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• Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service

  - by Elton Stoneman

  We're in the process of delivering an enabling project to expose on-premise WCF services securely to Internet consumers. The Azure Service Bus Relay is doing the clever stuff, we register our on-premise service with Azure, consumers call into our .servicebus.windows.net namespace, and their requests are relayed and serviced on-premise. In theory it's all wonderfully simple; by using the relay we get lots of protocol options, free HTTPS and load balancing, and by integrating to ACS we get plenty of security options. Part of our delivery is a suite of sample consumers for the service - .NET, jQuery, PHP - and this set of posts will cover setting up the service and the consumers. Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service In theory, this is ultra-straightforward. In practice, and on a dev laptop it is - but in a corporate network with firewalls and proxies, it isn't, so we'll walkthrough some of the pitfalls. Note that I'm using the "old" Azure portal which will soon be out of date, but the new shiny portal should have the same steps available and be easier to use. We start with a simple WCF service which takes a string as input, reverses the string and returns it. The Part 1 version of the code is on GitHub here: on GitHub here: IPASBR Part 1. Configuring Azure Service Bus Start by logging into the Azure portal and registering a Service Bus namespace which will be our endpoint in the cloud. Give it a globally unique name, set it up somewhere near you (if you’re in Europe, remember Europe (North) is Ireland, and Europe (West) is the Netherlands), and  enable ACS integration by ticking "Access Control" as a service: Authenticating and authorizing to ACS When we try to register our on-premise service as a listener for the Service Bus endpoint, we need to supply credentials, which means only trusted service providers can act as listeners. We can use the default "owner" credentials, but that has admin permissions so a dedicated service account is better (Neil Mackenzie has a good post On Not Using owner with the Azure AppFabric Service Bus with lots of permission details). Click on "Access Control Service" for the namespace, navigate to Service Identities and add a new one. Give the new account a sensible name and description: Let ACS generate a symmetric key for you (this will be the shared secret we use in the on-premise service to authenticate as a listener), but be sure to set the expiration date to something usable. The portal defaults to expiring new identities after 1 year - but when your year is up *your identity will expire without warning* and everything will stop working. In production, you'll need governance to manage identity expiration and a process to make sure you renew identities and roll new keys regularly. The new service identity needs to be authorized to listen on the service bus endpoint. This is done through claim mapping in ACS - we'll set up a rule that says if the nameidentifier in the input claims has the value serviceProvider, in the output we'll have an action claim with the value Listen. In the ACS portal you'll see that there is already a Relying Party Application set up for ServiceBus, which has a Default rule group. Edit the rule group and click Add to add this new rule: The values to use are: Issuer: Access Control Service Input claim type: http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/nameidentifier Input claim value: serviceProvider Output claim type: net.windows.servicebus.action Output claim value: Listen When your service namespace and identity are set up, open the Part 1 solution and put your own namespace, service identity name and secret key into the file AzureConnectionDetails.xml in Solution Items, e.g: <azure namespace="sixeyed-ipasbr">    <!-- ACS credentials for the listening service (Part1):-->   <service identityName="serviceProvider"            symmetricKey="nuR2tHhlrTCqf4YwjT2RA2BZ/+xa23euaRJNLh1a/V4="/>  </azure> Build the solution, and the T4 template will generate the Web.config for the service project with your Azure details in the transportClientEndpointBehavior:           <behavior name="SharedSecret">             <transportClientEndpointBehavior credentialType="SharedSecret">               <clientCredentials>                 <sharedSecret issuerName="serviceProvider"                               issuerSecret="nuR2tHhlrTCqf4YwjT2RA2BZ/+xa23euaRJNLh1a/V4="/>               </clientCredentials>             </transportClientEndpointBehavior>           </behavior> , and your service namespace in the Azure endpoint:         <!-- Azure Service Bus endpoints -->          <endpoint address="sb://sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net/net"                   binding="netTcpRelayBinding"                   contract="Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services.IFormatService"                   behaviorConfiguration="SharedSecret">         </endpoint> The sample project is hosted in IIS, but it won't register with Azure until the service is activated. Typically you'd install AppFabric 1.1 for Widnows Server and set the service to auto-start in IIS, but for dev just navigate to the local REST URL, which will activate the service and register it with Azure. Testing the service locally As well as an Azure endpoint, the service has a WebHttpBinding for local REST access:         <!-- local REST endpoint for internal use -->         <endpoint address="rest"                   binding="webHttpBinding"                   behaviorConfiguration="RESTBehavior"                   contract="Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services.IFormatService" /> Build the service, then navigate to: http://localhost/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services/FormatService.svc/rest/reverse?string=abc123 - and you should see the reversed string response: If your network allows it, you'll get the expected response as before, but in the background your service will also be listening in the cloud. Good stuff! Who needs network security? Onto the next post for consuming the service with the netTcpRelayBinding.  Setting up network access to Azure But, if you get an error, it's because your network is secured and it's doing something to stop the relay working. The Service Bus relay bindings try to use direct TCP connections to Azure, so if ports 9350-9354 are available *outbound*, then the relay will run through them. If not, the binding steps down to standard HTTP, and issues a CONNECT across port 443 or 80 to set up a tunnel for the relay. If your network security guys are doing their job, the first option will be blocked by the firewall, and the second option will be blocked by the proxy, so you'll get this error: System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException: Unable to reach sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net via TCP (9351, 9352) or HTTP (80, 443) - and that will probably be the start of lots of discussions. Network guys don't really like giving servers special permissions for the web proxy, and they really don't like opening ports, so they'll need to be convinced about this. The resolution in our case was to put up a dedicated box in a DMZ, tinker with the firewall and the proxy until we got a relay connection working, then run some traffic which the the network guys monitored to do a security assessment afterwards. Along the way we hit a few more issues, diagnosed mainly with Fiddler and Wireshark: System.Net.ProtocolViolationException: Chunked encoding upload is not supported on the HTTP/1.0 protocol - this means the TCP ports are not available, so Azure tries to relay messaging traffic across HTTP. The service can access the endpoint, but the proxy is downgrading traffic to HTTP 1.0, which does not support tunneling, so Azure can’t make its connection. We were using the Squid proxy, version 2.6. The Squid project is incrementally adding HTTP 1.1 support, but there's no definitive list of what's supported in what version (here are some hints). System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityNegotiationException: The X.509 certificate CN=servicebus.windows.net chain building failed. The certificate that was used has a trust chain that cannot be verified. Replace the certificate or change the certificateValidationMode. The evocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline. - by this point we'd given up on the HTTP proxy and opened the TCP ports. We got this error when the relay binding does it's authentication hop to ACS. The messaging traffic is TCP, but the control traffic still goes over HTTP, and as part of the ACS authentication the process checks with a revocation server to see if Microsoft’s ACS cert is still valid, so the proxy still needs some clearance. The service account (the IIS app pool identity) needs access to: www.public-trust.com mscrl.microsoft.com We still got this error periodically with different accounts running the app pool. We fixed that by ensuring the machine-wide proxy settings are set up, so every account uses the correct proxy: netsh winhttp set proxy proxy-server="http://proxy.x.y.z" - and you might need to run this to clear out your credential cache: certutil -urlcache * delete If your network guys end up grudgingly opening ports, they can restrict connections to the IP address range for your chosen Azure datacentre, which might make them happier - see Windows Azure Datacenter IP Ranges. After all that you've hopefully got an on-premise service listening in the cloud, which you can consume from pretty much any technology.

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• How to Never Use iTunes With Your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

  - by Chris Hoffman

  iTunes isn’t an amazing program on Windows. There was a time when Apple device users had to plug their devices into their PCs or Macs and use iTunes for device activation, updates, and syncing, but iTunes is no longer necessary. Apple still allows you to use iTunes for these things, but you don’t have to. Your iOS device can function independently from iTunes, so you should never be forced to plug it into a PC or Mac. Device Activation When the iPad first came out, it was touted as a device that could replace full PCs and Macs for people who only needed to perform light computing tasks. Yet, to set up a new iPad, users had to plug it into a PC or Mac running iTunes and use iTunes to activate the device. This is no longer necessary. With new iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, you can simply go through the setup process after turning on your new device without ever having to plug it into iTunes. Just connect to a Wi-Fi or cellular data network and log in with your Apple ID when prompted. You’ll still see an option that allows you to activate the device via iTunes, but this should only be necessary if you don’t have a wireless Internet connection available for your device. Operating System Updates You no longer have to use Apple’s iTunes software to update to a new version of Apple’s iOS operating system, either. Just open the Settings app on your device, select the General category, and tap Software Update. You’ll be able to update right from your device without ever opening iTunes. Purchased iTunes Media Apple allows you to easily access content you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store on any device. You don’t have to connect your device to your computer and sync via iTunes. For example, you can purchase a movie from the iTunes Store. Then, without any syncing, you can open the iTunes Store app on any of your iOS devices, tap the Purchased section, and see stuff you’ve downloaded. You can download the content right from the store to your device. This also works for apps — apps you purchase from the App Store can be accessed in the Purchased section on the App Store on your device later. You don’t have to sync apps from iTunes to your device, although iTunes still allows you to. You can even set up automatic downloads from the iTunes & App Store settings screen. This would allow you to purchase content on one device and have it automatically download to your other devices without any hassle. Music Apple allows you to re-download purchased music from the iTunes Store in the same way. However, there’s a good chance you have your own music you didn’t purchase from iTunes. Maybe you spent time ripping it all from your old CDs and you’ve been syncing it to your devices via iTunes ever since. Apple’s solution for this is named iTunes Match. This feature isn’t free, but it’s not a bad deal at all. For $25 per year, Apple allows you to upload all your music to your iCloud account. You can then access all your music from any iPhone, IPad, or iPod Touch. You can stream all your music — perfect if you have a huge library and little storage on your device — and choose which songs you want to download to your device for offline use. When you add additional music to your computer, iTunes will notice it and upload it using iTunes Match, making it available for streaming and downloading directly from your iOS devices without any syncing. This feature is named iTunes Match because it doesn’t just upload music — if Apple already has a song you upload, it will “match” your song with Apple’s copy. This means you may get higher-quality versions of your songs if you ripped them from CD at a lower bitrate. Podcasts You don’t have to use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts and sync them to your devices. Even if you have a lowly iPod Touch, you can install APple’s Podcasts app from the app store. Use it to subscribe to podcasts and configure them to automatically download directly to your device. You can use other podcast apps for this, too. Backups You can continue backing up your device’s data through iTunes, generating local backups that are stored on your computer. However, new iOS devices are configured to automatically back up their data to iCloud. This happens automatically in the background without you even having to think about it, and you can restore such backups when setting up a device simply by logging in with your Apple ID. Personal Data In the days of PalmPilots, people would use desktop programs like iTunes to sync their email, contacts, and calendar events with their mobile devices. You probably shouldn’t have to sync this data form your computer. Just sign into your email account — for example, a Gmail account — on your device and iOS will automatically pull your email, contacts, and calendar events from your associated account. Photos Rather than connecting your iOS device to your computer and syncing photos from it, you can use an app that automatically uploads your photos to a web service. Dropbox, Google+, and even Flickr all have this feature in their apps. You’ll be able to access your photos from any computer and have a backup copy without any syncing required. You may still need to use iTunes if you want to sync local music without paying for iTunes Match or copy local video files to your device. Copying large local files over is the only real scenario where you’d need iTunes. If you don’t need to copy such files over, you can go ahead and uninstall iTunes from your Windows PC if you like. You shouldn’t need it.     

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• Merge replication stopping without errors in SQL 2008 R2

  - by Rob Farley

  A non-SQL MVP friend of mine, who also happens to be a client, asked me for some help again last week. I was planning on writing this up even before Rob Volk (@sql_r) listed his T-SQL Tuesday topic for this month. Earlier in the year, I (well, LobsterPot Solutions, although I’d been the person mostly involved) had helped out with a merge replication problem. The Merge Agent on the subscriber was just stopping every time, shortly after it started. With no errors anywhere – not in the Windows Event Log, the SQL Agent logs, not anywhere. We’d managed to get the system working again, but didn’t have a good reason about what had happened, and last week, the problem occurred again. I asked him about writing up the experience in a blog post, largely because of the red herrings that we encountered. It was an interesting experience for me, also because I didn’t end up touching my computer the whole time – just tapping on my phone via Twitter and Live Msgr. You see, the thing with replication is that a useful troubleshooting option is to reinitialise the thing. We’d done that last time, and it had started to work again – eventually. I say eventually, because the link being used between the sites is relatively slow, and it took a long while for the initialisation to finish. Meanwhile, we’d been doing some investigation into what the problem could be, and were suitably pleased when the problem disappeared. So I got a message saying that a replication problem had occurred again. Reinitialising wasn’t going to be an option this time either. In this scenario, the subscriber having the problem happened to be in a different domain to the publisher. The other subscribers (within the domain) were fine, just this one in a different domain had the problem. Part of the problem seemed to be a log file that wasn’t being backed up properly. They’d been trying to back up to a backup device that had a corruption, and the log file was growing. Turned out, this wasn’t related to the problem, but of course, any time you’re troubleshooting and you see something untoward, you wonder. Having got past that problem, my next thought was that perhaps there was a problem with the account being used. But the other subscribers were using the same account, without any problems. The client pointed out that that it was almost exactly six months since the last failure (later shown to be a complete red herring). It sounded like something might’ve expired. Checking through certificates and trusts showed no sign of anything, and besides, there wasn’t a problem running a command-prompt window using the account in question, from the subscriber box. ...except that when he ran the sqlcmd –E –S servername command I recommended, it failed with a Named Pipes error. I’ve seen problems with firewalls rejecting connections via Named Pipes but letting TCP/IP through, so I got him to look into SQL Configuration Manager to see what kind of connection was being preferred... Everything seemed fine. And strangely, he could connect via Management Studio. Turned out, he had a typo in the servername of the sqlcmd command. That particular red herring must’ve been reflected in his cheeks as he told me. During the time, I also pinged a friend of mine to find out who I should ask, and Ted Kruger (@onpnt) ‘s name came up. Ted (and thanks again, Ted – really) reconfirmed some of my thoughts around the idea of an account expiring, and also suggesting bumping up the logging to level 4 (2 is Verbose, 4 is undocumented ridiculousness). I’d just told the client to push the logging up to level 2, but the log file wasn’t appearing. Checking permissions showed that the user did have permission on the folder, but still no file was appearing. Then it was noticed that the user had been switched earlier as part of the troubleshooting, and switching it back to the real user caused the log file to appear. Still no errors. A lot more information being pushed out, but still no errors. Ted suggested making sure the FQDNs were okay from both ends, in case the servers were unable to talk to each other. DNS problems can lead to hassles which can stop replication from working. No luck there either – it was all working fine. Another server started to report a problem as well. These two boxes were both SQL 2008 R2 (SP1), while the others, still working, were SQL 2005. Around this time, the client tried an idea that I’d shown him a few years ago – using a Profiler trace to see what was being called on the servers. It turned out that the last call being made on the publisher was sp_MSenumschemachange. A quick interwebs search on that showed a problem that exists in SQL Server 2008 R2, when stored procedures have more than 4000 characters. Running that stored procedure (with the same parameters) manually on SQL 2005 listed three stored procedures, the first of which did indeed have more than 4000 characters. Still no error though, and the problem as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2539378 describes an error that should occur in the Event log. However, this problem is the type of thing that is fixed by a reinitialisation (because it doesn’t need to send the procedure change across as a transaction). And a look in the change history of the long stored procs (you all keep them, right?), showed that the problem from six months earlier could well have been down to this too. Applying SP2 (with sufficient paranoia about backups and how to get back out again if necessary) fixed the problem. The stored proc changes went through immediately after the service pack was applied, and it’s been running happily since. The funny thing is that I didn’t solve the problem. He had put the Profiler trace on the server, and had done the search that found a forum post pointing at this particular problem. I’d asked Ted too, and although he’d given some useful information, nothing that he’d come up with had actually been the solution either. Sometimes, asking for help is the most useful thing you can do. Often though, you don’t end up getting the help from the person you asked – the sounding board is actually what you need. @rob_farley

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• Christmas in the Clouds

  - by andrewbrust

  I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies.  And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services).  In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles.  But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), I’ve looked at Azure Drive and the new VM Role; I’ve looked quite a bit at SQL Azure (including the project “Houston” Silverlight UI) and I’ve looked at SQL Azure labs’ OData service too. I’ve also looked at DataMarket and its integration with both PowerPivot and native Excel.  Then there’s AppFabric Caching, SQL Azure Reporting (what I could learn of it) and the Visual Studio tooling for Azure, including the storage of certificate-based credentials.  And to round it out with some user stuff, on the BPOS side, I’ve been working with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and LiveMeeting. I have to say I like a lot of what I’ve been seeing.  Azure’s not perfect, and BPOS certainly isn’t either.  But there’s good stuff in all these products, and there’s a lot of value. Azure Goes Deep Most people know that Web and Worker roles put the platform in charge of spinning virtual machines up and down, and keeping them up to date. But you can go way beyond that now.  The still-in-beta VM Role gives you the power to craft the machine (much as does Amazon’s EC2), though it takes away the platform’s self-managing attributes.  It still spins instances up and down, making drive storage non-durable, but Azure Drive gives you the ability to store VHD files as blobs and mount them as virtual hard drives that are readable and writeable.  Whether with Azure Storage or SQL Azure, Azure does data.  And OData is everywhere.  Azure Table Storage supports an OData Interface.  So does SQL Azure and so does DataMarket (the former project “Dallas”).  That means that Azure data repositories aren’t just straightforward to provision and configure…they’re also easy to program against, from just about any programming environment, in a RESTful manner.  And for more .NET-centric implementations, Azure AppFabric caching takes the technology formerly known as “Velocity” and throws it up into the cloud, speeding data access even more. Snapping in Place Once you get the hang of it, this stuff just starts to work in a way that becomes natural to understand.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I was really happy to discover it. In retrospect, I am not surprised, because I think the various Azure teams are the center of gravity for Redmond’s innovation right now.  The products belie this and so do my observations of the product teams’ motivation and high morale.  It is really good to see this; Microsoft needs to lead somewhere, and they need to be seen as the underdog while doing so.  With Azure, both requirements are in place.   BPOS: Bad Acronym, Easy Setup BPOS is about products you already know; Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communications Server.  As such, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by BPOS.  Until you realize how easy it makes it to get all that stuff set up.  I would say that from sign-up to productive use took me about 45 minutes…and that included the time necessary to wrestle with my DNS provider, set up Outlook and my SmartPhone up to talk to the Exchange account, create my SharePoint site collection, and configure the Outlook Conferencing add-in to talk to the provisioned Live Meeting account. Never before did I think setting up my own Exchange mail could come anywhere close to the simplicity of setting up an SMTP/POP account, and yet BPOS actually made it faster.   What I want from my Azure Christmas Next Year Not everything about Microsoft’s cloud is good.  I close this post with a list of things I’d like to see addressed: BPOS offerings are still based on the 2007 Wave of Microsoft server technologies.  We need to get to 2010, and fast.  Arguably, the 2010 products should have been released to the off-premises channel before the on-premise sone.  Office 365 can’t come fast enough. Azure’s Internet tooling and domain naming, is scattered and confusing.  Deployed ASP.NET applications go to cloudapp.net; SQL Azure and Azure storage work off windows.net.  The Azure portal and Project Houston are at azure.com.  Then there’s appfabriclabs.com and sqlazurelabs.com.  There is a new Silverlight portal that replaces most, but not all of the HTML ones.  And Project Houston is Silvelright-based too, though separate from the Silverlight portal tooling. Microsoft is the king off tooling.  They should not make me keep an entire OneNote notebook full of portal links, account names, access keys, assemblies and namespaces and do so much CTRL-C/CTRL-V work.  I’d like to see more project templates, have them automatically reference the appropriate assemblies, generate the right using/Imports statements and prime my config files with the right markup.  Then I want a UI that lets me log in with my Live ID and pick the appropriate project, database, namespace and key string to get set up fast. Beta programs, if they’re open, should onboard me quickly.  I know the process is difficult and everyone’s going as fast as they can.  But I don’t know why it’s so difficult or why it takes so long.  Getting developers up to speed on new features quickly helps popularize the platform.  Make this a priority. Make Azure accessible from the simplicity platforms, i.e. ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) and LightSwitch.  Support .NET 4 now.  Make WebMatrix, IIS Express and SQL Compact work with the Azure development fabric. Have HTML helpers make Azure programming easier.  Have LightSwitch work with SQL Azure and not require SQL Express.  LightSwitch has some promising Azure integration now.  But we need more.  WebMatrix has none and that’s just silly, now that the Extra Small Instance is being introduced. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is great.  But I want Microsoft to make it even better and I want them to evangelize it much more aggressively.  There’s a lot of good material on Azure development out there, but it’s scattered in the same way that the platform is.   The Training Kit ties a lot of disparate stuff together nicely.  Make it known. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot All in all, diving deep into Azure was a good way to end the year.  Diving deeper into Azure should a great way to spend next year, not just for me, but for Microsoft too.

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• Notifications for Expiring DBSNMP Passwords

  - by Courtney Llamas

  Most user accounts these days have a password profile on them that automatically expires the password after a set number of days.   Depending on your company’s security requirements, this may be as little as 30 days or as long as 365 days, although typically it falls between 60-90 days. For a normal user, this can cause a small interruption in your day as you have to go get your password reset by an admin. When this happens to privileged accounts, such as the DBSNMP account that is responsible for monitoring database availability, it can cause bigger problems. In Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c you may notice the error message “ORA-28002: the password will expire within 5 days” when you connect to a target, or worse you may get “ORA-28001: the password has expired". If you wait too long, your monitoring will fail because the password is locked out. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get an alert 10 days before our DBSNMP password expired? Thanks to Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Metric Extensions (ME), you can! See the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator’s Guide for more information on Metric Extensions. To create a metric extension, select Enterprise / Monitoring / Metric Extensions, and then click on Create. On the General Properties screen select either Cluster Database or Database Instance, depending on which target you need to monitor.  If you have both RAC and Single instance you may need to create one for each. In this example we will create a Cluster Database metric.  Enter a Name for the ME and a Display Name. Then select SQL for the Adapter.  Adjust the Collection Schedule as desired, for this example we will collect this metric every 1 day. Notice for metric collected every day, we can determine the exact time we want to collect. On the Adapter page, enter the query that you wish to execute.  In this example we will use the query below that specifically checks for the DBSNMP user that is expiring within 10 days. Of course, you can adjust this query to alert for any user that can cause an outage such as an application account or service account such as RMAN. select username, account_status, trunc(expiry_date-sysdate) days_to_expirefrom dba_userswhere username = 'DBSNMP'and expiry_date is not null; The next step is to create the columns to store the data returned from the query.  Click Add and add a column for each of the fields in the same order that data is returned.  The table below will help you complete the column additions. Name Display Name Column Type Value Type Metric Category Unit Username User Name Key String Security AccountStatus Account Status Data String Security DaysToExpire Days Until Expiration Data Number Security Days When creating the DaysToExpire column, you can add a default threshold here for Warning and Critical (say < 10 and 5).  When all columns have been added, click Next. On the Credentials page, you can choose to use the default monitoring credentials or specify new credentials.  We will use the default credentials established for our target (dbsnmp). The next step is to test your Metric Extension.  Click on Add to select a target for testing, then click Select. Now click the button Run Test to execute the test against the selected target(s). We can see in the example below that the Metric Extension has executed and returned a value of 68 days to expire. Click Next to proceed. Review the metric extension in the final screen and click Finish. The metric will be created in Editable status.  Select the metric, click Actions and select Deployable Draft. You can do this once more to move to Published. Finally, we want to apply this metric to a target. When managing many targets, it’s best to add your metric to a template, for details on adding a Metric Extension to a template see the Administrator’s Guide. For this example, we will deploy this to a target directly. Select Actions / Deploy to Targets. Click Add and select the target you wish to deploy to and click Submit.  Once deployment is complete, we can go to the target and view the Metric & Collection Settings to see the new metric and its thresholds.   After some time, you will find the metric has collected and the days to expiration for DBSNMP user can be seen in the All Metrics view.   For metrics collected once per day, you may have to wait up to 24 hours to see the metric and current severity. In the example below, the current severity is Clear (green check) as it is not scheduled to expire within 10 days. To test the notification, we can edit the thresholds for the new metric so they trigger an alert.  Our password expires in 139 days, so we’ll change our Warning to 140 and leave Critical at 5, in our example we also changed the collection time to every 5 minutes.  At the next collection, you’ll find that the current severity changes to a Warning and any related Incident Rules would be triggered to create an Incident or Notification as desired. Now that you get a notification that your DBSNMP passwords is about to expire, you can use OEM Command Line Interface (EM CLI) verb update_db_password to change it at both the database target and the OEM target in one step.  The caveat is you must know the existing password to use the update_db_password command.  To learn more about EM CLI, see the Oracle Enterprise Manager Command Line Interface Guide.  Below is an example of changing the password with the update_db_password verb.  $ ./emcli update_db_password -target_name=emrep -target_type=oracle_database -user_name=dbsnmp -change_at_target=yes -change_all_references=yes Enter value for old_password :Enter value for new_password :Enter value for retype_new_password :Successfully submitted a job to change the password in Enterprise Manager and on the target database: "emrep"Execute "emcli get_jobs -job_id=FA66C1C4D663297FE0437656F20ACC84" to check the status of the job.Search for job name "CHANGE_PWD_JOB_FA66C1C4D662297FE0437656F20ACC84" on the Jobs home page to check job execution details. The subsequent job created will typically run quickly enough that a blackout is not needed, however if you submit a script with many targets to change, your job may run slower so adding a blackout to the script is recommended. $ ./emcli get_jobs -job_id=FA66C1C4D663297FE0437656F20ACC84 Name Type Job ID Execution ID Scheduled Completed TZ Offset Status Status ID Owner Target Type Target Name CHANGE_PWD_JOB_FA66C1C4D662297FE0437656F20ACC84 ChangePassword FA66C1C4D663297FE0437656F20ACC84 FA66C1C4D665297FE0437656F20ACC84 2014-05-28 09:39:12 2014-05-28 09:39:18 GMT-07:00 Succeeded 5 SYSMAN oracle_database emrep After implementing the above Metric Extension and using the EM CLI update_db_password verb, you will be able to stay on top of your DBSNMP password changes without experiencing an unplanned monitoring outage.  

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• Can this PHP function be improved?

  - by jasondavis

  Below is some code I am working on for a navigation menu, if you are on a certain page, it will add a "current" css class to the proper tab. I am curious if there is a better way to do this in PHP because it really seems like a lot of code to do such a simple task? My pages will also have a jquery library already loaded, would it be better to set the tab with jquery instead of PHP? Any tips appreciated <?PHP active_header('page identifier goes here'); //ie; 'home' or 'users.online' function active_header($page_name) { // arrays for header menu selector $header_home = array('home' => true); $header_users = array( 'users.online' => true, 'users.online.male' => true, 'users.online.female' => true, 'users.online.friends' => true, 'users.location' => true, 'users.featured' => true, 'users.new' => true, 'users.browse' => true, 'users.search' => true, 'users.staff' => true ); $header_forum = array('forum' => true); $header_more = array( 'widgets' => true, 'news' => true, 'promote' => true, 'development' => true, 'bookmarks' => true, 'about' => true ); $header_money = array( 'account.money' => true, 'account.store' => true, 'account.lottery' => true, 'users.top.money' => true ); $header_account = array('account' => true); $header_mail = array( 'mail.inbox' => true, 'mail.sentbox' => true, 'mail.trash' => true, 'bulletins.post' => true, 'bulletins.my' => true, 'bulletins' => true ); // set variables if there array value exist if (isset($header_home[$page_name])){ $current_home = 'current'; }else if (isset($header_users[$page_name])){ $current_users = 'current'; }else if (isset($header_forum[$page_name])){ $current_forum = 'current'; }else if (isset($header_more[$page_name])){ $current_more = 'current'; }else if (isset($header_money[$page_name])){ $current_money = 'current'; }else if (isset($header_account[$page_name])){ $current_account = 'current'; }else if (isset($header_mail[$page_name])){ $current_mail = 'current'; } // show the links echo '<li class="' . (isset($current_home) ? $current_home : '') . '"><a href=""><em>Home</em></a></li>'; echo '<li class="' . (isset($current_users) ? $current_users : '') . '"><a href=""><em>Users</em></a></li>'; echo '<li class="' . (isset($current_forum) ? $current_forum : '') . '"><a href=""><em>Forum</em></a></li>'; echo '<li class="' . (isset($current_more) ? $current_more : '') . '"><a href=""><em>More</em></a></li>'; echo '<li class="' . (isset($current_money) ? $current_money : '') . '"><a href=""><em>Money</em></a></li>'; echo '<li class="' . (isset($current_account) ? $current_account : '') . '"><a href=""><em>Account</em></a></li>'; echo '<li class="' . (isset($current_mail) ? $current_mail : '') . '"><a href=""><em>Mail</em></a></li>'; } ?>

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• Failing rspec Rails Tutorial Chapter 9.3

  - by greyghost24

  I am failing 3 tests and I have found numerous examples on here and on on the internet in general but I can't seem to find where I'm going wrong. Thanks for any help. 1) User pages signup with valid information edit page Failure/Error: before { visit edit_user_path(user) } ActionView::Template::Error: undefined method `model_name' for NilClass:Class # ./app/views/users/edit.html.erb:6:in `_app_views_users_edit_html_erb___4113112884365867193_70232486166220' # ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:96:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>' 2) User pages signup with valid information edit page Failure/Error: before { visit edit_user_path(user) } ActionView::Template::Error: undefined method `model_name' for NilClass:Class # ./app/views/users/edit.html.erb:6:in `_app_views_users_edit_html_erb___4113112884365867193_70232486166220' # ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:96:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>' 3) User pages signup with valid information edit page Failure/Error: before { visit edit_user_path(user) } ActionView::Template::Error: undefined method `model_name' for NilClass:Class # ./app/views/users/edit.html.erb:6:in `_app_views_users_edit_html_erb___4113112884365867193_70232486166220' # ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:96:in `block (5 levels) in <top (required)>' Finished in 0.26515 seconds 3 examples, 3 failures Failed examples: rspec ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:100 # User pages signup with valid information edit page rspec ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:99 # User pages signup with valid information edit page rspec ./spec/requests/user_pages_spec.rb:101 # User pages signup with valid information edit page authentication_pages_spec.rb require 'spec_helper' describe "Authentication" do subject { page } describe "signin page" do before { visit signin_path } it { should have_selector('h1', text: 'Sign in') } it { should have_selector('title', text: 'Sign in') } end describe "signin" do before { visit signin_path } describe "with invalid information" do before { click_button "Sign in" } it { should have_selector('title', text: 'Sign in') } it { should have_selector('div.alert.alert-error', text: 'Invalid') } describe "after visiting another page" do before { click_link "Home" } it { should_not have_selector('div.alert.alert-error') } end end describe "with valid information" do let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) } before do fill_in "Email", with: user.email fill_in "Password", with: user.password click_button "Sign in" end it { should have_selector('title', text: user.name) } it { should have_link('Profile', href: user_path(user)) } it { should have_link('Sign out', href: signout_path) } it { should_not have_link('Sign in', href: signin_path) } describe "followed by signout" do before { click_link "Sign out" } it { should have_link('Sign in') } end end end end Here is the users_controller: class UsersController < ApplicationController def show @user = User.find(params[:id]) end def new @user = User.new end def create @user = User.new(params[:user]) if @user.save sign_in @user flash[:success] = "Welcome to the Sample App!" redirect_to @user else render 'new' end end end def edit @user = User.find(params[:id]) end edit.html.erb: <% provide(:title, "Edit user") %> <h1>Update your profile</h1> <div class="row"> <div class="span6 offset3"> <%= form_for(@user) do |f| %> <%= render 'shared/error_messages' %> <%= f.label :name %> <%= f.text_field :name %> <%= f.label :email %> <%= f.text_field :email %> <%= f.label :password %> <%= f.password_field :password %> <%= f.label :password_confirmation, "Confirm Password" %> <%= f.password_field :password_confirmation %> <%= f.submit "Save changes", class: "btn btn-large btn-primary" %> <% end %> <%= gravatar_for @user %> <a href="http://gravatar.com/emails">change</a> </div> here is the user_pages_spec: require 'spec_helper' describe "User pages" do subject { page } describe "profile page" do let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) } before { visit user_path(user) } it { should have_selector('h1', text: user.name) } it { should have_selector('title', text: user.name) } end describe "signup page" do before { visit signup_path } it { should have_selector('h1', text: 'Sign up') } it { should have_selector('title', text: full_title('Sign up')) } end describe "signup" do before { visit signup_path } describe "with invalid information" do it "should not create a user" do expect { click_button "Create my account" }.not_to change(User, :count) end describe "error messages" do before { click_button "Create my account" } it { should have_selector('title', text: 'Sign up') } it { should have_content('error') } end end describe "with valid information" do before do fill_in "Name", with: "Example User" fill_in "Email", with: "[email protected]" fill_in "Password", with: "foobar" fill_in "Confirmation", with: "foobar" end it "should create a user" do expect do click_button "Create my account" end.to change(User, :count).by(1) end describe "after saving the user" do before { click_button "Create my account" } let(:user) { User.find_by_email('[email protected]') } it { should have_selector('title', text: user.name) } it { should have_selector('div.alert.alert-success', text: 'Welcome') } it { should have_link('Sign out') } end end end describe "signup page" do before { visit signup_path } it { should have_selector('h1', text: 'Sign up') } it { should have_selector('title', text: full_title('Sign up')) } end describe "signup" do before { visit signup_path } let(:submit) { "Create my account" } describe "with invalid information" do it "should not create a user" do expect { click_button submit }.not_to change(User, :count) end end describe "with valid information" do before do fill_in "Name", with: "Example User" fill_in "Email", with: "[email protected]" fill_in "Password", with: "foobar" fill_in "Confirmation", with: "foobar" end it "should create a user" do expect { click_button submit }.to change(User, :count).by(1) end describe "edit" do let(:user) { FactoryGirl.create(:user) } before { visit edit_user_path(user) } describe "page" do it { should have_selector('h1', text: "Update your profile") } it { should have_selector('title', text: "Edit user") } it { should have_link('change', href: 'http://gravatar.com/emails') } end describe "with invalid information" do before { click_button "Save changes" } it { should have_content('error') } end end end end end edit: users_controllers.rb was formatted incorrectly. It should look like this: class UsersController < ApplicationController def show @user = User.find(params[:id]) end def new @user = User.new end def create @user = User.new(params[:user]) if @user.save sign_in @user flash[:success] = "Welcome to the Sample App!" redirect_to @user else render 'new' end end def edit @user = User.find(params[:id]) end end

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• Listen to Over 100,000 Radio Stations in Windows Media Center

  - by Mysticgeek

  A cool feature in Windows 7 Media Center is the ability to listen to local FM radio. But what if you don’t have a tuner card that supports a connected radio antenna? The RadioTime plugin solves the problem by allowing access to thousands of online radio stations. With the RadioTime plugin for Windows Media Center, you’ll have access to over 100,000 online radio stations from around the world. Their guide is broken down into different categories such as Talk Radio, Music Radio, Sports Radio and more. It’s completely free, but does require registration to save preset stations. RadioTime It works with Media Center in XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (which we’re demonstrating here). When installing it for Windows 7, make sure to click the Installer link below the “Get It Now – Free” button as the installer works best for the new OS. Installation is extremely quick and easy… Now when you open Windows 7 Media Center you’ll find it located in the Extras category from the main menu. After you launch it, you’re presented with the RadioTime guide where you can browse through the different categories of stations. Your shown various station suggestions each time you start it up. The main categories are broken down further so you can find the right genre of the music your looking for.   World Radio offers you stations from all over the world categorized into different regions. RadioTime does support local stations via an FM tuner, but if you don’t have one, you can still access local stations provided they broadcast online. One thing about listening to your local stations online is the audio quality may not be as good as if you had a tuner connected. It provides information on most of the online stations. For example here we look at Minnesota Public Radio info and you get a schedule of when certain programs are on. Then get even more information about the topics on the shows. To use the Presets option you’ll need to log into your RadioTime account, or if you don’t have one just click on the link to create a free one.   Creating a free account is simple and basic on their site. You aren’t required to have an account to use the RadioTime plugin, it’s only if you want the additional benefits. Conclusion For this article we only tried it with Windows 7 Media Center, and sometimes the interface felt clunky when moving quickly through menus. Also, there isn’t a search feature from within Media Center, however, you can search stations from their site and add them to your presets. Despite a few shortcomings, this is a very cool way to get access to thousands of online radio stations through Windows Media Center. If you’re looking for a way to access thousands of radio stations through WMC, you might want to give RadioTime a try. Download RadioTime for Windows Media Center Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Listen To XM Radio with Windows Media Center in Windows 7Listen and Record Over 12,000 Online Radio Stations with RadioSureUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Learning Windows 7: Manage Your Music with Windows Media PlayerSchedule Updates for Windows Media Center TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet

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• BizTalk and IBM WebSphere MQ Errors

  - by Christopher House

  The project I'm currently working on is going to make heavy use of IBM WebShere MQ to send messages from BizTalk to the client's iSeries box.  I'd never previously worked with WebSphere MQ, so I didn't really have any idea what it would take to get this to work.  I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't too difficult to configure a send port and pass messages through it to a queue.  Or so I thought... A couple of weeks ago, the client gave me the name of a host, queue manager and queue that I'd been using for my development.  Everything was going great, I was able to put messages onto the queue, I was happy, the client was happy.  Life was good.  Then the client tells me that the host I've been connecting to is actually a Solaris box and that in prod, we'll actually be sending to an iSeries.  We both agree that it would behoove us to start pointing my dev environment to their dev iSeries box in order to flush out any weirdness there might be.  As it turns out, it was a good thing we made the change.  As soon as I reconfigured my BRE policy that sets endpoint information to point to the iSeries queue, we started seeing failures in the event log.  An example from the event log: Event Type: Error Event Source: BizTalk Server 2009 Event Category: BizTalk Server 2009 Event ID: 5754 Date:  6/9/2010 Time:  10:16:41 AM User:  N/A Computer: WINDOWS2003 Description: A message sent to adapter "MQSC" on send port "<my dynamic sendport name>" with URI "mqsc://client/tcp/<hostname>(1414)/<queue manager name>/<queue name>" is suspended.  Error details: Failure encountered while attempting to open queue. queue = <queue name> queueManager = <queue manager name>, reasonCode = 6124  MessageId:  {76825C7C-611A-4A56-8A6F-35E1124BDB5C}  InstanceID: {BA389103-DF9B-493F-8C61-44574822AAD6} The key piece of information in the event entry is the reasonCode, 6124.  A quick Google search shows that reasonCode 6124 is the code for MQRC_NOT_CONNECTED.  According to IBM's docs, this means that you've tried to send a message without first opening a connection to the queue manager.  Obviously, in the context of BizTalk, this is an unexpected error, since this sort of thing should be managed entirely by the send adapter. Perusing IBM's documentation a bit more, I came across some info on how to turn on tracing for MQ.  With tracing enabled, I tried sending a message again, then went and reviewed the trace files.  The bulk of the information in the trace files didn't mean a thing to me, but at the end of one of the files, I did notice this: 00006257 15:40:20.327795   3500.4      RSESS:000009 ------{  reqReleaseConn 00006258 15:40:20.328714   3500.4      RSESS:000009 ------}  reqReleaseConn (rc=OK) 00006259 15:40:20.328727   3500.4      RSESS:000009 ------{  xcsClearTraceIdent 0000625A 15:40:20.328739   3500.4           :       ------}  xcsClearTraceIdent (rc=OK) 0000625B 15:40:20.328752   3500.4           :       -----}! trmzstMQCONNX (rc=MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED) 0000625C 15:40:20.328765   3500.4           :       ----}! MQCONNX (rc=MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED) 0000625D 15:40:20.328766   3500.4           :       ---}! ImqQueueManager::connect (rc=MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED) 0000625E 15:40:20.328767   3500.4           :       --}! ImqObject::open (rc=MQRC_NOT_CONNECTED) 0000625F 15:40:20.328768   3500.4           :       --{  ImqQueue::lock 00006260 15:40:20.328769   3500.4           :       --}! ImqQueue::lock (rc=Unknown(1)) 00006261 15:40:20.328769   3500.4           :       --{  ImqQueue::unlock 00006262 15:40:20.328769   3500.4           :       --}! ImqQueue::unlock (rc=Unknown(1)) It seemed like the MQRC_NOT_CONNECTED error was being caused by a security related issue (MQRC_NOT_AUTHORIZED).  I did notice something earlier in the log where it appeared that MQ was passing a field named UID with a value equal to the account name that my BizTalk service was running under.  I ended up creating a new local account on the BizTalk server that had the same name as a user which had access to the queue manager on the iSeries.  I then created a new host instance that ran under this new account, created a send handler for the MQSC adapter on this new host instance and reconfigured my orchestration to run on the new host instance.  After bouncing all my host instances, I was now able to send messages to the iSeries. It's still not clear to me why we were able to connect to the Solaris server.  I ended up contacting IBM's support and they did confirm that the process sending to MQ does in fact pass the identity to the queue manager it's connecting to.

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• How to install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview

  - by ybbest

  The Office 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 Preview is announced yesterday and as a SharePoint Developer, I am really excited to learn all the new features and capabilities. Today I will show you how to install the preview. 1. Create a service account called SP2013Install and give this account Dbcreator and SecurityAdmin in SQL Server 2012 2. You need to run the following script to set the ‘maxdegree of parellism’ setting to the required value of 1 in SQL Server 2012(using sysadmin privilege) before configure the SharePoint Farm. Otherwise , you might get the error ‘This SQL Server Instance does not have the required maxdegree of parellism setting of 1’ sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE; GO sp_configure 'max degree of parallelism', 1; GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE; GO 3. Download the SharePoint preview from here and I am going to install it on Windows Server 2008R2 with SQL2012. 4. Click the Install software prerequisites, this works fine with the internet connection. (However, if you do not have internet connection, it is a bit tricky to install window azure AppFabric as it has to be installed using the prerequisite installer. Your computer might reboot a few times in the process.) 5.After the prerequisites are installed `completely, you can then install the Preview. Click the Install SharePoint Server and Enter the Product key you get from the Preview download page. 6. Accept the License terms and Click Next. 7. Leave the default path for the file location. 8. You can now start the installation process 9. After binary files are installed, you then can configure your farm using the farm configuration wizard. 10.Specify the Database server and the install account 11. Specify SharePoint farm passphrase. 12 Specify the port number , you should choose your own favorite port number. 13. Choose Create a New Server Farm and click next. 14. Double-check with the settings and click Next to Configure the farm install. 15. Finally, your farm is configured successfully and you now are able to go to your Central Admin site http://sp2010:6666/ 16. You should configure the services manually or automate using PowerShell (If you like to understand why,you can read the blog post here) ,however I will use the wizard to configure automatically here  as  this is a test machine. After the configuration is complete, you now be able to see your SharePoint Site. 17.To start the evaluate the Preview , you need to install Visual Studio 2012 RC , Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012,SharePoint 2013 Designer Preview , Office 2013 Preview. References: Download SharePoint2013 Server 2013 Download Microsoft Visio Professional 2013 Preview Install SharePoint 2013 Preview Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013 Preview SharePoint 2013 IT Pro and Developer training materials released Plan for SharePoint 2013 Preview Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 SharePoint 2013 Preview Office365 for the SharePoint 2013 preview SharePoint Designer 2013 Download: Microsoft Office 2013 Preview Language Pack Try Office

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• Stream Media from Windows 7 to XP with VLC Media Player

  - by DigitalGeekery

  So you’ve got yourself a new computer with Windows 7 and you’re itching to take advantage of it’s ability to stream media across your home network. But, the rest of the family is still on Windows XP and you’re not quite ready to shell out the cash for the upgrades. Well, today we’ll show you how to easily stream media from Windows 7 to Windows XP with VLC Media Player. On the host computer running Windows 7, you’ll need to have an account set up with both a username and password. A blank password will not work. The media files will need to be located in a shared folder. Note: If the media files are located within the Public directory, or within the profile of the user account you use to log into the Windows 7 computer, they will be shared automatically. Sharing your Media Folders On your Windows 7 computer, right-click on the folder containing the files you’d like to stream and choose Properties.     On the Sharing Tab of the folder properties, click the Share button. Click OK.   Type or select from the drop down the user account you’ll use to log in, or select “Everyone” to share with all users. Then click Add. You may change the permission level, but only Read permission is required to play the media. Repeat this process for any additional folders you wish to share.    The Windows XP Client Computer Now that we’ve shared our media folders from the Windows 7 computer, we’re ready to play our files on the Windows XP computer. Download and install the VLC Media Player. (See link below) Then open VLC. Click on Media from the and select Open File… Browse your network for the shared folder that contains your media.   You’ll be prompted to log in to the host computer. Provide the credentials for a user on the Windows 7 computer. Click OK.   Select your media file and click Open.    Your media playback will begin momentarily.   This is a nice and easy way to stream media across your home network without upgrading multiple computers to Windows 7.  Plus, VLC is certainly no slouch as a Media Player. It’ll play virtually any video or audio file you can throw at it. Have you already upgraded all your home PCs to Windows 7? Check out our previous article on streaming media between Windows 7 computers on your home network. Download VLC Media Player Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesShare Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Enable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media PlayerInstall and Use the VLC Media Player on Ubuntu LinuxInstalling Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Need Help with Your Home Network? Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images

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• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt2)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Planning. I could stop there and let that be the entirety post #2 in this series.  Planning is the single most important element in building a cluster and the Laptop Demo Cluster is no exception.  One of the more awkward parts of actually creating a cluster is coordinating information between Windows Clustering and SQL Clustering.  The dialog boxes show up hours apart, but still have to have matching and consistent information. Excel seems to be a good tool for tracking these settings.  My workbook has four pages: Systems, Storage, Network, and Service Accounts.  The systems page looks like this:   Name Role Software Location East Physical Cluster Node 1 Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Laptop VM West Physical Cluster Node 2 Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Laptop VM North Physical Cluster Node 3 (Future Reserved) Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Laptop VM MicroCluster Cluster Management Interface N/A Laptop VM SQL01 High-Performance High-Security Instance SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 SP1 Laptop VM SQL02 High-Performance Standard-Security Instance SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 SP1 Laptop VM SQL03 Standard-Performance High-Security Instance SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 SP1 Laptop VM Note that everything that has a computer name is listed here, whether physical or virtual. Storage looks like this: Storage Name Instance Purpose Volume Path Size (GB) LUN ID Speed Quorum MicroCluster Cluster Quorum Quorum Q: 2     SQL01Anchor SQL01 Instance Anchor SQL01Anchor L: 2     SQL02Anchor SQL02 Instance Anchor SQL02Anchor M: 2     SQL01Data1 SQL01 SQL Data SQL01Data1 L:\MountPoints\SQL01Data1 2     SQL02Data1 SQL02 SQL Data SQL02Data1 M:\MountPoints\SQL02Data1       Starting at the left is the name used in the storage array.  It is important to rename resources at each level, whether it is Storage, LUN, Volume, or disk folder.  Otherwise, troubleshooting things gets complex and difficult.  You want to be able to glance at a resource at any level and see where it comes from and what it is connected to. Networking is the same way:   System Network VLAN  IP Subnet Mask Gateway DNS1 DNS2 East Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 East Heartbeat Cluster2   255.255.255.0       West Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 West Heartbeat Cluster2   255.255.255.0       North Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 10.97.230.1 North Heartbeat Cluster2   255.255.255.0       SQL01 Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0       SQL02 Public Cluster1 10.97.230.x(DHCP) 255.255.255.0       One hallmark of a poorly planned and implemented cluster is a bunch of "Local Network Connection #n" entries in the network settings page.  That lets me know that somebody didn't care about the long-term supportabaility of the cluster.  This can be critically important with Hyper-V Clusters and their high NIC counts.  Final page:   Instance Service Name Account Password Domain OU SQL01 SQL Server SVCSQL01 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL01 SQL Agent SVCSQL01 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL02 SQL Server SVC_SQL02 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL02 SQL Agent SVC_SQL02 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL03 (Future) SQL Server SVC_SQL03 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts SQL03 (Future) SQL Agent SVC_SQL03 Baseline22 MicroAD Service Accounts             Installation Account           administrator            Yes.  I write down the account information.  I secure the file via NTFS, but I don't want to fumble around looking for passwords when it comes time to rebuild a node. Always fill out the workbook COMPLETELY before installing anything.  The whole point is to have everything you need at your fingertips before you begin.  The install experience is so much better and more productive with this information in place.

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• Don&rsquo;t Kill the Password

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  A week ago Mr. Honan from Wired.com penned an article on security he titled “Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore.” He asserts that the password is not effective and a new solution is needed. Unfortunately, Mr. Honan was a victim of hacking. As a result he has a victim’s vendetta. His conclusion is ill conceived even though there are smatterings of truth and good advice. The password is a security barrier much like a lock on your door. In of itself it’s not guaranteeing protection. You can have a good password akin to a steel reinforced door with the best lock money can buy, or you can have a poor password like “password” which is like a sliding lock like on a bathroom stall. But, just like in the real world a lock isn’t always enough. You can have a lock, security system, video cameras, guard dogs, and even armed security guards; but none of that guarantees your protection. Even top secret government agencies can be breached by someone who is just that good (as dramatized in movies like Mission Impossible). And that’s the crux of it. There are real hackers out there that are that good. Killer coding ninja monkeys do exist! We still have locks on our doors, because they still serve their role. Passwords are no different. Security doesn’t end with the password. Most people would agree that stuffing your mattress with your life savings isn’t a good idea even if you have the best locks and security system. Most people agree its safest to have the money in a bank. Essentially this is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization extends to the online world as well. You’re at risk if your online banking accounts are linked to the same account as your social networks. This is especially true if you’re lackadaisical about linking those social networks to outside sources including apps. The object here is to minimize the damage that can be done. An attacker should not be able to get into your bank account, because they breached your Twitter account. It’s time to prioritize once you’ve compartmentalized. This simply means deciding how much security you want for the different compartments which I’ll call security zones. Social networking applications like Facebook provide a lot of security features. However, security features are almost always a compromise with privacy and convenience. It’s similar to an engineering adage, but in this case it’s security, convenience, and privacy – pick two. For example, you might use a safe instead of bank to store your money, because the convenience of having your money closer or the privacy of not having the bank records is more important than the added security. The following are lists of security do’s and don’ts (these aren’t meant to be exhaustive and each could be an article in of themselves): Security Do’s: Use strong passwords based on a phrase Use encryption whenever you can (e.g. HTTPS in Facebook) Use a firewall (and learn to use it properly) Configure security on your router (including port blocking) Keep your operating system patched Make routine backups of important files Realize that if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product Security Don’ts Link accounts if at all possible Reuse passwords across your security zones Use real answers for security questions (e.g. mother’s maiden name) Trust anything you download Ignore message boxes shown by your system or browser Forget to test your backups Share your primary email indiscriminately Only you can decide your comfort level between convenience, privacy, and security. Attackers are going to find exploits in software. Software is complex and depends on other software. The exploits are the responsibility of the software company. But your security is always your responsibility. Complete security is an illusion. But, there is plenty you can do to minimize the risk online just like you do in the physical world. Be safe and enjoy what the Internet has to offer. I expect passwords to be necessary just as long as locks.

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• How to install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview

  - by ybbest

  The Office 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 Preview is announced yesterday and as a SharePoint Developer, I am really excited to learn all the new features and capabilities. Today I will show you how to install the preview. 1. Create a service account called SP2013Install and give this account Dbcreator and SecurityAdmin in SQL Server 2012 2. You need to run the following script to set the ‘maxdegree of parellism’ setting to the required value of 1 in SQL Server 2012(using sysadmin privilege) before configure the SharePoint Farm. Otherwise , you might get the error ‘This SQL Server Instance does not have the required maxdegree of parellism setting of 1’ sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE; GO sp_configure 'max degree of parallelism', 1; GO RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE; GO 3. Download the SharePoint preview from here and I am going to install it on Windows Server 2008R2 with SQL2012. 4. Click the Install software prerequisites, this works fine with the internet connection. (However, if you do not have internet connection, it is a bit tricky to install window azure AppFabric as it has to be installed using the prerequisite installer. Your computer might reboot a few times in the process.) 5.After the prerequisites are installed `completely, you can then install the Preview. Click the Install SharePoint Server and Enter the Product key you get from the Preview download page. 6. Accept the License terms and Click Next. 7. Leave the default path for the file location. 8. You can now start the installation process 9. After binary files are installed, you then can configure your farm using the farm configuration wizard. 10.Specify the Database server and the install account 11. Specify SharePoint farm passphrase. 12 Specify the port number , you should choose your own favorite port number. 13. Choose Create a New Server Farm and click next. 14. Double-check with the settings and click Next to Configure the farm install. 15. Finally, your farm is configured successfully and you now are able to go to your Central Admin site http://sp2010:6666/ 16. You should configure the services manually or automate using PowerShell (If you like to understand why,you can read the blog post here) ,however I will use the wizard to configure automatically here  as  this is a test machine. After the configuration is complete, you now be able to see your SharePoint Site. 17.To start the evaluate the Preview , you need to install Visual Studio 2012 RC , Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012,SharePoint 2013 Designer Preview , Office 2013 Preview. References: Download SharePoint2013 Server 2013 Download Microsoft Visio Professional 2013 Preview Install SharePoint 2013 Preview Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013 Preview SharePoint 2013 IT Pro and Developer training materials released Plan for SharePoint 2013 Preview Microsoft Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012 SharePoint 2013 Preview Office365 for the SharePoint 2013 preview SharePoint Designer 2013 Download: Microsoft Office 2013 Preview Language Pack Try Office

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• SOA Community Newsletter June 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA partner community member Thanks for showing us your interest to rerun the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps! After knowing your suggestions we are happy to announce the 3rd edition of our advanced Fusion Middleware training. The camps will take place from August 26th - 30th 2013 in Lisbon Portugal. Topics will include Adaptive Case Management (ACM) as part of BPM Suite, b2b, Advanced SOA and SOA Governance. Please make sure you plan and book your seat in advance - (Booking is on the basis of first come first seat!). Thanks for all your efforts to become certified and Specialized. For all the experts who achieved the SOA Suite 11g Essentials or BPM Suite 11g Certified Implementation Specialist, you can download a logo for your blog or business card at the Competence Center. For all the companies who achieved a SOA or BPM specialization you can request a nice Plaques for your office. As part of our Industrial SOA article services we published “Canonizing a Language for Architecture” in the Service Technology Magazine and on Oracle Technology Network. If you write books or a blog - make sure you share it with us! Cloud Computing is the hottest topic in IT, specially as an architect you should be aware of the concepts and technology, therefore I highly recommend you Thomas Erl’s latest book named “Cloud Computing”. In the BPM space, Adaptive Case Management (ACM) is the hottest topic, with BPM PS6 the backend ACM functionality and an ACM sample application are available. You can even combine this hype with Customer Experience. The BPM section in this newsletter reflects the high importance of the topic and includes BPM PS6 video showing process lifecycle,BPM Resource Kit, Functional Testing, Introduction to Web Forms, Customized Workspace Application and Instance Patching Demo. B2B also become more and more popular in the Oracle SOA Suite. If you could not attend the training organized in the month May, we offer you an additional B2B training as a part of the Summer Camps or you can download the B2B training material from our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). Thanks to all for sharing the valuable SOA content with our community! Special thanks to ec4u for the new reference of SOA Suite and AIA Foundation Pack at a Swiss insurance company. It is time to submit a SOA and BPM  reference request today! In this edition of the newsletter you will see Guido and Ronald's second part of OSB article series and Kathiravan Udayakumar's published an exclusive article on SOA Suite best practice. If you want to submit your content for the next edition of the Newsletter then please feel free to submit it to myself. The A-Team is an excellent contributor to the best practice - make sure you visit the new A-Team page and read their articles such as Getting to know Maven. Also on the SOA side, we have published many new articles from the community Oracle SOA Suite for the Busy IT Professional by Frank Munz, SOA Suite Knowledge - Polyglot Service Implementation with Groovy by Alexander Suchier, QA82 Analyzer - Automated Quality Assurance for Oracle SOA Suite Projects, Verifying the Target by Anthony Reynolds and a new book called Oracle SOA Governance 11g Implementation book by Luis Augusto Weir. Two new SOA on-demand training courses NEW - Oracle Business Rules Self-Study Course & Introduction Human Workflow online course are available now! Make use of the Summer Time and get trained - hope to see you in Lisbon for the Summer Camps! Jürgen Kress Oracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soanewsJune2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress,SOA,BPM

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• System.Threading.ThreadAbortException executing WCF service

  - by SURESH GIRIRAJAN

  In one of our prod server we recently ran into issue when we went and update the web.config and try to browse the service. We started seeing the service was not responding and getting the following warning in the application log. Our service is WCF service, BizTalk orchestration exposed as service. We have other prod server where we never ran into this issue, so what’s different with this server. After going thru lot of forum and came up on some Microsoft service pack and hot fix which related to FCN. But I don’t want to apply any patch on this server then we need to do on all the other servers too. So solution is simple, I dropped the existing website, created a new site with different name with updated web.config browse the service. Then dropped that site and recreate the original web site and it worked fine without any issue. Event Viewer:  Event Type:        Warning Event Source:    ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0 Event Category:                Web Event Event ID:              1309 Date:                     6/6/2011 Time:                    5:41:42 PM User:                     N/A Computer:          PRODP02 Description: Event code: 3005 Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred. Event time: 6/6/2011 5:41:42 PM Event time (UTC): 6/6/2011 9:41:42 PM Event ID: a71769f42b304355a58c482bfec267f2 Event sequence: 3 Event occurrence: 1 Event detail code: 0  Application information:     Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/518296899/ROOT/PortArrivals-2-129518698821558995     Trust level: Full     Application Virtual Path: /TESTSVC     Application Path: D:\inetpub\wwwroot\RFID\TESTSVC\     Machine name: PRODP02  Process information:     Process ID: 8752     Process name: w3wp.exe     Account name: domain\BizTalk_Svc_Hostlso  Exception information:     Exception type: ThreadAbortException     Exception message: Thread was being aborted.  Request information:     Request URL: http://localhost:81/TESTSVC/TESTSVCS.svc     Request path: /TESTSVC/TESTSVCS.svc     User host address: 127.0.0.1     User:      Is authenticated: False     Authentication Type:      Thread account name: domain\BizTalk_Svc_Hostlso  Thread information:     Thread ID: 22     Thread account name: domain\BizTalk_Svc_Hostlso     Is impersonating: False     Stack trace:    at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)    at System.Web.HttpApplication.ApplicationStepManager.ResumeSteps(Exception error)  at System.Web.HttpApplication.System.Web.IHttpAsyncHandler.BeginProcessRequest(HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, Object extraData)    at System.Web.HttpRuntime.ProcessRequestInternal(HttpWorkerRequest wr)  <Description>Handling an exception.</Description> <AppDomain>/LM/W3SVC/518296899/ROOT/TESTSVC-6-129518741899334691</AppDomain> <Exception> <ExceptionType>System.Threading.ThreadAbortException, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089</ExceptionType> <Message>Thread was being aborted.</Message> <StackTrace> at System.Threading.Monitor.Enter(Object obj) at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath) at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.EnsureServiceAvailableFast(String relativeVirtualPath) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.HandleRequest() at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.BeginRequest() at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.OnBeginRequest(Object state) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke2() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ProcessCallbacks() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.CompletionCallback(Object state) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ScheduledOverlapped.IOCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) at System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.Utility.IOCompletionThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(UInt32 error, UInt32 bytesRead, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) </StackTrace> <ExceptionString>System.Threading.ThreadAbortException: Thread was being aborted.    at System.Threading.Monitor.Enter(Object obj)    at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath)    at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostingEnvironment.EnsureServiceAvailableFast(String relativeVirtualPath)    at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.HandleRequest()    at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.BeginRequest()    at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.OnBeginRequest(Object state)    at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke2()    at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke()    at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ProcessCallbacks()    at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.CompletionCallback(Object state)    at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ScheduledOverlapped.IOCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped)    at System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.Utility.IOCompletionThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(UInt32 error, UInt32 bytesRead, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped)</ExceptionString>

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• Windows Azure Mobile Services Updates Keep Coming

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Some exciting new Windows Azure Mobile Services features were delivered to production this week. The highlights include: iPhone and iPad connectivity support via a new iOS SDK Integrated Authentication so developers can configure user authentication via Microsoft Account, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. New server-side Mobile Service script modules Access to Structured Storage, Windows Azure Blob, Table, Queues, and ServiceBus Email services through partnership with SendGrid SMS & voice services through partnership with Twilio Mobile Services hosting expanded to west coast US The iOS SDK I’m excited to share that we've announced the release of an under-development iOS client SDK for Windows Azure Mobile Services. The iOS SDK joins the Windows 8 SDK launched with Windows Azure Mobile Services as well as client SDKs released by Xamarin for MonoTouch and MonoDroid.  The native iOS SDK is for developers programming in Objective-C on the iPhone and iPad platforms. The SDK gives developers the same level of access to data storage using dynamic schematization that is available for Windows 8. Also, iOS applications can use the same authentication options available in Mobile Services. While full iOS support is still in development, the libraries are currently available on GitHub. There’s a great getting started tutorial to walk you through building a simple iOS “Todo List” app that stores data in Windows Azure.  These additional tutorials explore how to use the iOS client libraries to store data and authenticate users: Get Started with data in Mobile Services for iOS Get Started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS What’s New in Authentication Available to both iOS and Windows 8 developers, Mobile Services has expanded its authentication options.  Developers can now use Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google authentication. Similar to using Microsoft accounts for authentication, developers must sign up and through Facebook, Twitter, or Google's developer portal in order to authenticate through them.  These tutorials walk through how to register your Mobile Service with an identity provider: How to register your app with Microsoft Account How to register your app with Facebook How to register your app with Twitter How to register your app with Google And these tutorials walk through authenticating against Mobile Services: Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (C#) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for Windows Store (JavaScript) Get started with authentication in Mobile Services for iOS What’s New in Mobile Service Scripts Some great new functionality is now available in the Mobile Service script layer.  These server side scripts are triggered off of any CRUD operation on a Mobile Service's table and can already handle doing data and query validation, filtering, web requests and more.  Today, the Azure SDK module is now available to these scripts giving them access to blob storage, service bus, table storage.  Check out the new tutorials on the Windows Azure Node.js developer center to learn more about working with Blob, Tables, Queues and Service Bus using the azure module. In addition, SendGrid and Twilio are now available via modules that can be called from the scripts as well.  This gives developers the ability to send emails (SendGrid) or SMS text messages (Twilio) whenever a script is fired.  Windows Azure customers receive a special offer of 25,000 free emails per month from SendGrid and 1000 free text messages from Twilio. Expanded Data Center Availability In addition to Mobile Services being available in our US East data center, they can now be spun up in US West. The above features are all now live in production and are available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using Mobile Services today. The Windows Azure Mobile Developer Center has been updated with new tutorials that cover these new features in detail. And don’t forget - Windows Azure Mobile Services are still free for your first ten applications running on shared compute instances. Stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows Azure announcements, updates, and links: @clinted

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• Stay on Schedule in Chrome with DayHiker

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you keep your schedule and tasks in Google Calendar?  Here’s a handy extension for Google Chrome that can keep you on top of your appointments without having to open Google Calendar in another tab. Integrate Google Calendar with Chrome DayHiker is a handy extension for Google Chrome that can help you stay on schedule in your browser.  Desktop applications typically can keep you notified easier with popups or alerts, but webapps require you to visit them to view your information.  DayHiker takes the best of both, and can make your Google Calendar work more like a desktop application. To get started, open the DayHiker page from the Chrome Extensions Gallery (link below), and click Install.  Confirm you wish to install it at the prompt. Now you’ll have a new extension button in your Chrome toolbar.  Click the calendar icon to view your Google Calendar.  You’ll need to be signed into your Google account for your calendar to display; click the key icon to select your account if it doesn’t show your appointments automatically. If you’re signed into multiple Google accounts, such as your public Gmail and a Google Apps account, you can select the calendar you wish and click Continue. Now you can quickly see your upcoming appointments.  Simply hover over the icon to see your upcoming events.  Or, just glance at it to see if there are any appointments coming up, as the indicator icon will change colors to show how long you have until your next appointment. Click the icon to see more information about your appointments. Or, click the Add link to add a new appointment.  If you need to edit the appointment details, click Edit Details and the appointment will open in Google Calendar for you to edit. You can also view and manage your tasks in Google Calendar.  Click the checkmark icon, and then add or check-off tasks directly from the extension pane. You can also set an alarm clock in DayHiker.  Click the green circle icon, and then enter the time for the alarm to go off.  Strangely it will only chime if the extension pane is left open, so if you click anywhere else in the browser or even switch to another program it will not chime.   If you’d like to customize DayHiker’s settings, right-click on it and select Options, or select Options in the Chrome Extensions page.  Here you can customize your badges and the DayHiker icon, or enter a custom domain for your Google Apps Pro calendar.   Conclusion If you rely on Google Calendar to stay on top of your schedule, DayHiker can help you stay scheduled and know what’s coming up.  We wish DayHiker supported multiple calendars so we could combine our Google Apps calendars with our personal Google Calendar, but even still, it is a very useful tool.  Whether you’re a tightly scheduled person or just like to jot down to-dos and keep track of them, this extension will help you do this efficiently with familiar Google tools. Link Download DayHiker from the Chrome Extensions Gallery Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Configure Disk Defragmenter Schedule in Windows 7 or VistaSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterOpen Multiple Sites Without Reopening the Menus in FirefoxFind a Website’s Actual Location with Chrome FlagsSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single Click TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Dual Boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 What is HTML5? Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good

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• Access Music from Amie Street in Boxee

  - by Mysticgeek

  One of our favorite sites for discovering new music is Amie Street. Today we take a look at the Amie Street app for Boxee that allows you to access your favorite tunes from the Boxee interface. Amie Street is a cool site that allows you to discover a lot of cool music from independent artists. What makes Amie Street unique is that most of the music starts out free, then the price goes up incrementally as its popularity grows. The Amie Street App for Boxee let’s you access music and playlists you’ve created on the site, with more features are on the way. For this example we’re using the mouse and keyboard, but of course you can also get to each section using your remote if you have one. Or you can turn your iPod touch into a Boxee remote too. Amie Street in Boxee To access the Amie Street app, launch Boxee and click on Apps from the main menu. Under the Search Sidebar type in Amie Street and select it from the results field.   Then you can add it to the My Apps section…and double-click on the icon. Click on Start to begin using it. You’ll be be presented with a Welcome screen where you can sign into your account. If you don’t have an account yet, there is also an option to go to the Amie Street site and create one. Enter in your account credentials… Now you’ll be able to access your Library, Playlists, Search for new tunes, and check out your Recommended bands and artists. Hover the pointer over an album to get a bit more info about it such as the music genre. You’ll be able to play the songs from the playlists you created on the Amie Street site. You can browse through the history of the music you’ve played as well. Not all the features of this app seem to work as you’d expect them to, and some of the features are not yet available like the Browse feature.   Conclusion At the time of this writing we weren’t able to purchase music or get additional information about the artists. As development continues on Boxee and this app, you can expect more of a full user experience and the ability to purchase music. Even though some of the features are a bit buggy or not available, if you’re a Boxee user and a fan of Amie Street, this is cool app to add to your collection. Download Boxee for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Learn more about Amie Street on Boxee Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Amie Street Downloader Makes Purchasing Music EasierFind Free or Cheap Indie Music at Amie StreetIntegrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Using Pandora in BoxeeGetting Started with Boxee TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Watch World Cup Online On These Sites Speed Up Windows With ReadyBoost Awesome World Cup Soccer Calendar Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like)

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• Integrating with Fusion Applications using SOAP web services and REST APIs (Part 1 of 2) by Arvind Srinivasamoorthy

  - by JuergenKress

  Fusion Applications provides several types of interfaces to facilitate integration with other applications within the enterprise and on the cloud.As one of the key integration interfaces, Fusion Applications (FA) supports SOAP services based integration, both inbound and outbound. At this point FA doesn’t provide REST API’s but it is planned for a future release. It is however possible to invoke external REST APIs from FA which we will discuss. Oracle continues to invest in improving both SOAP and REST based connectivity. The content in this blog is based on features that were available at the time of writing it. In this two part blog, I will cover the following topics briefly. Invoking FA SOAP web services from external applications Identifying the FA SOAP web service to be invoked Sample invocation from an external application Techniques to invoke FA services from an ADF application Invoking external SOAP Web Services from FA (covered in Part 2) Invoking external REST APIs from FA (covered in Part 2) I’ll touch upon some basics, so that you can quickly build a few SOAP/REST interactions with FA. If you do not already have access to an FA instance (on-premise or SaaS), you can request for a free 30 day trial of the Oracle Sales Cloud using http://cloud.oracle.com 1. Invoking FA SOAP web services from external applications There are two main types of services that FA exposes -  ADF Services - These services allow you to perform CRUD operations on Fusion business objects. For example, Sales Party Service, Opportunity Service etc. Using these services you can typically perform operations such as get, find, create, delete, update etc on FA objects.These services are typically useful for UI driven integrations such as looking up FA information from external application UIs, using third party Interfaces to create/update data in FA. They are also used in non-UI driven integration uses cases such as initial upload of business or setup data, synchronizing data with an external systems, etc. - Composite Services – These services involve more logic than CRUD and often involving human workflows, rules etc. These services perform a business function such as Get Orchestration Order Service and are used when building larger process based integrations with external systems.These services are usually asynchronous in nature and are not typically used for UI integration patterns. 1a. Identifying the FA SOAP web service to be invoked All FA web service metadata is available through an OER instance (Oracle Enterprise Repository) which is publicly available via http://fusionappsoer.oracle.com. This is the starting point for you to discover the services that you are going to work with. You do not need to own a FA account to browse the services using the above UI You can use the search area on the left to narrow down your search to what you are looking for. For example, you can choose the type as by ADF Services or Composite, you can narrow your search to a specific FA version, Product Family etc. Read the complete article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: AppAdvantage,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress,Arvind Srinivasamoorthy

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• Using GMail's SMTP and IMAP servers in Notification Mailer

  - by Saroja Kandepuneni

  Overview GMail offers free, reliable, popular SMTP and IMAP services, because of which many people are interested to use it. GMail can be used when there are no in-house SMTP/IMAP servers for testing or debugging purposes. This blog explains how to install GMail SSL certificate in Concurrent Tier, testing the connection using a standalone program, running Mailer diagnostics and configuring GMail IMAP and SMTP servers for Workflow Notification Mailer Inbound and Outbound connections. GMail servers configuration SMTP server Host Name  smtp.gmail.com SSL Port  465 TLS/SSL required  Yes User Name  Your full email address (including @gmail.com or @your_domain.com) Password  Your gmail passwor  IMAP server  Host Name imap.gmail.com  SSL Port 993 TLS/SSL Required Yes  User Name  Your full email address (including @gmail.com or @your_domain.com)  Password Your gmail password GMail SSL Certificate Installation The following is the procedure to install the GMail SSL certificate Copy the below GMail SSL certificate to a file eg: gmail.cer -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE----- Install the SSL certificate into the default JRE location or any other location using below command Installing into a dfeault JRE location in EBS instance         # keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore $AF_JRE_TOP/lib/security/cacerts  -storepass changeit -alias gmail-lnx_chainnedcert -file gmail.cer Install into a custom location         # keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore <customLocation>  -storepass changeit -alias gmail-lnx_chainnedcert -file gmail.cer       <customLocation> -- directory in instance where the certificate need to be installed After running the above command you can see the following response         Trust this certificate? [no]:  yes        Certificate was added to keystore Running Mailer Command Line Diagnostics Run Mailer command line diagnostics from conccurrent tier where Mailer is running, to check the IMAP connection using the below command $AFJVAPRG -classpath $AF_CLASSPATH -Dprotocol=imap -Ddbcfile=$FND_SECURE/$TWO_TASK.dbc -Dserver=imap.gmail.com -Dport=993 -Dssl=Y -Dtruststore=$AF_JRE_TOP/lib/security/cacerts -Daccount=<gmail username> -Dpassword=<password> -Dconnect_timeout=120 -Ddebug=Y -Dlogfile=GmailImapTest.log -DdebugMailSession=Y oracle.apps.fnd.wf.mailer.Mailer Run Mailer command line diagnostics from concurrent tier where Mailer is running, to check the SMTP connection using the below command   $AFJVAPRG -classpath $AF_CLASSPATH -Dprotocol=smtp -Ddbcfile=$FND_SECURE/$TWO_TASK.dbc -Dserver=smtp.gmail.com -Dport=465 -Dssl=Y -Dtruststore=$AF_JRE_TOP/lib/security/cacerts -Daccount=<gmail username> -Dpassword=<password> -Dconnect_timeout=120 -Ddebug=Y -Dlogfile=GmailSmtpTest.log -DdebugMailSession=Y oracle.apps.fnd.wf.mailer.Mailer Standalone program to verify the IMAP connection Run the below standalone program from the concurrent tier node where Mailer is running to verify the connection with GMail IMAP server. It connects to the Gmail IMAP server with the given GMail user name and password and lists all the folders that exist in that account. If the Gmail IMAP server is not working for the  Mailer check whether the PROCESSED and DISCARD folders exist for the GMail account, if not create manually by logging into GMail account.Sample program to test GMail IMAP connection  The standalone program can be run as below  $java GmailIMAPTest GmailUsername GMailUserPassword            Standalone program to verify the SMTP connection Run the below standalone program from the concurrent tier node where Mailer is running to verify the connection with GMail SMTP server. It connects to the GMail SMTP server by authenticating with the given user name and password  and sends a test email message to the give recipient user email address. Sample program to test GMail SMTP connection The standalone program can be run as below  $java GmailSMTPTest GmailUsername gMailPassword recipientEmailAddress    Warnings As gmail.com is an external domain, the Mailer concurrent tier should allow the connection with GMail server Please keep in mind when using it for corporate facilities, that the e-mail data would be stored outside the corporate network

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• Where's My Windows Azure Subscriptions

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/11/03/wheres-my-windows-azure-subscriptions.aspxYesterday when I opened Windows Azure manage portal I found some resources were missed. I checked the website for those missed cloud service and they are still live. Then I checked my billing history but didn't found any problem. When I back to the portal I found that all of those resource are under my MSDN subscription. So I remembered that if this is related with the recently Windows Azure platform update.   This feature named "Enterprise Management", which provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution. By default, all existing windows azure account would have a default Windows Azure Active Directory (a.k.a. WAAD) associated. In the address bar I can find the default login WAAD of my account, which is "microsoft.onmicrosoft.com". To change the WAAD we can click "subscriptions" on top of the manage portal, select the active directory from the list of "filter by directory" and select the subscription we want to see, then press "apply". As you can see, the subscription under my MSDN was located in a WAAD named "beijingtelecom.onmicrosoft.com". This is because when Microsoft applied this feature, they will check if you have an existing WAAD in your subscription. If not, it will create a new one, otherwise it will use your WAAD and move your subscription into this directory. Since I created a WAAD for test several months ago, this subscription was moved to this directory.   To change the subscription's directory is simple. First we need to create a new WAAD with the name we preferred. As below I created a new directory named "shaunxu". Then select "settings" from the left navigation bar, select the subscription we wanted to change and click "edit directory". You don't have the permission to edit/change directory unless your Microsoft Account is the service administrator of this subscription. Then in the popup window, select the WAAD you want to change and press "next". All done. You need to log off and log in the portal then your subscription will be in the directory you wanted. And after these steps I can view my resources in this subscription.   Summary In this post I described how to change subscriptions into a new directory. With this new feature we can manage our Windows Azure subscription more flexible. But there are something we need keep in mind. 1. Only the service administrator could be able to move subscription. 2. Currently there's no way for us to see our Windows Azure services in more than one directory at the same time. Like me, I can see my services under "shaunxu.onmicrosoft.com" and I must change the filter directory from the "subscriptions" menu to see other services under "microsoft.onmicrosoft.com". 3. Currently we cannot delete an existing WAAD.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• SOA Community Newsletter October 2013

  - by JuergenKress

  Dear SOA & BPM Partner Community member, Our October newsletter edition focuses on Oracle OpenWorld 2013, highlights, keynotes and all presentations. Thanks to all partners who made the conference a huge success. If you could not come to San Francisco you will find all the details within this newsletter. As the newsletter edition contains a lot of content thus we have three sections - SOA, BPM & ACM, and AppAdvantage & UX. Make sure you share your content with the community, best via twitter @soacommunity #soacommunity! What is new in SOA Suite 12c? At OOW the product management team demonstrated some of the key features of the upcoming version. The important SOA topics are mobile integration and cloud integration - make sure you re-use your existing SOA platform! Bruce Tierney showcased the Agilent mobile integration and you try the new Mobile Order Management for EBS GSE Demo using middleware technology. On cloud integration the product management team presented several OOW sessions and published two whitepapers. As SOA becomes mature the awareness for SOA Governance continues to raise, Introducing Oracle Enterprise Repository Express Workflows and watch Luis Weir: Challenges to Implementing SOA Governance. Thanks to Ronald for the SOA Made Simple | Introduction to SOA series, the next article in the Industrial SOA series is SOA and User Interfaces (UI). Have you achieved successful BPM implementation? Nominate your customer references for the Gartner Business Process Management Excellence Awards 2014. Do you want to showcase the latest BPM Suite? Make sure you use the hosted BPM PS6 (11.1.1.7) demo. Do you want to become an expert in BPM Suite? Attend one of our BPM Bootcamps in Germany, Netherland, Spain or UK! If you can not make it – we offer plenty of on-demand content Advanced BPM Scenarios & BPM Architecture Topics & Process Modeling and Life Cycle & Adaptive Case Management & Smart Application Extensibility with Oracle Process Accelerators. I would also recommend to watch great introduction to Adaptive Case Management the on-demand webcast with Bruce Silver & Ajay Khanna. Thanks to Mark Foster from the A-team for the ACM article series & Leon Smiers for their blog posts. If you accomplished a SOA Suite or BPM Suite project and want to become a certified SOA or BPM expert, we are offering again free vouchers to become a certified SOA & BPM expert (limited to partners in Europe Middle East and Africa). Don't miss this opportunity and become Specialized! Best regards, Jürgen Kress To read the newsletter please visit http://tinyurl.com/soaNewsOctober2013 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• SOA Community Newsletter May 2014

  - by JuergenKress

  Registration for the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps 2014 is open – Register asap for one of our bootcamps August 4th – 8th 2014 in Lisbon. Please read details and pre-requisitions careful before you register. We expect that like in the past, the conference will be booked out soon! If you can’t make it to Lisbon attend our SOA Suite 11c free on-demand Bootcamp or  Managing the Complexity of IoT online trainings. With more than 5000 customers, SOA Suite Achieves Significant Customer Adoption and Industry Recognition.Thanks to all our SOA Specialized partners for making our joins SOA customers successful! As a summary of the Industrial SOA series we published the Podcast Show Notes: SOA and Cloud - Where's This Relationship Going? Make sure you use the Oracle Demo Systems for your customer presentations. The demo systems are hosted by Oracle and include complete scenarios based on the latest Middleware version like the new B2B SOA Suite Demo System! For local presentations without fast internet use the SOA/BPM 11.1.1.7.1 Virtual Machine and Case Management Sample. At our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required) you can get new IoT presentations for Location Based Offers for Banking & Whitepaper and online Webcast & Utility presentation. In this newsletter you will find many articles about OSB: OSB 11g – A Hands-on Tutorial & Using Split-Joins in OSB Services for parallel processing of messages & OSB, Service Callouts and OQL & Working with Oracle Security Token Service. Thanks for sharing all the additional SOA articles within the community: How to configure Oracle SOA/BPM task auto release & Controlling BPEL process flow at runtime & Upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS6 (11.1.1.7)? Do this. & BPEL and BPM's performance monitoring using DMS & SOA 11g - Create RESTful Service In Oracle SOA & Wrong timezone causes TopLink warning in SOA suite. Highlight of the BPM and ACM section is the IDC BPM vendor report. The new bundle Patch including the ACM UI is now available. If you want to learn more about ACM, get the ACM training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). A great demo for your next BPM presentation is the BPM iPad app. It’s simpleMobile BPM is Not An Option. It’s a Necessity. Thanks for sharing all the additional BPM articles within the community: BPM update adds Case Management Web Interface and REST APIs & Implementing deadline functionality with Oracle Adaptive Case Management & BPM 11g Timeout Heuristics & Humantask Assignment: Names and Expressions Assignment via Rules. In our last section Architecture, it is all about design. Usability is a key factor for customer satisfaction, worth to spend some time and read the Simplified User Experience Design Patterns eBook. Great blueprint for your project! See you in Lisbon! To read the newsletter please visit www.tinyurl.com/soaNewsMay2014 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Cloud Computing Pricing - It's like a Hotel

  - by BuckWoody

  I normally don't go into the economics or pricing side of Distributed Computing, but I've had a few friends that have been surprised by a bill lately and I wanted to quickly address at least one aspect of it. Most folks are used to buying software and owning it outright - like buying a car. We pay a lot for the car, and then we use it whenever we want. We think of the "cloud" services as a taxi - we'll just pay for the ride we take an no more. But it's not quite like that. It's actually more like a hotel. When you subscribe to Azure using a free offering like the MSDN subscription, you don't have to pay anything for the service. But when you create an instance of a Web or Compute Role, Storage, that sort of thing, you can think of the idea of checking into a hotel room. You get the key, you pay for the room. For Azure, using bandwidth, CPU and so on is billed just like it states in the Azure Portal. so in effect there is a cost for the service and then a cost to use it, like water or power or any other utility. Where this bit some folks is that they created an instance, played around with it, and then left it running. No one was using it, no one was on - so they thought they wouldn't be charged. But they were. It wasn't much, but it was a surprise.They had the hotel room key, but they weren't in the room, so to speak. To add to their frustration, they had to talk to someone on the phone to cancel the account. I understand the frustration. Although we have all this spelled out in the sign up area, not everyone has the time to read through all that. I get that. So why not make this easier? As an explanation, we bill for that time because the instance is still running, and we have to tie up resources to be available the second you want them, and that costs money. As far as being able to cancel from the portal, that's also something that needs to be clearer. You may not be aware that you can spin up instances using code - and so cancelling from the Portal would allow you to do the same thing. Since a mistake in code could erase all of your instances and the account, we make you call to make sure you're you and you really want to take it down. Not a perfect system by any means, but we'll evolve this as time goes on. For now, I wanted to make sure you're aware of what you should do. By the way, you don't have to cancel your whole account not to be billed. Just delete the instance from the portal and you won't be charged. You don't have to call anyone for that. And just FYI - you can download the SDK for Azure and never even hit the online version at all for learning and playing around. No sign-up, no credit card, PO, nothing like that. In fact, that's how I demo Azure all the time. Everything runs right on your laptop in an emulated environment.  

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