 0|0 0|0 62b 1k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:40 *3 *0 *7 *0 0 5|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.6g 0 75.2 0 0|0 0|0 466b 2k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:41 *4 *0 *7 *0 0 1|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.64g 0 138 0 0|0 0|1 62b 1k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:42 *7 *0 *15 *0 0 3|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.64g 0 95.4 0 0|0 0|0 342b 1k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:43 *7 *0 *14 *0 0 1|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.64g 0 98 0 0|0 0|0 62b 1k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:44 *8 *0 *17 *0 0 3|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.64g 0 96.3 0 0|0 0|0 342b 1k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:45 *7 *0 *14 *0 0 3|0 0 30.9g 62.4g 1.64g 0 96.1 0 0|0 0|0 186b 2k 16 replset-01 SEC 06:55:46 mongostat for primary insert query update delete getmore command flushes mapped vsize res faults locked % idx miss % qr|qw ar|aw netIn netOut conn set repl time 12 30 20 0 0 3 0 30.9g 62.6g 641m 0 0.9 0 0|0 0|0 212k 619k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:41 5 17 10 0 0 2 0 30.9g 62.6g 641m 0 0.5 0 0|0 0|0 159k 429k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:42 9 22 16 0 0 3 0 30.9g 62.6g 642m 0 0.7 0 0|0 0|0 158k 276k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:43 6 18 12 0 0 2 0 30.9g 62.6g 640m 0 0.7 0 0|0 0|0 93k 231k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:44 6 12 8 0 0 3 0 30.9g 62.6g 640m 0 0.3 0 0|0 0|0 80k 125k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:45 8 21 14 0 0 9 0 30.9g 62.6g 641m 0 0.6 0 0|0 0|0 118k 419k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:46 10 34 20 0 0 6 0 30.9g 62.6g 640m 0 1.3 0 0|0 0|0 164k 527k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:47 6 21 13 0 0 2 0 30.9g 62.6g 641m 0 0.7 0 0|0 0|0 111k 477k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:48 8 21 15 0 0 2 0 30.9g 62.6g 641m 0 0.7 0 0|0 0|0 204k 336k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:49 4 12 8 0 0 8 0 30.9g 62.6g 641m 0 0.5 0 0|0 0|0 156k 530k 48 replset-01 M 06:56:50 Mongo version: 2.0.6

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• VMware vSphere cluster design for site redundancy

  - by Stefan Radovanovici

  I have a question about the best design for site redudancy when using vSphere clusters. A bit of background info about our situation first though. We are a medium-sized company with two main offices, located in different countries. Our networks are linked by a Layer2 150Mbps leased line which is currently underused. We have a variety of services running for internal use within the company, some on physycal servers and some on existing vSphere clusters. In our department we also run several services (almost all running under various forms of Linux) like NTP, Syslog, jump servers, monitoring servers and so on. We have now the requirement that those servers need to be redundant within each location (which they are not at the moment) and also site redudant (which they are to some extent, the servers are duplicated in the 2nd location with configurations kept in sync via various methods at the application layer). There is no SAN available for us, at least not something that we can use at the moment. Cost is also an issue. While we do have some budget available for this, we can't afford to buy SANs for both locations for example. I looked at the VSA feature and it seems that this could be something for us but I am unsure how to solve the site-redudancy requirement. At the moment for testing purposes I am setting up in a lab a vSphere 5 with VSA on two ESXi hosts. I am currently using the Essentials Plus kit with VSA license, which allows me to build a VSA cluster on up to 3 hosts, together with a vCenter license to manage them. The hosts each have two dual-port network cards and two 600GB drives, running in Raid1. Hardware-wise this will be enough for us to run the all the services we need as VMs and will provide redundandcy within the site. At the moment I see only two option to have site redundancy: build an identical VSA cluter in the second location and keep the various services sync'ed at application layer (database sync, rsync and so on). simply move one of the hosts from the existing cluster to the second location, basically having the VSA cluster span the 150Mbps link between the sites. I would very much prefer the second option but I am unsure how well it'll work, if it can work at all. Technically it should, we can span the needed VLANs across the leased line and have them available in the second location. The advantage would be that we don't need to worry at all about sync'ing databases and the like. But I have the feeling that the bandwidth will not be enough, I have no way of knowing how much traffic will the VSA cluster generate between the hosts. I realize that this will most likely depend on the individual usage of the VMs but still, I have no idea how VSA replicates data between the ESXi hosts. Are these my only options or can my goals be achieved in some other way ? Is there perhaps a way to have some sort of "cold stand by" cluster in the second location where the VMs would be sync'ed once per night from the main location ? The idea is that in case the first site becomes unavailable, we would be able to bring all those VMs online there. We would be ok with the data being 1 day old. Any answers are appreciated. Best regards, Stefan

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• can't access nginx server from IP

  - by EquinoX

  So 2 days ago I can see that page where it saya "Welcome to nginx", however as of now when I tried to access it, it says 404 page not found... Why is this? Inside my sites-enabled folder I have a file named default and it has the following: # You may add here your # server { # ... # } # statements for each of your virtual hosts server { listen 80; server_name 127.0.0.1; access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log; location / { root /var/www/nginx-default; index index.html index.htm; } location /doc { root /usr/share; autoindex on; allow 127.0.0.1; deny all; } location /images { root /usr/share; autoindex on; } #error_page 404 /404.html; # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html # #error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; #location = /50x.html { # root /var/www/nginx-default; #} # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80 # #location ~ \.php$ { #proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1; #} # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 # location ~ \.php$ { fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/nginx-default$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; } # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root # concurs with nginx's one # location ~ /\.ht { deny all; } } # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration # #server { #listen 8000; #listen somename:8080; #server_name somename alias another.alias; #location / { #root html; #index index.html index.htm; #} #} # HTTPS server # #server { #listen 443; #server_name localhost; #ssl on; #ssl_certificate cert.pem; #ssl_certificate_key cert.key; #ssl_session_timeout 5m; #ssl_protocols SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1; #ssl_ciphers ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP; #ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; #location / { #root html; #index index.html index.htm; #} #} Here's my nginx.conf file: user www-data; worker_processes 4; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; # multi_accept on; } http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log; sendfile on; #tcp_nopush on; #keepalive_timeout 0; keepalive_timeout 65; tcp_nodelay on; gzip on; gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)"; include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } # mail { # # See sample authentication script at: # # http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxImapAuthenticateWithApachePhpScript # # # auth_http localhost/auth.php; # # pop3_capabilities "TOP" "USER"; # # imap_capabilities "IMAP4rev1" "UIDPLUS"; # # server { # listen localhost:110; # protocol pop3; # proxy on; # } # # server { # listen localhost:143; # protocol imap; # proxy on; # } # } What am I doing wrong here? I have other virtual host setup in the sites-enabled as well... UPDATE: The server_name directives are: -admin.api.frapi -api.frapi -default -example.com -php.example.com

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