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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, December 30, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, December 30, 2010Popular ReleasesVarddienis - Windows Sidebar sikriks: Varddienis 0.9.5.0: Pievienota "Svetku" funkcija; Tiek paraditi Latvijas valsts svetki, atceres un atzimejamas dienas. Pievienoti “Atrie taustini” jeb isceli (laujot atrak izmantot Varddiena iespejas); Pievienota jauna poga - "Isceli", kas lauj lietotajam apskatit Varddieni pieejamos iscelus, un to taustinus. Nelielas izmainas: Nedaudz uzlabots JavaScript kods, Izmainits lidojošo logu aizveršanas krustinš – tagad tas klust dzeltens, ja uz ta uzbrauc ar peli; Ieverojami parkartoti un samazinati sik...SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 8: 1. added truncate table/defrag index/check db functions 2. improved alert 3. fixed problem with alert causing config file corrupted(hopefully)People's Note: People's Note 0.20: Version 0.20 is all about polishing the UI and supporting other developers. Several screens got better handling of the "close" button and the Escape key. The ink note screen got more traditional sketching colours, instead of the primaries. It also got a greater brush size. Messages for network errors have been improved. The Evernote API library got a Win32 target. Readme.txt was updated with additional instructions. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run i...ASP.NET Comet Ajax Library (Reverse Ajax - Server Push): Object Cache Sample: Object cache sample for Windows Forms Applications. This sample project demonstrates the usage of PCache class.Analysis Services Stored Procedure Project: 1.3.5 Release: This release includes the following fixes and new functionality: Updates to GetCubeLastProcessedDate to work with perspectives Fixes to reports that call Discover functions improving drillthrough functions against perspectives improving ExecuteDrillthroughAndFixColumns logic fixing situation where MDX query calling certain ASSP sprocs which opened external connections caused deadlock to SSAS processing small fix to Partition code when DbColumnName property doesn't exist changes...DocX: DocX v1.0.0.11: Building Examples projectTo build the Examples project, download DocX.dll and add it as a reference to the project. OverviewThis version of DocX contains many bug fixes, it is a serious step towards a stable release. Added1) Unit testing project, 2) Examples project, 3) To many bug fixes to list here, see the source code change list history.Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): 71406: This is the second release supporting the full line of Visual Studio 2010 editions. Changes since release 71246 include: Debug info is now stored in a single .cpdb file (which is a Firebird database) Keyboard input works now (using Console.ReadLine) Console colors work (using Console.ForegroundColor and .BackgroundColor)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.0: Added the all new Masteries Browser which replaces the Quick Open combobox AutoLoL will now attemt to create file associations for mastery (*.lolm) files Each Mastery Build can now contain keywords that the Masteries Browser will use for filtering Changed the way AutoLoL detects if another instance is already running Changed the format of the mastery files to allow more information stored in* Dialogs will now focus the Ok or Cancel button which allows the user to press Return to clo...Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.6.0: Handling of layer masks has been greatly improved. Improved reliability. Many PSD files that previously loaded in as garbage will now load in correctly. Parallelized loading. PSD files containing layer masks will load in a bit quicker thanks to the removal of the sequential bottleneck. Hidden layers are no longer made visible on save. Many thanks to the users who helped expose the layer masks problem: Rob Horowitz, M_Lyons10. Please keep sending in those bug reports and PSD repro files!Razor Templating Engine: Razor Templating Engine v1.2: Changes: ADDED: Standard namespaces imports for all templates: System, System.Collections.Generic, System.Linq (Changeset 5635) ADDED: Methods for Precompilation (Changeset 3283) CHANGED: Refactored precompilation to be exposed per-TemplateService. (Changeset 3440) CHANGED: Added more descriptive compilation exception message. (Changeset 3629) FIXED: Forced reference to Microsoft.CSharp to correct support for testing frameworks. (Changeset 3689) FIXED: Added support for nested anonymous obj...Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.1: From 4.1.1 Release: Authentication bug fix caused by facebook change (error with redirects in Safari) Authenticator fix, always returning true From 4.1.0 Release Lots of bug fixes Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample Changed internal serialization to use Json.net BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer supported. Use Signed...Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.0.0: And there it is, the final release of Catel, and it is no longer a beta version!EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.7 ALPHA: 2.2.7 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Mongoose has bee...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.19: Mono 2.8, Silverlight, OAuth, 100% Twitter API coverage, streaming, extensibility via Raw Queries, and added documentation. Bug fixes.Euro for Windows XP: ChangeRegionalSettings 1..0: *Flickr Wallpaper Rotator (for Windows desktop): Wallpaper Flickr 1.1: Some minor bugfixes (mostly covering when network connection is flakey, so I discovered them all while at my parents' house for Christmas).NoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.NHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????（????v3.5??）: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????，??： NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????，??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????（???，XCode??????） XCode?? ?????????，??????????????????，?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??，?v3.5?v6.0???????????????，?????????。v3.5???????????，??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????，????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????（????XTemplate????），??????????????????Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6 Beta - codename JUNO: The Umbraco 4.6 beta (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains more than 89 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Improved installer experience Updated Starter Kits (Simple, Blog, Personal, Business) Beautiful, free, customizable skins included Skinning engine and Skin customization (see Skinning Documentation Kit) Default dashboards on install with hide option Updated Login t...New ProjectsAlquerque.net: Quer mostrar todo seu potencial? Destacar sua idéia inovadora? Desenvolva uma solução na plataforma .NET e prove que você está preparado para o mercado!Buccaneer: Buccaneer is a very extensive version of the windows explorer, which can be even furter extended with selfmade plugins. It is developed in c#.Chianti: Project Chianticomputing pi with a webcam: computing pi with a webcam and a spinning plate using buffon's methodConfree for Outlook: Confree lets you create audio conferences from Claro / Telmex directly from Outlook.Esurfing: EsurfingFoursquare Helper for WebMatrix: The Foursquare Helper for WebMatrix makes it simple to integrate Foursquare in your site. With a few lines of code you'll be able to show an "Add to My Foursquare" button or show any user's badges in your site.GetSatisfaction Helper for WebMatrix: The GetSatisfaction Helper for WebMatrix allows you to easily integrate GetSatistaction feedback functionality into your site. It provides a set of widgets for your users to share their ideas, questions, problems, and praises.GoodStore: ??????????，??B/S??，asp.net?sqlserver???，???????，?????????。。。Groupon Helper for WebMatrix: The Groupon Helper for WebMatrix allows you to easily add a Groupon badge to your WebMatrix site. When the helper is in place, it can query the Groupon API to get the deals for a given location, for you to display them in new, different ways. HarrierSight: An extensible application for analyze of spatial dataiPlay: iPlay is a WPF application built using MVVM for generating iTunes playlists randomly and displaying the status of iTunes in a user friendly way. It's secondary purpose is to explore the capabilities of WPF and MVVM in a contextual way.iSun Studio CMS: SNS Kiiro: An easy to use collaboration and project management application built for SharePoint. Kiiro lets your team collaborate on projects, documents, discussions, tasks and issues all within a simple, easy-to-use interface.Kiva7: The Kiva7 app is a Windows Phone 7 app for www.kiva.com. It shows all information on your loans and allows you to search for new loans. LeanEngine Framework: The LeanEngine framework makes it easier and faster for developers to develop .Net data centric applications. It's developed in C# language.MedSpeech: Guardado de grabaciones sobre los estudios radiologicos para luego poder realizar reportes de estos.Open Gran Turismo: Open Gran Turismo is an opensource car racing game highly customizable developed in XNA and BEPU physics. Opt.Net: Command line options and arguments parsing library for .NET 3.5 and 4.0 programs. Uses reflection to convert command line arguments and options into property values on an object that the application defines. Will support command pattern programs as well.Plancast Helper for WebMatrix: The Plancast Helper for WebMatrix provides an easy way to integrate Plancast on your WebMatrix site. With a few lines of code you'll able to show your Plancast plans or the ones from your friends. Polldaddy Helper for WebMatrix: The Polldaddy helper makes easy to add Poll widgets, ratings and surveys to your WebMatrix site in a few lines of code. It also provides access to the Polldaddy API, wrapping some of the API methods to retrieve Poll data.Scribd Helper for WebMatrix: The Scribd Helper for WebMatrix allows you to easily add Scribd documents to your site. When the helper is in place, it interacts with the Scribd API and with Scribd Reader to easily list your documents, enabling users to view them without having to leave your site. SharePoint 2010 Custom List Form Demo: This example will show you how to create a custom list form for SharePoint 2010 in Visual Studio 2010 using SharePoint Designer 2010 and VS2010... See my blog for a "Walkthrough": http://ikarstein.wordpress.comTdd unit test bar for Windows Phone development: a simple application which launches NUnit-Console on your Windows Phone unit tests every time you build, using a SilverLight version of NUnit. The output is then colored for better readability: Green bar if success, Red bar if failure.Techne: Techne is a program which will take a user input of a color or picture and then using motors to pipette paint will manually create the colors described by the user and draw a picture. The goal is to continually expand the system into performing more complicated tasks.TelerikTest1: ????Telerik??111111111TriExporterNET: TriExporter .NET Twitter Helper for WebMatrix: The Twitter Helper for WebMatrix makes it simple to integrate several Twitter social features in your site. For example, you can display Twitter widgets like "Follow Me" and "Tweet" Buttons, and access the Timeline Resources exposed by the Twitter API in a few lines of code.windows azure backup: If you need to have a backup of your files using Windows Azure, then this is the project to download. It incorporates an "admin" user and his backups. Can upload/retrieve files from local hard drive. Made with ASP.NET MVC.WP7PrintHelper: This project is aimed at the Windows Phone 7 developers that need to print from an App they are developing. The project provides a WCF service that runs on any desktop or server, and a print dialog dll that runs on the Windows 7 phone. It is developed in Framework 4.0 Client C#Wufoo Helper for WebMatrix: The Wufoo Helper for WebMatrix provides an easy way to integrate Wufoo forms and data into your WebMatrix site. It allows you to add Wufoo forms in your pages and integrate the data submitted in your forms by using Web Hooks.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 28, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 28, 2011Popular ReleasesFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 1.0: Refer to http://computerbeacon.net for Documentation and Tutorial New features:added FQL support added Expires property to Api object added support for publishing to a user's friend / Facebook Page added support for posting and removing comments on posts added support for adding and removing likes on posts and comments added static methods for Page class added support for Iframe Application Tab of Facebook Page added support for obtaining the user's country, locale and age in If...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.7.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager small improvements for some helpers and AjaxDropdown has Data like the Lookup except it's value gets reset and list refilled if any element from data gets changedManaged Extensibility Framework: MEF 2 Preview 3: This release aims .net 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0. Accordingly, there are two solutions files. The assemblies are named System.ComponentModel.Composition.Codeplex.dll as a way to avoid clashing with the version shipped with the 4th version of the framework. Introduced CompositionOptions to container instantiation CompositionOptions.DisableSilentRejection makes MEF throw an exception on composition errors. Useful for diagnostics Support for open generics Support for attribute-less registr...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.6 Production: DonationsDonate via PayPal via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donation Acknowledgements page. PEAR channelWe now also have a full PEAR channel! Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPExcel Or if you've already installed PHPExcel before: pear upgrade pearplex/PHPExcel The official page can be found at http://pearplex.net. Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.4: Version: 2.0.0.4 (Milestone 4): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...VidCoder: 0.8.2: Updated auto-naming to handle seconds and frames ranges as well. Deprecated the {chapters} token for auto-naming in favor of {range}. Allowing file drag to preview window and enabling main window shortcut keys to work no matter what window is focused. Added option in config to enable giving custom names to audio tracks. (Note that these names will only show up certain players like iTunes or on the iPod. Players that support custom track names normally may not show them.) Added tooltips ...SQL Server Compact Toolbox: Standalone version 2.0 for SQL Server Compact 4.0: Download the Visual Studio add-in for SQL Server Compact 4.0 and 3.5 from here Standalone version of (most of) the same functionality as the add-in, for SQL Server Compact 4.0. Useful for anyone not having Visual Studio Professional or higher installed. Requires .NET 4.0. Any feedback much appreciated.Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9.2: Release Notes Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Now with added support to Windows XP! Change Log from 0.9.1 to 0.9.2: ==================== Added: > Now it displays number of files added in the wizard to the Window Title bar. > Added support to Windows XP. > Minor UI tweaks. I...Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide: Drop 1 - Claims Identity Guide V2: Highlights of drop #1 This is the first drop of the new "Claims Identity Guide" edition. In this release you will find: All previous samples updated and enhanced. All code upgraded to .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Extensive cleanup. Refactored Simulated Issuers: each solution now gets its own issuers. This results in much cleaner and simpler to understand code. Added Single Sign Out support. Added first sample using ACS ("ACS as a Federation Provider"). This sample extends the ori...Simple Notify: Simple Notify Beta 2011-02-25: Feature: host the service with a single click in console Feature: host the service as a windows service Feature: notification cient application Feature: push client application Feature: push notifications from your powershell script Feature: C# wrapper libraries for your applicationsMono.Addins: Mono.Addins 0.6: The 0.6 release of Mono.Addins includes many improvements, bug fixes and new features: Add-in engine Add-in name and description can now be localized. There are new custom attributes for defining them, and can also be specified as xml elements in an add-in manifest instead of attributes. Support for custom add-in properties. It is now possible to specify arbitrary properties in add-ins, which can be queried at install time (using the Mono.Addins.Setup API) or at run-time. Custom extensio...patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 3 - 25 Feb 2011: IntroductionWelcome to the third community drop of Project Silk. For this drop we are requesting feedback on overall application architecture, code review of the JavaScript Conductor and Widgets, and general direction of the application. Project Silk provides guidance and sample implementations that describe and illustrate recommended practices for building modern web applications using technologies such as HTML5, jQuery, CSS3 and Internet Explorer 9. This guidance is intended for experien...PhoneyTools: Initial Release (0.1): This is the 0.1 version for preview of the features.Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.5: Now supports new Minecraft beta v1.3 map format, thanks to updated mcmap. Disabled biomes, until Minecraft Biome Extractor supports new format.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight??????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...New ProjectsAutoDiff: High-performance and high-accuracy automatic function-differentiation library suitable for optimization and numeric computing. Eburgfoto: fotoserviceE-Mail Marketing Server: Criação de um E-Mail Marketing Server Tecnologias Aplicacadas: ASP.NET VB.NET Entity Framework 4 DevExpress Components Integração com SmarterMail Precisamos de Ajuda para: - Layouts CSS - E-Mail Templates F# WPF Application Template with Themes: An F# Template which generates a simple WPF application with themes.FAST Search for Sharepoint 2010 Query Logger: The FS4SP query logger will make it easier for developers and IT pro's to debug user queries.FoxPress CMS: FoxPress is a totally free and Open Source Content Management System (CMS) you can use to create a beautiful website. From Fortune 500 site to busy e-commerce shopping hub to personal blog, FoxPress is simple to use and simple to implement. Performance and scalability are key.IISAppPoolTM: IISAppPoolTM allows you to control IIS 7.0 application pool right from you windows system tray. You no longer have to go through IIS management console and to manage your application pool. Do it directly from you Windows taskbar! IISAppPoolTM is developed in C#.JobTrends: Job TrendsLondon: Project "London" is a futuristic crowd-sourcing system. We are currently in development and expect to ship in the summer of 2011.pgnSoft Framework: Complete Framework for Busines, games and casual system developers.Prompt Instantiator - Simple Dependency Injector: Prompt Instantiator is simple lightweight dependency injector for .NET and Silverlight.SjscV5: Sjsc Application V5SSIS Batch Geocoder: SSIS Batch Geocoder is a SQL Server 2008 R2 Integration Services (SSIS) data flow transformation that geocodes addresses in the pipeline using the Bing Maps Geocode Dataflow. SurveySL: SurveyUser authentication against active directory: Portable tool, winform. Check user name and password against active directory. Green software (no installation). XAMLtoMVC dynamic image generator: XAMLtoMVC was created to ease tasks in web development when you have something to display that is impossible (or nearly impossible) with html. And especially with images you want to use, but you realize you can't because they are too static to reflect even the smallest changes.Xray - for your Ioc: Visualise the contents of an IoC container. this is a developer tool to show the dependency graph registered in the IoC container.???????????: ???????? «???????????», ???????????? ? ?????? ?????????????? ??????????? ???????? ?? C#. ???????? ?? C#.??C#??SEED????????: ???????????????????, ??C#???SEED(The Standard for the Exchange of Earthquake Data)????????, ????????????,??? ??SEED ???????、????????。

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 11, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 11, 2012Popular ReleasesCommand-Line Database Builder: 1.0.2012.0411: Utility now supports arbitrary key:value pairs on the command-line for performing replacements in the .pp.sql files. Removed the usage of '-' to prefix key:value arguments. AspNetAssemblyPath is no longer a known key:value pair but can still be used because the tool now supports arbitrary key:value pairs for replacements. This was provided previously to support setting up ASP.NET Membership and Roles in a database. I've added a .pp.sql file to the Examples archive that demonstrates this usage.Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1 - Team Foundation Service Whitepapers: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Service Whitepapers preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issue...Scrum Task Board Card Creator: TaskCardCreator 3.2.0.0: What's New: New report template added: Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Detailed Report Supported Templates: Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 MSF for Agile Software Development v5.0Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer: .NET Gadgeteer Core 2.42.550 (BETA): Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer Core RELEASE NOTES Version 2.42.550 11 April 2012 BETA VERSION WARNING: This is a beta version! Please note: - API changes may be made before the next version (2.42.600) - The designer will not show modules/mainboards for NETMF 4.2 until you get upgraded libraries from the module/mainboard vendors - Install NETMF 4.2 (see link below) to use the new features of this release That warning aside, this version should continue to sup...DISM GUI: DISM GUI 3.1.1: Fixes - Fixed a bug in the Delete Driver function - The Index field is not auto populated with the number 1LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.24: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, and Client Profile. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet.Kendo UI ASP.NET Sample Applications: Sample Applications (2012-04-11): Sample application(s) demonstrating the use of Kendo UI in ASP.NET applications.Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 2: New feature - Added support for the SerializableAttribute and serializing a type's internal fields New feature - Added MaxDepth to JsonReader/JsonSerializer/JsonSerializerSettings New feature - Added support for ignoring properties with the NonSerializableAttribute Fix - Fixed deserializing a null string throwing a NullReferenceException Fix - Fixed JsonTextReader reading from a slow stream Fix - Fixed CultureInfo not being overridden on JsonSerializerProxy Fix - Fixed full trust ...SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Improved WMI date conversion to be aware of timezone differences and DST. Fixed new version check. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA on Windows XP. Cmdkey.exe is natively availab...Dual Browsing: Dual Browser: Please note the following: I setup the address bar temporarily to only accepts http:// .com addresses. Just type in the name of the website excluding: http://, www., and .com; (Ex: for www.youtube.com just type: youtube then click OK). The page splitter can be grabbed by holding down your left mouse button and move left or right. By right clicking on the page background, you can choose to refresh, go back a page and so on. Demo video: http://youtu.be/L7NTFVM3JUYMultiwfn: Multiwfn 2.3.3: Multiwfn 2.3.3Liberty: v3.2.0.1 Release 9th April 2012: Change Log-Fixed -Reach Fixed a bug where the object editor did not work on non-English operating systemsPath Copy Copy: 10.1: This release addresses the following work items: 11357 11358 11359 This release is a recommended upgrade, especially for users who didn't install the 10.0.1 version.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.3: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-08 v3.1.3 -??Language="zh_TW"?JS???BUG（??）。 +?D...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.5: New Controls ChatBubble ChatBubbleTextBox OpacityToggleButton New Stuff TimeSpan languages added: RU, SK, CS Expose the physics math from TimeSpanPicker Image Stretch now on buttons Bug Fixes Layout fix so RoundToggleButton and RoundButton are exactly the same Fix for ColorPicker when set via code behind ToastPrompt bug fix with OnNavigatedTo Toast now adjusts its layout if the SIP is up Fixed some issues with Expression Blend supportHarness - Internet Explorer Automation: Harness 2.0.3: support the operation fo frameset, frame and iframe Add commands SwitchFrame GetUrl GoBack GoForward Refresh SetTimeout GetTimeout Rename commands GetActiveWindow to GetActiveBrowser SetActiveWindow to SetActiveBrowser FindWindowAll to FindBrowser NewWindow to NewBrowser GetMajorVersion to GetVersionBetter Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.861 Alpha: - fixed new folder button operation not work well in some situations - removed some unnecessary code like subclassing that is not needed anymore - Added option to make Better Exlorer default (at least for WIN+E operations) - Added option to enable file operation replacements (like Terracopy) to work with Better Explorer - Added some basic usability to "Share" button - Other fixesLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: LightFarsiDictionary - v1: LightFarsiDictionary - v1WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.3: Version: 2.5.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete [O] WAF: Mark the StringBuilderExtensions class as obsolete because the AppendInNewLine method can be replaced with string.Jo...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceNew Projects0x10c Tools: Tools for the 0x10c-CPU: Assembler, emulator and (maybe in the future) a small compiler. Just for fun and exercise.AzureWiki: AzureWiki is the Wiki developed using Windows Azure platform which would be similar to dotnetwikiCommand-Line Database Builder: A command-line tool for interacting with a DBMS command-line interface (e.g., sqlcmd.exe) to execute a sequential list of SQL scripts against the DBMS. Tool allows for expression replacement in the SQL scripts during execution.copydata: The CopyData command-line utility enables you to easily transfer sets of data from an Oracle or SQL server data source directly to a target SQL Server database. It is developed in C#.DinoDoc: The little friendly batch-upload tool designed for SharePoint Server and Windows SharePoint Services, enabling you to easily upload multiple files and folders with a single click! For more information about DinoDoc and about SharePoint development: http://spdino.wordpress.comDiscovery House: This is a project demonstrating a green home.DocShare: DocShare illustrates the CQRS pattern on Windows Azure and also uses MVC4 Web API. DocShare uses two web roles, one for queries (reads) and one for command (writes). Each has a UI and a Web API service.EnderTecLauncher: EnderTecLauncherEntityFilter: This library provides a way to store filtering metadata, and reassemble it into dynamic lambda expressions. It allows for groups of filters to be created. Two implementations of IFilterRepository are in development:Database and XML. It's developed in C# for EntityFramework 4.1 and above.Epi Info™ - Web Analysis & Visualization: Epi Info™ is a public domain suite of software tools designed for the global community of public health practitioners and researchers. It provides for easy data entry form and database construction, a customized data entry experience, and data analyses with epidemiologic statistic Epi Info™ Web Analytics & Visualization is an open source project of the popular Epi Info™ suite of tools. The web product can be deployed as an intranet application and will provide analytical and visualization ...fOrganiz: This application allows you to automatically organize by date in specific subdirectories your picturesforwork: forworkGeneric Language - Mobile & Telephony Technologies: Genlang Mobile and Telephony Technologies, a complete application development platform for all platforms, Windows Mobile, Windows Desktop, Web, Apple, Android, BlackBerry.gindex: Graph has become increasingly important in modelling complicated structures and schemaless data such as proteins,chemical compounds, and XML documents. Given a graph query, it is desirable to retrieve graphs quickly from a large database via graph-based indices.Hijri Date SkinObject: Hijri date skin object for dotnetnuke copy to admin/skins use it in your skin file HorseRaces: Exercise inspired on example found in book "Designing for scalability with Microsoft Windows DNA" by Sten Sundblad and Per SundbladHotelMS: HotelManageSystemhtml5lmth: testjRulee: The jRulee javascript toolkit libraryKrishaTool: oloLegSec: LegSec is an small command line application for collating licence information based on that provided in Nuget packages. Modwind Domain Info: The program determines country of origin for top-level domains and purpose for international ones.MySCM Outlook Addin: This is another tool for SCM/TFS team. Use this add-in to create, update, refresh TFS work items from your Outlook emails. Not a substitution, but this little tool can help you to track your various work in TFS while educating and establishing the processes and policies.neptouni: This software can be used to convert nepali ttf text to the unicode characters.Northwind SSDT: An SSDT project for the Northwind database. This will enable you to deploy Northwind wherever you like. Note that to allow for hosting in a SQL Azure database that is used to host objects for other applications all the Northwind objects have been moved into a schema called [Northwind]Optional: Optional is a library to create options and commands from command-line arguments. It uses Convention over Configuration to get out of your way. Attributes can be used to set properties which differ from the convention.pbdevnpro1: pbdevnpro1，no1Projet LIF7 Snake: Projet LIF7 SnakePurpleStoat: A modular, extensible Silverlight application shell using Prism, Unity and the Enterprise Library, and written in C#. It includes WCF services which provide AuthZ and logging services to the shell, which are also available to the modules.Sharepoint 2010 Weather WebPart using Azure Data Market Met Office Feed: Sharepoint 2010 WebPart that displays a 5 day weather forecast for a given location. The weather data is retrieved from the Met Office feed hosted on the Windows Azure Data Market. This is a free data feed that provides weather data for the UK only.Silverlight Layouts: Silverlight Layouts is a project for controls that behave as content placeholders with pre-defined GUI layout for some of common scenarios: - frozen headers, - frozen columns, - cyrcle layouts etc.Snom Phone .NET Library: .NET Automation library for the snom IP phones. Provides simple class library to interact with you snom phone: - Press any key on the phone. - Dial numbers. - Answer or hang up call. - Mute and un-mute. - Hold and un-hold a call. - Navigate through a routing phone system using dial tone. - Get events on incoming or outgoing calls, as well as other events. - And more...Substrate Windows 8 XAML Framework: Framework for writing Windows 8 applications in XAMLTiger Converters: Tiger is a small languaje based on expressions, so it's perfect for writing the body of a WPF/SL converter.Time manager by bozheville: Time manager by bozhevilleUmbraco 501 on Windows Azure (with Dynamic Deploy): This project is configured to run Umbraco 5.0.1 on Windows Azure via the Dynamic Deploy platform. For more information on Dynamic Deploy visit http://www.dynamicdeploy.com Dynamic Deploy is a cloud deployment platform from where you can deploy applications directly to cloud platforms (like Windows Azure). UnitPrice: This is unit priceWebmedia: this is my webmedia projectWindows 8 Metro RSS Reader: A RSS Reader metro app for Windows 8 written in C# and XAML based on the sample Grid templateWindows Phone UPnP: The basics of a UPnP network stack for Windows Phone, based on a blog post originally. Written in C#, also requires the Async CTP. Includes device discovery via SSDP and method invocation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: A set of controls, extensions and helper classes for Windows Runtime XAML applicationsWmiGuru: WmiGuru is a lightweight F# library for WMI operations such as getting instances, creating instance, and querying associated instances.????: ???? ??.net mvc3??。??jquery+html5????。?????: openwebsite

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 19, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 19, 2011Popular ReleasesWPF Converters: WPF Converters V1.2.0.0: support for enumerations, value types, and reference types in the expression converter's equality operators the expression converter now handles DependencyProperty.UnsetValue as argument values correctly (#4062) StyleCop conformance (more or less)Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 4: Change - JsonTextReader.Culture is now CultureInfo.InvariantCulture by default Change - KeyValurPairConverter no longer cares about the order of the key and value properties Change - Time zone conversions now use new TimeZoneInfo instead of TimeZone Fix - Fixed boolean values sometimes being capitalized when converting to XML Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ConcurrentDictionary Fix - Fixed serializing some Uris returning the incorrect value Fix - Fixed occasional error when...Media Companion: MC 3.423b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Replaced 'Rebuild' with 'Refresh' throughout entire code. Rebuild will now be known as Refresh. mc_com.exe has been fully updated TV Show Resolutions... Resolved issue #206 - having to hit save twice when updating runtime manually Shrunk cache size and lowered loading times f...Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games: 1.1.1: Version 1.1.1: Updated to use Windows Azure SDK and Tools Version 1.6 Version 1.1.1: Performance improvements Separated Social Gaming Toolkit from Tankster Sample Added Tic-Tac-Toe and Four in a row game Simplified game API Simplified JavaScript Libraries Improved documentationASP.net Awesome Samples (Web-Forms): 1.0 samples: Full Demo VS2008 Very Simple Demo VS2010 (demos for the ASP.net Awesome jQuery Ajax Controls)SharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLR: SharpMap-0.9-AnyCPU-Trunk-2011.11.17: This is a build of SharpMap from the 0.9 development trunk as per 2011-11-17 For most applications the AnyCPU release is the recommended, but in case you need an x86 build that is included to. For some dataproviders (GDAL/OGR, SqLite, PostGis) you need to also referense the SharpMap.Extensions assembly For SqlServer Spatial you need to reference the SharpMap.SqlServerSpatial assemblySQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 5: 1. added basic schema support 2. added server instance name and process id 3. fixed problem with object search index out of range 4. improved version comparison with previous/next difference navigation 5. remeber main window spliter and object explorer spliter positionAJAX Control Toolkit: November 2011 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - November 2011 Release Version 51116November 2011 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found h...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.5: Added: Now the DateRanteAttribute accepts complex expressions containing "Now" and "Today" as static minimum and maximum. Menu, MenuFor helpers capable of handling a "currently selected element". The developer can choose between using a standard nested menu based on a standard SimpleMenuItem class or specifying an item template based on a custom class. Added also helpers to build the tree structure containing all data items the menu takes infos from. Improved the pager. Now the developer ...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.7: Reworked API to be more consistent. See Supported formats table. Added some more helper methods - e.g. OpenEntryStream (RarArchive/RarReader does not support this) Fixed up testsCODE Framework: 4.0.11115.0: Added support for partial views in the WPF framework, as well as a new helper feature that allows hooking commands/actions to all WPF events.Silverlight Toolkit: Windows Phone Toolkit - Nov 2011 (7.1 SDK): This release is coming soon! What's new ListPicker once again works in a ScrollViewer LongListSelector bug fixes around OutOfRange exceptions, wrong ordering of items, grouping issues, and scrolling events. ItemTuple is now refactored to be the public type LongListSelectorItem to provide users better access to the values in selection changed handlers. PerformanceProgressBar binding fix for IsIndeterminate (item 9767 and others) There is no longer a GestureListener dependency with the C...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.01.01: Major Highlights Fixed problem with the core skin object rendering CSS above the other framework inserted files, which caused problems when using core style skin objects Fixed issue with iFrames getting removed when content is saved Fixed issue with the HTML module removing styling and scripts from the content Fixed issue with inserting the link to jquery after the header of the page Security Fixesnone Updated Modules/Providers ModulesHTML version 6.1.0 ProvidersnoneDotNetNuke Performance Settings: 01.00.00: First release of DotNetNuke SQL update queries to set the DNN installation for optimimal performance. Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8 is currently the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added "Wake On LAN" action. WOL.EXE is now included. Added new action "Get all active advertisements" to list all machine based advertisements on remote computers. Added new action "Get all active user advertisements" to list all user based advertisements for logged on users on remote computers. Added config.ini setting "enablePingTest" to control whether ping test is ru...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.3: New featuresAdd magnifier size and scale New file info view in the backstage Add dynamic properties on book and settings Sorting and grouping in the explorer with new design Rework on conversion : Images, PDF, Cbr/rar, Cbz/zip, Xps to the destination formats Images, Cbz and XPS ImprovmentsSuppress MainViewModel and ExplorerViewModel dependencies Add view notifications and Messages from MVVM Light for ViewModel=>View notifications Make thread better on open catalog, no more ihm freeze, less t...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.2: This release remove the like and the broadcast buttons as Google Reader stopped supporting them (no, we don't like this decission...) Additionally and to have at least a small plus: the login window now automaitcally logs you in if you stored username and passwort (no more extra click needed) Finally added WebKit .NET to the about window and removed Awesomium MD5-Hash: 5fccf25a2fb4fecc1dc77ebabc8d3897 SHA-Hash: d44ff788b123bd33596ad1a75f3b9fa74a862fdbFluent Validation for .NET: 3.2: Changes since 3.1: Fixed issue #7084 (NotEmptyValidator does not work with EntityCollection<T>) Fixed issue #7087 (AbstractValidator.Custom ignores RuleSets and always runs) Removed support for WP7 for now as it doesn't support co/contravariance without crashing.Rawr: Rawr 4.2.7: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...VidCoder: 1.2.2: Updated Handbrake core to svn 4344. Fixed the 6-channel discrete mixdown option not appearing for AAC encoders. Added handling for possible exceptions when copying to the clipboard, added retries and message when it fails. Fixed issue with audio bitrate UI not appearing sometimes when switching audio encoders. Added extra checks to protect against reported crashes. Added code to upgrade encoding profiles on old queued items.New ProjectsAnimateX: silverlight animate basic library C#code build storyboard object basic object build animate engine for silverlight 4.0Api diendandaihoc.vn: api news diendandaihoc.vnAviaCode Interview Project: This is an extension to the Apunta Notas project. It was created for interview purposes.BitTorrentSharp: BitTorrent Sharp is an open source bit torrent protocol and server/client implementation.BizTalk Archiving - SQL and File: BizTalk Message Archiving - it's a pipeline component that can be used for archiving incoming/outgoing message from any adapters. It provides an option to save the message to either file (local, shared, network) or in SQL Server. bpatch: Simple byte patch utilityCourseManager: Course Manager is an Application for course,instructor and students control.dise operating system: the name is get from Divine State. Our goal is to create a real-time, efficient, stable operating system.Electrum: Simple Windows Phone 7 toolkitendrocode: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril deleni...FinanceTool: FinanceTool makes a visual representation of your spending during a period of time. The Winforms application works on export files from the Dutch ING bank and the SNS bank. It's developed in C# based on .NET 4.0.Kinect Spots: Kinect Spots is a small little app that displays a stylized bubble image based on the input from the Microsoft Kinect's camera.MEF practises: Project Nebula: ASP.NET MVC 3 with Full MEF architectureNesoi 2D game engine: This is a 2D game engine witten for XNA to to use a component based architecture.nullllllllllllll: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~PolytechMango: Mobile application for DI courses Polytech'Tours developed in Windows Phone 7.5 platform Authors : ARKHIS - AZIRAR - FOFANA - JEBARI PowerPartsforSharePoint.CrossSiteViewer: CrossSite Viewer WebPart allows you to view SharePoint list or Document library from other sites without coding. Simply drag and drop the web part onto the page, select the source site collection , web , view and you are done. www.PowerPartsForSharePoint.ComQuix Utilities for SharePoint: Over the past decade of working with SharePoint, I've had to build many quick utilities for one purpose or another. It thus came to pass that it made sense to unify all these utilities together into a single project that I could share with my fellow geeks. The Quix Utilities for SharePoint tool set is a collection of utilities that perform a wide variety of tasks in SharePoint and SharePoint servers.ReactiveMVVM: ReactiveMVVM is MVVM patter, it impovert with Microsoft Reactive Extensions. Can used in silverlight, WPF and WP7. ReactiveMVVM makes it easier for you to develop multithreading program in Silverlight, WPF and WP7 project. To be good work with it, you need know Rx framework. Regatta: Regatta is a Window Phone application for sailboat racing. Its mission is to make it easier for people to participate in sailboat racing. The underlying technology is C# and WP7. Anyone with an interest in sailing and/or Windows Phone technology is welcome to contribute.SF for Windows Phone: This is an C# app for Windows Phone 7 that utilizes API's from www.sf.se to display new movies, closest bio etc.SimManning: SimManning is a C#.NET library containing a discrete-event simulation engine dedicated to manning / staffing, especially for domains involving a succession of phases. An example of basic domain is provided, but the idea is for users to implement their own domain. This originates from a research group of DTU, the Technical University of Denmark.Simple Authentication Toolkit: Simple Authentication ToolkitSparkline Generator: Generate symbols sparklineSSIS Package Configuration Editor: This utility identifies package configuration paths that are not valid and enables you to correct the paths without having to open the package in Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS).StreamingSoundtracks.com: My first Windows Phone 7.1 application. 1. Now Playing 2. View Queue 3. View Chat Message 4. Send Chat MessageTravellingEntrepreneur: A simple application for finding Green Government Opportunities for Small Businesses. The application based on your current location retrieves all the government programs for the state of location and then allows you to share your favorite program on Facebook. (US only, WP7).wp7msu: For Windows Phone Programming in MSU.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 07, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 07, 2013Popular ReleasesCompare .NET Objects: Version 1.7.4.0: Manual merge of patch 15325 from Farris to fix issues 9075 and 9076 relating to defects with Ignoring the Collection Order Applied patch 15263 from MariuszWojcik to support LINQ enumerators.Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.9.25): XrmToolbox improvement Correct changing connection from the status dropdown Tools improvement Updated tool Audit Center (v1.2013.9.10) -> Publish entities Iconator (v1.2013.9.27) -> Optimized asynchronous loading of images and entities MetadataDocumentGenerator (v1.2013.11.6) -> Correct system entities reading with incorrect attribute type Script Manager (v1.2013.9.27) -> Retrieve only custom events SiteMapEditor (v1.2013.11.7) -> Reset of CRM 2013 SiteMap ViewLayoutReplicator (v1.201...Event-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.AppDesigner.59: Iteration 59 (Feature): By selecting the center thumb of a selected wire you can add a point attribute by context menu (to redirect a wire). Therefore all possible wire outlines are possible... New: AddNewWirePointAttributeFlow, AddNewWirePointAttributeAdapter, NewPointAttributeAdder Improved: LineAdorner, WireLineDecoratorBase, WireLineSourceToTargetDecorator, WiresRenderer, ... See: https://ebcappbuilder.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Modify%20the%20view%20of%20a%20wire Coming soon: Iterat...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: SQL Server 2014 CTP2 In-Memory OLTP Sample, based: This sample showcases the new In-Memory OLTP feature, which is part of SQL Server 2014 CTP2. It shows the new memory-optimized tables and natively-compiled stored procedures, and can be used to show the performance benefit of in-memory OLTP. Installation instructions for the sample are included in the file ‘awinmemsample.doc’, which is part of the download. You can ask a question about this sample at the SQL Server Samples Forum Composite C1 CMS - Open Source on .NET: Composite C1 4.1: Composite C1 4.1 (4.1.5058.34326) Write a review for this release - help us improve, recommend us. Getting started If you are new to Composite C1 and want to install it: http://docs.composite.net/Getting-started What's new in Composite C1 4.1 The following are highlights of major changes since Composite C1 4.0: General user features: Drag-and-drop images and files like PDF and Word directly from own your desktop and folders into page content Allow you to install Composite Form Builder ...xFunc: xFunc 2.10.1: Fixed https://github.com/sys27/xFunc/issues/60.Win_8 (??? Devel Studio 2 ??? 3): Win8 0.8 + Sample (.dvs): ???????------------------------------------------ 1. ????????? ??????????? ????????? ??????. 2. ?????????? ???? , ????????? ? ?????????? ???? ????. 3. ?????????? ?????? ??????. 4. ?????????? ????????? ???????????. 5. ????????????? ??? . English----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Added ability to load icons. 2. Fixed bugs related to obtaining names of shapes. 3. Fixed a memory leak. 4. Fixed some defects. 5. Optimized code. ---------------------------...ConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu 131105 [Alpha]: ConEmu - developer build x86 and x64 versions. Written in C++, no additional packages required. Run "ConEmu.exe" or "ConEmu64.exe". Some useful information you may found: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/conemu http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/ConEmuFAQ http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/TableOfContents If you want to use ConEmu in portable mode, just create empty "ConEmu.xml" file near to "ConEmu.exe"CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.9.0: Implemented Recent Scripts list Added checking for plugin updates from AboutBox Multiple formatting improvements/fixes Implemented selection of the CLR version when preparing distribution package Added project panel button for showing plugin shortcuts list Added 'What's New?' panel Fixed auto-formatting scrolling artifact Implemented navigation to "logical" file (vs. auto-generated) file from output panel To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Home Access Plus+: v9.7: Updated: JSON.net Fixed: Issue with the Windows 8 App Added: Windows 8.1 App Added: Win: Self Signed HAP+ Install Support Added: Win: Delete File Support Added: Timeout for the Logon Tracker Removed: Error Dialogs on the User Card Fixed: Green line showing over the booking form Note: a web.config file update is requiredxUnit.net - Unit testing framework for C# and .NET (a successor to NUnit): xUnit.net Visual Studio Runner: A placeholder for downloading Visual Studio runner VSIX files, in case the Gallery is down (or you want to downgrade to older versions).Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9.1): This new version includes: - Include me option is back - Fixed the login bug reported latelyVeraCrypt: VeraCrypt version 1.0c: Changes between 1.0b and 1.0c (11 November 2013) : Set correctly the minimum required version in volumes header (this value must always follow the program version after any major changes). This also solves also the hidden volume issueCaptcha MVC: Captcha MVC 2.5: v 2.5: Added support for MVC 5. The DefaultCaptchaManager is no longer throws an error if the captcha values was entered incorrectly. Minor changes. v 2.4.1: Fixed issues with deleting incorrect values of the captcha token in the SessionStorageProvider. This could lead to a situation when the captcha was not working with the SessionStorageProvider. Minor changes. v 2.4: Changed the IIntelligencePolicy interface, added ICaptchaManager as parameter for all methods. Improved font size ...Duplica: duplica 0.2.498: this is first stable releaseDNN Blog: 06.00.01: 06.00.01 ReleaseThis is the first bugfix release of the new v6 blog module. These are the changes: Added some robustness in v5-v6 scripts to cater for some rare upgrade scenarios Changed the name of the module definition to avoid clash with Evoq Social Addition of sitemap providerVG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.50: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageHostHQ.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgMoney.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgSavy.com" links NEW: Added Support for "PixTreat.com" links Bug fixesVidCoder: 1.5.11 Beta: Added Encode Details window. Exposes elapsed time, ETA, current and average FPS, running file size, current pass and pass progress. Open it by going to Windows -> Encode Details while an encode is running. Subtitle dialog now disables the "Burn In" checkbox when it's either unavailable or it's the only option. It also disables the "Forced Only" when the subtitle type doesn't support the "Forced" flag. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5872. Fixed crash in the preview window when a source fil...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1311.02: Add three new Actions in Custom Updates : Work with Files (Copy, Delete, Rename), Work with Folders (Add, Delete, Rename) and Work with Registry Keys (Add, Delete, Rename). Fix a bug, where after resigning an update, the display is not refresh. Modify the way WPP sort rows in 'Updates Detail Viewer' and 'Computer List Viewer' so that dates are correctly sorted. Add a Tab in the settings form to set Proxy settings when WPP needs to go on Internet. Fix a bug where 'Manage Catalogs Subsc...uComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...New ProjectsAuto Mapping MVVM: A simple MVVM Kit that works with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, with the ability to automatically map between Views and ViewModels.BMS Converter: BMS Converter is a converter for .bms files (Be-Music Source), which converts them to audio and/or video files.Car Management: The software which is going to be developed aims to give an interface in order to manage cars booking with ABC University institution.Classic Algorithms: This is a collection of classic algorithms written in C#. I'll start with the Graphs.Community TFS Work Item Tracking Extensions: The Community TFS WIT Extensions project is a place to share tools and extensions to the TFS work item tracking system.D3N: "port" of D3 to .NETdoinik tara client: The Daily Star ClientLEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 API: API for the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 brick usable from desktop, Windows Phone and WinRT.LudejoWcf: Playground wcfMy Test: This is a demoPearson API Wrapper: Pearson API Wrapper enables you to develop Learning Apps faster !Pescar2013ShopAyelenArce: Lalalapescar2013-shop-ElectroShop: ya contiene: EF5 agrega: layouts bootstrap bootstrap js js linq(?) knockout(?) jquery jquery ui Pescar2013Shop-MaruMati: Venta de productos a través de una pagina web.Pescar2013Shop-The_Future_2014: primer proyecto.RatatoskSMS: SMS gateway based on library GSMComm, that can handle multiple GSM modems to send and recieve messages to/from database, with http interface.SharePoint Enhanced New: A replacement to the "New Document" split button in document libraries with a modal dialog displaying available document Content Types.Task Management Application: The Eisenhower Matrix with BacklogTridion: This project provides an analog to Tridion Core Services for older versions of Tridion that rely on the TOM (COM) architecture.Web Scripting - Assignment 2 - Website Prototype: Assignment 2 - Website PrototypeWindows Azure Custom Performance Counters: The project Windows Azure Custom Performance Counters is a startup task to help working with custom performance counters on web and worker roles.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 06, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 06, 2013Popular ReleasesWin_8 (??? Devel Studio 2 ??? 3): Win8 0.8 + Sample (.dvs): ???????------------------------------------------ 1. ????????? ??????????? ????????? ??????. 2. ?????????? ???? , ????????? ? ?????????? ???? ????. 3. ?????????? ?????? ??????. 4. ?????????? ????????? ???????????. 5. ????????????? ??? . English----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Added ability to load icons. 2. Fixed bugs related to obtaining names of shapes. 3. Fixed a memory leak. 4. Fixed some defects. 5. Optimized code. ---------------------------...NWTCompiler: NWTCompiler v2.4.0: This version fixes a bug with Pinyin and adds support for the 2013 English NWT.ConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu 131105 [Alpha]: ConEmu - developer build x86 and x64 versions. Written in C++, no additional packages required. Run "ConEmu.exe" or "ConEmu64.exe". Some useful information you may found: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/conemu http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/ConEmuFAQ http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/TableOfContents If you want to use ConEmu in portable mode, just create empty "ConEmu.xml" file near to "ConEmu.exe"CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.9.0: Implemented Recent Scripts list Added checking for plugin updates from AboutBox Multiple formatting improvements/fixes Implemented selection of the CLR version when preparing distribution package Added project panel button for showing plugin shortcuts list Added 'What's New?' panel Fixed auto-formatting scrolling artifact Implemented navigation to "logical" file (vs. auto-generated) file from output panel To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Home Access Plus+: v9.7: Updated: JSON.net Fixed: Issue with the Windows 8 App Added: Windows 8.1 App Added: Win: Self Signed HAP+ Install Support Added: Win: Delete File Support Added: Timeout for the Logon Tracker Removed: Error Dialogs on the User Card Fixed: Green line showing over the booking form Note: a web.config file update is requiredWPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.10 binaries: Now row summaries are updated whenever autofilter value sis modified.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V55 (LiveConnect): This is a which can be used with the new LiveConnect authentication and the MSDN forums. It fixed a bug where the authentication does not work after 1 hour. A logfile will be stored in "%AppData%\Community\CommunityForumsNNTPServer". If you have any problems please feel free to sent me the file "LogFile.txt" or attached it to a issue.xUnit.net - Unit testing framework for C# and .NET (a successor to NUnit): xUnit.net Visual Studio Runner: A placeholder for downloading Visual Studio runner VSIX files, in case the Gallery is down (or you want to downgrade to older versions).Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.9.1): This new version includes: - Include me option is back - Fixed the login bug reported latelyVeraCrypt: VeraCrypt version 1.0c: Changes between 1.0b and 1.0c (11 November 2013) : Set correctly the minimum required version in volumes header (this value must always follow the program version after any major changes). This also solves also the hidden volume issueCaptcha MVC: Captcha MVC 2.5: v 2.5: Added support for MVC 5. The DefaultCaptchaManager is no longer throws an error if the captcha values was entered incorrectly. Minor changes. v 2.4.1: Fixed issues with deleting incorrect values of the captcha token in the SessionStorageProvider. This could lead to a situation when the captcha was not working with the SessionStorageProvider. Minor changes. v 2.4: Changed the IIntelligencePolicy interface, added ICaptchaManager as parameter for all methods. Improved font size ...Role Based Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Role Based Views in CRM 2011 - 1.0.0.0: Set the default view for a user for a particular entity based on security role Hide/ Show views for a user for a particular entity based on his security role Choose the preferred role for a user for view configuration when the user have more than one security role in the system. Ability to exclude/ include a user from view configuration as per business requirementsDuplica: duplica 0.2.498: this is first stable releaseDNN Blog: 06.00.01: 06.00.01 ReleaseThis is the first bugfix release of the new v6 blog module. These are the changes: Added some robustness in v5-v6 scripts to cater for some rare upgrade scenarios Changed the name of the module definition to avoid clash with Evoq Social Addition of sitemap providerStock Track: Version 1.2 Stable: Overhaul and re-think of the user interface in normal mode. Added stock history view in normal mode. Allows user to enter orders in normal mode. Allow advanced user to run database queries within the program. Improved sales statistics feature, able to calculate against a single category. Updated database script file. Now compatible with lower version of SQL Server.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.50: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageHostHQ.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgMoney.net" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgSavy.com" links NEW: Added Support for "PixTreat.com" links Bug fixesVidCoder: 1.5.11 Beta: Added Encode Details window. Exposes elapsed time, ETA, current and average FPS, running file size, current pass and pass progress. Open it by going to Windows -> Encode Details while an encode is running. Subtitle dialog now disables the "Burn In" checkbox when it's either unavailable or it's the only option. It also disables the "Forced Only" when the subtitle type doesn't support the "Forced" flag. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5872. Fixed crash in the preview window when a source fil...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1311.02: Add three new Actions in Custom Updates : Work with Files (Copy, Delete, Rename), Work with Folders (Add, Delete, Rename) and Work with Registry Keys (Add, Delete, Rename). Fix a bug, where after resigning an update, the display is not refresh. Modify the way WPP sort rows in 'Updates Detail Viewer' and 'Computer List Viewer' so that dates are correctly sorted. Add a Tab in the settings form to set Proxy settings when WPP needs to go on Internet. Fix a bug where 'Manage Catalogs Subsc...uComponents: uComponents v6.0.0: This release of uComponents will compile against and support the new API in Umbraco v6.1.0. What's new in uComponents v6.0.0? New DataTypesImage Point XML DropDownList XPath Templatable List New features / Resolved issuesThe following workitems have been implemented and/or resolved: 14781 14805 14808 14818 14854 14827 14868 14859 14790 14853 14790 DataType Grid 14788 14810 14873 14833 14864 14855 / 14860 14816 14823 Drag & Drop support for rows Su...SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.1: New FeaturesAdded option Limit to current basket subtotal to HadSpentAmount discount rule Items in product lists can be labelled as NEW for a configurable period of time Product templates can optionally display a discount sign when discounts were applied Added the ability to set multiple favicons depending on stores and/or themes Plugin management: multiple plugins can now be (un)installed in one go Added a field for the HTML body id to store entity (Developer) New property 'Extra...New Projects.Net PG: Just university projectA2D: 1. Cache System 2. Event System 3. IoC 4. Sql Dispatcher System 5. Session System 6. ???Command Bus 7. ????Advantage Browser: A web browser made in Visual Basic 2010 for all to add and learn from or just use.BarCoder: BarCoder is C# Web app for creating EAN-8 and EAN-16 bar codec in vector graphic image format.CLIDE .NET: CLIDE .NET The Command Line IDE for .NET Because Code is just CodeDevcken Java Library: Devcken's Java LibraryDouble Sides Flipping Control - Windows Phone: Double Sides Flipping Control The Control features the following: Two Sides Control which flipping across its center in Both Directions based on horizontal geFigTree FHMS (Funeral Home Management System): FigTree FHMS (Funeral Home Management System) application is outfitted for daily operations of your funeral home.InChatter: InChatter is a Instant messaging communication module for a desktop application programmed by C#. And the server is a WCF program.Mod.Training: Some helpful examples about Orchardy stuffPlupload MVC4 Demo: This project shows how to implement Plupload with an MVC applicationQuality Control Management System: QCMS is a web-based Test Management systemQuan Ly Nha Thuoc: Project Qu?n Lý Ti?m Thu?c Tây Email: phuoc.nh2953@sinhvien.hoasen.edu.vnRandomchaos DX11 Engine: An open source C++ DX 11 EngineService Gateway: The service gateway enables composition and agility for web sites and services.Sortable objects: Sortable objects server and client sideSTSADM ExportCrawlLog - SP Foundation 2010: STSADM extension to see/export SharePoint Fiundation 2010 MSSearch configuration and Crawl LogsTACACS Plus Extended: tacacs+ updates to support subnet specific configurations and reduced configuration with ldap access.TKinect: Framework for Testing Kinect ApplicationsWebApi Data Wrapper: This project - a collection of wrapper for WebAPI.WPF ExpressionEditor: Control representing expression editor. Allows usage of custom expression parsers.

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• Google and Bing Map APIs Compared

  - by SGWellens

  At one of the local golf courses I frequent, there is an open grass field next to the course. It is about eight acres in size and mowed regularly. It is permissible to hit golf balls there—you bring and shag our own balls. My golf colleagues and I spend hours there practicing, chatting and in general just wasting time. One of the guys brings Ginger, the amazing, incredible, wonder dog. Ginger is a Portuguese Pointer. She chases squirrels, begs for snacks and supervises us closely to make sure we don't misbehave.     Anyway, I decided to make a dedicated web page to measure distances on the field in yards using online mapping services. I started with Google maps and then did the same application with Bing maps. It is a good way to become familiar with the APIs. Here are images of the final two maps: Google:  Bing:   To start with online mapping services, you need to visit the respective websites and get a developers key. I pared the code down to the minimum to make it easier to compare the APIs. Google maps required this CSS (or it wouldn't work): <style type="text/css">     html     {         height: 100%;     }       body     {         height: 100%;         margin: 0;         padding: 0;     } Here is how the map scripts are included. Google requires the developer Key when loading the JavaScript, Bing requires it when the map object is created: Google: <script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=XXXXXXX&libraries=geometry&sensor=false" > </script> Bing: <script  type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=7.0"> </script> Note: I use jQuery to manipulate the DOM elements which may be overkill, but I may add more stuff to this application and I didn't want to have to add it later. Plus, I really like jQuery. Here is how the maps are created: Common Code (the same for both Google and Bing Maps):     <script type="text/javascript">         var gTheMap;         var gMarker1;         var gMarker2;           $(document).ready(DocLoaded);           function DocLoaded()         {             // golf course coordinates             var StartLat = 44.924254;             var StartLng = -93.366859;               // what element to display the map in             var mapdiv = $("#map_div")[0];   Google:         // where on earth the map should display         var StartPoint = new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng);           // create the map         gTheMap = new google.maps.Map(mapdiv,             {                 center: StartPoint,                 zoom: 18,                 mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.SATELLITE             });           // place two markers         marker1 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng + .0001));         marker2 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng - .0001));           DragEnd(null);     } Bing:         // where on earth the map should display         var StartPoint = new  Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng);           // create the map         gTheMap = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(mapdiv,             {                 credentials: 'Asbsa_hzfHl69XF3wxBd_WbW0dLNTRUH3ZHQG9qcV5EFRLuWEaOP1hjWdZ0A0P17',                 center: StartPoint,                 zoom: 18,                 mapTypeId: Microsoft.Maps.MapTypeId.aerial             });             // place two markers         marker1 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng + .0001));         marker2 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng - .0001));           DragEnd(null);     } Note: In the Bing documentation, mapTypeId: was missing from the list of options even though the sample code included it. Note: When creating the Bing map, use the developer Key for the credentials property. I immediately place two markers/pins on the map which is simpler that creating them on the fly with mouse clicks (as I first tried). The markers/pins are draggable and I capture the DragEnd event to calculate and display the distance in yards and draw a line when the user finishes dragging. Here is the code to place a marker: Google: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------   function PlaceMarker(location) {     var marker = new google.maps.Marker(         {             position: location,             map: gTheMap,             draggable: true         });     marker.addListener('dragend', DragEnd);     return marker; }   Bing: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------   function PlaceMarker(location) {     var marker = new Microsoft.Maps.Pushpin(location,     {         draggable : true     });     Microsoft.Maps.Events.addHandler(marker, 'dragend', DragEnd);     gTheMap.entities.push(marker);     return marker; } Here is the code than runs when the user stops dragging a marker: Google: // ---- DragEnd -------------------------------------------   var gLine = null;   function DragEnd(Event) {     var meters = google.maps.geometry.spherical.computeDistanceBetween(marker1.position, marker2.position);     var yards = meters * 1.0936133;     $("#message").text(yards.toFixed(1) + ' yards');    // draw a line connecting the points     var Endpoints = [marker1.position, marker2.position];       if (gLine == null)     {         gLine = new google.maps.Polyline({             path: Endpoints,             strokeColor: "#FFFF00",             strokeOpacity: 1.0,             strokeWeight: 2,             map: gTheMap         });     }     else        gLine.setPath(Endpoints); } Bing: // ---- DragEnd -------------------------------------------   var gLine = null;   function DragEnd(Args) {    var Distance =  CalculateDistance(marker1._location, marker2._location);      $("#message").text(Distance.toFixed(1) + ' yards');       // draw a line connecting the points    var Endpoints = [marker1._location, marker2._location];           if (gLine == null)    {        gLine = new Microsoft.Maps.Polyline(Endpoints,            {                strokeColor: new Microsoft.Maps.Color(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0),  // aRGB                strokeThickness : 2            });          gTheMap.entities.push(gLine);    }    else        gLine.setLocations(Endpoints);  }   Note: I couldn't find a function to calculate the distance between points in the Bing API, so I wrote my own (CalculateDistance). If you want to see the source for it, you can pick it off the web page. Note: I was able to verify the accuracy of the measurements by using the golf hole next to the field. I put a pin/marker on the center of the green, and then by zooming in, I was able to see the 150 markers on the fairway and put the other pin/marker on one of them. Final Notes: All in all, the APIs are very similar. Both made it easy to accomplish a lot with a minimum amount of code. In one aerial view, there are leaves on the tree, in the other, the trees are bare. I don't know which service has the newer data. Here are links to working pages: Bing Map Demo Google Map Demo I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens   CodeProject

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• Google and Bing Map APIs Compared

  - by SGWellens

  At one of the local golf courses I frequent, there is an open grass field next to the course. It is about eight acres in size and mowed regularly. It is permissible to hit golf balls there—you bring and shag our own balls. My golf colleagues and I spend hours there practicing, chatting and in general just wasting time. One of the guys brings Ginger, the amazing, incredible, wonder dog. Ginger is a Hungarian Vizlas (or Hungarian pointer). She chases squirrels, begs for snacks and supervises us closely to make sure we don't misbehave. Anyway, I decided to make a dedicated web page to measure distances on the field in yards using online mapping services. I started with Google maps and then did the same application with Bing maps. It is a good way to become familiar with the APIs. Here are images of the final two maps: Google:  Bing:   To start with online mapping services, you need to visit the respective websites and get a developers key. I pared the code down to the minimum to make it easier to compare the APIs. Google maps required this CSS (or it wouldn't work): <style type="text/css">     html     {         height: 100%;     }       body     {         height: 100%;         margin: 0;         padding: 0;     } Here is how the map scripts are included. Google requires the developer Key when loading the JavaScript, Bing requires it when the map object is created: Google: <script type="text/javascript" src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=XXXXXXX&libraries=geometry&sensor=false" > </script> Bing: <script  type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=7.0"> </script> Note: I use jQuery to manipulate the DOM elements which may be overkill, but I may add more stuff to this application and I didn't want to have to add it later. Plus, I really like jQuery. Here is how the maps are created: Common Code (the same for both Google and Bing Maps):     <script type="text/javascript">         var gTheMap;         var gMarker1;         var gMarker2;           $(document).ready(DocLoaded);           function DocLoaded()         {             // golf course coordinates             var StartLat = 44.924254;             var StartLng = -93.366859;               // what element to display the map in             var mapdiv = $("#map_div")[0];   Google:         // where on earth the map should display         var StartPoint = new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng);           // create the map         gTheMap = new google.maps.Map(mapdiv,             {                 center: StartPoint,                 zoom: 18,                 mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.SATELLITE             });           // place two markers         marker1 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng + .0001));         marker2 = PlaceMarker(new google.maps.LatLng(StartLat, StartLng - .0001));           DragEnd(null);     } Bing:         // where on earth the map should display         var StartPoint = new  Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng);           // create the map         gTheMap = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(mapdiv,             {                 credentials: 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',                 center: StartPoint,                 zoom: 18,                 mapTypeId: Microsoft.Maps.MapTypeId.aerial             });           // place two markers         marker1 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng + .0001));         marker2 = PlaceMarker(new Microsoft.Maps.Location(StartLat, StartLng - .0001));           DragEnd(null);     } Note: In the Bing documentation, mapTypeId: was missing from the list of options even though the sample code included it. Note: When creating the Bing map, use the developer Key for the credentials property. I immediately place two markers/pins on the map which is simpler that creating them on the fly with mouse clicks (as I first tried). The markers/pins are draggable and I capture the DragEnd event to calculate and display the distance in yards and draw a line when the user finishes dragging. Here is the code to place a marker: Google: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------   function PlaceMarker(location) {     var marker = new google.maps.Marker(         {             position: location,             map: gTheMap,             draggable: true         });     marker.addListener('dragend', DragEnd);     return marker; } Bing: // ---- PlaceMarker ------------------------------------   function PlaceMarker(location) {     var marker = new Microsoft.Maps.Pushpin(location,     {         draggable : true     });     Microsoft.Maps.Events.addHandler(marker, 'dragend', DragEnd);     gTheMap.entities.push(marker);     return marker; } Here is the code than runs when the user stops dragging a marker: Google: // ---- DragEnd -------------------------------------------   var gLine = null;   function DragEnd(Event) {     var meters = google.maps.geometry.spherical.computeDistanceBetween(marker1.position, marker2.position);     var yards = meters * 1.0936133;     $("#message").text(yards.toFixed(1) + ' yards');    // draw a line connecting the points     var Endpoints = [marker1.position, marker2.position];       if (gLine == null)     {         gLine = new google.maps.Polyline({             path: Endpoints,             strokeColor: "#FFFF00",             strokeOpacity: 1.0,             strokeWeight: 2,             map: gTheMap         });     }     else        gLine.setPath(Endpoints); } Bing: // ---- DragEnd -------------------------------------------   var gLine = null;   function DragEnd(Args) {    var Distance =  CalculateDistance(marker1._location, marker2._location);      $("#message").text(Distance.toFixed(1) + ' yards');       // draw a line connecting the points    var Endpoints = [marker1._location, marker2._location];           if (gLine == null)    {        gLine = new Microsoft.Maps.Polyline(Endpoints,            {                strokeColor: new Microsoft.Maps.Color(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0),  // aRGB                strokeThickness : 2            });          gTheMap.entities.push(gLine);    }    else        gLine.setLocations(Endpoints);  }  Note: I couldn't find a function to calculate the distance between points in the Bing API, so I wrote my own (CalculateDistance). If you want to see the source for it, you can pick it off the web page. Note: I was able to verify the accuracy of the measurements by using the golf hole next to the field. I put a pin/marker on the center of the green, and then by zooming in, I was able to see the 150 markers on the fairway and put the other pin/marker on one of them. Final Notes: All in all, the APIs are very similar. Both made it easy to accomplish a lot with a minimum amount of code. In one aerial view, there are leaves on the tree, in the other, the trees are bare. I don't know which service has the newer data. Here are links to working pages: Bing Map Demo Google Map Demo I hope someone finds this useful. Steve Wellens   CodeProject

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• Top things web developers should know about the Visual Studio 2013 release

  - by Jon Galloway

  ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release NotesASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release NotesSummary for lazy readers: Visual Studio 2013 is now available for download on the Visual Studio site and on MSDN subscriber downloads) Visual Studio 2013 installs side by side with Visual Studio 2012 and supports round-tripping between Visual Studio versions, so you can try it out without committing to a switch Visual Studio 2013 ships with the new version of ASP.NET, which includes ASP.NET MVC 5, ASP.NET Web API 2, Razor 3, Entity Framework 6 and SignalR 2.0 The new releases ASP.NET focuses on One ASP.NET, so core features and web tools work the same across the platform (e.g. adding ASP.NET MVC controllers to a Web Forms application) New core features include new templates based on Bootstrap, a new scaffolding system, and a new identity system Visual Studio 2013 is an incredible editor for web files, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Markdown, LESS, Coffeescript, Handlebars, Angular, Ember, Knockdown, etc. Top links: Visual Studio 2013 content on the ASP.NET site are in the standard new releases area: http://www.asp.net/vnext ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release Notes Short intro videos on the new Visual Studio web editor features from Scott Hanselman and Mads Kristensen Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 post on the official .NET Web Development and Tools Blog Scott Guthrie's post: Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework Okay, for those of you who are still with me, let's dig in a bit. Quick web dev notes on downloading and installing Visual Studio 2013 I found Visual Studio 2013 to be a pretty fast install. According to Brian Harry's release post, installing over pre-release versions of Visual Studio is supported.  I've installed the release version over pre-release versions, and it worked fine. If you're only going to be doing web development, you can speed up the install if you just select Web Developer tools. Of course, as a good Microsoft employee, I'll mention that you might also want to install some of those other features, like the Store apps for Windows 8 and the Windows Phone 8.0 SDK, but they do download and install a lot of other stuff (e.g. the Windows Phone SDK sets up Hyper-V and downloads several GB's of VM's). So if you're planning just to do web development for now, you can pick just the Web Developer Tools and install the other stuff later. If you've got a fast internet connection, I recommend using the web installer instead of downloading the ISO. The ISO includes all the features, whereas the web installer just downloads what you're installing. Visual Studio 2013 development settings and color theme When you start up Visual Studio, it'll prompt you to pick some defaults. These are totally up to you -whatever suits your development style - and you can change them later. As I said, these are completely up to you. I recommend either the Web Development or Web Development (Code Only) settings. The only real difference is that Code Only hides the toolbars, and you can switch between them using Tools / Import and Export Settings / Reset. Web Development settings Web Development (code only) settings Usually I've just gone with Web Development (code only) in the past because I just want to focus on the code, although the Standard toolbar does make it easier to switch default web browsers. More on that later. Color theme Sigh. Okay, everyone's got their favorite colors. I alternate between Light and Dark depending on my mood, and I personally like how the low contrast on the window chrome in those themes puts the emphasis on my code rather than the tabs and toolbars. I know some people got pretty worked up over that, though, and wanted the blue theme back. I personally don't like it - it reminds me of ancient versions of Visual Studio that I don't want to think about anymore. So here's the thing: if you install Visual Studio Ultimate, it defaults to Blue. The other versions default to Light. If you use Blue, I won't criticize you - out loud, that is. You can change themes really easily - either Tools / Options / Environment / General, or the smart way: ctrl+q for quick launch, then type Theme and hit enter. Signing in During the first run, you'll be prompted to sign in. You don't have to - you can click the "Not now, maybe later" link at the bottom of that dialog. I recommend signing in, though. It's not hooked in with licensing or tracking the kind of code you write to sell you components. It is doing good things, like  syncing your Visual Studio settings between computers. More about that here. So, you don't have to, but I sure do. Overview of shiny new things in ASP.NET land There are a lot of good new things in ASP.NET. I'll list some of my favorite here, but you can read more on the ASP.NET site. One ASP.NET You've heard us talk about this for a while. The idea is that options are good, but choice can be a burden. When you start a new ASP.NET project, why should you have to make a tough decision - with long-term consequences - about how your application will work? If you want to use ASP.NET Web Forms, but have the option of adding in ASP.NET MVC later, why should that be hard? It's all ASP.NET, right? Ideally, you'd just decide that you want to use ASP.NET to build sites and services, and you could use the appropriate tools (the green blocks below) as you needed them. So, here it is. When you create a new ASP.NET application, you just create an ASP.NET application. Next, you can pick from some templates to get you started... but these are different. They're not "painful decision" templates, they're just some starting pieces. And, most importantly, you can mix and match. I can pick a "mostly" Web Forms template, but include MVC and Web API folders and core references. If you've tried to mix and match in the past, you're probably aware that it was possible, but not pleasant. ASP.NET MVC project files contained special project type GUIDs, so you'd only get controller scaffolding support in a Web Forms project if you manually edited the csproj file. Features in one stack didn't work in others. Project templates were painful choices. That's no longer the case. Hooray! I just did a demo in a presentation last week where I created a new Web Forms + MVC + Web API site, built a model, scaffolded MVC and Web API controllers with EF Code First, add data in the MVC view, viewed it in Web API, then added a GridView to the Web Forms Default.aspx page and bound it to the Model. In about 5 minutes. Sure, it's a simple example, but it's great to be able to share code and features across the whole ASP.NET family. Authentication In the past, authentication was built into the templates. So, for instance, there was an ASP.NET MVC 4 Intranet Project template which created a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application that was preconfigured for Windows Authentication. All of that authentication stuff was built into each template, so they varied between the stacks, and you couldn't reuse them. You didn't see a lot of changes to the authentication options, since they required big changes to a bunch of project templates. Now, the new project dialog includes a common authentication experience. When you hit the Change Authentication button, you get some common options that work the same way regardless of the template or reference settings you've made. These options work on all ASP.NET frameworks, and all hosting environments (IIS, IIS Express, or OWIN for self-host) The default is Individual User Accounts: This is the standard "create a local account, using username / password or OAuth" thing; however, it's all built on the new Identity system. More on that in a second. The one setting that has some configuration to it is Organizational Accounts, which lets you configure authentication using Active Directory, Windows Azure Active Directory, or Office 365. Identity There's a new identity system. We've taken the best parts of the previous ASP.NET Membership and Simple Identity systems, rolled in a lot of feedback and made big enhancements to support important developer concerns like unit testing and extensiblity. I've written long posts about ASP.NET identity, and I'll do it again. Soon. This is not that post. The short version is that I think we've finally got just the right Identity system. Some of my favorite features: There are simple, sensible defaults that work well - you can File / New / Run / Register / Login, and everything works. It supports standard username / password as well as external authentication (OAuth, etc.). It's easy to customize without having to re-implement an entire provider. It's built using pluggable pieces, rather than one large monolithic system. It's built using interfaces like IUser and IRole that allow for unit testing, dependency injection, etc. You can easily add user profile data (e.g. URL, twitter handle, birthday). You just add properties to your ApplicationUser model and they'll automatically be persisted. Complete control over how the identity data is persisted. By default, everything works with Entity Framework Code First, but it's built to support changes from small (modify the schema) to big (use another ORM, store your data in a document database or in the cloud or in XML or in the EXIF data of your desktop background or whatever). It's configured via OWIN. More on OWIN and Katana later, but the fact that it's built using OWIN means it's portable. You can find out more in the Authentication and Identity section of the ASP.NET site (and lots more content will be going up there soon). New Bootstrap based project templates The new project templates are built using Bootstrap 3. Bootstrap (formerly Twitter Bootstrap) is a front-end framework that brings a lot of nice benefits: It's responsive, so your projects will automatically scale to device width using CSS media queries. For example, menus are full size on a desktop browser, but on narrower screens you automatically get a mobile-friendly menu. The built-in Bootstrap styles make your standard page elements (headers, footers, buttons, form inputs, tables etc.) look nice and modern. Bootstrap is themeable, so you can reskin your whole site by dropping in a new Bootstrap theme. Since Bootstrap is pretty popular across the web development community, this gives you a large and rapidly growing variety of templates (free and paid) to choose from. Bootstrap also includes a lot of very useful things: components (like progress bars and badges), useful glyphicons, and some jQuery plugins for tooltips, dropdowns, carousels, etc.). Here's a look at how the responsive part works. When the page is full screen, the menu and header are optimized for a wide screen display: When I shrink the page down (this is all based on page width, not useragent sniffing) the menu turns into a nice mobile-friendly dropdown: For a quick example, I grabbed a new free theme off bootswatch.com. For simple themes, you just need to download the boostrap.css file and replace the /content/bootstrap.css file in your project. Now when I refresh the page, I've got a new theme: Scaffolding The big change in scaffolding is that it's one system that works across ASP.NET. You can create a new Empty Web project or Web Forms project and you'll get the Scaffold context menus. For release, we've got MVC 5 and Web API 2 controllers. We had a preview of Web Forms scaffolding in the preview releases, but they weren't fully baked for RTM. Look for them in a future update, expected pretty soon. This scaffolding system wasn't just changed to work across the ASP.NET frameworks, it's also built to enable future extensibility. That's not in this release, but should also hopefully be out soon. Project Readme page This is a small thing, but I really like it. When you create a new project, you get a Project_Readme.html page that's added to the root of your project and opens in the Visual Studio built-in browser. I love it. A long time ago, when you created a new project we just dumped it on you and left you scratching your head about what to do next. Not ideal. Then we started adding a bunch of Getting Started information to the new project templates. That told you what to do next, but you had to delete all of that stuff out of your website. It doesn't belong there. Not ideal. This is a simple HTML file that's not integrated into your project code at all. You can delete it if you want. But, it shows a lot of helpful links that are current for the project you just created. In the future, if we add new wacky project types, they can create readme docs with specific information on how to do appropriately wacky things. Side note: I really like that they used the internal browser in Visual Studio to show this content rather than popping open an HTML page in the default browser. I hate that. It's annoying. If you're doing that, I hope you'll stop. What if some unnamed person has 40 or 90 tabs saved in their browser session? When you pop open your "Thanks for installing my Visual Studio extension!" page, all eleventy billion tabs start up and I wish I'd never installed your thing. Be like these guys and pop stuff Visual Studio specific HTML docs in the Visual Studio browser. ASP.NET MVC 5 The biggest change with ASP.NET MVC 5 is that it's no longer a separate project type. It integrates well with the rest of ASP.NET. In addition to that and the other common features we've already looked at (Bootstrap templates, Identity, authentication), here's what's new for ASP.NET MVC. Attribute routing ASP.NET MVC now supports attribute routing, thanks to a contribution by Tim McCall, the author of http://attributerouting.net. With attribute routing you can specify your routes by annotating your actions and controllers. This supports some pretty complex, customized routing scenarios, and it allows you to keep your route information right with your controller actions if you'd like. Here's a controller that includes an action whose method name is Hiding, but I've used AttributeRouting to configure it to /spaghetti/with-nesting/where-is-waldo public class SampleController : Controller { [Route("spaghetti/with-nesting/where-is-waldo")] public string Hiding() { return "You found me!"; } } I enable that in my RouteConfig.cs, and I can use that in conjunction with my other MVC routes like this: public class RouteConfig { public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes(); routes.MapRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); } } You can read more about Attribute Routing in ASP.NET MVC 5 here. Filter enhancements There are two new additions to filters: Authentication Filters and Filter Overrides. Authentication filters are a new kind of filter in ASP.NET MVC that run prior to authorization filters in the ASP.NET MVC pipeline and allow you to specify authentication logic per-action, per-controller, or globally for all controllers. Authentication filters process credentials in the request and provide a corresponding principal. Authentication filters can also add authentication challenges in response to unauthorized requests. Override filters let you change which filters apply to a given action method or controller. Override filters specify a set of filter types that should not be run for a given scope (action or controller). This allows you to configure filters that apply globally but then exclude certain global filters from applying to specific actions or controllers. ASP.NET Web API 2 ASP.NET Web API 2 includes a lot of new features. Attribute Routing ASP.NET Web API supports the same attribute routing system that's in ASP.NET MVC 5. You can read more about the Attribute Routing features in Web API in this article. OAuth 2.0 ASP.NET Web API picks up OAuth 2.0 support, using security middleware running on OWIN (discussed below). This is great for features like authenticated Single Page Applications. OData Improvements ASP.NET Web API now has full OData support. That required adding in some of the most powerful operators: $select, $expand, $batch and $value. You can read more about OData operator support in this article by Mike Wasson. Lots more There's a huge list of other features, including CORS (cross-origin request sharing), IHttpActionResult, IHttpRequestContext, and more. I think the best overview is in the release notes. OWIN and Katana I've written about OWIN and Katana recently. I'm a big fan. OWIN is the Open Web Interfaces for .NET. It's a spec, like HTML or HTTP, so you can't install OWIN. The benefit of OWIN is that it's a community specification, so anyone who implements it can plug into the ASP.NET stack, either as middleware or as a host. Katana is the Microsoft implementation of OWIN. It leverages OWIN to wire up things like authentication, handlers, modules, IIS hosting, etc., so ASP.NET can host OWIN components and Katana components can run in someone else's OWIN implementation. Howard Dierking just wrote a cool article in MSDN magazine describing Katana in depth: Getting Started with the Katana Project. He had an interesting example showing an OWIN based pipeline which leveraged SignalR, ASP.NET Web API and NancyFx components in the same stack. If this kind of thing makes sense to you, that's great. If it doesn't, don't worry, but keep an eye on it. You're going to see some cool things happen as a result of ASP.NET becoming more and more pluggable. Visual Studio Web Tools Okay, this stuff's just crazy. Visual Studio has been adding some nice web dev features over the past few years, but they've really cranked it up for this release. Visual Studio is by far my favorite code editor for all web files: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and lots of popular libraries. Stop thinking of Visual Studio as a big editor that you only use to write back-end code. Stop editing HTML and CSS in Notepad (or Sublime, Notepad++, etc.). Visual Studio starts up in under 2 seconds on a modern computer with an SSD. Misspelling HTML attributes or your CSS classes or jQuery or Angular syntax is stupid. It doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a silly person who wastes time. Browser Link Browser Link is a real-time, two-way connection between Visual Studio and all connected browsers. It's only attached when you're running locally, in debug, but it applies to any and all connected browser, including emulators. You may have seen demos that showed the browsers refreshing based on changes in the editor, and I'll agree that's pretty cool. But it's really just the start. It's a two-way connection, and it's built for extensiblity. That means you can write extensions that push information from your running application (in IE, Chrome, a mobile emulator, etc.) back to Visual Studio. Mads and team have showed off some demonstrations where they enabled edit mode in the browser which updated the source HTML back on the browser. It's also possible to look at how the rendered HTML performs, check for compatibility issues, watch for unused CSS classes, the sky's the limit. New HTML editor The previous HTML editor had a lot of old code that didn't allow for improvements. The team rewrote the HTML editor to take advantage of the new(ish) extensibility features in Visual Studio, which then allowed them to add in all kinds of features - things like CSS Class and ID IntelliSense (so you type style="" and get a list of classes and ID's for your project), smart indent based on how your document is formatted, JavaScript reference auto-sync, etc. Here's a 3 minute tour from Mads Kristensen. The previous HTML editor had a lot of old code that didn't allow for improvements. The team rewrote the HTML editor to take advantage of the new(ish) extensibility features in Visual Studio, which then allowed them to add in all kinds of features - things like CSS Class and ID IntelliSense (so you type style="" and get a list of classes and ID's for your project), smart indent based on how your document is formatted, JavaScript reference auto-sync, etc. Lots more Visual Studio web dev features That's just a sampling - there's a ton of great features for JavaScript editing, CSS editing, publishing, and Page Inspector (which shows real-time rendering of your page inside Visual Studio). Here are some more short videos showing those features. Lots, lots more Okay, that's just a summary, and it's still quite a bit. Head on over to http://asp.net/vnext for more information, and download Visual Studio 2013 now to get started!

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• Camera for 2.5D Game

  - by me--

  I'm hoping someone can explain this to me like I'm 5, because I've been struggling with this for hours and simply cannot understand what I'm doing wrong. I've written a Camera class for my 2.5D game. The intention is to support world and screen spaces like this: The camera is the black thing on the right. The +Z axis is upwards in that image, with -Z heading downwards. As you can see, both world space and screen space have (0, 0) at their top-left. I started writing some unit tests to prove that my camera was working as expected, and that's where things started getting...strange. My tests plot coordinates in world, view, and screen spaces. Eventually I will use image comparison to assert that they are correct, but for now my test just displays the result. The render logic uses Camera.ViewMatrix to transform world space to view space, and Camera.WorldPointToScreen to transform world space to screen space. Here is an example test: [Fact] public void foo() { var camera = new Camera(new Viewport(0, 0, 250, 100)); DrawingVisual worldRender; DrawingVisual viewRender; DrawingVisual screenRender; this.Render(camera, out worldRender, out viewRender, out screenRender, new Vector3(30, 0, 0), new Vector3(30, 40, 0)); this.ShowRenders(camera, worldRender, viewRender, screenRender); } And here's what pops up when I run this test: World space looks OK, although I suspect the z axis is going into the screen instead of towards the viewer. View space has me completely baffled. I was expecting the camera to be sitting above (0, 0) and looking towards the center of the scene. Instead, the z axis seems to be the wrong way around, and the camera is positioned in the opposite corner to what I expect! I suspect screen space will be another thing altogether, but can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong in my Camera class? UPDATE I made some progress in terms of getting things to look visually as I expect, but only through intuition: not an actual understanding of what I'm doing. Any enlightenment would be greatly appreciated. I realized that my view space was flipped both vertically and horizontally compared to what I expected, so I changed my view matrix to scale accordingly: this.viewMatrix = Matrix.CreateLookAt(this.location, this.target, this.up) * Matrix.CreateScale(this.zoom, this.zoom, 1) * Matrix.CreateScale(-1, -1, 1); I could combine the two CreateScale calls, but have left them separate for clarity. Again, I have no idea why this is necessary, but it fixed my view space: But now my screen space needs to be flipped vertically, so I modified my projection matrix accordingly: this.projectionMatrix = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(0.7853982f, viewport.AspectRatio, 1, 2) * Matrix.CreateScale(1, -1, 1); And this results in what I was expecting from my first attempt: I have also just tried using Camera to render sprites via a SpriteBatch to make sure everything works there too, and it does. But the question remains: why do I need to do all this flipping of axes to get the space coordinates the way I expect? UPDATE 2 I've since improved my rendering logic in my test suite so that it supports geometries and so that lines get lighter the further away they are from the camera. I wanted to do this to avoid optical illusions and to further prove to myself that I'm looking at what I think I am. Here is an example: In this case, I have 3 geometries: a cube, a sphere, and a polyline on the top face of the cube. Notice how the darkening and lightening of the lines correctly identifies those portions of the geometries closer to the camera. If I remove the negative scaling I had to put in, I see: So you can see I'm still in the same boat - I still need those vertical and horizontal flips in my matrices to get things to appear correctly. In the interests of giving people a repro to play with, here is the complete code needed to generate the above. If you want to run via the test harness, just install the xunit package: Camera.cs: using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using System.Diagnostics; public sealed class Camera { private readonly Viewport viewport; private readonly Matrix projectionMatrix; private Matrix? viewMatrix; private Vector3 location; private Vector3 target; private Vector3 up; private float zoom; public Camera(Viewport viewport) { this.viewport = viewport; // for an explanation of the negative scaling, see: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/63409/ this.projectionMatrix = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(0.7853982f, viewport.AspectRatio, 1, 2) * Matrix.CreateScale(1, -1, 1); // defaults this.location = new Vector3(this.viewport.Width / 2, this.viewport.Height, 100); this.target = new Vector3(this.viewport.Width / 2, this.viewport.Height / 2, 0); this.up = new Vector3(0, 0, 1); this.zoom = 1; } public Viewport Viewport { get { return this.viewport; } } public Vector3 Location { get { return this.location; } set { this.location = value; this.viewMatrix = null; } } public Vector3 Target { get { return this.target; } set { this.target = value; this.viewMatrix = null; } } public Vector3 Up { get { return this.up; } set { this.up = value; this.viewMatrix = null; } } public float Zoom { get { return this.zoom; } set { this.zoom = value; this.viewMatrix = null; } } public Matrix ProjectionMatrix { get { return this.projectionMatrix; } } public Matrix ViewMatrix { get { if (this.viewMatrix == null) { // for an explanation of the negative scaling, see: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/63409/ this.viewMatrix = Matrix.CreateLookAt(this.location, this.target, this.up) * Matrix.CreateScale(this.zoom) * Matrix.CreateScale(-1, -1, 1); } return this.viewMatrix.Value; } } public Vector2 WorldPointToScreen(Vector3 point) { var result = viewport.Project(point, this.ProjectionMatrix, this.ViewMatrix, Matrix.Identity); return new Vector2(result.X, result.Y); } public void WorldPointsToScreen(Vector3[] points, Vector2[] destination) { Debug.Assert(points != null); Debug.Assert(destination != null); Debug.Assert(points.Length == destination.Length); for (var i = 0; i < points.Length; ++i) { destination[i] = this.WorldPointToScreen(points[i]); } } } CameraFixture.cs: using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Media; using Xunit; using XNA = Microsoft.Xna.Framework; public sealed class CameraFixture { [Fact] public void foo() { var camera = new Camera(new Viewport(0, 0, 250, 100)); DrawingVisual worldRender; DrawingVisual viewRender; DrawingVisual screenRender; this.Render( camera, out worldRender, out viewRender, out screenRender, new Sphere(30, 15) { WorldMatrix = XNA.Matrix.CreateTranslation(155, 50, 0) }, new Cube(30) { WorldMatrix = XNA.Matrix.CreateTranslation(75, 60, 15) }, new PolyLine(new XNA.Vector3(0, 0, 0), new XNA.Vector3(10, 10, 0), new XNA.Vector3(20, 0, 0), new XNA.Vector3(0, 0, 0)) { WorldMatrix = XNA.Matrix.CreateTranslation(65, 55, 30) }); this.ShowRenders(worldRender, viewRender, screenRender); } #region Supporting Fields private static readonly Pen xAxisPen = new Pen(Brushes.Red, 2); private static readonly Pen yAxisPen = new Pen(Brushes.Green, 2); private static readonly Pen zAxisPen = new Pen(Brushes.Blue, 2); private static readonly Pen viewportPen = new Pen(Brushes.Gray, 1); private static readonly Pen nonScreenSpacePen = new Pen(Brushes.Black, 0.5); private static readonly Color geometryBaseColor = Colors.Black; #endregion #region Supporting Methods private void Render(Camera camera, out DrawingVisual worldRender, out DrawingVisual viewRender, out DrawingVisual screenRender, params Geometry[] geometries) { var worldDrawingVisual = new DrawingVisual(); var viewDrawingVisual = new DrawingVisual(); var screenDrawingVisual = new DrawingVisual(); const int axisLength = 15; using (var worldDrawingContext = worldDrawingVisual.RenderOpen()) using (var viewDrawingContext = viewDrawingVisual.RenderOpen()) using (var screenDrawingContext = screenDrawingVisual.RenderOpen()) { // draw lines around the camera's viewport var viewportBounds = camera.Viewport.Bounds; var viewportLines = new Tuple<int, int, int, int>[] { Tuple.Create(viewportBounds.Left, viewportBounds.Bottom, viewportBounds.Left, viewportBounds.Top), Tuple.Create(viewportBounds.Left, viewportBounds.Top, viewportBounds.Right, viewportBounds.Top), Tuple.Create(viewportBounds.Right, viewportBounds.Top, viewportBounds.Right, viewportBounds.Bottom), Tuple.Create(viewportBounds.Right, viewportBounds.Bottom, viewportBounds.Left, viewportBounds.Bottom) }; foreach (var viewportLine in viewportLines) { var viewStart = XNA.Vector3.Transform(new XNA.Vector3(viewportLine.Item1, viewportLine.Item2, 0), camera.ViewMatrix); var viewEnd = XNA.Vector3.Transform(new XNA.Vector3(viewportLine.Item3, viewportLine.Item4, 0), camera.ViewMatrix); var screenStart = camera.WorldPointToScreen(new XNA.Vector3(viewportLine.Item1, viewportLine.Item2, 0)); var screenEnd = camera.WorldPointToScreen(new XNA.Vector3(viewportLine.Item3, viewportLine.Item4, 0)); worldDrawingContext.DrawLine(viewportPen, new Point(viewportLine.Item1, viewportLine.Item2), new Point(viewportLine.Item3, viewportLine.Item4)); viewDrawingContext.DrawLine(viewportPen, new Point(viewStart.X, viewStart.Y), new Point(viewEnd.X, viewEnd.Y)); screenDrawingContext.DrawLine(viewportPen, new Point(screenStart.X, screenStart.Y), new Point(screenEnd.X, screenEnd.Y)); } // draw axes var axisLines = new Tuple<int, int, int, int, int, int, Pen>[] { Tuple.Create(0, 0, 0, axisLength, 0, 0, xAxisPen), Tuple.Create(0, 0, 0, 0, axisLength, 0, yAxisPen), Tuple.Create(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, axisLength, zAxisPen) }; foreach (var axisLine in axisLines) { var viewStart = XNA.Vector3.Transform(new XNA.Vector3(axisLine.Item1, axisLine.Item2, axisLine.Item3), camera.ViewMatrix); var viewEnd = XNA.Vector3.Transform(new XNA.Vector3(axisLine.Item4, axisLine.Item5, axisLine.Item6), camera.ViewMatrix); var screenStart = camera.WorldPointToScreen(new XNA.Vector3(axisLine.Item1, axisLine.Item2, axisLine.Item3)); var screenEnd = camera.WorldPointToScreen(new XNA.Vector3(axisLine.Item4, axisLine.Item5, axisLine.Item6)); worldDrawingContext.DrawLine(axisLine.Item7, new Point(axisLine.Item1, axisLine.Item2), new Point(axisLine.Item4, axisLine.Item5)); viewDrawingContext.DrawLine(axisLine.Item7, new Point(viewStart.X, viewStart.Y), new Point(viewEnd.X, viewEnd.Y)); screenDrawingContext.DrawLine(axisLine.Item7, new Point(screenStart.X, screenStart.Y), new Point(screenEnd.X, screenEnd.Y)); } // for all points in all geometries to be rendered, find the closest and furthest away from the camera so we can lighten lines that are further away var distancesToAllGeometrySections = from geometry in geometries let geometryViewMatrix = geometry.WorldMatrix * camera.ViewMatrix from section in geometry.Sections from point in new XNA.Vector3[] { section.Item1, section.Item2 } let viewPoint = XNA.Vector3.Transform(point, geometryViewMatrix) select viewPoint.Length(); var furthestDistance = distancesToAllGeometrySections.Max(); var closestDistance = distancesToAllGeometrySections.Min(); var deltaDistance = Math.Max(0.000001f, furthestDistance - closestDistance); // draw each geometry for (var i = 0; i < geometries.Length; ++i) { var geometry = geometries[i]; // there's probably a more correct name for this, but basically this gets the geometry relative to the camera so we can check how far away each point is from the camera var geometryViewMatrix = geometry.WorldMatrix * camera.ViewMatrix; // we order roughly by those sections furthest from the camera to those closest, so that the closer ones "overwrite" the ones further away var orderedSections = from section in geometry.Sections let startPointRelativeToCamera = XNA.Vector3.Transform(section.Item1, geometryViewMatrix) let endPointRelativeToCamera = XNA.Vector3.Transform(section.Item2, geometryViewMatrix) let startPointDistance = startPointRelativeToCamera.Length() let endPointDistance = endPointRelativeToCamera.Length() orderby (startPointDistance + endPointDistance) descending select new { Section = section, DistanceToStart = startPointDistance, DistanceToEnd = endPointDistance }; foreach (var orderedSection in orderedSections) { var start = XNA.Vector3.Transform(orderedSection.Section.Item1, geometry.WorldMatrix); var end = XNA.Vector3.Transform(orderedSection.Section.Item2, geometry.WorldMatrix); var viewStart = XNA.Vector3.Transform(start, camera.ViewMatrix); var viewEnd = XNA.Vector3.Transform(end, camera.ViewMatrix); worldDrawingContext.DrawLine(nonScreenSpacePen, new Point(start.X, start.Y), new Point(end.X, end.Y)); viewDrawingContext.DrawLine(nonScreenSpacePen, new Point(viewStart.X, viewStart.Y), new Point(viewEnd.X, viewEnd.Y)); // screen rendering is more complicated purely because I wanted geometry to fade the further away it is from the camera // otherwise, it's very hard to tell whether the rendering is actually correct or not var startDistanceRatio = (orderedSection.DistanceToStart - closestDistance) / deltaDistance; var endDistanceRatio = (orderedSection.DistanceToEnd - closestDistance) / deltaDistance; // lerp towards white based on distance from camera, but only to a maximum of 90% var startColor = Lerp(geometryBaseColor, Colors.White, startDistanceRatio * 0.9f); var endColor = Lerp(geometryBaseColor, Colors.White, endDistanceRatio * 0.9f); var screenStart = camera.WorldPointToScreen(start); var screenEnd = camera.WorldPointToScreen(end); var brush = new LinearGradientBrush { StartPoint = new Point(screenStart.X, screenStart.Y), EndPoint = new Point(screenEnd.X, screenEnd.Y), MappingMode = BrushMappingMode.Absolute }; brush.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(startColor, 0)); brush.GradientStops.Add(new GradientStop(endColor, 1)); var pen = new Pen(brush, 1); brush.Freeze(); pen.Freeze(); screenDrawingContext.DrawLine(pen, new Point(screenStart.X, screenStart.Y), new Point(screenEnd.X, screenEnd.Y)); } } } worldRender = worldDrawingVisual; viewRender = viewDrawingVisual; screenRender = screenDrawingVisual; } private static float Lerp(float start, float end, float amount) { var difference = end - start; var adjusted = difference * amount; return start + adjusted; } private static Color Lerp(Color color, Color to, float amount) { var sr = color.R; var sg = color.G; var sb = color.B; var er = to.R; var eg = to.G; var eb = to.B; var r = (byte)Lerp(sr, er, amount); var g = (byte)Lerp(sg, eg, amount); var b = (byte)Lerp(sb, eb, amount); return Color.FromArgb(255, r, g, b); } private void ShowRenders(DrawingVisual worldRender, DrawingVisual viewRender, DrawingVisual screenRender) { var itemsControl = new ItemsControl(); itemsControl.Items.Add(new HeaderedContentControl { Header = "World", Content = new DrawingVisualHost(worldRender)}); itemsControl.Items.Add(new HeaderedContentControl { Header = "View", Content = new DrawingVisualHost(viewRender) }); itemsControl.Items.Add(new HeaderedContentControl { Header = "Screen", Content = new DrawingVisualHost(screenRender) }); var window = new Window { Title = "Renders", Content = itemsControl, ShowInTaskbar = true, SizeToContent = SizeToContent.WidthAndHeight }; window.ShowDialog(); } #endregion #region Supporting Types // stupidly simple 3D geometry class, consisting of a series of sections that will be connected by lines private abstract class Geometry { public abstract IEnumerable<Tuple<XNA.Vector3, XNA.Vector3>> Sections { get; } public XNA.Matrix WorldMatrix { get; set; } } private sealed class Line : Geometry { private readonly XNA.Vector3 magnitude; public Line(XNA.Vector3 magnitude) { this.magnitude = magnitude; } public override IEnumerable<Tuple<XNA.Vector3, XNA.Vector3>> Sections { get { yield return Tuple.Create(XNA.Vector3.Zero, this.magnitude); } } } private sealed class PolyLine : Geometry { private readonly XNA.Vector3[] points; public PolyLine(params XNA.Vector3[] points) { this.points = points; } public override IEnumerable<Tuple<XNA.Vector3, XNA.Vector3>> Sections { get { if (this.points.Length < 2) { yield break; } var end = this.points[0]; for (var i = 1; i < this.points.Length; ++i) { var start = end; end = this.points[i]; yield return Tuple.Create(start, end); } } } } private sealed class Cube : Geometry { private readonly float size; public Cube(float size) { this.size = size; } public override IEnumerable<Tuple<XNA.Vector3, XNA.Vector3>> Sections { get { var halfSize = this.size / 2; var frontBottomLeft = new XNA.Vector3(-halfSize, halfSize, -halfSize); var frontBottomRight = new XNA.Vector3(halfSize, halfSize, -halfSize); var frontTopLeft = new XNA.Vector3(-halfSize, halfSize, halfSize); var frontTopRight = new XNA.Vector3(halfSize, halfSize, halfSize); var backBottomLeft = new XNA.Vector3(-halfSize, -halfSize, -halfSize); var backBottomRight = new XNA.Vector3(halfSize, -halfSize, -halfSize); var backTopLeft = new XNA.Vector3(-halfSize, -halfSize, halfSize); var backTopRight = new XNA.Vector3(halfSize, -halfSize, halfSize); // front face yield return Tuple.Create(frontBottomLeft, frontBottomRight); yield return Tuple.Create(frontBottomLeft, frontTopLeft); yield return Tuple.Create(frontTopLeft, frontTopRight); yield return Tuple.Create(frontTopRight, frontBottomRight); // left face yield return Tuple.Create(frontTopLeft, backTopLeft); yield return Tuple.Create(backTopLeft, backBottomLeft); yield return Tuple.Create(backBottomLeft, frontBottomLeft); // right face yield return Tuple.Create(frontTopRight, backTopRight); yield return Tuple.Create(backTopRight, backBottomRight); yield return Tuple.Create(backBottomRight, frontBottomRight); // back face yield return Tuple.Create(backBottomLeft, backBottomRight); yield return Tuple.Create(backTopLeft, backTopRight); } } } private sealed class Sphere : Geometry { private readonly float radius; private readonly int subsections; public Sphere(float radius, int subsections) { this.radius = radius; this.subsections = subsections; } public override IEnumerable<Tuple<XNA.Vector3, XNA.Vector3>> Sections { get { var latitudeLines = this.subsections; var longitudeLines = this.subsections; // see http://stackoverflow.com/a/4082020/5380 var results = from latitudeLine in Enumerable.Range(0, latitudeLines) from longitudeLine in Enumerable.Range(0, longitudeLines) let latitudeRatio = latitudeLine / (float)latitudeLines let longitudeRatio = longitudeLine / (float)longitudeLines let nextLatitudeRatio = (latitudeLine + 1) / (float)latitudeLines let nextLongitudeRatio = (longitudeLine + 1) / (float)longitudeLines let z1 = Math.Cos(Math.PI * latitudeRatio) let z2 = Math.Cos(Math.PI * nextLatitudeRatio) let x1 = Math.Sin(Math.PI * latitudeRatio) * Math.Cos(Math.PI * 2 * longitudeRatio) let y1 = Math.Sin(Math.PI * latitudeRatio) * Math.Sin(Math.PI * 2 * longitudeRatio) let x2 = Math.Sin(Math.PI * nextLatitudeRatio) * Math.Cos(Math.PI * 2 * longitudeRatio) let y2 = Math.Sin(Math.PI * nextLatitudeRatio) * Math.Sin(Math.PI * 2 * longitudeRatio) let x3 = Math.Sin(Math.PI * latitudeRatio) * Math.Cos(Math.PI * 2 * nextLongitudeRatio) let y3 = Math.Sin(Math.PI * latitudeRatio) * Math.Sin(Math.PI * 2 * nextLongitudeRatio) let start = new XNA.Vector3((float)x1 * radius, (float)y1 * radius, (float)z1 * radius) let firstEnd = new XNA.Vector3((float)x2 * radius, (float)y2 * radius, (float)z2 * radius) let secondEnd = new XNA.Vector3((float)x3 * radius, (float)y3 * radius, (float)z1 * radius) select new { First = Tuple.Create(start, firstEnd), Second = Tuple.Create(start, secondEnd) }; foreach (var result in results) { yield return result.First; yield return result.Second; } } } } #endregion }

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• JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue

  - by John-Brown.Evans

  JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue ol{margin:0;padding:0} .c11_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c9_4{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt}.c14{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c17_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c7_4{vertical-align:top;width:130pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c19_4{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c22_4{background-color:#ffffff} .c20_4{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0} .c6_4{font-size:8pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c24_4{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c23_4{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c0_4{height:11pt;direction:ltr} .c10_4{font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c3_4{padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} .c18_4{font-size:8pt} .c8_4{text-align:center} .c12_4{background-color:#ffff00} .c2_4{font-weight:bold} .c21_4{background-color:#00ff00} .c4_4{line-height:1.0} .c1_4{direction:ltr} .c15_4{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c13_4{font-family:"Courier New"} .c5_4{font-style:italic} .c16_4{border-collapse:collapse} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:0pt} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue In this example we will create a BPEL process which will write (enqueue) a message to a JMS queue using a JMS adapter. The JMS adapter will enqueue the full XML payload to the queue. This sample will use the following WebLogic Server objects. The first two, the Connection Factory and JMS Queue, were created as part of the first blog post in this series, JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g. If you haven't created those objects yet, please see that post for details on how to do so. The Connection Pool will be created as part of this example. Object Name Type JNDI Name TestConnectionFactory Connection Factory jms/TestConnectionFactory TestJMSQueue JMS Queue jms/TestJMSQueue eis/wls/TestQueue Connection Pool eis/wls/TestQueue 1. Verify Connection Factory and JMS Queue As mentioned above, this example uses a WLS Connection Factory called TestConnectionFactory and a JMS queue TestJMSQueue. As these are prerequisites for this example, let us verify they exist. Log in to the WebLogic Server Administration Console. Select Services > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule You should see the following objects: If not, or if the TestJMSModule is missing, please see the abovementioned article and create these objects before continuing. 2. Create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server The BPEL process we are about to create uses a JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. The JMS adapter is deployed to the WebLogic server and needs to be configured to include a connection pool which references the connection factory associated with the JMS queue. In the WebLogic Server Console Go to Deployments > Next and select (click on) the JmsAdapter Select Configuration > Outbound Connection Pools and expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory. This will display the list of connections configured for this adapter. For example, eis/aqjms/Queue, eis/aqjms/Topic etc. These JNDI names are actually quite confusing. We are expecting to configure a connection pool here, but the names refer to queues and topics. One would expect these to be called *ConnectionPool or *_CF or similar, but to conform to this nomenclature, we will call our entry eis/wls/TestQueue . This JNDI name is also the name we will use later, when creating a BPEL process to access this JMS queue! Select New, check the oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory check box and Next. Enter JNDI Name: eis/wls/TestQueue for the connection instance, then press Finish. Expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory again and select (click on) eis/wls/TestQueue The ConnectionFactoryLocation must point to the JNDI name of the connection factory associated with the JMS queue you will be writing to. In our example, this is the connection factory called TestConnectionFactory, with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory.( As a reminder, this connection factory is contained in the JMS Module called TestJMSModule, under Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule which we verified at the beginning of this document. )Enter jms/TestConnectionFactory  into the Property Value field for Connection Factory Location. After entering it, you must press Return/Enter then Save for the value to be accepted. If your WebLogic server is running in Development mode, you should see the message that the changes have been activated and the deployment plan successfully updated. If not, then you will manually need to activate the changes in the WebLogic server console. Although the changes have been activated, the JmsAdapter needs to be redeployed in order for the changes to become effective. This should be confirmed by the message Remember to update your deployment to reflect the new plan when you are finished with your changes as can be seen in the following screen shot: The next step is to redeploy the JmsAdapter.Navigate back to the Deployments screen, either by selecting it in the left-hand navigation tree or by selecting the “Summary of Deployments” link in the breadcrumbs list at the top of the screen. Then select the checkbox next to JmsAdapter and press the Update button On the Update Application Assistant page, select “Redeploy this application using the following deployment files” and press Finish. After a few seconds you should get the message that the selected deployments were updated. The JMS adapter configuration is complete and it can now be used to access the JMS queue. To summarize: we have created a JMS adapter connection pool connector with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory. This is the JNDI name to be accessed by a process such as a BPEL process, when using the JMS adapter to access the previously created JMS queue with the JNDI name jms/TestJMSQueue. In the following step, we will set up a BPEL process to use this JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. 3. Create a BPEL Composite with a JMS Adapter Partner Link This step requires that you have a valid Application Server Connection defined in JDeveloper, pointing to the application server on which you created the JMS Queue and Connection Factory. You can create this connection in JDeveloper under the Application Server Navigator. Give it any name and be sure to test the connection before completing it. This sample will use the connection name jbevans-lx-PS5, as that is the name of the connection pointing to my SOA PS5 installation. When using a JMS adapter from within a BPEL process, there are various configuration options, such as the operation type (consume message, produce message etc.), delivery mode and message type. One of these options is the choice of the format of the JMS message payload. This can be structured around an existing XSD, in which case the full XML element and tags are passed, or it can be opaque, meaning that the payload is sent as-is to the JMS adapter. In the case of an XSD-based message, the payload can simply be copied to the input variable of the JMS adapter. In the case of an opaque message, the JMS adapter’s input variable is of type base64binary. So the payload needs to be converted to base64 binary first. I will go into this in more detail in a later blog entry. This sample will pass a simple message to the adapter, based on the following simple XSD file, which consists of a single string element: stringPayload.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.example.org" targetNamespace="http://www.example.org" elementFormDefault="qualified" <xsd:element name="exampleElement" type="xsd:string"> </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The following steps are all executed in JDeveloper. The SOA project will be created inside a JDeveloper Application. If you do not already have an application to contain the project, you can create a new one via File > New > General > Generic Application. Give the application any name, for example JMSTests and, when prompted for a project name and type, call the project JmsAdapterWriteWithXsd and select SOA as the project technology type. If you already have an application, continue below. Create a SOA Project Create a new project and choose SOA Tier > SOA Project as its type. Name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema. When prompted for the composite type, choose Composite With BPEL Process. When prompted for the BPEL Process, name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema too and choose Synchronous BPEL Process as the template. This will create a composite with a BPEL process and an exposed SOAP service. Double-click the BPEL process to open and begin editing it. You should see a simple BPEL process with a Receive and Reply activity. As we created a default process without an XML schema, the input and output variables are simple strings. Create an XSD File An XSD file is required later to define the message format to be passed to the JMS adapter. In this step, we create a simple XSD file, containing a string variable and add it to the project. First select the xsd item in the left-hand navigation tree to ensure that the XSD file is created under that item. Select File > New > General > XML and choose XML Schema. Call it stringPayload.xsd and when the editor opens, select the Source view. then replace the contents with the contents of the stringPayload.xsd example above and save the file. You should see it under the xsd item in the navigation tree. Create a JMS Adapter Partner Link We will create the JMS adapter as a service at the composite level. If it is not already open, double-click the composite.xml file in the navigator to open it. From the Component Palette, drag a JMS adapter over onto the right-hand swim lane, under External References. This will start the JMS Adapter Configuration Wizard. Use the following entries: Service Name: JmsAdapterWrite Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service (OEMS): Oracle Weblogic JMS AppServer Connection: Use an existing application server connection pointing to the WebLogic server on which the above JMS queue and connection factory were created. You can use the “+” button to create a connection directly from the wizard, if you do not already have one. This example uses a connection called jbevans-lx-PS5. Adapter Interface > Interface: Define from operation and schema (specified later) Operation Type: Produce Message Operation Name: Produce_message Destination Name: Press the Browse button, select Destination Type: Queues, then press Search. Wait for the list to populate, then select the entry for TestJMSQueue , which is the queue created earlier. JNDI Name: The JNDI name to use for the JMS connection. This is probably the most important step in this exercise and the most common source of error. This is the JNDI name of the JMS adapter’s connection pool created in the WebLogic Server and which points to the connection factory. JDeveloper does not verify the value entered here. If you enter a wrong value, the JMS adapter won’t find the queue and you will get an error message at runtime, which is very difficult to trace. In our example, this is the value eis/wls/TestQueue . (See the earlier step on how to create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server for details.) MessagesURL: We will use the XSD file we created earlier, stringPayload.xsd to define the message format for the JMS adapter. Press the magnifying glass icon to search for schema files. Expand Project Schema Files > stringPayload.xsd and select exampleElement: string. Press Next and Finish, which will complete the JMS Adapter configuration. Wire the BPEL Component to the JMS Adapter In this step, we link the BPEL process/component to the JMS adapter. From the composite.xml editor, drag the right-arrow icon from the BPEL process to the JMS adapter’s in-arrow. This completes the steps at the composite level. 4. Complete the BPEL Process Design Invoke the JMS Adapter Open the BPEL component by double-clicking it in the design view of the composite.xml, or open it from the project navigator by selecting the JmsAdapterWriteSchema.bpel file. This will display the BPEL process in the design view. You should see the JmsAdapterWrite partner link under one of the two swim lanes. We want it in the right-hand swim lane. If JDeveloper displays it in the left-hand lane, right-click it and choose Display > Move To Opposite Swim Lane. An Invoke activity is required in order to invoke the JMS adapter. Drag an Invoke activity between the Receive and Reply activities. Drag the right-hand arrow from the Invoke activity to the JMS adapter partner link. This will open the Invoke editor. The correct default values are entered automatically and are fine for our purposes. We only need to define the input variable to use for the JMS adapter. By pressing the green “+” symbol, a variable of the correct type can be auto-generated, for example with the name Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable. Press OK after creating the variable. ( For some reason, while I was testing this, the JMS Adapter moved back to the left-hand swim lane again after this step. There is no harm in leaving it there, but I find it easier to follow if it is in the right-hand lane, because I kind-of think of the message coming in on the left and being routed through the right. But you can follow your personal preference here.) Assign Variables Drag an Assign activity between the Receive and Invoke activities. We will simply copy the input variable to the JMS adapter and, for completion, so the process has an output to print, again to the process’s output variable. Double-click the Assign activity and create two Copy rules: for the first, drag Variables > inputVariable > payload > client:process > client:input_string to Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable > body > ns2:exampleElement for the second, drag the same input variable to outputVariable > payload > client:processResponse > client:result This will create two copy rules, similar to the following: Press OK. This completes the BPEL and Composite design. 5. Compile and Deploy the Composite We won’t go into too much detail on how to compile and deploy. In JDeveloper, compile the process by pressing the Make or Rebuild icons or by right-clicking the project name in the navigator and selecting Make... or Rebuild... If the compilation is successful, deploy it to the SOA server connection defined earlier. (Right-click the project name in the navigator, select Deploy to Application Server, choose the application server connection, choose the partition on the server (usually default) and press Finish. You should see the message ---- Deployment finished. ---- in the Deployment frame, if the deployment was successful. 6. Test the Composite This is the exciting part. Open two tabs in your browser and log in to the WebLogic Administration Console in one tab and the Enterprise Manager 11g Fusion Middleware Control (EM) for your SOA installation in the other. We will use the Console to monitor the messages being written to the queue and the EM to execute the composite. In the Console, go to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule > TestJMSQueue > Monitoring. Note the number of messages under Messages Current. In the EM, go to SOA > soa-infra (soa_server1) > default (or wherever you deployed your composite to) and click on JmsAdapterWriteSchema [1.0], then press the Test button. Under Input Arguments, enter any string into the text input field for the payload, for example Test Message then press Test Web Service. If the instance is successful you should see the same text in the Response message, “Test Message”. In the Console, refresh the Monitoring screen to confirm a new message has been written to the queue. Check the checkbox and press Show Messages. Click on the newest message and view its contents. They should include the full XML of the entered payload. 7. Troubleshooting If you get an exception similar to the following at runtime ... BINDING.JCA-12510 JCA Resource Adapter location error. Unable to locate the JCA Resource Adapter via .jca binding file element The JCA Binding Component is unable to startup the Resource Adapter specified in the element: location='eis/wls/QueueTest'. The reason for this is most likely that either 1) the Resource Adapters RAR file has not been deployed successfully to the WebLogic Application server or 2) the '' element in weblogic-ra.xml has not been set to eis/wls/QueueTest. In the last case you will have to add a new WebLogic JCA connection factory (deploy a RAR). Please correct this and then restart the Application Server at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.AdapterBindingException. createJndiLookupException(AdapterBindingException.java:130) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.createJCAConnectionFactory (JCAConnectionManager.java:1387) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.newPoolObject (JCAConnectionManager.java:1285) ... then this is very likely due to an incorrect JNDI name entered for the JMS Connection in the JMS Adapter Wizard. Recheck those steps. The error message prints the name of the JNDI name used. In this example, it was incorrectly entered as eis/wls/QueueTest instead of eis/wls/TestQueue. This concludes this example. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

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• Toorcon14

  - by danx

  Toorcon 2012 Information Security Conference San Diego, CA, http://www.toorcon.org/ Dan Anderson, October 2012 It's almost Halloween, and we all know what that means—yes, of course, it's time for another Toorcon Conference! Toorcon is an annual conference for people interested in computer security. This includes the whole range of hackers, computer hobbyists, professionals, security consultants, press, law enforcement, prosecutors, FBI, etc. We're at Toorcon 14—see earlier blogs for some of the previous Toorcon's I've attended (back to 2003). This year's "con" was held at the Westin on Broadway in downtown San Diego, California. The following are not necessarily my views—I'm just the messenger—although I could have misquoted or misparaphrased the speakers. Also, I only reviewed some of the talks, below, which I attended and interested me. MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections, Aditya K. Sood Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata, Rebecca "bx" Shapiro Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules?, Valkyrie Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI, Dan Griffin You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program, Boris Sverdlik What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking, Dave Maas & Jason Leopold Accessibility and Security, Anna Shubina Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance, Adam Brand McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend, Jay James & Shane MacDougall MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections Aditya K. Sood, IOActive, Michigan State PhD candidate Aditya talked about Android smartphone malware. There's a lot of old Android software out there—over 50% Gingerbread (2.3.x)—and most have unpatched vulnerabilities. Of 9 Android vulnerabilities, 8 have known exploits (such as the old Gingerbread Global Object Table exploit). Android protection includes sandboxing, security scanner, app permissions, and screened Android app market. The Android permission checker has fine-grain resource control, policy enforcement. Android static analysis also includes a static analysis app checker (bouncer), and a vulnerablity checker. What security problems does Android have? User-centric security, which depends on the user to grant permission and make smart decisions. But users don't care or think about malware (the're not aware, not paranoid). All they want is functionality, extensibility, mobility Android had no "proper" encryption before Android 3.0 No built-in protection against social engineering and web tricks Alternative Android app markets are unsafe. Simply visiting some markets can infect Android Aditya classified Android Malware types as: Type A—Apps. These interact with the Android app framework. For example, a fake Netflix app. Or Android Gold Dream (game), which uploads user files stealthy manner to a remote location. Type K—Kernel. Exploits underlying Linux libraries or kernel Type H—Hybrid. These use multiple layers (app framework, libraries, kernel). These are most commonly used by Android botnets, which are popular with Chinese botnet authors What are the threats from Android malware? These incude leak info (contacts), banking fraud, corporate network attacks, malware advertising, malware "Hackivism" (the promotion of social causes. For example, promiting specific leaders of the Tunisian or Iranian revolutions. Android malware is frequently "masquerated". That is, repackaged inside a legit app with malware. To avoid detection, the hidden malware is not unwrapped until runtime. The malware payload can be hidden in, for example, PNG files. Less common are Android bootkits—there's not many around. What they do is hijack the Android init framework—alteering system programs and daemons, then deletes itself. For example, the DKF Bootkit (China). Android App Problems: no code signing! all self-signed native code execution permission sandbox — all or none alternate market places no robust Android malware detection at network level delayed patch process Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata Rebecca "bx" Shapiro, Dartmouth College, NH https://github.com/bx/elf-bf-tools @bxsays on twitter Definitions. "ELF" is an executable file format used in linking and loading executables (on UNIX/Linux-class machines). "Weird machine" uses undocumented computation sources (I think of them as unintended virtual machines). Some examples of "weird machines" are those that: return to weird location, does SQL injection, corrupts the heap. Bx then talked about using ELF metadata as (an uintended) "weird machine". Some ELF background: A compiler takes source code and generates a ELF object file (hello.o). A static linker makes an ELF executable from the object file. A runtime linker and loader takes ELF executable and loads and relocates it in memory. The ELF file has symbols to relocate functions and variables. ELF has two relocation tables—one at link time and another one at loading time: .rela.dyn (link time) and .dynsym (dynamic table). GOT: Global Offset Table of addresses for dynamically-linked functions. PLT: Procedure Linkage Tables—works with GOT. The memory layout of a process (not the ELF file) is, in order: program (+ heap), dynamic libraries, libc, ld.so, stack (which includes the dynamic table loaded into memory) For ELF, the "weird machine" is found and exploited in the loader. ELF can be crafted for executing viruses, by tricking runtime into executing interpreted "code" in the ELF symbol table. One can inject parasitic "code" without modifying the actual ELF code portions. Think of the ELF symbol table as an "assembly language" interpreter. It has these elements: instructions: Add, move, jump if not 0 (jnz) Think of symbol table entries as "registers" symbol table value is "contents" immediate values are constants direct values are addresses (e.g., 0xdeadbeef) move instruction: is a relocation table entry add instruction: relocation table "addend" entry jnz instruction: takes multiple relocation table entries The ELF weird machine exploits the loader by relocating relocation table entries. The loader will go on forever until told to stop. It stores state on stack at "end" and uses IFUNC table entries (containing function pointer address). The ELF weird machine, called "Brainfu*k" (BF) has: 8 instructions: pointer inc, dec, inc indirect, dec indirect, jump forward, jump backward, print. Three registers - 3 registers Bx showed example BF source code that implemented a Turing machine printing "hello, world". More interesting was the next demo, where bx modified ping. Ping runs suid as root, but quickly drops privilege. BF modified the loader to disable the library function call dropping privilege, so it remained as root. Then BF modified the ping -t argument to execute the -t filename as root. It's best to show what this modified ping does with an example: $ whoami bx $ ping localhost -t backdoor.sh # executes backdoor $ whoami root $ The modified code increased from 285948 bytes to 290209 bytes. A BF tool compiles "executable" by modifying the symbol table in an existing ELF executable. The tool modifies .dynsym and .rela.dyn table, but not code or data. Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules? "Valkyrie" (Christie Dudley, Santa Clara Law JD candidate) Valkyrie talked about mobile handset privacy. Some background: Senator Franken (also a comedian) became alarmed about CarrierIQ, where the carriers track their customers. Franken asked the FCC to find out what obligations carriers think they have to protect privacy. The carriers' response was that they are doing just fine with self-regulation—no worries! Carriers need to collect data, such as missed calls, to maintain network quality. But carriers also sell data for marketing. Verizon sells customer data and enables this with a narrow privacy policy (only 1 month to opt out, with difficulties). The data sold is not individually identifiable and is aggregated. But Verizon recommends, as an aggregation workaround to "recollate" data to other databases to identify customers indirectly. The FCC has regulated telephone privacy since 1934 and mobile network privacy since 2007. Also, the carriers say mobile phone privacy is a FTC responsibility (not FCC). FTC is trying to improve mobile app privacy, but FTC has no authority over carrier / customer relationships. As a side note, Apple iPhones are unique as carriers have extra control over iPhones they don't have with other smartphones. As a result iPhones may be more regulated. Who are the consumer advocates? Everyone knows EFF, but EPIC (Electrnic Privacy Info Center), although more obsecure, is more relevant. What to do? Carriers must be accountable. Opt-in and opt-out at any time. Carriers need incentive to grant users control for those who want it, by holding them liable and responsible for breeches on their clock. Location information should be added current CPNI privacy protection, and require "Pen/trap" judicial order to obtain (and would still be a lower standard than 4th Amendment). Politics are on a pro-privacy swing now, with many senators and the Whitehouse. There will probably be new regulation soon, and enforcement will be a problem, but consumers will still have some benefit. Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI Dan Griffin, JWSecure, Inc., Seattle, @JWSdan Dan talked about hacking measured UEFI boot. First some terms: UEFI is a boot technology that is replacing BIOS (has whitelisting and blacklisting). UEFI protects devices against rootkits. TPM - hardware security device to store hashs and hardware-protected keys "secure boot" can control at firmware level what boot images can boot "measured boot" OS feature that tracks hashes (from BIOS, boot loader, krnel, early drivers). "remote attestation" allows remote validation and control based on policy on a remote attestation server. Microsoft pushing TPM (Windows 8 required), but Google is not. Intel TianoCore is the only open source for UEFI. Dan has Measured Boot Tool at http://mbt.codeplex.com/ with a demo where you can also view TPM data. TPM support already on enterprise-class machines. UEFI Weaknesses. UEFI toolkits are evolving rapidly, but UEFI has weaknesses: assume user is an ally trust TPM implicitly, and attached to computer hibernate file is unprotected (disk encryption protects against this) protection migrating from hardware to firmware delays in patching and whitelist updates will UEFI really be adopted by the mainstream (smartphone hardware support, bank support, apathetic consumer support) You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program Boris Sverdlik, ISDPodcast.com co-host Boris talked about problems typical with current security audits. "IT Security" is an oxymoron—IT exists to enable buiness, uptime, utilization, reporting, but don't care about security—IT has conflict of interest. There's no Magic Bullet ("blinky box"), no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs)). Regulations don't make you secure. The cloud is not secure (because of shared data and admin access). Defense and pen testing is not sexy. Auditors are not solution (security not a checklist)—what's needed is experience and adaptability—need soft skills. Step 1: First thing is to Google and learn the company end-to-end before you start. Get to know the management team (not IT team), meet as many people as you can. Don't use arbitrary values such as CISSP scores. Quantitive risk assessment is a myth (e.g. AV*EF-SLE). Learn different Business Units, legal/regulatory obligations, learn the business and where the money is made, verify company is protected from script kiddies (easy), learn sensitive information (IP, internal use only), and start with low-hanging fruit (customer service reps and social engineering). Step 2: Policies. Keep policies short and relevant. Generic SANS "security" boilerplate policies don't make sense and are not followed. Focus on acceptable use, data usage, communications, physical security. Step 3: Implementation: keep it simple stupid. Open source, although useful, is not free (implementation cost). Access controls with authentication & authorization for local and remote access. MS Windows has it, otherwise use OpenLDAP, OpenIAM, etc. Application security Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel—use existing static analysis tools. Review high-risk apps and major revisions. Don't run different risk level apps on same system. Assume host/client compromised and use app-level security control. Network security VLAN != segregated because there's too many workarounds. Use explicit firwall rules, active and passive network monitoring (snort is free), disallow end user access to production environment, have a proxy instead of direct Internet access. Also, SSL certificates are not good two-factor auth and SSL does not mean "safe." Operational Controls Have change, patch, asset, & vulnerability management (OSSI is free). For change management, always review code before pushing to production For logging, have centralized security logging for business-critical systems, separate security logging from administrative/IT logging, and lock down log (as it has everything). Monitor with OSSIM (open source). Use intrusion detection, but not just to fulfill a checkbox: build rules from a whitelist perspective (snort). OSSEC has 95% of what you need. Vulnerability management is a QA function when done right: OpenVas and Seccubus are free. Security awareness The reality is users will always click everything. Build real awareness, not compliance driven checkbox, and have it integrated into the culture. Pen test by crowd sourcing—test with logging COSSP http://www.cossp.org/ - Comprehensive Open Source Security Project What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking Dave Maas, San Diego CityBeat Jason Leopold, Truthout.org The difference between hackers and investigative journalists: For hackers, the motivation varies, but method is same, technological specialties. For investigative journalists, it's about one thing—The Story, and they need broad info-gathering skills. J-School in 60 Seconds: Generic formula: Person or issue of pubic interest, new info, or angle. Generic criteria: proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence. Media awareness of hackers and trends: journalists becoming extremely aware of hackers with congressional debates (privacy, data breaches), demand for data-mining Journalists, use of coding and web development for Journalists, and Journalists busted for hacking (Murdock). Info gathering by investigative journalists include Public records laws. Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is good, but slow. California Public Records Act is a lot stronger. FOIA takes forever because of foot-dragging—it helps to be specific. Often need to sue (especially FBI). CPRA is faster, and requests can be vague. Dumps and leaks (a la Wikileaks) Journalists want: leads, protecting ourselves, our sources, and adapting tools for news gathering (Google hacking). Anonomity is important to whistleblowers. They want no digital footprint left behind (e.g., email, web log). They don't trust encryption, want to feel safe and secure. Whistleblower laws are very weak—there's no upside for whistleblowers—they have to be very passionate to do it. Accessibility and Security or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Halting Problem Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College Anna talked about how accessibility and security are related. Accessibility of digital content (not real world accessibility). mostly refers to blind users and screenreaders, for our purpose. Accessibility is about parsing documents, as are many security issues. "Rich" executable content causes accessibility to fail, and often causes security to fail. For example MS Word has executable format—it's not a document exchange format—more dangerous than PDF or HTML. Accessibility is often the first and maybe only sanity check with parsing. They have no choice because someone may want to read what you write. Google, for example, is very particular about web browser you use and are bad at supporting other browsers. Uses JavaScript instead of links, often requiring mouseover to display content. PDF is a security nightmare. Executible format, embedded flash, JavaScript, etc. 15 million lines of code. Google Chrome doesn't handle PDF correctly, causing several security bugs. PDF has an accessibility checker and PDF tagging, to help with accessibility. But no PDF checker checks for incorrect tags, untagged content, or validates lists or tables. None check executable content at all. The "Halting Problem" is: can one decide whether a program will ever stop? The answer, in general, is no (Rice's theorem). The same holds true for accessibility checkers. Language-theoretic Security says complicated data formats are hard to parse and cannot be solved due to the Halting Problem. W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: "Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust" Not much help though, except for "Robust", but here's some gems: * all information should be parsable (paraphrasing) * if not parsable, cannot be converted to alternate formats * maximize compatibility in new document formats Executible webpages are bad for security and accessibility. They say it's for a better web experience. But is it necessary to stuff web pages with JavaScript for a better experience? A good example is The Drudge Report—it has hand-written HTML with no JavaScript, yet drives a lot of web traffic due to good content. A bad example is Google News—hidden scrollbars, guessing user input. Solutions: Accessibility and security problems come from same source Expose "better user experience" myth Keep your corner of Internet parsable Remember "Halting Problem"—recognize false solutions (checking and verifying tools) Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance Adam Brand, protiviti @adamrbrand, http://www.picfun.com/ Adam talked about PCI compliance for retail sales. Take an example: for PCI compliance, 50% of Brian's time (a IT guy), 960 hours/year was spent patching POSs in 850 restaurants. Often applying some patches make no sense (like fixing a browser vulnerability on a server). "Scanner worship" is overuse of vulnerability scanners—it gives a warm and fuzzy and it's simple (red or green results—fix reds). Scanners give a false sense of security. In reality, breeches from missing patches are uncommon—more common problems are: default passwords, cleartext authentication, misconfiguration (firewall ports open). Patching Myths: Myth 1: install within 30 days of patch release (but PCI §6.1 allows a "risk-based approach" instead). Myth 2: vendor decides what's critical (also PCI §6.1). But §6.2 requires user ranking of vulnerabilities instead. Myth 3: scan and rescan until it passes. But PCI §11.2.1b says this applies only to high-risk vulnerabilities. Adam says good recommendations come from NIST 800-40. Instead use sane patching and focus on what's really important. From NIST 800-40: Proactive: Use a proactive vulnerability management process: use change control, configuration management, monitor file integrity. Monitor: start with NVD and other vulnerability alerts, not scanner results. Evaluate: public-facing system? workstation? internal server? (risk rank) Decide:on action and timeline Test: pre-test patches (stability, functionality, rollback) for change control Install: notify, change control, tickets McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend Jay James, Shane MacDougall, Tactical Intelligence Inc., Canada "McAfee Secure Trustmark" is a website seal marketed by McAfee. A website gets this badge if they pass their remote scanning. The problem is a removal of trustmarks act as flags that you're vulnerable. Easy to view status change by viewing McAfee list on website or on Google. "Secure TrustGuard" is similar to McAfee. Jay and Shane wrote Perl scripts to gather sites from McAfee and search engines. If their certification image changes to a 1x1 pixel image, then they are longer certified. Their scripts take deltas of scans to see what changed daily. The bottom line is change in TrustGuard status is a flag for hackers to attack your site. Entire idea of seals is silly—you're raising a flag saying if you're vulnerable.

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• Basic Spatial Data with SQL Server and Entity Framework 5.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  In my most recent project we needed to do a bit of geo-spatial referencing. While spatial features have been in SQL Server for a while using those features inside of .NET applications hasn't been as straight forward as could be, because .NET natively doesn't support spatial types. There are workarounds for this with a few custom project like SharpMap or a hack using the Sql Server specific Geo types found in the Microsoft.SqlTypes assembly that ships with SQL server. While these approaches work for manipulating spatial data from .NET code, they didn't work with database access if you're using Entity Framework. Other ORM vendors have been rolling their own versions of spatial integration. In Entity Framework 5.0 running on .NET 4.5 the Microsoft ORM finally adds support for spatial types as well. In this post I'll describe basic geography features that deal with single location and distance calculations which is probably the most common usage scenario. SQL Server Transact-SQL Syntax for Spatial Data Before we look at how things work with Entity framework, lets take a look at how SQL Server allows you to use spatial data to get an understanding of the underlying semantics. The following SQL examples should work with SQL 2008 and forward. Let's start by creating a test table that includes a Geography field and also a pair of Long/Lat fields that demonstrate how you can work with the geography functions even if you don't have geography/geometry fields in the database. Here's the CREATE command:CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Geo]( [id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [Location] [geography] NULL, [Long] [float] NOT NULL, [Lat] [float] NOT NULL ) Now using plain SQL you can insert data into the table using geography::STGeoFromText SQL CLR function:insert into Geo( Location , long, lat ) values ( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(-121.527200 45.712113)', 4326), -121.527200, 45.712113 ) insert into Geo( Location , long, lat ) values ( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(-121.517265 45.714240)', 4326), -121.517265, 45.714240 ) insert into Geo( Location , long, lat ) values ( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(-121.511536 45.714825)', 4326), -121.511536, 45.714825) The STGeomFromText function accepts a string that points to a geometric item (a point here but can also be a line or path or polygon and many others). You also need to provide an SRID (Spatial Reference System Identifier) which is an integer value that determines the rules for how geography/geometry values are calculated and returned. For mapping/distance functionality you typically want to use 4326 as this is the format used by most mapping software and geo-location libraries like Google and Bing. The spatial data in the Location field is stored in binary format which looks something like this: Once the location data is in the database you can query the data and do simple distance computations very easily. For example to calculate the distance of each of the values in the database to another spatial point is very easy to calculate. Distance calculations compare two points in space using a direct line calculation. For our example I'll compare a new point to all the points in the database. Using the Location field the SQL looks like this:-- create a source point DECLARE @s geography SET @s = geography:: STGeomFromText('POINT(-121.527200 45.712113)' , 4326); --- return the ids select ID, Location as Geo , Location .ToString() as Point , @s.STDistance( Location) as distance from Geo order by distance The code defines a new point which is the base point to compare each of the values to. You can also compare values from the database directly, but typically you'll want to match a location to another location and determine the difference for which you can use the geography::STDistance function. This query produces the following output: The STDistance function returns the straight line distance between the passed in point and the point in the database field. The result for SRID 4326 is always in meters. Notice that the first value passed was the same point so the difference is 0. The other two points are two points here in town in Hood River a little ways away - 808 and 1256 meters respectively. Notice also that you can order the result by the resulting distance, which effectively gives you results that are ordered radially out from closer to further away. This is great for searches of points of interest near a central location (YOU typically!). These geolocation functions are also available to you if you don't use the Geography/Geometry types, but plain float values. It's a little more work, as each point has to be created in the query using the string syntax, but the following code doesn't use a geography field but produces the same result as the previous query.--- using float fields select ID, geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(' + STR (long, 15,7 ) + ' ' + Str(lat ,15, 7) + ')' , 4326), geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(' + STR (long, 15,7 ) + ' ' + Str(lat ,15, 7) + ')' , 4326). ToString(), @s.STDistance( geography::STGeomFromText ('POINT(' + STR(long ,15, 7) + ' ' + Str(lat ,15, 7) + ')' , 4326)) as distance from geo order by distance Spatial Data in the Entity Framework Prior to Entity Framework 5.0 on .NET 4.5 consuming of the data above required using stored procedures or raw SQL commands to access the spatial data. In Entity Framework 5 however, Microsoft introduced the new DbGeometry and DbGeography types. These immutable location types provide a bunch of functionality for manipulating spatial points using geometry functions which in turn can be used to do common spatial queries like I described in the SQL syntax above. The DbGeography/DbGeometry types are immutable, meaning that you can't write to them once they've been created. They are a bit odd in that you need to use factory methods in order to instantiate them - they have no constructor() and you can't assign to properties like Latitude and Longitude. Creating a Model with Spatial Data Let's start by creating a simple Entity Framework model that includes a Location property of type DbGeography: public class GeoLocationContext : DbContext { public DbSet<GeoLocation> Locations { get; set; } } public class GeoLocation { public int Id { get; set; } public DbGeography Location { get; set; } public string Address { get; set; } } That's all there's to it. When you run this now against SQL Server, you get a Geography field for the Location property, which looks the same as the Location field in the SQL examples earlier. Adding Spatial Data to the Database Next let's add some data to the table that includes some latitude and longitude data. An easy way to find lat/long locations is to use Google Maps to pinpoint your location, then right click and click on What's Here. Click on the green marker to get the GPS coordinates. To add the actual geolocation data create an instance of the GeoLocation type and use the DbGeography.PointFromText() factory method to create a new point to assign to the Location property:[TestMethod] public void AddLocationsToDataBase() { var context = new GeoLocationContext(); // remove all context.Locations.ToList().ForEach( loc => context.Locations.Remove(loc)); context.SaveChanges(); var location = new GeoLocation() { // Create a point using native DbGeography Factory method Location = DbGeography.PointFromText( string.Format("POINT({0} {1})", -121.527200,45.712113) ,4326), Address = "301 15th Street, Hood River" }; context.Locations.Add(location); location = new GeoLocation() { Location = CreatePoint(45.714240, -121.517265), Address = "The Hatchery, Bingen" }; context.Locations.Add(location); location = new GeoLocation() { // Create a point using a helper function (lat/long) Location = CreatePoint(45.708457, -121.514432), Address = "Kaze Sushi, Hood River" }; context.Locations.Add(location); location = new GeoLocation() { Location = CreatePoint(45.722780, -120.209227), Address = "Arlington, OR" }; context.Locations.Add(location); context.SaveChanges(); } As promised, a DbGeography object has to be created with one of the static factory methods provided on the type as the Location.Longitude and Location.Latitude properties are read only. Here I'm using PointFromText() which uses a "Well Known Text" format to specify spatial data. In the first example I'm specifying to create a Point from a longitude and latitude value, using an SRID of 4326 (just like earlier in the SQL examples). You'll probably want to create a helper method to make the creation of Points easier to avoid that string format and instead just pass in a couple of double values. Here's my helper called CreatePoint that's used for all but the first point creation in the sample above:public static DbGeography CreatePoint(double latitude, double longitude) { var text = string.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.NumberFormat, "POINT({0} {1})", longitude, latitude); // 4326 is most common coordinate system used by GPS/Maps return DbGeography.PointFromText(text, 4326); } Using the helper the syntax becomes a bit cleaner, requiring only a latitude and longitude respectively. Note that my method intentionally swaps the parameters around because Latitude and Longitude is the common format I've seen with mapping libraries (especially Google Mapping/Geolocation APIs with their LatLng type). When the context is changed the data is written into the database using the SQL Geography type which looks the same as in the earlier SQL examples shown. Querying Once you have some location data in the database it's now super easy to query the data and find out the distance between locations. A common query is to ask for a number of locations that are near a fixed point - typically your current location and order it by distance. Using LINQ to Entities a query like this is easy to construct:[TestMethod] public void QueryLocationsTest() { var sourcePoint = CreatePoint(45.712113, -121.527200); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); // find any locations within 5 kilometers ordered by distance var matches = context.Locations .Where(loc => loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) < 5000) .OrderBy( loc=> loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) ) .Select( loc=> new { Address = loc.Address, Distance = loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) }); Assert.IsTrue(matches.Count() > 0); foreach (var location in matches) { Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1:n0} meters)", location.Address, location.Distance); } } This example produces: 301 15th Street, Hood River (0 meters)The Hatchery, Bingen (809 meters)Kaze Sushi, Hood River (1,074 meters)   The first point in the database is the same as my source point I'm comparing against so the distance is 0. The other two are within the 5 mile radius, while the Arlington location which is 65 miles or so out is not returned. The result is ordered by distance from closest to furthest away. In the code, I first create a source point that is the basis for comparison. The LINQ query then selects all locations that are within 5km of the source point using the Location.Distance() function, which takes a source point as a parameter. You can either use a pre-defined value as I'm doing here, or compare against another database DbGeography property (say when you have to points in the same database for things like routes). What's nice about this query syntax is that it's very clean and easy to read and understand. You can calculate the distance and also easily order by the distance to provide a result that shows locations from closest to furthest away which is a common scenario for any application that places a user in the context of several locations. It's now super easy to accomplish this. Meters vs. Miles As with the SQL Server functions, the Distance() method returns data in meters, so if you need to work with miles or feet you need to do some conversion. Here are a couple of helpers that might be useful (can be found in GeoUtils.cs of the sample project):/// <summary> /// Convert meters to miles /// </summary> /// <param name="meters"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static double MetersToMiles(double? meters) { if (meters == null) return 0F; return meters.Value * 0.000621371192; } /// <summary> /// Convert miles to meters /// </summary> /// <param name="miles"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static double MilesToMeters(double? miles) { if (miles == null) return 0; return miles.Value * 1609.344; } Using these two helpers you can query on miles like this:[TestMethod] public void QueryLocationsMilesTest() { var sourcePoint = CreatePoint(45.712113, -121.527200); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); // find any locations within 5 miles ordered by distance var fiveMiles = GeoUtils.MilesToMeters(5); var matches = context.Locations .Where(loc => loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) <= fiveMiles) .OrderBy(loc => loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint)) .Select(loc => new { Address = loc.Address, Distance = loc.Location.Distance(sourcePoint) }); Assert.IsTrue(matches.Count() > 0); foreach (var location in matches) { Console.WriteLine("{0} ({1:n1} miles)", location.Address, GeoUtils.MetersToMiles(location.Distance)); } } which produces: 301 15th Street, Hood River (0.0 miles)The Hatchery, Bingen (0.5 miles)Kaze Sushi, Hood River (0.7 miles) Nice 'n simple. .NET 4.5 Only Note that DbGeography and DbGeometry are exclusive to Entity Framework 5.0 (not 4.4 which ships in the same NuGet package or installer) and requires .NET 4.5. That's because the new DbGeometry and DbGeography (and related) types are defined in the 4.5 version of System.Data.Entity which is a CLR assembly and is only updated by major versions of .NET. Why this decision was made to add these types to System.Data.Entity rather than to the frequently updated EntityFramework assembly that would have possibly made this work in .NET 4.0 is beyond me, especially given that there are no native .NET framework spatial types to begin with. I find it also odd that there is no native CLR spatial type. The DbGeography and DbGeometry types are specific to Entity Framework and live on those assemblies. They will also work for general purpose, non-database spatial data manipulation, but then you are forced into having a dependency on System.Data.Entity, which seems a bit silly. There's also a System.Spatial assembly that's apparently part of WCF Data Services which in turn don't work with Entity framework. Another example of multiple teams at Microsoft not communicating and implementing the same functionality (differently) in several different places. Perplexed as a I may be, for EF specific code the Entity framework specific types are easy to use and work well. Working with pre-.NET 4.5 Entity Framework and Spatial Data If you can't go to .NET 4.5 just yet you can also still use spatial features in Entity Framework, but it's a lot more work as you can't use the DbContext directly to manipulate the location data. You can still run raw SQL statements to write data into the database and retrieve results using the same TSQL syntax I showed earlier using Context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand(). Here's code that you can use to add location data into the database:[TestMethod] public void RawSqlEfAddTest() { string sqlFormat = @"insert into GeoLocations( Location, Address) values ( geography::STGeomFromText('POINT({0} {1})', 4326),@p0 )"; var sql = string.Format(sqlFormat,-121.527200, 45.712113); Console.WriteLine(sql); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); Assert.IsTrue(context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand(sql,"301 N. 15th Street") > 0); } Here I'm using the STGeomFromText() function to add the location data. Note that I'm using string.Format here, which usually would be a bad practice but is required here. I was unable to use ExecuteSqlCommand() and its named parameter syntax as the longitude and latitude parameters are embedded into a string. Rest assured it's required as the following does not work:string sqlFormat = @"insert into GeoLocations( Location, Address) values ( geography::STGeomFromText('POINT(@p0 @p1)', 4326),@p2 )";context.Database.ExecuteSqlCommand(sql, -121.527200, 45.712113, "301 N. 15th Street") Explicitly assigning the point value with string.format works however. There are a number of ways to query location data. You can't get the location data directly, but you can retrieve the point string (which can then be parsed to get Latitude and Longitude) and you can return calculated values like distance. Here's an example of how to retrieve some geo data into a resultset using EF's and SqlQuery method:[TestMethod] public void RawSqlEfQueryTest() { var sqlFormat = @" DECLARE @s geography SET @s = geography:: STGeomFromText('POINT({0} {1})' , 4326); SELECT Address, Location.ToString() as GeoString, @s.STDistance( Location) as Distance FROM GeoLocations ORDER BY Distance"; var sql = string.Format(sqlFormat, -121.527200, 45.712113); var context = new GeoLocationContext(); var locations = context.Database.SqlQuery<ResultData>(sql); Assert.IsTrue(locations.Count() > 0); foreach (var location in locations) { Console.WriteLine(location.Address + " " + location.GeoString + " " + location.Distance); } } public class ResultData { public string GeoString { get; set; } public double Distance { get; set; } public string Address { get; set; } } Hopefully you don't have to resort to this approach as it's fairly limited. Using the new DbGeography/DbGeometry types makes this sort of thing so much easier. When I had to use code like this before I typically ended up retrieving data pks only and then running another query with just the PKs to retrieve the actual underlying DbContext entities. This was very inefficient and tedious but it did work. Summary For the current project I'm working on we actually made the switch to .NET 4.5 purely for the spatial features in EF 5.0. This app heavily relies on spatial queries and it was worth taking a chance with pre-release code to get this ease of integration as opposed to manually falling back to stored procedures or raw SQL string queries to return spatial specific queries. Using native Entity Framework code makes life a lot easier than the alternatives. It might be a late addition to Entity Framework, but it sure makes location calculations and storage easy. Where do you want to go today? ;-) Resources Download Sample Project© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ADO.NET  Sql Server  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 1 of 2 &ndash; CLR Profiler)

  - by ToStringTheory

  One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible.  Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind…  In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve.  One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well.  In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program.  I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction The ANTS Profiler pack provided by Red Gate was something that I had not heard of before receiving an email regarding an offer to review it for a license.  Since I look to make my code efficient, it was a no brainer for me to try it out!  One thing that I have to say took me by surprise is that upon downloading the program and installing it you fill out a form for your usual contact information.  Sure enough within 2 hours, I received an email from a sales representative at Red Gate asking if she could help me to achieve the most out of my trial time so it wouldn’t go to waste.  After replying to her and explaining that I was looking to review its feature set, she put me in contact with someone that setup a demo session to give me a quick rundown of its features via an online meeting.  After having dealt with a massive ordeal with one of my utility companies and their complete lack of customer service, Red Gates friendly and helpful representatives were a breath of fresh air, and something I was thankful for. ANTS CLR Profiler The ANTS CLR profiler is the thing I want to focus on the most in this post, so I am going to dive right in now. Install was simple and took no time at all.  It installed both the profiler for the CLR and Memory, but also visual studio extensions to facilitate the usage of the profilers (click any images for full size images): The Visual Studio menu options (under ANTS menu) Starting the CLR Performance Profiler from the start menu yields this window If you follow the instructions after launching the program from the start menu (Click File > New Profiling Session to start a new project), you are given a dialog with plenty of options for profiling: The New Session dialog.  Lots of options.  One thing I noticed is that the buttons in the lower right were half-covered by the panel of the application.  If I had to guess, I would imagine that this is caused by my DPI settings being set to 125%.  This is a problem I have seen in other applications as well that don’t scale well to different dpi scales. The profiler options give you the ability to profile: .NET Executable ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS) ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS express) ASP.NET web application (hosted in Cassini Web Development Server) SharePoint web application (hosted in IIS) Silverlight 4+ application Windows Service COM+ server XBAP (local XAML browser application) Attach to an already running .NET 4 process Choosing each option provides a varying set of other variables/options that one can set including options such as application arguments, operating path, record I/O performance performance counters to record (43 counters in all!), etc…  All in all, they give you the ability to profile many different .Net project types, and make it simple to do so.  In most cases of my using this application, I would be using the built in Visual Studio extensions, as they automatically start a new profiling project in ANTS with the options setup, and start your program, however RedGate has made it easy enough to profile outside of Visual Studio as well. On the flip side of this, as someone who lives most of their work life in Visual Studio, one thing I do wish is that instead of opening an entirely separate application/gui to perform profiling after launching, that instead they would provide a Visual Studio panel with the information, and integrate more of the profiling project information into Visual Studio.  So, now that we have an idea of what options that the profiler gives us, its time to test its abilities and features. Horrendous Example Code – Prime Number Generator One of my interests besides development, is Physics and Math – what I went to college for.  I have especially always been interested in prime numbers, as they are something of a mystery…  So, I decided that I would go ahead and to test the abilities of the profiler, I would write a small program, website, and library to generate prime numbers in the quantity that you ask for.  I am going to start off with some terrible code, and show how I would see the profiler being used as a development tool. First off, the IPrimes interface (all code is downloadable at the end of the post): interface IPrimes { IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve); } Simple enough, right?  Anything that implements the interface will (hopefully) provide an IEnumerable of int, with the quantity specified in the parameter argument.  Next, I am going to implement this interface in the most basic way: public class DumbPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _analyzing = 4; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; //start dividing at 2 //divide until number is reached, or determined not prime for (int i = 2; i < _analyzing && isPrime; i++) { //if (i) goes into _analyzing without a remainder, //_analyzing is NOT prime if (_analyzing % i == 0) isPrime = false; } //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(_analyzing); //increment number to analyze next _analyzing++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } This is the simplest way to get primes in my opinion.  Checking each number by the straight definition of a prime – is it divisible by anything besides 1 and itself. I have included this code in a base class library for my solution, as I am going to use it to demonstrate a couple of features of ANTS.  This class library is consumed by a simple non-MVVM WPF application, and a simple MVC4 website.  I will not post the WPF code here inline, as it is simply an ObservableCollection<int>, a label, two textbox’s, and a button. Starting a new Profiling Session So, in Visual Studio, I have just completed my first stint developing the GUI and DumbPrimes IPrimes class, so now I want to check my codes efficiency by profiling it.  All I have to do is build the solution (surprised initiating a profiling session doesn’t do this, but I suppose I can understand it), and then click the ANTS menu, followed by Profile Performance.  I am then greeted by the profiler starting up and already monitoring my program live: You are provided with a realtime graph at the top, and a pane at the bottom giving you information on how to proceed.  I am going to start by asking my program to show me the first 15000 primes: After the program finally began responding again (I did all the work on the main UI thread – how bad!), I stopped the profiler, which did kill the process of my program too.  One important thing to note, is that the profiler by default wants to give you a lot of detail about the operation – line hit counts, time per line, percent time per line, etc…  The important thing to remember is that this itself takes a lot of time.  When running my program without the profiler attached, it can generate the 15000 primes in 5.18 seconds, compared to 74.5 seconds – almost a 1500 percent increase.  While this may seem like a lot, remember that there is a trade off.  It may be WAY more inefficient, however, I am able to drill down and make improvements to specific problem areas, and then decrease execution time all around. Analyzing the Profiling Session After clicking ‘Stop Profiling’, the process running my application stopped, and the entire execution time was automatically selected by ANTS, and the results shown below: Now there are a number of interesting things going on here, I am going to cover each in a section of its own: Real Time Performance Counter Bar (top of screen) At the top of the screen, is the real time performance bar.  As your application is running, this will constantly update with the currently selected performance counters status.  A couple of cool things to note are the fact that you can drag a selection around specific time periods to drill down the detail views in the lower 2 panels to information pertaining to only that period. After selecting a time period, you can bookmark a section and name it, so that it is easy to find later, or after reloaded at a later time.  You can also zoom in, out, or fit the graph to the space provided – useful for drilling down. It may be hard to see, but at the top of the processor time graph below the time ticks, but above the red usage graph, there is a green bar. This bar shows at what times a method that is selected in the ‘Call tree’ panel is called. Very cool to be able to click on a method and see at what times it made an impact. As I said before, ANTS provides 43 different performance counters you can hook into.  Click the arrow next to the Performance tab at the top will allow you to change between different counters if you have them selected: Method Call Tree, ADO.Net Database Calls, File IO – Detail Panel Red Gate really hit the mark here I think. When you select a section of the run with the graph, the call tree populates to fill a hierarchical tree of method calls, with information regarding each of the methods.   By default, methods are hidden where the source is not provided (framework type code), however, Red Gate has integrated Reflector into ANTS, so even if you don’t have source for something, you can select a method and get the source if you want.  Methods are also hidden where the impact is seen as insignificant – methods that are only executed for 1% of the time of the overall calling methods time; in other words, working on making them better is not where your efforts should be focused. – Smart! Source Panel – Detail Panel The source panel is where you can see line level information on your code, showing the code for the currently selected method from the Method Call Tree.  If the code is not available, Reflector takes care of it and shows the code anyways! As you can notice, there does seem to be a problem with how ANTS determines what line is the actual line that a call is completed on.  I have suspicions that this may be due to some of the inline code optimizations that the CLR applies upon compilation of the assembly.  In a method with comments, the problem is much more severe: As you can see here, apparently the most offending code in my base library was a comment – *gasp*!  Removing the comments does help quite a bit, however I hope that Red Gate works on their counter algorithm soon to improve the logic on positioning for statistics: I did a small test just to demonstrate the lines are correct without comments. For me, it isn’t a deal breaker, as I can usually determine the correct placements by looking at the application code in the region and determining what makes sense, but it is something that would probably build up some irritation with time. Feature – Suggest Method for Optimization A neat feature to really help those in need of a pointer, is the menu option under tools to automatically suggest methods to optimize/improve: Nice feature – clicking it filters the call tree and stars methods that it thinks are good candidates for optimization.  I do wish that they would have made it more visible for those of use who aren’t great on sight: Process Integration I do think that this could have a place in my process.  After experimenting with the profiler, I do think it would be a great benefit to do some development, testing, and then after all the bugs are worked out, use the profiler to check on things to make sure nothing seems like it is hogging more than its fair share.  For example, with this program, I would have developed it, ran it, tested it – it works, but slowly. After looking at the profiler, and seeing the massive amount of time spent in 1 method, I might go ahead and try to re-implement IPrimes (I actually would probably rewrite the offending code, but so that I can distribute both sets of code easily, I’m just going to make another implementation of IPrimes).  Using two pieces of knowledge about prime numbers can make this method MUCH more efficient – prime numbers fall into two buckets 6k+/-1 , and a number is prime if it is not divisible by any other primes before it: public class SmartPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _k = 1; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; int potentialPrime; //analyze 6k-1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k - 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); if (_foundPrimes.Count() == retrieve) break; //analyze 6k+1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k + 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); //increment k to analyze next _k++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } Now there are definitely more things I can do to help make this more efficient, but for the scope of this example, I think this is fine (but still hideous)! Profiling this now yields a happy surprise 27 seconds to generate the 15000 primes with the profiler attached, and only 1.43 seconds without.  One important thing I wanted to call out though was the performance graph now: Notice anything odd?  The %Processor time is above 100%.  This is because there is now more than 1 core in the operation.  A better label for the chart in my mind would have been %Core time, but to each their own. Another odd thing I noticed was that the profiler seemed to be spot on this time in my DumbPrimes class with line details in source, even with comments..  Odd. Profiling Web Applications The last thing that I wanted to cover, that means a lot to me as a web developer, is the great amount of work that Red Gate put into the profiler when profiling web applications.  In my solution, I have a simple MVC4 application setup with 1 page, a single input form, that will output prime values as my WPF app did.  Launching the profiler from Visual Studio as before, nothing is really different in the profiler window, however I did receive a UAC prompt for a Red Gate helper app to integrate with the web server without notification. After requesting 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 primes, and looking at the profiler session, things are slightly different from before: As you can see, there are 4 spikes of activity in the processor time graph, but there is also something new in the call tree: That’s right – ANTS will actually group method calls by get/post operations, so it is easier to find out what action/page is giving the largest problems…  Pretty cool in my mind! Overview Overall, I think that Red Gate ANTS CLR Profiler has a lot to offer, however I think it also has a long ways to go.  3 Biggest Pros: Ability to easily drill down from time graph, to method calls, to source code Wide variety of counters to choose from when profiling your application Excellent integration/grouping of methods being called from web applications by request – BRILLIANT! 3 Biggest Cons: Issue regarding line details in source view Nit pick – Processor time vs. Core time Nit pick – Lack of full integration with Visual Studio Ratings Ease of Use (7/10) – I marked down here because of the problems with the line level details and the extra work that that entails, and the lack of better integration with Visual Studio. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do.  Especially with its large variety of performance counters, a definite plus! Features (9/10) – Besides the real time performance monitoring, and the drill downs that I’ve shown here, ANTS also has great integration with ADO.Net, with the ability to show database queries run by your application in the profiler.  This, with the line level details, the web request grouping, reflector integration, and various options to customize your profiling session I think create a great set of features! Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good.  their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (8/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find.  With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (8/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Performance Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel.  I WOULD recommend you trying the application and seeing if it would fit into your process, BUT, remember there are still some kinks in it to hopefully be worked out. My next post will definitely be shorter (hopefully), but thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead!  Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think!  I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 Review

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  (This is my first review as a part of the GeeksWithBlogs.net Influencers program. It’s a program in which I (and the others who have been selected for it) get the opportunity to check out new products and services and write reviews about them. We don’t get paid for this, but we do generally get to keep a copy of the software or retain an account for some period of time on the service that we review. In this case I received a copy of Red Gate Software’s ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0, which was released in January. I don’t have any upgrade rights nor is my review guided, restrained, influenced, or otherwise controlled by Red Gate or anyone else. But I do get to keep the software license. I will always be clear about what I received whenever I do a review – I leave it up to you to decide whether you believe I can be objective. I believe I can be. If I used something and really didn’t like it, keeping a copy of it wouldn’t be worth anything to me. In that case though, I would simply uninstall/deactivate/whatever the software or service and tell the company what I didn’t like about it so they could (hopefully) make it better in the future. I don’t think it’d be polite to write up a terrible review, nor do I think it would be a particularly good use of my time. There are people who get paid for a living to review things, so I leave it to them to tell you what they think is bad and why. I’ll only spend my time telling you about things I think are good.) Overview of Common .NET Memory Problems When coming to land of managed memory from the wilds of unmanaged code, it’s easy to say to one’s self, “Wow! Now I never have to worry about memory problems again!” But this simply isn’t true. Managed code environments, such as .NET, make many, many things easier. You will never have to worry about memory corruption due to a bad pointer, for example (unless you’re working with unsafe code, of course). But managed code has its own set of memory concerns. For example, failing to unsubscribe from events when you are done with them leaves the publisher of an event with a reference to the subscriber. If you eliminate all your own references to the subscriber, then that memory is effectively lost since the GC won’t delete it because of the publishing object’s reference. When the publishing object itself becomes subject to garbage collection then you’ll get that memory back finally, but that could take a very long time depending of the life of the publisher. Another common source of resource leaks is failing to properly release unmanaged resources. When writing a class that contains members that hold unmanaged resources (e.g. any of the Stream-derived classes, IsolatedStorageFile, most classes ending in “Reader” or “Writer”), you should always implement IDisposable, making sure to use a properly written Dispose method. And when you are using an instance of a class that implements IDisposable, you should always make sure to use a 'using' statement in order to ensure that the object’s unmanaged resources are disposed of properly. (A ‘using’ statement is a nicer, cleaner looking, and easier to use version of a try-finally block. The compiler actually translates it as though it were a try-finally block. Note that Code Analysis warning 2202 (CA2202) will often be triggered by nested using blocks. A properly written dispose method ensures that it only runs once such that calling dispose multiple times should not be a problem. Nonetheless, CA2202 exists and if you want to avoid triggering it then you should write your code such that only the innermost IDisposable object uses a ‘using’ statement, with any outer code making use of appropriate try-finally blocks instead). Then, of course, there are situations where you are operating in a memory-constrained environment or else you want to limit or even eliminate allocations within a certain part of your program (e.g. within the main game loop of an XNA game) in order to avoid having the GC run. On the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7, for example, for every 1 MB of heap allocations you make, the GC runs; the added time of a GC collection can cause a game to drop frames or run slowly thereby making it look bad. Eliminating allocations (or else minimizing them and calling an explicit Collect at an appropriate time) is a common way of avoiding this (the other way is to simplify your heap so that the GC’s latency is low enough not to cause performance issues). ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 When the opportunity to review Red Gate’s recently released ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 arose, I jumped at it. In order to review it, I was given a free copy (which does not include upgrade rights for future versions) which I am allowed to keep. For those of you who are familiar with ANTS Memory Profiler, you can find a list of new features and enhancements here. If you are an experienced .NET developer who is familiar with .NET memory management issues, ANTS Memory Profiler is great. More importantly still, if you are new to .NET development or you have no experience or limited experience with memory profiling, ANTS Memory Profiler is awesome. From the very beginning, it guides you through the process of memory profiling. If you’re experienced and just want dive in however, it doesn’t get in your way. The help items GAHSFLASHDAJLDJA are well designed and located right next to the UI controls so that they are easy to find without being intrusive. When you first launch it, it presents you with a “Getting Started” screen that contains links to “Memory profiling video tutorials”, “Strategies for memory profiling”, and the “ANTS Memory Profiler forum”. I’m normally the kind of person who looks at a screen like that only to find the “Don’t show this again” checkbox. Since I was doing a review, though, I decided I should examine them. I was pleasantly surprised. The overview video clocks in at three minutes and fifty seconds. It begins by showing you how to get started profiling an application. It explains that profiling is done by taking memory snapshots periodically while your program is running and then comparing them. ANTS Memory Profiler (I’m just going to call it “ANTS MP” from here) analyzes these snapshots in the background while your application is running. It briefly mentions a new feature in Version 7, a new API that give you the ability to trigger snapshots from within your application’s source code (more about this below). You can also, and this is the more common way you would do it, take a memory snapshot at any time from within the ANTS MP window by clicking the “Take Memory Snapshot” button in the upper right corner. The overview video goes on to demonstrate a basic profiling session on an application that pulls information from a database and displays it. It shows how to switch which snapshots you are comparing, explains the different sections of the Summary view and what they are showing, and proceeds to show you how to investigate memory problems using the “Instance Categorizer” to track the path from an object (or set of objects) to the GC’s root in order to find what things along the path are holding a reference to it/them. For a set of objects, you can then click on it and get the “Instance List” view. This displays all of the individual objects (including their individual sizes, values, etc.) of that type which share the same path to the GC root. You can then click on one of the objects to generate an “Instance Retention Graph” view. This lets you track directly up to see the reference chain for that individual object. In the overview video, it turned out that there was an event handler which was holding on to a reference, thereby keeping a large number of strings that should have been freed in memory. Lastly the video shows the “Class List” view, which lets you dig in deeply to find problems that might not have been clear when following the previous workflow. Once you have at least one memory snapshot you can begin analyzing. The main interface is in the “Analysis” tab. You can also switch to the “Session Overview” tab, which gives you several bar charts highlighting basic memory data about the snapshots you’ve taken. If you hover over the individual bars (and the individual colors in bars that have more than one), you will see a detailed text description of what the bar is representing visually. The Session Overview is good for a quick summary of memory usage and information about the different heaps. You are going to spend most of your time in the Analysis tab, but it’s good to remember that the Session Overview is there to give you some quick feedback on basic memory usage stats. As described above in the summary of the overview video, there is a certain natural workflow to the Analysis tab. You’ll spin up your application and take some snapshots at various times such as before and after clicking a button to open a window or before and after closing a window. Taking these snapshots lets you examine what is happening with memory. You would normally expect that a lot of memory would be freed up when closing a window or exiting a document. By taking snapshots before and after performing an action like that you can see whether or not the memory is really being freed. If you already know an area that’s giving you trouble, you can run your application just like normal until just before getting to that part and then you can take a few strategic snapshots that should help you pin down the problem. Something the overview didn’t go into is how to use the “Filters” section at the bottom of ANTS MP together with the Class List view in order to narrow things down. The video tutorials page has a nice 3 minute intro video called “How to use the filters”. It’s a nice introduction and covers some of the basics. I’m going to cover a bit more because I think they’re a really neat, really helpful feature. Large programs can bring up thousands of classes. Even simple programs can instantiate far more classes than you might realize. In a basic .NET 4 WPF application for example (and when I say basic, I mean just MainWindow.xaml with a button added to it), the unfiltered Class List view will have in excess of 1000 classes (my simple test app had anywhere from 1066 to 1148 classes depending on which snapshot I was using as the “Current” snapshot). This is amazing in some ways as it shows you how in stark detail just how immensely powerful the WPF framework is. But hunting through 1100 classes isn’t productive, no matter how cool it is that there are that many classes instantiated and doing all sorts of awesome things. Let’s say you wanted to examine just the classes your application contains source code for (in my simple example, that would be the MainWindow and App). Under “Basic Filters”, click on “Classes with source” under “Show only…”. Voilà. Down from 1070 classes in the snapshot I was using as “Current” to 2 classes. If you then click on a class’s name, it will show you (to the right of the class name) two little icon buttons. Hover over them and you will see that you can click one to view the Instance Categorizer for the class and another to view the Instance List for the class. You can also show classes based on which heap they live on. If you chose both a Baseline snapshot and a Current snapshot then you can use the “Comparing snapshots” filters to show only: “New objects”; “Surviving objects”; “Survivors in growing classes”; or “Zombie objects” (if you aren’t sure what one of these means, you can click the helpful “?” in a green circle icon to bring up a popup that explains them and provides context). Remember that your selection(s) under the “Show only…” heading will still apply, so you should update those selections to make sure you are seeing the view you want. There are also links under the “What is my memory problem?” heading that can help you diagnose the problems you are seeing including one for “I don’t know which kind I have” for situations where you know generally that your application has some problems but aren’t sure what the behavior you have been seeing (OutOfMemoryExceptions, continually growing memory usage, larger memory use than expected at certain points in the program). The Basic Filters are not the only filters there are. “Filter by Object Type” gives you the ability to filter by: “Objects that are disposable”; “Objects that are/are not disposed”; “Objects that are/are not GC roots” (GC roots are things like static variables); and “Objects that implement _______”. “Objects that implement” is particularly neat. Once you check the box, you can then add one or more classes and interfaces that an object must implement in order to survive the filtering. Lastly there is “Filter by Reference”, which gives you the option to pare down the list based on whether an object is “Kept in memory exclusively by” a particular item, a class/interface, or a namespace; whether an object is “Referenced by” one or more of those choices; and whether an object is “Never referenced by” one or more of those choices. Remember that filtering is cumulative, so anything you had set in one of the filter sections still remains in effect unless and until you go back and change it. There’s quite a bit more to ANTS MP – it’s a very full featured product – but I think I touched on all of the most significant pieces. You can use it to debug: a .NET executable; an ASP.NET web application (running on IIS); an ASP.NET web application (running on Visual Studio’s built-in web development server); a Silverlight 4 browser application; a Windows service; a COM+ server; and even something called an XBAP (local XAML browser application). You can also attach to a .NET 4 process to profile an application that’s already running. The startup screen also has a large number of “Charting Options” that let you adjust which statistics ANTS MP should collect. The default selection is a good, minimal set. It’s worth your time to browse through the charting options to examine other statistics that may also help you diagnose a particular problem. The more statistics ANTS MP collects, the longer it will take to collect statistics. So just turning everything on is probably a bad idea. But the option to selectively add in additional performance counters from the extensive list could be a very helpful thing for your memory profiling as it lets you see additional data that might provide clues about a particular problem that has been bothering you. ANTS MP integrates very nicely with all versions of Visual Studio that support plugins (i.e. all of the non-Express versions). Just note that if you choose “Profile Memory” from the “ANTS” menu that it will launch profiling for whichever project you have set as the Startup project. One quick tip from my experience so far using ANTS MP: if you want to properly understand your memory usage in an application you’ve written, first create an “empty” version of the type of project you are going to profile (a WPF application, an XNA game, etc.) and do a quick profiling session on that so that you know the baseline memory usage of the framework itself. By “empty” I mean just create a new project of that type in Visual Studio then compile it and run it with profiling – don’t do anything special or add in anything (except perhaps for any external libraries you’re planning to use). The first thing I tried ANTS MP out on was a demo XNA project of an editor that I’ve been working on for quite some time that involves a custom extension to XNA’s content pipeline. The first time I ran it and saw the unmanaged memory usage I was convinced I had some horrible bug that was creating extra copies of texture data (the demo project didn’t have a lot of texture data so when I saw a lot of unmanaged memory I instantly figured I was doing something wrong). Then I thought to run an empty project through and when I saw that the amount of unmanaged memory was virtually identical, it dawned on me that the CLR itself sits in unmanaged memory and that (thankfully) there was nothing wrong with my code! Quite a relief. Earlier, when discussing the overview video, I mentioned the API that lets you take snapshots from within your application. I gave it a quick trial and it’s very easy to integrate and make use of and is a really nice addition (especially for projects where you want to know what, if any, allocations there are in a specific, complicated section of code). The only concern I had was that if I hadn’t watched the overview video I might never have known it existed. Even then it took me five minutes of hunting around Red Gate’s website before I found the “Taking snapshots from your code" article that explains what DLL you need to add as a reference and what method of what class you should call in order to take an automatic snapshot (including the helpful warning to wrap it in a try-catch block since, under certain circumstances, it can raise an exception, such as trying to call it more than 5 times in 30 seconds. The difficulty in discovering and then finding information about the automatic snapshots API was one thing I thought could use improvement. Another thing I think would make it even better would be local copies of the webpages it links to. Although I’m generally always connected to the internet, I imagine there are more than a few developers who aren’t or who are behind very restrictive firewalls. For them (and for me, too, if my internet connection happens to be down), it would be nice to have those documents installed locally or to have the option to download an additional “documentation” package that would add local copies. Another thing that I wish could be easier to manage is the Filters area. Finding and setting individual filters is very easy as is understanding what those filter do. And breaking it up into three sections (basic, by object, and by reference) makes sense. But I could easily see myself running a long profiling session and forgetting that I had set some filter a long while earlier in a different filter section and then spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out why some problem that was clearly visible in the data wasn’t showing up in, e.g. the instance list before remembering to check all the filters for that one setting that was only culling a few things from view. Some sort of indicator icon next to the filter section names that appears you have at least one filter set in that area would be a nice visual clue to remind me that “oh yeah, I told it to only show objects on the Gen 2 heap! That’s why I’m not seeing those instances of the SuperMagic class!” Something that would be nice (but that Red Gate cannot really do anything about) would be if this could be used in Windows Phone 7 development. If Microsoft and Red Gate could work together to make this happen (even if just on the WP7 emulator), that would be amazing. Especially given the memory constraints that apps and games running on mobile devices need to work within, a good memory profiler would be a phenomenally helpful tool. If anyone at Microsoft reads this, it’d be really great if you could make something like that happen. Perhaps even a (subsidized) custom version just for WP7 development. (For XNA games, of course, you can create a Windows version of the game and use ANTS MP on the Windows version in order to get a better picture of your memory situation. For Silverlight on WP7, though, there’s quite a bit of educated guess work and WeakReference creation followed by forced collections in order to find the source of a memory problem.) The only other thing I found myself wanting was a “Back” button. Between my Windows Phone 7, Zune, and other things, I’ve grown very used to having a “back stack” that lets me just navigate back to where I came from. The ANTS MP interface is surprisingly easy to use given how much it lets you do, and once you start using it for any amount of time, you learn all of the different areas such that you know where to go. And it does remember the state of the areas you were previously in, of course. So if you go to, e.g., the Instance Retention Graph from the Class List and then return back to the Class List, it will remember which class you had selected and all that other state information. Still, a “Back” button would be a welcome addition to a future release. Bottom Line ANTS Memory Profiler is not an inexpensive tool. But my time is valuable. I can easily see ANTS MP saving me enough time tracking down memory problems to justify it on a cost basis. More importantly to me, knowing what is happening memory-wise in my programs and having the confidence that my code doesn’t have any hidden time bombs in it that will cause it to OOM if I leave it running for longer than I do when I spin it up real quickly for debugging or just to see how a new feature looks and feels is a good feeling. It’s a feeling that I like having and want to continue to have. I got the current version for free in order to review it. Having done so, I’ve now added it to my must-have tools and will gladly lay out the money for the next version when it comes out. It has a 14 day free trial, so if you aren’t sure if it’s right for you or if you think it seems interesting but aren’t really sure if it’s worth shelling out the money for it, give it a try.

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• JMS Step 5 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Reads a Message Based on an XML Schema from a JMS Queue

  - by John-Brown.Evans

  JMS Step 5 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Reads a Message Based on an XML Schema from a JMS Queue .jblist{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0;padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} ol{margin:0;padding:0} .c12_5{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c8_5{vertical-align:top;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c10_5{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c14_5{vertical-align:top;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c21_5{background-color:#ffffff} .c18_5{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c16_5{color:#666666;font-size:12pt} .c5_5{background-color:#f3f3f3;font-weight:bold} .c19_5{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c3_5{height:11pt;text-align:center} .c11_5{font-weight:bold} .c20_5{background-color:#00ff00} .c6_5{font-style:italic} .c4_5{height:11pt} .c17_5{background-color:#ffff00} .c0_5{direction:ltr} .c7_5{font-family:"Courier New"} .c2_5{border-collapse:collapse} .c1_5{line-height:1.0} .c13_5{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c15_5{height:0pt} .c9_5{text-align:center} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} Welcome to another post in the series of blogs which demonstrates how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue Today we will create a BPEL process which will read (dequeue) the message from the JMS queue, which we enqueued in the last example. The JMS adapter will dequeue the full XML payload from the queue. 1. Recap and Prerequisites In the previous examples, we created a JMS Queue, a Connection Factory and a Connection Pool in the WebLogic Server Console. Then we designed and deployed a BPEL composite, which took a simple XML payload and enqueued it to the JMS queue. In this example, we will read that same message from the queue, using a JMS adapter and a BPEL process. As many of the configuration steps required to read from that queue were done in the previous samples, this one will concentrate on the new steps. A summary of the required objects is listed below. To find out how to create them please see the previous samples. They also include instructions on how to verify the objects are set up correctly. WebLogic Server Objects Object Name Type JNDI Name TestConnectionFactory Connection Factory jms/TestConnectionFactory TestJMSQueue JMS Queue jms/TestJMSQueue eis/wls/TestQueue Connection Pool eis/wls/TestQueue Schema XSD File The following XSD file is used for the message format. It was created in the previous example and will be copied to the new process. stringPayload.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"                 xmlns="http://www.example.org"                 targetNamespace="http://www.example.org"                 elementFormDefault="qualified">   <xsd:element name="exampleElement" type="xsd:string">   </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> JMS Message After executing the previous samples, the following XML message should be in the JMS queue located at jms/TestJMSQueue: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><exampleElement xmlns="http://www.example.org">Test Message</exampleElement> JDeveloper Connection You will need a valid Application Server Connection in JDeveloper pointing to the SOA server which the process will be deployed to. 2. Create a BPEL Composite with a JMS Adapter Partner Link In the previous example, we created a composite in JDeveloper called JmsAdapterWriteSchema. In this one, we will create a new composite called JmsAdapterReadSchema. There are probably many ways of incorporating a JMS adapter into a SOA composite for incoming messages. One way is design the process in such a way that the adapter polls for new messages and when it dequeues one, initiates a SOA or BPEL instance. This is possibly the most common use case. Other use cases include mid-flow adapters, which are activated from within the BPEL process. In this example we will use a polling adapter, because it is the most simple to set up and demonstrate. But it has one disadvantage as a demonstrative model. When a polling adapter is active, it will dequeue all messages as soon as they reach the queue. This makes it difficult to monitor messages we are writing to the queue, because they will disappear from the queue as soon as they have been enqueued. To work around this, we will shut down the composite after deploying it and restart it as required. (Another solution for this would be to pause the consumption for the queue and resume consumption again if needed. This can be done in the WLS console JMS-Modules -> queue -> Control -> Consumption -> Pause/Resume.) We will model the composite as a one-way incoming process. Usually, a BPEL process will do something useful with the message after receiving it, such as passing it to a database or file adapter, a human workflow or external web service. But we only want to demonstrate how to dequeue a JMS message using BPEL and a JMS adapter, so we won’t complicate the design with further activities. However, we do want to be able to verify that we have read the message correctly, so the BPEL process will include a small piece of embedded java code, which will print the message to standard output, so we can view it in the SOA server’s log file. Alternatively, you can view the instance in the Enterprise Manager and verify the message. The following steps are all executed in JDeveloper. Create the project in the same JDeveloper application used for the previous examples or create a new one. Create a SOA Project Create a new project and choose SOA Tier > SOA Project as its type. Name it JmsAdapterReadSchema. When prompted for the composite type, choose Empty Composite. Create a JMS Adapter Partner Link In the composite editor, drag a JMS adapter over from the Component Palette to the left-hand swim lane, under Exposed Services. This will start the JMS Adapter Configuration Wizard. Use the following entries: Service Name: JmsAdapterRead Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service (OEMS): Oracle WebLogic JMS AppServer Connection: Use an application server connection pointing to the WebLogic server on which the JMS queue and connection factory mentioned under Prerequisites above are located. Adapter Interface > Interface: Define from operation and schema (specified later) Operation Type: Consume Message Operation Name: Consume_message Consume Operation Parameters Destination Name: Press the Browse button, select Destination Type: Queues, then press Search. Wait for the list to populate, then select the entry for TestJMSQueue , which is the queue created in a previous example. JNDI Name: The JNDI name to use for the JMS connection. As in the previous example, this is probably the most common source of error. This is the JNDI name of the JMS adapter’s connection pool created in the WebLogic Server and which points to the connection factory. JDeveloper does not verify the value entered here. If you enter a wrong value, the JMS adapter won’t find the queue and you will get an error message at runtime, which is very difficult to trace. In our example, this is the value eis/wls/TestQueue . (See the earlier step on how to create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server for details.) Messages/Message SchemaURL: We will use the XSD file created during the previous example, in the JmsAdapterWriteSchema project to define the format for the incoming message payload and, at the same time, demonstrate how to import an existing XSD file into a JDeveloper project. Press the magnifying glass icon to search for schema files. In the Type Chooser, press the Import Schema File button. Select the magnifying glass next to URL to search for schema files. Navigate to the location of the JmsAdapterWriteSchema project > xsd and select the stringPayload.xsd file. Check the “Copy to Project” checkbox, press OK and confirm the following Localize Files popup. Now that the XSD file has been copied to the local project, it can be selected from the project’s schema files. Expand Project Schema Files > stringPayload.xsd and select exampleElement: string . Press Next and Finish, which will complete the JMS Adapter configuration.Save the project. Create a BPEL Component Drag a BPEL Process from the Component Palette (Service Components) to the Components section of the composite designer. Name it JmsAdapterReadSchema and select Template: Define Service Later and press OK. Wire the JMS Adapter to the BPEL Component Now wire the JMS adapter to the BPEL process, by dragging the arrow from the adapter to the BPEL process. A Transaction Properties popup will be displayed. Set the delivery mode to async.persist. This completes the steps at the composite level. 3 . Complete the BPEL Process Design Invoke the BPEL Flow via the JMS Adapter Open the BPEL component by double-clicking it in the design view of the composite.xml, or open it from the project navigator by selecting the JmsAdapterReadSchema.bpel file. This will display the BPEL process in the design view. You should see the JmsAdapterRead partner link in the left-hand swim lane. Drag a Receive activity onto the BPEL flow diagram, then drag a wire (left-hand yellow arrow) from it to the JMS adapter. This will open the Receive activity editor. Auto-generate the variable by pressing the green “+” button and check the “Create Instance” checkbox. This will result in a BPEL instance being created when a new JMS message is received. At this point it would actually be OK to compile and deploy the composite and it would pick up any messages from the JMS queue. In fact, you can do that to test it, if you like. But it is very rudimentary and would not be doing anything useful with the message. Also, you could only verify the actual message payload by looking at the instance’s flow in the Enterprise Manager. There are various other possibilities; we could pass the message to another web service, write it to a file using a file adapter or to a database via a database adapter etc. But these will all introduce unnecessary complications to our sample. So, to keep it simple, we will add a small piece of Java code to the BPEL process which will write the payload to standard output. This will be written to the server’s log file, which will be easy to monitor. Add a Java Embedding Activity First get the full name of the process’s input variable, as this will be needed for the Java code. Go to the Structure pane and expand Variables > Process > Variables. Then expand the input variable, for example, "Receive1_Consume_Message_InputVariable > body > ns2:exampleElement”, and note variable’s name and path, if they are different from this one. Drag a Java Embedding activity from the Component Palette (Oracle Extensions) to the BPEL flow, after the Receive activity, then open it to edit. Delete the example code and replace it with the following, replacing the variable parts with those in your sample, if necessary.: System.out.println("JmsAdapterReadSchema process picked up a message"); oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLElement inputPayload =    (oracle.xml.parser.v2.XMLElement)getVariableData(                           "Receive1_Consume_Message_InputVariable",                           "body",                           "/ns2:exampleElement");   String inputString = inputPayload.getFirstChild().getNodeValue(); System.out.println("Input String is " + inputPayload.getFirstChild().getNodeValue()); Tip. If you are not sure of the exact syntax of the input variable, create an Assign activity in the BPEL process and copy the variable to another, temporary one. Then check the syntax created by the BPEL designer. This completes the BPEL process design in JDeveloper. Save, compile and deploy the process to the SOA server. 3. Test the Composite Shut Down the JmsAdapterReadSchema Composite After deploying the JmsAdapterReadSchema composite to the SOA server it is automatically activated. If there are already any messages in the queue, the adapter will begin polling them. To ease the testing process, we will deactivate the process first Log in to the Enterprise Manager (Fusion Middleware Control) and navigate to SOA > soa-infra (soa_server1) > default (or wherever you deployed your composite to) and click on JmsAdapterReadSchema [1.0] . Press the Shut Down button to disable the composite and confirm the following popup. Monitor Messages in the JMS Queue In a separate browser window, log in to the WebLogic Server Console and navigate to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule > TestJMSQueue > Monitoring. This is the location of the JMS queue we created in an earlier sample (see the prerequisites section of this sample). Check whether there are any messages already in the queue. If so, you can dequeue them using the QueueReceive Java program created in an earlier sample. This will ensure that the queue is empty and doesn’t contain any messages in the wrong format, which would cause the JmsAdapterReadSchema to fail. Send a Test Message In the Enterprise Manager, navigate to the JmsAdapterWriteSchema created earlier, press Test and send a test message, for example “Message from JmsAdapterWriteSchema”. Confirm that the message was written correctly to the queue by verifying it via the queue monitor in the WLS Console. Monitor the SOA Server’s Output A program deployed on the SOA server will write its standard output to the terminal window in which the server was started, unless this has been redirected to somewhere else, for example to a file. If it has not been redirected, go to the terminal session in which the server was started, otherwise open and monitor the file to which it was redirected. Re-Enable the JmsAdapterReadSchema Composite In the Enterprise Manager, navigate to the JmsAdapterReadSchema composite again and press Start Up to re-enable it. This should cause the JMS adapter to dequeue the test message and the following output should be written to the server’s standard output: JmsAdapterReadSchema process picked up a message. Input String is Message from JmsAdapterWriteSchema Note that you can also monitor the payload received by the process, by navigating to the the JmsAdapterReadSchema’s Instances tab in the Enterprise Manager. Then select the latest instance and view the flow of the BPEL component. The Receive activity will contain and display the dequeued message too. 4 . Troubleshooting This sample demonstrates how to dequeue an XML JMS message using a BPEL process and no additional functionality. For example, it doesn’t contain any error handling. Therefore, any errors in the payload will result in exceptions being written to the log file or standard output. If you get any errors related to the payload, such as Message handle error ... ORABPEL-09500 ... XPath expression failed to execute. An error occurs while processing the XPath expression; the expression is /ns2:exampleElement. ... etc. check that the variable used in the Java embedding part of the process was entered correctly. Possibly follow the tip mentioned in previous section. If this doesn’t help, you can delete the Java embedding part and simply verify the message via the flow diagram in the Enterprise Manager. Or use a different method, such as writing it to a file via a file adapter. This concludes this example. In the next post, we will begin with an AQ JMS example, which uses JMS to write to an Advanced Queue stored in the database. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

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• Towards Database Continuous Delivery – What Next after Continuous Integration? A Checklist

  - by Ben Rees

  .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database delivery patterns & practices STAGE 4 AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT If you’ve been fortunate enough to get to the stage where you’ve implemented some sort of continuous integration process for your database updates, then hopefully you’re seeing the benefits of that investment – constant feedback on changes your devs are making, advanced warning of data loss (prior to the production release on Saturday night!), a nice suite of automated tests to check business logic, so you know it’s going to work when it goes live, and so on. But what next? What can you do to improve your delivery process further, moving towards a full continuous delivery process for your database? In this article I describe some of the issues you might need to tackle on the next stage of this journey, and how to plan to overcome those obstacles before they appear. Our Database Delivery Learning Program consists of four stages, really three – source controlling a database, running continuous integration processes, then how to set up automated deployment (the middle stage is split in two – basic and advanced continuous integration, making four stages in total). If you’ve managed to work through the first three of these stages – source control, basic, then advanced CI, then you should have a solid change management process set up where, every time one of your team checks in a change to your database (whether schema or static reference data), this change gets fully tested automatically by your CI server. But this is only part of the story. Great, we know that our updates work, that the upgrade process works, that the upgrade isn’t going to wipe our 4Tb of production data with a single DROP TABLE. But – how do you get this (fully tested) release live? Continuous delivery means being always ready to release your software at any point in time. There’s a significant gap between your latest version being tested, and it being easily releasable. Just a quick note on terminology – there’s a nice piece here from Atlassian on the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This piece also gives a nice description of the benefits of continuous delivery. These benefits have been summed up by Jez Humble at Thoughtworks as: “Continuous delivery is a set of principles and practices to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes to users” There’s another really useful piece here on Simple-Talk about the need for continuous delivery and how it applies to the database written by Phil Factor – specifically the extra needs and complexities of implementing a full CD solution for the database (compared to just implementing CD for, say, a web app). So, hopefully you’re convinced of moving on the the next stage! The next step after CI is to get some sort of automated deployment (or “release management”) process set up. But what should I do next? What do I need to plan and think about for getting my automated database deployment process set up? Can’t I just install one of the many release management tools available and hey presto, I’m ready! If only it were that simple. Below I list some of the areas that it’s worth spending a little time on, where a little planning and prep could go a long way. It’s also worth pointing out, that this should really be an evolving process. Depending on your starting point of course, it can be a long journey from your current setup to a full continuous delivery pipeline. If you’ve got a CI mechanism in place, you’re certainly a long way down that path. Nevertheless, we’d recommend evolving your process incrementally. Pages 157 and 129-141 of the book on Continuous Delivery (by Jez Humble and Dave Farley) have some great guidance on building up a pipeline incrementally: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912 For now, in this post, we’ll look at the following areas for your checklist: You and Your Team Environments The Deployment Process Rollback and Recovery Development Practices You and Your Team It’s a cliché in the DevOps community that “It’s not all about processes and tools, really it’s all about a culture”. As stated in this DevOps report from Puppet Labs: “DevOps processes and tooling contribute to high performance, but these practices alone aren’t enough to achieve organizational success. The most common barriers to DevOps adoption are cultural: lack of manager or team buy-in, or the value of DevOps isn’t understood outside of a specific group”. Like most clichés, there’s truth in there – if you want to set up a database continuous delivery process, you need to get your boss, your department, your company (if relevant) onside. Why? Because it’s an investment with the benefits coming way down the line. But the benefits are huge – for HP, in the book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, these are summarized as: -2008 to present: overall development costs reduced by 40% -Number of programs under development increased by 140% -Development costs per program down 78% -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40% But what does this mean? It means that, when moving to the next stage, to make that extra investment in automating your deployment process, it helps a lot if everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. That they understand the benefits of automated deployment and are willing to make the effort to transform to a new way of working. Incidentally, if you’re ever struggling to convince someone of the value I’d strongly recommend just buying them a copy of this book – a great read, and a very practical guide to how it can really work at a large org. I’ve spoken to many customers who have implemented database CI who describe their deployment process as “The point where automation breaks down. Up to that point, the CI process runs, untouched by human hand, but as soon as that’s finished we revert to manual.” This deployment process can involve, for example, a DBA manually comparing an environment (say, QA) to production, creating the upgrade scripts, reading through them, checking them against an Excel document emailed to him/her the night before, turning to page 29 in his/her notebook to double-check how replication is switched off and on for deployments, and so on and so on. Painful, error-prone and lengthy. But the point is, if this is something like your deployment process, telling your DBA “We’re changing everything you do and your toolset next week, to automate most of your role – that’s okay isn’t it?” isn’t likely to go down well. There’s some work here to bring him/her onside – to explain what you’re doing, why there will still be control of the deployment process and so on. Or of course, if you’re the DBA looking after this process, you have to do a similar job in reverse. You may have researched and worked out how you’d like to change your methodology to start automating your painful release process, but do the dev team know this? What if they have to start producing different artifacts for you? Will they be happy with this? Worth talking to them, to find out. As well as talking to your DBA/dev team, the other group to get involved before implementation is your manager. And possibly your manager’s manager too. As mentioned, unless there’s buy-in “from the top”, you’re going to hit problems when the implementation starts to get rocky (and what tool/process implementations don’t get rocky?!). You need to have support from someone senior in your organisation – someone you can turn to when you need help with a delayed implementation, lack of resources or lack of progress. Actions: Get your DBA involved (or whoever looks after live deployments) and discuss what you’re planning to do or, if you’re the DBA yourself, get the dev team up-to-speed with your plans, Get your boss involved too and make sure he/she is bought in to the investment. Environments Where are you going to deploy to? And really this question is – what environments do you want set up for your deployment pipeline? Assume everyone has “Production”, but do you have a QA environment? Dedicated development environments for each dev? Proper pre-production? I’ve seen every setup under the sun, and there is often a big difference between “What we want, to do continuous delivery properly” and “What we’re currently stuck with”. Some of these differences are: What we want What we’ve got Each developer with their own dedicated database environment A single shared “development” environment, used by everyone at once An Integration box used to test the integration of all check-ins via the CI process, along with a full suite of unit-tests running on that machine In fact if you have a CI process running, you’re likely to have some sort of integration server running (even if you don’t call it that!). Whether you have a full suite of unit tests running is a different question… Separate QA environment used explicitly for manual testing prior to release “We just test on the dev environments, or maybe pre-production” A proper pre-production (or “staging”) box that matches production as closely as possible Hopefully a pre-production box of some sort. But does it match production closely!? A production environment reproducible from source control A production box which has drifted significantly from anything in source control The big question is – how much time and effort are you going to invest in fixing these issues? In reality this just involves figuring out which new databases you’re going to create and where they’ll be hosted – VMs? Cloud-based? What about size/data issues – what data are you going to include on dev environments? Does it need to be masked to protect access to production data? And often the amount of work here really depends on whether you’re working on a new, greenfield project, or trying to update an existing, brownfield application. There’s a world if difference between starting from scratch with 4 or 5 clean environments (reproducible from source control of course!), and trying to re-purpose and tweak a set of existing databases, with all of their surrounding processes and quirks. But for a proper release management process, ideally you have: Dedicated development databases, An Integration server used for testing continuous integration and running unit tests. [NB: This is the point at which deployments are automatic, without human intervention. Each deployment after this point is a one-click (but human) action], QA – QA engineers use a one-click deployment process to automatically* deploy chosen releases to QA for testing, Pre-production. The environment you use to test the production release process, Production. * A note on the use of the word “automatic” – when carrying out automated deployments this does not mean that the deployment is happening without human intervention (i.e. that something is just deploying over and over again). It means that the process of carrying out the deployment is automatic in that it’s not a person manually running through a checklist or set of actions. The deployment still requires a single-click from a user. Actions: Get your environments set up and ready, Set access permissions appropriately, Make sure everyone understands what the environments will be used for (it’s not a “free-for-all” with all environments to be accessed, played with and changed by development). The Deployment Process As described earlier, most existing database deployment processes are pretty manual. The following is a description of a process we hear very often when we ask customers “How do your database changes get live? How does your manual process work?” Check pre-production matches production (use a schema compare tool, like SQL Compare). Sometimes done by taking a backup from production and restoring in to pre-prod, Again, use a schema compare tool to find the differences between the latest version of the database ready to go live (i.e. what the team have been developing). This generates a script, User (generally, the DBA), reviews the script. This often involves manually checking updates against a spreadsheet or similar, Run the script on pre-production, and check there are no errors (i.e. it upgrades pre-production to what you hoped), If all working, run the script on production.* * this assumes there’s no problem with production drifting away from pre-production in the interim time period (i.e. someone has hacked something in to the production box without going through the proper change management process). This difference could undermine the validity of your pre-production deployment test. Red Gate is currently working on a free tool to detect this problem – sign up here at www.sqllighthouse.com, if you’re interested in testing early versions. There are several variations on this process – some better, some much worse! How do you automate this? In particular, step 3 – surely you can’t automate a DBA checking through a script, that everything is in order!? The key point here is to plan what you want in your new deployment process. There are so many options. At one extreme, pure continuous deployment – whenever a dev checks something in to source control, the CI process runs (including extensive and thorough testing!), before the deployment process keys in and automatically deploys that change to the live box. Not for the faint hearted – and really not something we recommend. At the other extreme, you might be more comfortable with a semi-automated process – the pre-production/production matching process is automated (with an error thrown if these environments don’t match), followed by a manual intervention, allowing for script approval by the DBA. One he/she clicks “Okay, I’m happy for that to go live”, the latter stages automatically take the script through to live. And anything in between of course – and other variations. But we’d strongly recommended sitting down with a whiteboard and your team, and spending a couple of hours mapping out “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” NB: Most of what we’re discussing here is about production deployments. It’s important to note that you will also need to map out a deployment process for earlier environments (for example QA). However, these are likely to be less onerous, and many customers opt for a much more automated process for these boxes. Actions: Sit down with your team and a whiteboard, and draw out the answers to the questions above for your production deployments – “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” Repeat for earlier environments (QA and so on). Rollback and Recovery If only every deployment went according to plan! Unfortunately they don’t – and when things go wrong, you need a rollback or recovery plan for what you’re going to do in that situation. Once you move in to a more automated database deployment process, you’re far more likely to be deploying more frequently than before. No longer once every 6 months, maybe now once per week, or even daily. Hence the need for a quick rollback or recovery process becomes paramount, and should be planned for. NB: These are mainly scenarios for handling rollbacks after the transaction has been committed. If a failure is detected during the transaction, the whole transaction can just be rolled back, no problem. There are various options, which we’ll explore in subsequent articles, things like: Immediately restore from backup, Have a pre-tested rollback script (remembering that really this is a “roll-forward” script – there’s not really such a thing as a rollback script for a database!) Have fallback environments – for example, using a blue-green deployment pattern. Different options have pros and cons – some are easier to set up, some require more investment in infrastructure; and of course some work better than others (the key issue with using backups, is loss of the interim transaction data that has been added between the failed deployment and the restore). The best mechanism will be primarily dependent on how your application works and how much you need a cast-iron failsafe mechanism. Actions: Work out an appropriate rollback strategy based on how your application and business works, your appetite for investment and requirements for a completely failsafe process. Development Practices This is perhaps the more difficult area for people to tackle. The process by which you can deploy database updates is actually intrinsically linked with the patterns and practices used to develop that database and linked application. So you need to decide whether you want to implement some changes to the way your developers actually develop the database (particularly schema changes) to make the deployment process easier. A good example is the pattern “Branch by abstraction”. Explained nicely here, by Martin Fowler, this is a process that can be used to make significant database changes (e.g. splitting a table) in a step-wise manner so that you can always roll back, without data loss – by making incremental updates to the database backward compatible. Slides 103-108 of the following slidedeck, from Niek Bartholomeus explain the process: https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/orchestration-in-meatspace As these slides show, by making a significant schema change in multiple steps – where each step can be rolled back without any loss of new data – this affords the release team the opportunity to have zero-downtime deployments with considerably less stress (because if an increment goes wrong, they can roll back easily). There are plenty more great patterns that can be implemented – the book Refactoring Databases, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage is a great read, if this is a direction you want to go in: http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515 But the question is – how much of this investment are you willing to make? How often are you making significant schema changes that would require these best practices? Again, there’s a difference here between migrating old projects and starting afresh – with the latter it’s much easier to instigate best practice from the start. Actions: For your business, work out how far down the path you want to go, amending your database development patterns to “best practice”. It’s a trade-off between implementing quality processes, and the necessity to do so (depending on how often you make complex changes). Socialise these changes with your development group. No-one likes having “best practice” changes imposed on them, so good to introduce these ideas and the rationale behind them early.   Summary The next stages of implementing a continuous delivery pipeline for your database changes (once you have CI up and running) require a little pre-planning, if you want to get the most out of the work, and for the implementation to go smoothly. We’ve covered some of the checklist of areas to consider – mainly in the areas of “Getting the team ready for the changes that are coming” and “Planning our your pipeline, environments, patterns and practices for development”, though there will be more detail, depending on where you’re coming from – and where you want to get to. This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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• Bindable richTextBox still hanging in memory {WPF, Caliburn.Micro}

  - by Paul

  Hi, I use in WFP Caliburn.Micro Framework. I need bindable richTextbox for Document property. I found many ways how do it bindable richTextBox. But I have one problem. From parent window I open child window. Child window consist bindable richTextBox user control. After I close child window and use memory profiler view class with bindabelrichTextBox control and view model class is still hanging in memory. - this cause memory leaks. If I use richTextBox from .NET Framework or richTextBox from Extended WPF Toolkit it doesn’t cause this memory leak problem. I can’t identified problem in bindable richTextBox class. Here is ist class for bindable richTextBox: Base class can be from .NET or Extended toolkit. /// <summary> /// Represents a bindable rich editing control which operates on System.Windows.Documents.FlowDocument /// objects. /// </summary> public class BindableRichTextBox : RichTextBox { /// <summary> /// Identifies the <see cref="Document"/> dependency property. /// </summary> public static readonly DependencyProperty DocumentProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("Document", typeof(FlowDocument), typeof(BindableRichTextBox)); /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="BindableRichTextBox"/> class. /// </summary> public BindableRichTextBox() : base() { } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="BindableRichTextBox"/> class. /// </summary> /// <param title="document">A <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.FlowDocument"></see> to be added as the initial contents of the new <see cref="T:System.Windows.Controls.BindableRichTextBox"></see>.</param> public BindableRichTextBox(FlowDocument document) : base(document) { } /// <summary> /// Raises the <see cref="E:System.Windows.FrameworkElement.Initialized"></see> event. This method is invoked whenever <see cref="P:System.Windows.FrameworkElement.IsInitialized"></see> is set to true internally. /// </summary> /// <param title="e">The <see cref="T:System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs"></see> that contains the event data.</param> protected override void OnInitialized(EventArgs e) { // Hook up to get notified when DocumentProperty changes. DependencyPropertyDescriptor descriptor = DependencyPropertyDescriptor.FromProperty(DocumentProperty, typeof(BindableRichTextBox)); descriptor.AddValueChanged(this, delegate { // If the underlying value of the dependency property changes, // update the underlying document, also. base.Document = (FlowDocument)GetValue(DocumentProperty); }); // By default, we support updates to the source when focus is lost (or, if the LostFocus // trigger is specified explicity. We don't support the PropertyChanged trigger right now. this.LostFocus += new RoutedEventHandler(BindableRichTextBox_LostFocus); base.OnInitialized(e); } /// <summary> /// Handles the LostFocus event of the BindableRichTextBox control. /// </summary> /// <param title="sender">The source of the event.</param> /// <param title="e">The <see cref="System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param> void BindableRichTextBox_LostFocus(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { // If we have a binding that is set for LostFocus or Default (which we are specifying as default) // then update the source. Binding binding = BindingOperations.GetBinding(this, DocumentProperty); if (binding.UpdateSourceTrigger == UpdateSourceTrigger.Default || binding.UpdateSourceTrigger == UpdateSourceTrigger.LostFocus) { BindingOperations.GetBindingExpression(this, DocumentProperty).UpdateSource(); } } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.FlowDocument"></see> that represents the contents of the <see cref="T:System.Windows.Controls.BindableRichTextBox"></see>. /// </summary> /// <value></value> /// <returns>A <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.FlowDocument"></see> object that represents the contents of the <see cref="T:System.Windows.Controls.BindableRichTextBox"></see>.By default, this property is set to an empty <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.FlowDocument"></see>. Specifically, the empty <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.FlowDocument"></see> contains a single <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.Paragraph"></see>, which contains a single <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.Run"></see> which contains no text.</returns> /// <exception cref="T:System.ArgumentException">Raised if an attempt is made to set this property to a <see cref="T:System.Windows.Documents.FlowDocument"></see> that represents the contents of another <see cref="T:System.Windows.Controls.RichTextBox"></see>.</exception> /// <exception cref="T:System.ArgumentNullException">Raised if an attempt is made to set this property to null.</exception> /// <exception cref="T:System.InvalidOperationException">Raised if this property is set while a change block has been activated.</exception> public new FlowDocument Document { get { return (FlowDocument)GetValue(DocumentProperty); } set { SetValue(DocumentProperty, value); } } } Thank fro help and advice. Qucik example: Child window with .NET richTextBox <Window x:Class="WpfApplication2.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300"> <Grid> <RichTextBox Background="Green" VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" FontSize="13" Margin="4,4,4,4" Grid.Row="0"/> </Grid> </Window> This window I open from parent window: var w = new Window1(); w.Show(); Then close this window, check with memory profiler and it memory doesn’t exist any object of window1 - richTextBox. It’s Ok. But then I try bindable richTextBox: Child window 2: <Window x:Class="WpfApplication2.Window2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:WpfApplication2.Controls" Title="Window2" Height="300" Width="300"> <Grid> <Controls:BindableRichTextBox Background="Red" VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" FontSize="13" Margin="4,4,4,4" Grid.Row="0" /> </Grid> </Window> Open child window 2, close this child window and in memory are still alive object of this child window also bindable richTextBox object.

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• What is the fastest cyclic synchronization in Java (ExecutorService vs. CyclicBarrier vs. X)?

  - by Alex Dunlop

  Which Java synchronization construct is likely to provide the best performance for a concurrent, iterative processing scenario with a fixed number of threads like the one outlined below? After experimenting on my own for a while (using ExecutorService and CyclicBarrier) and being somewhat surprised by the results, I would be grateful for some expert advice and maybe some new ideas. Existing questions here do not seem to focus primarily on performance, hence this new one. Thanks in advance! The core of the app is a simple iterative data processing algorithm, parallelized to the spread the computational load across 8 cores on a Mac Pro, running OS X 10.6 and Java 1.6.0_07. The data to be processed is split into 8 blocks and each block is fed to a Runnable to be executed by one of a fixed number of threads. Parallelizing the algorithm was fairly straightforward, and it functionally works as desired, but its performance is not yet what I think it could be. The app seems to spend a lot of time in system calls synchronizing, so after some profiling I wonder whether I selected the most appropriate synchronization mechanism(s). A key requirement of the algorithm is that it needs to proceed in stages, so the threads need to sync up at the end of each stage. The main thread prepares the work (very low overhead), passes it to the threads, lets them work on it, then proceeds when all threads are done, rearranges the work (again very low overhead) and repeats the cycle. The machine is dedicated to this task, Garbage Collection is minimized by using per-thread pools of pre-allocated items, and the number of threads can be fixed (no incoming requests or the like, just one thread per CPU core). V1 - ExecutorService My first implementation used an ExecutorService with 8 worker threads. The program creates 8 tasks holding the work and then lets them work on it, roughly like this: // create one thread per CPU executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool( 8 ); ... // now process data in cycles while( ...) { // package data into 8 work items ... // create one Callable task per work item ... // submit the Callables to the worker threads executorService.invokeAll( taskList ); } This works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as much as the processing algorithm would be expected to allow (some work items will finish faster than others, then idle). However, as the work items become smaller (and this is not really under the program's control), the user CPU load shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.8% 85% 1.30 64k 2.5% 77% 5.6 16k 4% 64% 22.5 4096 8% 56% 86 1024 13% 38% 227 256 17% 19% 420 64 19% 17% 948 16 19% 13% 1626 Legend: - block size = size of the work item (= computational steps) - system = system load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (red bar) - user = user load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (green bar) - cycles/sec = iterations through the main while loop, more is better The primary area of concern here is the high percentage of time spent in the system, which appears to be driven by thread synchronization calls. As expected, for smaller work items, ExecutorService.invokeAll() will require relatively more effort to sync up the threads versus the amount of work being performed in each thread. But since ExecutorService is more generic than it would need to be for this use case (it can queue tasks for threads if there are more tasks than cores), I though maybe there would be a leaner synchronization construct. V2 - CyclicBarrier The next implementation used a CyclicBarrier to sync up the threads before receiving work and after completing it, roughly as follows: main() { // create the barrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier( 8 + 1 ); // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier Runnable task = new WorkerThreadRunnable( barrier ); // start the threads for( int i = 0; i < 8; i++ ) { // create one thread per core new Thread( task ).start(); } while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work ... // N threads + this will call await(), then system proceeds barrier.await(); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work barrier.await(); // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as before. However, as the work items become smaller, the load still shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.7% 78% 6.1 16k 5.5% 52% 25 4096 9% 29% 64 1024 11% 15% 117 256 12% 8% 169 64 12% 6.5% 285 16 12% 6% 377 For large work items, synchronization is negligible and the performance is identical to V1. But unexpectedly, the results of the (highly specialized) CyclicBarrier seem MUCH WORSE than those for the (generic) ExecutorService: throughput (cycles/sec) is only about 1/4th of V1. A preliminary conclusion would be that even though this seems to be the advertised ideal use case for CyclicBarrier, it performs much worse than the generic ExecutorService. V3 - Wait/Notify + CyclicBarrier It seemed worth a try to replace the first cyclic barrier await() with a simple wait/notify mechanism: main() { // create the barrier // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier // start the threads while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work // for each: workerThreadRunnable.setWorkItem( ... ); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; @NotNull volatile private Callable<Integer> workItem; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; this.workItem = NO_WORK; } final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { synchronized( this ) { workItem = callable; notify(); } } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work while( true ) { synchronized( this ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; try { wait(); } catch( InterruptedException e ) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.4% 80% 6.3 16k 4.6% 60% 30.1 4096 8.6% 41% 98.5 1024 12% 23% 202 256 14% 11.6% 299 64 14% 10.0% 518 16 14.8% 8.7% 679 The throughput for small work items is still much worse than that of the ExecutorService, but about 2x that of the CyclicBarrier. Eliminating one CyclicBarrier eliminates half of the gap. V4 - Busy wait instead of wait/notify Since this app is the primary one running on the system and the cores idle anyway if they're not busy with a work item, why not try a busy wait for work items in each thread, even if that spins the CPU needlessly. The worker thread code changes as follows: class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { // as before final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { workItem = callable; } public void run() { while( true ) { // busy-wait for work while( true ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Also works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.2% 81% 6.3 16k 4.2% 62% 33 4096 7.5% 40% 107 1024 10.4% 23% 210 256 12.0% 12.0% 310 64 11.9% 10.2% 550 16 12.2% 8.6% 741 For small work items, this increases throughput by a further 10% over the CyclicBarrier + wait/notify variant, which is not insignificant. But it is still much lower-throughput than V1 with the ExecutorService. V5 - ? So what is the best synchronization mechanism for such a (presumably not uncommon) problem? I am weary of writing my own sync mechanism to completely replace ExecutorService (assuming that it is too generic and there has to be something that can still be taken out to make it more efficient). It is not my area of expertise and I'm concerned that I'd spend a lot of time debugging it (since I'm not even sure my wait/notify and busy wait variants are correct) for uncertain gain. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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• Simple Grouping With TableSorter Plugin

  - by HurnsMobile

  Im playing around with the Tablesorter plug-in for jQuery and was trying to get a very simple grouping functionality added into it. Using the follow html/js works great until you click sort again and reverse the order. The headers get moved to the bottom of the group when this happens. The following is my (admitedly hacky) attempt at it. Does anyone have any ideas? <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <title>Table Manipulation Test</title> <link type="text/css" href="css/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.1.custom.css" rel="stylesheet" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="tablesorter/themes/green/style.css" type="text/css"/> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-ui-1.8.1.custom.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="tablesorter/jquery.tablesorter.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $("#test_table").tablesorter({ sortForce: [[3,0]] }); $(".group_details").hide(); $(".group_header").click(function(){ var group = $(this).attr("group"); var $expander = $(this).children("td.expanderguy") if ($("." + group + ":visible").length){ $("." + group + "").fadeOut('fast'); $expander.html("<img src='icons/plus.gif'>"); } else{ $("." + group + "").fadeIn('fast'); $expander.html("<img src='icons/minus.gif'>"); } }); } ); </script> <style type="text/css"> .group_header td{ background-color: #888888; !important } </style> </head> <body> <table id="test_table" class="tablesorter"> <thead> <tr><th>First Name</th><th>Last Name</th><th>Email</th><th>Due Date</th><th>Amount Due</th></tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr class="group_header" group="group1"><td class="expanderguy"><img src="icons/plus.gif"></td><td></td><td></td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td></td></tr> <tr class="group_details group1"><td>Flavian</td><td>Wenceslas</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td>$100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group1"><td>Gordian</td><td>Ives</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td>$1700</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group1"><td>Saladin</td><td>Tarquin</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td>$1700</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group1"><td>Urban</td><td>Cyprian</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td>$1500</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group1"><td>Sargon</td><td>Swithun</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td>$1100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group1"><td>Pompey</td><td>Ladislas</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td>$300</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group1"><td>Attila</td><td>Hiawatha</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Monday, June 7</td><td>$200</td></tr> <tr class="group_header" group="group2"><td class="expanderguy"><img src="icons/plus.gif"></td><td></td><td></td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td></td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Bruce</td><td>Fenton</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$1700</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Wade</td><td>Sequoia</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$1400</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Eddie</td><td>Jerold</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$1100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Lynn</td><td>Lucan</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$1200</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Taegan</td><td>Tadg</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Clyde</td><td>Reed</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$6100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Alaois</td><td>Art</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$2100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group2"><td>Gilbert</td><td>Patsy</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Tuesday, June 8</td><td>$1500</td></tr> <tr class="group_header" group="group3"><td class="expanderguy"><img src="icons/plus.gif"></td><td></td><td></td><td>Wednesday, June 9</td><td></td></tr> <tr class="group_details group3" ><td>Clem</td><td>Eben</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Wednesday, June 9</td><td>$2100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group3" ><td>Elijah</td><td>Julyan</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Wednesday, June 9</td><td>$2100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group3" ><td>Marvyn</td><td>Damian</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Wednesday, June 9</td><td>$1100</td></tr> <tr class="group_details group3" ><td>Sawyer</td><td>Ryker</td><td>[email protected]</td><td>Wednesday, June 9</td><td>$500</td></tr> </tbody> </table> </body>

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• Axis value changes in barchart while swapping the phone using Achartengine

  - by Vasu

  Hi I have included the Barchart using AchartEngine API .When I swap the orientation of the screen the yaxis value is altered as same values. For eg. initially it is (0,10) , (10,25) but after swapping its changes to (0,10), (10,10) i could not understand why it is happening . And I have place string in x axis instead of numbers , I used addtextlabel method but the string is overlapped on the number . I need to display only the names. could you help on this. I have included my code here. public class Analytics extends Activity implements OnClickListener { private Button settings_btn; private RelativeLayout relativeLayout3; private boolean isClicked = false; private static final int SERIES_NR = 1; static int multiple_of_five; private GraphicalView mChartView; XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer; static int value=20; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.analytics); settings_btn = (Button) findViewById(R.id.settings_btn); relativeLayout3 = (RelativeLayout) findViewById(R.id.relativeLayout3); settings_btn.setOnClickListener(this); if (SharedValues.isClicked) { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE); } else { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.GONE); } renderer = getBarDemoRenderer(); setChartSettings(renderer); if (mChartView == null) { RelativeLayout layout = (RelativeLayout) findViewById(R.id.relativeLayout5); // mChartView= ChartFactory.getLineChartView(this, getDemoDataset(), getDemoRenderer()); mChartView = ChartFactory.getBarChartView(getApplicationContext(),getBarDemoDataset(),renderer,Type.DEFAULT); layout.addView(mChartView,new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, 280)); } else { mChartView.repaint(); } // Intent intent = ChartFactory.getLineChartIntent(this, getDemoDataset(), getDemoRenderer()); // intent = ChartFactory.getBarChartIntent(this, getBarDemoDataset(), renderer, Type.DEFAULT); // startActivity(intent); } @Override protected void onResume() { super.onResume(); } public XYMultipleSeriesRenderer getBarDemoRenderer() { XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer = new XYMultipleSeriesRenderer(); renderer.setAxisTitleTextSize(16); renderer.setChartTitleTextSize(20); renderer.setLabelsTextSize(15); renderer.setLegendTextSize(15); // renderer.setApplyBackgroundColor(true); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(R.color.chart_bg); // renderer.setMarginsColor(R.color.settings_bg_color); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(getResources().getColor(R.color.background)); renderer.setPanEnabled(false, false); renderer.setZoomEnabled(false, false); renderer.setMargins(new int[] {0, 10, 0, 0}); SimpleSeriesRenderer r = new SimpleSeriesRenderer(); // r.setColor(Color.MAGENTA); // renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); r = new SimpleSeriesRenderer(); r.setColor(Color.CYAN); renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); return renderer; } private void setChartSettings(XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer) { // renderer.setChartTitle("Chart demo"); // renderer.setXTitle("x values"); // renderer.setYTitle("y values"); renderer.setXAxisMin(2); renderer.setMarginsColor(Color.parseColor("#00F5DA81")); renderer.addXTextLabel(1.0, "Q1"); renderer.addXTextLabel(3.0, "Q2"); renderer.addXTextLabel(5.0, "Q3"); renderer.addXTextLabel(7.0, "Q4"); renderer.addXTextLabel(9.0, "Q5"); renderer.setXAxisMax(20); renderer.setYAxisMin(0); renderer.setYAxisMax(100); renderer.setZoomEnabled(false, false); // renderer.setApplyBackgroundColor(true); // renderer.setMarginsColor(R.color.settings_bg_color); renderer.setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(R.color.chart_bg); } private XYMultipleSeriesDataset getDemoDataset() { XYMultipleSeriesDataset dataset = new XYMultipleSeriesDataset(); final int nr = 10; Random r = new Random(); for (int i = 0; i < SERIES_NR; i++) { XYSeries series = new XYSeries(""); for (int k = 0; k < nr; k++) { if(k%2==1) { series.add(0, 0); } else { series.add(k, 20); } } dataset.addSeries(series); } return dataset; } private XYMultipleSeriesRenderer getDemoRenderer() { XYMultipleSeriesRenderer renderer = new XYMultipleSeriesRenderer(); renderer.setAxisTitleTextSize(6); renderer.setChartTitleTextSize(10); renderer.setLabelsTextSize(5); renderer.setLegendTextSize(5); renderer.setPointSize(5f); // renderer.setMarginsColor(R.color.settings_bg_color); // renderer.setApplyBackgroundColor(true); // renderer.setBackgroundColor(R.color.chart_bg); renderer.setMargins(new int[] {20, 30, 15, 0}); XYSeriesRenderer r = new XYSeriesRenderer(); r.setColor(Color.BLUE); r.setPointStyle(PointStyle.SQUARE); r.setFillBelowLine(true); r.setFillBelowLineColor(Color.WHITE); r.setFillPoints(true); renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); r = new XYSeriesRenderer(); r.setPointStyle(PointStyle.CIRCLE); r.setColor(Color.GREEN); r.setFillPoints(true); renderer.addSeriesRenderer(r); renderer.setAxesColor(Color.DKGRAY); renderer.setLabelsColor(Color.LTGRAY); return renderer; } private XYMultipleSeriesDataset getBarDemoDataset() { XYMultipleSeriesDataset dataset = new XYMultipleSeriesDataset(); final int nr = 10; Random r = new Random(); for (int i = 0; i < SERIES_NR; i++) { CategorySeries series = new CategorySeries("Quadrant"); for (int k = 0; k < nr; k++) { value=value+5; // multiple_of_five=k+5; // Log.i("multiple_of_five", ""+multiple_of_five); // series.add(20 +multiple_of_five ); if(k%2==1){ series.add(value ); } else { series.add(0); } } dataset.addSeries(series.toXYSeries()); } return dataset; } @Override public void onClick(View v) { if (v == settings_btn) { if (SharedValues.isClicked) { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.GONE); SharedValues.isClicked = false; } else { relativeLayout3.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE); SharedValues.isClicked = true; } } } }

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• IOException: Unable To Delete Images Due To File Lock

  - by Arslan Pervaiz

  I am Unable To Delete Image File From My Server Path It Gaves Error That The Process Cannot Access The File "FileName" Because it is being Used By Another Process. I Tried Many Methods But Still All In Vain. Please Help me Out in This Issue. Here is My Code Snippet. using System; using System.Data; using System.Web; using System.Data.SqlClient; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; using System.Globalization; using System.Web.Security; using System.Text; using System.DirectoryServices; using System.Collections; using System.IO; using System.Drawing; using System.Drawing.Imaging; using System.Drawing.Drawing2D; //============ Main Block ================= byte[] data = (byte[])ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][0]; MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(data); Image returnImage = Image.FromStream(ms); returnImage.Save(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\SavedImage.jpg"), System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg); returnImage.Dispose(); \\ I Tried this Dispose Method To Unlock The File But Nothing Done. ms.Close(); \\ I Tried The Memory Stream Close Method Also But Its Also Not Worked For Me. watermark(); \\ Here is My Water Mark Method That Print Water Mark Image on My Saved Image (Image That is Converted From Byte Array) DeleteImages(); \\ Here is My Delete Method That I Call To Delete The Images //===== ==== My Delete Method To Delete Files================== public void DeleteImages() { try { File.Delete(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\WaterMark.jpg")); \\This Image Deleted Fine. File.Delete(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\SavedImage.jpg")); \\ Exception Thrown On Deleting of This Image. } catch (Exception ex) { LogManager.LogException(ex, "Error in Deleting Images."); Master.ShowMessage(ex.Message, true); } } \ ==== Method Declartion That Make Watermark of One Image On Another Image.======= public void watermark() { //create a image object containing the photograph to watermark Image imgPhoto = Image.FromFile(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\SavedImage.jpg")); int phWidth = imgPhoto.Width; int phHeight = imgPhoto.Height; //create a Bitmap the Size of the original photograph Bitmap bmPhoto = new Bitmap(phWidth, phHeight, PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb); bmPhoto.SetResolution(imgPhoto.HorizontalResolution, imgPhoto.VerticalResolution); //load the Bitmap into a Graphics object Graphics grPhoto = Graphics.FromImage(bmPhoto); //create a image object containing the watermark Image imgWatermark = new Bitmap(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\PrintasWatermark.jpg")); int wmWidth = imgWatermark.Width; int wmHeight = imgWatermark.Height; //Set the rendering quality for this Graphics object grPhoto.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias; //Draws the photo Image object at original size to the graphics object. grPhoto.DrawImage( imgPhoto, // Photo Image object new Rectangle(0, 0, phWidth, phHeight), // Rectangle structure 0, // x-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. 0, // y-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. phWidth, // Width of the portion of the source image to draw. phHeight, // Height of the portion of the source image to draw. GraphicsUnit.Pixel); // Units of measure //------------------------------------------------------- //to maximize the size of the Copyright message we will //test multiple Font sizes to determine the largest posible //font we can use for the width of the Photograph //define an array of point sizes you would like to consider as possiblities //------------------------------------------------------- //Define the text layout by setting the text alignment to centered StringFormat StrFormat = new StringFormat(); StrFormat.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center; //define a Brush which is semi trasparent black (Alpha set to 153) SolidBrush semiTransBrush2 = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(153, 0, 0, 0)); //define a Brush which is semi trasparent white (Alpha set to 153) SolidBrush semiTransBrush = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(153, 255, 255, 255)); //------------------------------------------------------------ //Step #2 - Insert Watermark image //------------------------------------------------------------ //Create a Bitmap based on the previously modified photograph Bitmap Bitmap bmWatermark = new Bitmap(bmPhoto); bmWatermark.SetResolution(imgPhoto.HorizontalResolution, imgPhoto.VerticalResolution); //Load this Bitmap into a new Graphic Object Graphics grWatermark = Graphics.FromImage(bmWatermark); //To achieve a transulcent watermark we will apply (2) color //manipulations by defineing a ImageAttributes object and //seting (2) of its properties. ImageAttributes imageAttributes = new ImageAttributes(); //The first step in manipulating the watermark image is to replace //the background color with one that is trasparent (Alpha=0, R=0, G=0, B=0) //to do this we will use a Colormap and use this to define a RemapTable ColorMap colorMap = new ColorMap(); //My watermark was defined with a background of 100% Green this will //be the color we search for and replace with transparency colorMap.OldColor = Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 255, 0); colorMap.NewColor = Color.FromArgb(0, 0, 0, 0); ColorMap[] remapTable = { colorMap }; imageAttributes.SetRemapTable(remapTable, ColorAdjustType.Bitmap); //The second color manipulation is used to change the opacity of the //watermark. This is done by applying a 5x5 matrix that contains the //coordinates for the RGBA space. By setting the 3rd row and 3rd column //to 0.3f we achive a level of opacity float[][] colorMatrixElements = { new float[] {1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.3f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f}}; ColorMatrix wmColorMatrix = new ColorMatrix(colorMatrixElements); imageAttributes.SetColorMatrix(wmColorMatrix, ColorMatrixFlag.Default, ColorAdjustType.Bitmap); //For this example we will place the watermark in the upper right //hand corner of the photograph. offset down 10 pixels and to the //left 10 pixles int xPosOfWm = ((phWidth - wmWidth) - 10); int yPosOfWm = 10; grWatermark.DrawImage(imgWatermark, new Rectangle(xPosOfWm, yPosOfWm, wmWidth, wmHeight), //Set the detination Position 0, // x-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. 0, // y-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. wmWidth, // Watermark Width wmHeight, // Watermark Height GraphicsUnit.Pixel, // Unit of measurment imageAttributes); //ImageAttributes Object //Replace the original photgraphs bitmap with the new Bitmap imgPhoto = bmWatermark; grPhoto.Dispose(); grWatermark.Dispose(); //save new image to file system. imgPhoto.Save(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\WaterMark.jpg"), ImageFormat.Jpeg); imgPhoto.Dispose(); imgWatermark.Dispose(); }

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• java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException

  - by thefonso

  Here is the code. import java.applet.Applet; import java.awt.Button; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Graphics; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; public class GuessingGame extends Applet{ /** * */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; private final int START_X = 20; private final int START_Y = 40; private final int ROWS = 4; private final int COLS = 4; private final int BOX_WIDTH = 20; private final int BOX_HEIGHT = 20; //this is used to keep track of boxes that have been matched. private boolean matchedBoxes[][]; //this is used to keep track of two boxes that have been clicked. private MaskableBox chosenBoxes[]; private MaskableBox boxes[][]; private Color boxColors[][]; private Button resetButton; public void init() { boxes = new MaskableBox[ROWS][COLS]; boxColors = new Color[ROWS][COLS]; resetButton = new Button("Reset Colors"); resetButton.addActionListener(new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { randomizeColors(); buildBoxes(); repaint(); } }); add(resetButton); //separate building colors so we can add a button later //to re-randomize them. randomizeColors(); buildBoxes(); } public void paint(Graphics g) { for (int row =0; row < boxes.length; row ++) { for (int col = 0; col < boxes[row].length; col++) { if(boxes[row][col].isClicked()) { //boxes[row][col].setMaskColor(Color.black); //boxes[row][col].setMask(!boxes[row][col].isMask()); //boxes[row][col].setClicked(false); //} if (!matchedBoxes[row][col]) { gameLogic(boxes[row][col]); //boxes[row][col].draw(g); } } } } //loop through the boxes and draw them. for (int row = 0; row < boxes.length; row++) { for (int col = 0; col < boxes[row].length; col++) { boxes[row][col].draw(g); } } } public void gameLogic(MaskableBox box) { if ((chosenBoxes[0] != null)&&(chosenBoxes[1] != null)) { if(chosenBoxes[0].getBackColor() == chosenBoxes[1].getBackColor()) { for (int i=0; 0 <= chosenBoxes.length; ++i ) { for(int row = 0; row < boxes.length; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < boxes[row].length; col++) { if( boxes[row][col] == chosenBoxes[i] ) { System.out.println("boxes [row][col] == chosenBoxes[] at index: " + i ); matchedBoxes[row][col] = true; break; } } } } }else { chosenBoxes[0].setMask(true); chosenBoxes[1].setMask(true); } chosenBoxes = new MaskableBox[2]; }else { if (chosenBoxes[0] == null) { chosenBoxes[0] = box; chosenBoxes[0].setMask(false); return; }else{ if (chosenBoxes[1] == null) { chosenBoxes[1] = box; chosenBoxes[1].setMask(false); } } } } private void removeMouseListeners() { for(int row = 0; row < boxes.length; row ++) { for(int col = 0; col < boxes[row].length; col++) { removeMouseListener(boxes[row][col]); } } } private void buildBoxes() { // need to clear any chosen boxes when building new array. chosenBoxes = new MaskableBox[2]; // create a new matchedBoxes array matchedBoxes = new boolean [ROWS][COLS]; removeMouseListeners(); for(int row = 0; row < boxes.length; row++) { for(int col = 0; col < boxes[row].length; col++) { boxes[row][col] = new MaskableBox(START_X + col * BOX_WIDTH, START_Y + row * BOX_HEIGHT, BOX_WIDTH, BOX_HEIGHT, Color.gray, boxColors[row][col], true, true, this); addMouseListener(boxes[row][col]); } } } private void randomizeColors() { int[] chosenColors = {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0}; Color[] availableColors = {Color.red, Color.blue, Color.green, Color.yellow, Color.cyan, Color.magenta, Color.pink, Color.orange }; for(int row = 0; row < boxes.length; row++) { for (int col = 0; col < boxes[row].length; col++) { for (;;) { int rnd = (int) (Math.random() * 8); if (chosenColors[rnd]< 2) { chosenColors[rnd]++; boxColors[row][col] = availableColors[rnd]; break; } } } } } } here is the second batch of code containing maskablebox import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Container; import java.awt.Graphics; public class MaskableBox extends ClickableBox { private boolean mask; private Color maskColor; Container parent; public MaskableBox(int x, int y, int width, int height, Color borderColor, Color backColor, boolean drawBorder, boolean mask, Container parent ) { super(x, y, width, height, borderColor, backColor, drawBorder, parent); this.parent = parent; this.mask = mask; } public void draw(Graphics g) { if(mask=false) { super.draw(g); // setOldColor(g.getColor()); // g.setColor(maskColor); // g.fillRect(getX(),getY(),getWidth(), getHeight()); // if(isDrawBorder()) { // g.setColor(getBorderColor()); // g.drawRect(getX(),getY(),getWidth(),getHeight()); // } // g.setColor(getOldColor()); }else { if(mask=true) { //super.draw(g); setOldColor(g.getColor()); g.setColor(maskColor); g.fillRect(getX(),getY(),getWidth(), getHeight()); if(isDrawBorder()) { g.setColor(getBorderColor()); g.drawRect(getX(),getY(),getWidth(),getHeight()); } g.setColor(getOldColor()); } } } public boolean isMask() { return mask; } public void setMask(boolean mask) { this.mask = mask; } public Color getMaskColor() { return maskColor; } public void setMaskColor(Color maskColor) { this.maskColor = maskColor; } } I keep getting these error messages. I'm going nuts trying to figure this out. can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? boxes [row][col] == chosenBoxes[] at index: 0 boxes [row][col] == chosenBoxes[] at index: 1 Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-1" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 2 at GuessingGame.gameLogic(GuessingGame.java:77) at GuessingGame.paint(GuessingGame.java:55) at java.awt.Container.update(Container.java:1801) at sun.awt.RepaintArea.updateComponent(RepaintArea.java:239) at sun.awt.RepaintArea.paint(RepaintArea.java:216) at sun.awt.windows.WComponentPeer.handleEvent(WComponentPeer.java:306) at java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Component.java:4706) at java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:2099) at java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:4460) at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:599) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:269) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:174) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:169) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:161) at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122)

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• Bizarre Son of Suckerfish ie6/ie7 problem - 2 letters from right-most dropdown menu also appearing o

  - by Kevin Burke

  I'm interning for an NGO in India and trying to fix their website, including updating their menu so it's not the last item on the page to load, and it's centered on the screen. Everything works well enough but when I try out my new menu in IE6, I get this weird error where the content below the menu is padded an extra 30px or so and the material in the right-most drop down appears on the far left of the screen, always visible. When I drop down the rightmost link ("Publications") the content appears both in the correct location and in the same spot on the far left of the screen, and changes color when I hover as well. It's tough to describe, so it would probably be best if you took a look: visit http://sevamandir.org/a30/aboutus.htm in your IE6/IE7 browser to see for yourself. I really appreciate your help. Also I'm using a 1000px wide monitor, if there's more hijinks going on outside that space I'd like to know about that too. I took a look at the problem again and it's even weirder than I thought. Only two letters of the bottom-most drop down menu item are shown, no matter how many items are in the left-most drop down menu. When I delete the left-most drop down menu, the bottom item from the next left-most item shows up in the same space. The padding between the menu and the content is always the same. When I hover over the real menu item, the two letters on the left hand side change color to match the hover color. Unfortunately many people that visit our website are using old browsers so IE6 support is pretty crucial, this problem is really weird though, and I would appreciate some help. I uploaded a file with the entire style.css sheet in the and HTML code below, at http://sevamandir.org/a30/aboutus.htm. Here's the relevant code: in the html head: <script> sfHover = function() { var sfEls = document.getElementById("nav").getElementsByTagName("LI"); for (var i=0; i<sfEls.length; i++) { sfEls[i].onmouseover=function() { this.className+=" sfhover"; } sfEls[i].onmouseout=function() { this.className=this.className.replace(new RegExp(" sfhover\\b"), ""); } } } if (window.attachEvent) window.attachEvent("onload", sfHover); </script> text surrounding the menu - the menu is simply <ul id="nav"><li></li></ul> etc. <!--begin catchphrase--> <div style="float:left; height:27px; width:520px; margin:0px; font:16px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight:bold; color:#769841;"> Transforming lives through democratic &amp; participatory development </div> <?php include("menu.php"); ?> </div><!-- end header --> <!--begin main text div--> <div id="maincontent"> Relevant menu CSS: #nav, #nav ul { font:bold 11px Verdana, sans-serif; float: left; width: 980px; list-style: none; line-height: 1; background: white; font-weight: bold; padding: 0; border: solid #769841; border-width: 0; margin: 0 0 1em 0; } #nav a { display: block; width: 140px; /*this is the total width of the upper menu*/ w\idth: 120px; /*this is the width less horizontal padding */ padding: 5px 10px 5px 10px; /*horiz padding is the 2nd & 4th items here - goes Top Right Bottom Left */ color: #ffffff; background:#b6791e; text-decoration: none; } #nav a.daddy { background: url(rightarrow2.gif) center right no-repeat; } #nav li { float: left; padding: 0; width: 140px; /*this needs to be updated to match top #nav a */ background:#b6791e; } #nav li:hover, #nav li a:hover, #nav li:hover a { background:#769841; } #nav li:hover li a { background:#ffffff; color:#769841; } #nav li ul { position: absolute; left: -999em; height: auto; width: 14.4em; w\idth: 13.9em; font-weight: bold; border-width: 0.25em; /*green border around dropdown menu*/ margin: 0; } #nav li ul a { background:#ffffff; color:#769841; } #nav li li { padding-right: 1em; width: 13em; background:#ffffff; } #nav li ul a { width: 13em; w\idth: 9em; } #nav li ul ul { margin: -1.75em 0 0 14em; } #nav li:hover ul ul, #nav li:hover ul ul ul, #nav li.sfhover ul ul, #nav li.sfhover ul ul ul { left: -999em; } #nav li:hover ul, #nav li li:hover ul, #nav li li li:hover ul, #nav li.sfhover ul, #nav li li.sfhover ul, #nav li li li.sfhover ul { left: auto; } #nav li:hover, #nav li.sfhover, { background: #769841; color:#ffe400; } #nav li a:hover, #nav li li a:hover, #nav li:hover li:hover, #nav li.sfhover a:hover { background: #769841; color:#ffe400; }

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• Create an axpanding image with CSS and div or span

  - by user1594895

  I have a complex image cutted up in alot of slice. You can see http://jsfiddle.net/yefQR/ <!--Force IE6 into quirks mode with this comment tag--> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <title>Page Title</title> <style type="text/css"> body{ margin: 0; padding: 0; border: 0; overflow: hidden; height: 100%; max-height: 100%; } #framecontentTop, #framecontentBottom{ position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 130px; /*Height of top frame div*/ overflow: hidden; /*Disable scrollbars. Set to "scroll" to enable*/ background-color: navy; color: white; } #framecontentBottom{ top: auto; bottom: 0; height: 110px; /*Height of bottom frame div*/ overflow: hidden; /*Disable scrollbars. Set to "scroll" to enable*/ background-color: navy; color: white; } #maincontent{ position: fixed; top: 130px; /*Set top value to HeightOfTopFrameDiv*/ left: 0; right: 0; bottom: 110px; /*Set bottom value to HeightOfBottomFrameDiv*/ overflow: auto; background: #fff; } .innertube{ margin: 15px; /*Margins for inner DIV inside each DIV (to provide padding)*/ } * html body{ /*IE6 hack*/ padding: 130px 0 110px 0; /*Set value to (HeightOfTopFrameDiv 0 HeightOfBottomFrameDiv 0)*/ } * html #maincontent{ /*IE6 hack*/ height: 100%; width: 100%; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="framecontentTop"> <div class="innertube"> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c2" style=" background-color: green;position:absolute; left:4px; top:6px; width:20px; height:68px; z-index:1; visibility:visible; "> </div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c3" style="background-color: yellow; position:absolute; left:24px; top:6px;width:47px; height:68px;z-index:2; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c4" style="background-color: red; position:absolute; left:71px; top:6px;width:165px; height:68px;z-index:3; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c5" style="background-color: black; position:absolute; left:236px; top:6px;width:62px; height:68px;z-index:4; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c6" style="background-color: pink; position:absolute; left:298px; top:6px;width:147px; height:68px;z-index:5; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c7" style="background-color: orange; position:absolute; left:445px; top:6px;width:311px; height:37px;z-index:6; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c9" style="background-color: cyan; position:absolute; left:756px; top:6px;width:108px; height:37px;z-index:7; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r2c11" style="background-color: white; position:absolute; left:864px; top:6px;width:27px; height:37px;z-index:8; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r3c7" style="background-color: DodgerBlue; position:absolute; left:445px; top:43px;width:8px; height:31px;z-index:9; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r3c8" style="background-color: Gold; position:absolute; left:453px; top:43px;width:355px; height:31px;z-index:10; visibility:visible;"></div> <div id="screenshot%20tsam%20900r3c10" style="background-color: LightCyan ; position:absolute; left:808px; top:43px;width:83px; height:31px;z-index:11; visibility:visible;"></div> </div> </div> <div id="framecontentBottom"> <div class="innertube"> <h3>Sample text here</h3> </div> </div> <div id="maincontent"> <div class="innertube"> <h1>Lorem</h1> <p> Lorem ipsum </p> <p style="text-align: center">Vestibulum </p> </div> </div> </body> </html> Id like to make : 1) the header image autoexpanding using the repeated-y css property of DodgerBlue color and Orange div because thy are the only 2 part of image axpandible. 2) Is it possible to define a minimum size of header, and is possible to make the entire body minimum size based that size so the browser cant get smaller an if the window get smaller, scrollbar is show.

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