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  • Within headers, images with alt text vs. text

    - by Court
    Do search engines treat the alt text of an image placed within an h1 tag the same way they would treat regular text placed in an h1 tag? I gave a search through here looking for an answer to this question, but was only able to find information on image replacement and the infamous h1 debate. For example would: <h1><img src="#" alt="Contact Us" /></h1> Act the same as: <h1>Contact Us</h1> In the electronic eye of a search engine? This seems considerably less "CSS Hacky" than other image replacement techniques like negative text indents, display:none, height:0, or ridiculous z-index integers.

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  • Using Google to find programming answers (does locale matter)?

    - by Jason
    I have overseas developers working for me, and sometimes I am surprised they can't find the same resources online that I do. They are in a South America country... and Google defaults to their language/locale. What do you think about this, when using it to solve computer programs? There is very little software development done in their country (as compared to the US). Is Google skewing their results for articles in their language or posted on sites that are local to them? Should I insist that they bypass their local Google search and have them use the US version?

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  • get value from database based on array in codeigniter

    - by Developer
    I have an array $user = array([0]=>1 [1]=>2 [2]=>3) which contains id's of certain users. I need to get the countries of these users from database. foreach($userid as $user){ $this->db->select('country'); $this->db->where('user_id',$user); $this->db->from('company'); $usercountry = $this->db->get(); $count = $usercountry->row(); $country = $count->country; } Suppose user1 has country ES, user2 has IN, user3 has US, user4 has UK. then if array contains 1,2,3. Then i need to get the countries ES,IN,US.

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  • Getting deadlocks in MySQL

    - by at
    We're very frustratingly getting deadlocks in MySQL. It isn't because of exceeding a lock timeout as the deadlocks happen instantly when they do happen. Here's the SQL code that is executing on 2 separate threads (with 2 separate connections from the connection pool) that produces a deadlock: UPDATE Sequences SET Counter = LAST_INSERT_ID(Counter + 1) WHERE Sequence IS NULL Sequences table has 2 columns: Sequence and Counter The LAST_INSERT_ID allows us to retrieve this updated counter value as per MySQL's recommendation. That works perfect for us, but we get these deadlocks! Why are we getting them and how can we avoid them?? Thanks so much for any help with this.

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  • Ubuntu 9.10 and Squid 2.7 Transparent Proxy TCP_DENIED

    - by user38400
    Hi, We've spent the last two days trying to get squid 2.7 to work with ubuntu 9.10. The computer running ubuntu has two network interfaces: eth0 and eth1 with dhcp running on eth1. Both interfaces have static ip's, eth0 is connected to the Internet and eth1 is connected to our LAN. We have followed literally dozens of different tutorials with no success. The tutorial here was the last one we did that actually got us some sort of results: http://www.basicconfig.com/linuxnetwork/setup_ubuntu_squid_proxy_server_beginner_guide. When we try to access a site like seriouswheels.com from the LAN we get the following message on the client machine: ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved Invalid Request error was encountered while trying to process the request: GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: www.seriouswheels.com Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.307.11 Safari/532.9 Cache-Control: max-age=0 Accept: application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,/;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Cookie: __utmz=88947353.1269218405.1.1.utmccn=(direct)|utmcsr=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); __qca=P0-1052556952-1269218405250; __utma=88947353.1027590811.1269218405.1269218405.1269218405.1; __qseg=Q_D Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 Some possible problems are: Missing or unknown request method. Missing URL. Missing HTTP Identifier (HTTP/1.0). Request is too large. Content-Length missing for POST or PUT requests. Illegal character in hostname; underscores are not allowed. Your cache administrator is webmaster. Below are all the configuration files: /etc/squid/squid.conf, /etc/network/if-up.d/00-firewall, /etc/network/interfaces, /var/log/squid/access.log. Something somewhere is wrong but we cannot figure out where. Our end goal for all of this is the superimpose content onto every page that a client requests on the LAN. We've been told that squid is the way to do this but at this point in the game we are just trying to get squid setup correctly as our proxy. Thanks in advance. squid.conf acl all src all acl manager proto cache_object acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32 acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8 acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/24 acl SSL_ports port 443 # https acl SSL_ports port 563 # snews acl SSL_ports port 873 # rsync acl Safe_ports port 80 # http acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp acl Safe_ports port 443 # https acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http acl Safe_ports port 631 # cups acl Safe_ports port 873 # rsync acl Safe_ports port 901 # SWAT acl purge method PURGE acl CONNECT method CONNECT http_access allow manager localhost http_access deny manager http_access allow purge localhost http_access deny purge http_access deny !Safe_ports http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports http_access allow localhost http_access allow localnet http_access deny all icp_access allow localnet icp_access deny all http_port 3128 hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ? cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid/cache1 1000 16 256 access_log /var/log/squid/access.log squid refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080 refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440 refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0 0% 0 refresh_pattern (Release|Package(.gz)*)$ 0 20% 2880 refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320 acl shoutcast rep_header X-HTTP09-First-Line ^ICY.[0-9] upgrade_http0.9 deny shoutcast acl apache rep_header Server ^Apache broken_vary_encoding allow apache extension_methods REPORT MERGE MKACTIVITY CHECKOUT cache_mgr webmaster cache_effective_user proxy cache_effective_group proxy hosts_file /etc/hosts coredump_dir /var/spool/squid access.log 1269243042.740 0 192.168.1.11 TCP_DENIED/400 2576 GET NONE:// - NONE/- text/html 00-firewall iptables -F iptables -t nat -F iptables -t mangle -F iptables -X echo 1 | tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3128 networking auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 142.104.109.179 netmask 255.255.224.0 gateway 142.104.127.254 auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 192.168.1.100 netmask 255.255.255.0

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  • Postfix - Gmail - Mountain Lion // can't send mail

    - by miako
    I have read most of the tutorials found on google but still can't make it work. I run the command : date | mail -s "Test" [email protected] . The log is this : Oct 22 11:38:00 XXX.local postfix/master[288]: daemon started -- version 2.9.2, configuration /etc/postfix Oct 22 11:38:00 XXX.local postfix/pickup[289]: 9D85418A031: uid=501 from=<me> Oct 22 11:38:00 XXX.local postfix/cleanup[291]: 9D85418A031: message-id=<[email protected]> Oct 22 11:38:00 XXX.local postfix/qmgr[290]: 9D85418A031: from=<[email protected]>, size=327, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Oct 22 11:38:00 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: initializing the client-side TLS engine Oct 22 11:38:02 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: setting up TLS connection to smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587 Oct 22 11:38:02 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587: TLS cipher list "ALL:!EXPORT:!LOW:+RC4:@STRENGTH:!eNULL" Oct 22 11:38:02 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:before/connect initialization Oct 22 11:38:02 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv2/v3 write client hello A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 read server hello A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587: certificate verification depth=2 verify=0 subject=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA Oct 22 11:38:03 --- last message repeated 1 time --- Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587: certificate verification depth=1 verify=1 subject=/C=US/O=Google Inc/CN=Google Internet Authority G2 Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587: certificate verification depth=0 verify=1 subject=/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Google Inc/CN=smtp.gmail.com Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 read server certificate A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 read server done A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 write client key exchange A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 write change cipher spec A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 write finished A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 flush data Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 read server session ticket A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: SSL_connect:SSLv3 read finished A Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587: subject_CN=smtp.gmail.com, issuer_CN=Google Internet Authority G2, fingerprint E4:CA:10:85:C3:53:00:E6:A1:D2:AC:C4:35:E4:A2:10, pkey_fingerprint=D6:06:2E:15:AF:DF:E9:50:A5:B4:E2:E4:C5:2E:F9:BA Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: Untrusted TLS connection established to smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587: TLSv1 with cipher RC4-SHA (128/128 bits) Oct 22 11:38:03 XXX.local postfix/smtp[293]: 9D85418A031: to=<[email protected]>, relay=smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109]:587, delay=3.4, delays=0.26/0.13/2.8/0.26, dsn=5.5.1, status=bounced (host smtp.gmail.com[173.194.70.109] said: 530-5.5.1 Authentication Required. Learn more at 530 5.5.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=14257 s3sm54097220eeo.3 - gsmtp (in reply to MAIL FROM command)) Oct 22 11:38:04 XXX.local postfix/cleanup[291]: D4D2F18A03C: message-id=<[email protected]> Oct 22 11:38:04 XXX.local postfix/qmgr[290]: D4D2F18A03C: from=<>, size=2382, nrcpt=1 (queue active) Oct 22 11:38:04 XXX.local postfix/bounce[297]: 9D85418A031: sender non-delivery notification: D4D2F18A03C Oct 22 11:38:04 XXX.local postfix/qmgr[290]: 9D85418A031: removed Oct 22 11:38:04 XXX.local postfix/local[298]: D4D2F18A03C: to=<[email protected]>, relay=local, delay=0.11, delays=0/0.08/0/0.02, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered to mailbox) Oct 22 11:38:04 XXX.local postfix/qmgr[290]: D4D2F18A03C: removed Oct 22 11:39:00 XXX.local postfix/master[288]: master exit time has arrived I am really confused as i have never setup MTA again an i need it for local web development. I don't use XAMPP. I use the built in Servers. Can anyone guide me?

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  • Performance Tuning a High-Load Apache Server

    - by futureal
    I am looking to understand some server performance problems I am seeing with a (for us) heavily loaded web server. The environment is as follows: Debian Lenny (all stable packages + patched to security updates) Apache 2.2.9 PHP 5.2.6 Amazon EC2 large instance The behavior we're seeing is that the web typically feels responsive, but with a slight delay to begin handling a request -- sometimes a fraction of a second, sometimes 2-3 seconds in our peak usage times. The actual load on the server is being reported as very high -- often 10.xx or 20.xx as reported by top. Further, running other things on the server during these times (even vi) is very slow, so the load is definitely up there. Oddly enough Apache remains very responsive, other than that initial delay. We have Apache configured as follows, using prefork: StartServers 5 MinSpareServers 5 MaxSpareServers 10 MaxClients 150 MaxRequestsPerChild 0 And KeepAlive as: KeepAlive On MaxKeepAliveRequests 100 KeepAliveTimeout 5 Looking at the server-status page, even at these times of heavy load we are rarely hitting the client cap, usually serving between 80-100 requests and many of those in the keepalive state. That tells me to rule out the initial request slowness as "waiting for a handler" but I may be wrong. Amazon's CloudWatch monitoring tells me that even when our OS is reporting a load of 15, our instance CPU utilization is between 75-80%. Example output from top: top - 15:47:06 up 31 days, 1:38, 8 users, load average: 11.46, 7.10, 6.56 Tasks: 221 total, 28 running, 193 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 66.9%us, 22.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 2.6%id, 3.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.7%si, 4.5%st Mem: 7871900k total, 7850624k used, 21276k free, 68728k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 3750664k cached The majority of the processes look like: 24720 www-data 15 0 202m 26m 4412 S 9 0.3 0:02.97 apache2 24530 www-data 15 0 212m 35m 4544 S 7 0.5 0:03.05 apache2 24846 www-data 15 0 209m 33m 4420 S 7 0.4 0:01.03 apache2 24083 www-data 15 0 211m 35m 4484 S 7 0.5 0:07.14 apache2 24615 www-data 15 0 212m 35m 4404 S 7 0.5 0:02.89 apache2 Example output from vmstat at the same time as the above: procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 8 0 0 215084 68908 3774864 0 0 154 228 5 7 32 12 42 9 6 21 0 198948 68936 3775740 0 0 676 2363 4022 1047 56 16 9 15 23 0 0 169460 68936 3776356 0 0 432 1372 3762 835 76 21 0 0 23 1 0 140412 68936 3776648 0 0 280 0 3157 827 70 25 0 0 20 1 0 115892 68936 3776792 0 0 188 8 2802 532 68 24 0 0 6 1 0 133368 68936 3777780 0 0 752 71 3501 878 67 29 0 1 0 1 0 146656 68944 3778064 0 0 308 2052 3312 850 38 17 19 24 2 0 0 202104 68952 3778140 0 0 28 90 2617 700 44 13 33 5 9 0 0 188960 68956 3778200 0 0 8 0 2226 475 59 17 6 2 3 0 0 166364 68956 3778252 0 0 0 21 2288 386 65 19 1 0 And finally, output from Apache's server-status: Server uptime: 31 days 2 hours 18 minutes 31 seconds Total accesses: 60102946 - Total Traffic: 974.5 GB CPU Usage: u209.62 s75.19 cu0 cs0 - .0106% CPU load 22.4 requests/sec - 380.3 kB/second - 17.0 kB/request 107 requests currently being processed, 6 idle workers C.KKKW..KWWKKWKW.KKKCKK..KKK.KKKK.KK._WK.K.K.KKKKK.K.R.KK..C.C.K K.C.K..WK_K..KKW_CK.WK..W.KKKWKCKCKW.W_KKKKK.KKWKKKW._KKK.CKK... KK_KWKKKWKCKCWKK.KKKCK.......................................... ................................................................ From my limited experience I draw the following conclusions/questions: We may be allowing far too many KeepAlive requests I do see some time spent waiting for IO in the vmstat although not consistently and not a lot (I think?) so I am not sure this is a big concern or not, I am less experienced with vmstat Also in vmstat, I see in some iterations a number of processes waiting to be served, which is what I am attributing the initial page load delay on our web server to, possibly erroneously We serve a mixture of static content (75% or higher) and script content, and the script content is often fairly processor intensive, so finding the right balance between the two is important; long term we want to move statics elsewhere to optimize both servers but our software is not ready for that today I am happy to provide additional information if anybody has any ideas, the other note is that this is a high-availability production installation so I am wary of making tweak after tweak, and is why I haven't played with things like the KeepAlive value myself yet.

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  • How to install php-devel under CentOS 6.3 x64?

    - by Jeremy Dicaire
    I'm trying to install php-devel on my CentOS 6.3 VPS and get a failed dependencies test. From phpinfos(): SYSTEM Linux 2.6.32-279.5.2.el6.x86_64 #1 x86_64 NTS error: Failed dependencies: php(x86-64) = 5.4.6-1.el6.remi is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.x86_64 I've tried the following RPM packages: php54w-devel-5.4.6-1.w6.x86_64.rpm php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686.rpm php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.x86_64.rpm One of the above package gave me this: root@sv1 [/tmp]# rpm -Uvh php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686.rpm warning: php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686.rpm: Header V3 DSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 00f97f56: NOKEY error: Failed dependencies: php(x86-32) = 5.4.6-1.el6.remi is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libbz2.so.1 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libcom_err.so.2 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libcrypto.so.10 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libedit.so.0 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libgmp.so.3 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libgssapi_krb5.so.2 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libk5crypto.so.3 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libkrb5.so.3 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libncurses.so.5 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libssl.so.10 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libstdc++.so.6 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libxml2.so.2 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libxml2.so.2(LIBXML2_2.4.30) is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libxml2.so.2(LIBXML2_2.5.2) is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libxml2.so.2(LIBXML2_2.6.0) is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libxml2.so.2(LIBXML2_2.6.11) is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libxml2.so.2(LIBXML2_2.6.5) is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 libz.so.1 is needed by php-devel-5.4.6-1.el6.remi.i686 I don't know how to fix this error and download all the dependencies. Thank you. Edit 1 (for quanta): Here is "yum repolist": root@sv1 [/tmp]# yum repolist Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: mirror.atlanticmetro.net * epel: mirror.cogentco.com * extras: mirror.atlanticmetro.net * rpmforge: mirror.us.leaseweb.net * updates: centos.mirror.choopa.net repo id repo name status base CentOS-6 - Base 5,980+366 epel Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - x86_64 6,493+1,272 extras CentOS-6 - Extras 4 rpmforge RHEL 6 - RPMforge.net - dag 2,123+2,310 updates CentOS-6 - Updates 499+29 repolist: 15,099 root@sv1 [/tmp]# rpm -qa | grep php didn't return any result. I forgot to mention I'm using cPanel/WHM Edit 2 after adding the Remi repo: >root@sv1 [/etc/yum.repos.d]# yum clean all Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto Cleaning repos: base epel extras remi remi-test rpmforge updates Cleaning up Everything Cleaning up list of fastest mirrors 1 delta-package files removed, by presto >root@sv1 [/etc/yum.repos.d]# yum repolist Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto Determining fastest mirrors epel/metalink | 12 kB 00:00 * base: centos.mirror.nac.net * epel: mirror.symnds.com * extras: centos.mirror.choopa.net * remi: remi-mirror.dedipower.com * remi-test: remi-mirror.dedipower.com * rpmforge: mirror.us.leaseweb.net * updates: centos.mirror.nac.net base | 3.7 kB 00:00 base/primary_db | 4.5 MB 00:00 epel | 4.3 kB 00:00 epel/primary_db | 4.7 MB 00:00 extras | 3.0 kB 00:00 extras/primary_db | 6.3 kB 00:00 remi | 2.9 kB 00:00 remi/primary_db | 330 kB 00:00 remi-test | 2.9 kB 00:00 remi-test/primary_db | 85 kB 00:00 rpmforge | 1.9 kB 00:00 rpmforge/primary_db | 2.5 MB 00:00 updates | 3.5 kB 00:00 updates/primary_db | 2.3 MB 00:00 repo id repo name status base CentOS-6 - Base 5,980+366 epel Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - x86_64 6,493+1,272 extras CentOS-6 - Extras 4 remi Les RPM de remi pour Enterprise Linux 6 - x86_64 96+564 remi-test Les RPM de remi en test pour Enterprise Linux 6 - x86_64 25+139 rpmforge RHEL 6 - RPMforge.net - dag 2,123+2,310 updates CentOS-6 - Updates 499+29 repolist: 15,220 >root@sv1 [/etc/yum.repos.d]# yum install php-devel Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, presto Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: centos.mirror.nac.net * epel: mirror.symnds.com * extras: centos.mirror.choopa.net * remi: remi-mirror.dedipower.com * remi-test: remi-mirror.dedipower.com * rpmforge: mirror.us.leaseweb.net * updates: centos.mirror.nac.net Setting up Install Process No package php-devel available. Error: Nothing to do >root@sv1 [/etc/yum.repos.d]#

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  • How to setup stunnel so that gmail can use my own smtp server to send messages.

    - by igorhvr
    I am trying to setup gmail to send messages using my own smtp server. I am doing this by using stunnel over a non-ssl enabled server. I am able to use my own smtp client with ssl enabled just fine to my server. Unfortunately, however, gmail seems to be unable to connect to my stunnel port. Gmail seems to be simply closing the connection right after it is established - I get a "SSL socket closed on SSL_read" on my server logs. On gmail, I get a "We are having trouble authenticating with your other mail service. Please try changing your SSL settings. If you continue to experience difficulties, please contact your other email provider for further instructions." message. Any help / tips on figuring this out will be appreciated. My certificate is self-signed - could this perhaps be related to the problem I am experiencing? I pasted the entire SSL session (logs from my server) below. 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082491584]: Service ssmtp accepted FD=0 from 209.85.210.171:46858 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Service ssmtp started 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: FD=0 in non-blocking mode 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Option TCP_NODELAY set on local socket 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Waiting for a libwrap process 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Acquired libwrap process #0 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Releasing libwrap process #0 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Released libwrap process #0 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Service ssmtp permitted by libwrap from 209.85.210.171:46858 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: Service ssmtp accepted connection from 209.85.210.171:46858 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: FD=1 in non-blocking mode 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG6[20897:3082267504]: connect_blocking: connecting 127.0.0.1:25 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: connect_blocking: s_poll_wait 127.0.0.1:25: waiting 10 seconds 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: connect_blocking: connected 127.0.0.1:25 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: Service ssmtp connected remote server from 127.0.0.1:3701 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Remote FD=1 initialized 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Option TCP_NODELAY set on remote socket 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: Negotiations for smtp (server side) started 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: RFC 2487 not detected 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: Protocol negotiations succeeded 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): before/accept initialization 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 read client hello A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 write server hello A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 write certificate A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 write certificate request A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 flush data 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: CRL: verification passed 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: VERIFY OK: depth=2, /C=US/O=Equifax/OU=Equifax Secure Certificate Authority 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: CRL: verification passed 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: VERIFY OK: depth=1, /C=US/O=Google Inc/CN=Google Internet Authority 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: CRL: verification passed 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: VERIFY OK: depth=0, /C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Google Inc/CN=smtp.gmail.com 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 read client certificate A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 read client key exchange A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 read certificate verify A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 read finished A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 write change cipher spec A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 write finished A 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL state (accept): SSLv3 flush data 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 1 items in the session cache 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 client connects (SSL_connect()) 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 client connects that finished 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 client renegotiations requested 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 1 server connects (SSL_accept()) 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 1 server connects that finished 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 server renegotiations requested 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 session cache hits 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 external session cache hits 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 session cache misses 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: 0 session cache timeouts 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG6[20897:3082267504]: SSL accepted: new session negotiated 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG6[20897:3082267504]: Negotiated ciphers: RC4-MD5 SSLv3 Kx=RSA Au=RSA Enc=RC4(128) Mac=MD5 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: SSL socket closed on SSL_read 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Socket write shutdown 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG5[20897:3082267504]: Connection closed: 167 bytes sent to SSL, 37 bytes sent to socket 2011.01.02 16:56:20 LOG7[20897:3082267504]: Service ssmtp finished (0 left)

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  • AWS Load balancer connection reset

    - by joshmmo
    I have an ELB set up with two instances. The issue I have with it is that when I do not add www. to it, the ELB just hangs. This is some info I get when I spider with wget: Spider mode enabled. Check if remote file exists. --2013-06-20 13:40:54-- http://learning.example.com/ Resolving learning.example.com... 54.xxx.x.x53, 50.xx.xxx.x71 Connecting to learning.example.com|54.xxx.x.x53|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... No data received. Retrying. when I add www. it works great. I have a GoDaddy SSL cert that I added to the listener section that covers 3 domains, www.learning.example.com, files.learning.example.com and learning.example.com. These are my listener settings: - HTTP 80 HTTPS 443 N/A N/A - SSL 443 SSL 443 Change canvasNew (Change) My EC2 instances are running apache2 on Ubuntu 12.04. I will be happy to post my vhosts file if needed. However, when I ran the server with the domains pointing to just one EC2 instance things worked fine. How can I fix this issue for learning.example.com? Why does www work just fine? A second question would be what is the difference between instance protocol and load balancer protocol? EDIT: Here are the dig results for learning.example.com from yesterday. I changed the DNS entry to point to one instance to make sure it was the elb. When I switch it back I will do it for www.learning.example.com ; <<>> DiG 9.9.1-P2 <<>> learning.example.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 20210 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;learning.example.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: learning.example.com. 2559 IN CNAME canvas-22222222222.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com. canvas-22222222222.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com. 60 IN A 54.xxx.x.x53 canvas-22222222222.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com. 60 IN A 50.xx.xxx.x71 ;; Query time: 83 msec ;; SERVER: 10.x.xx.20#53(10.x.xx.20) ;; WHEN: Thu Jun 20 13:40:47 2013 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 137 EDIT 2: Here is some more info that might be helpful. Port Configuration: 80 (HTTP) forwarding to 443 (HTTPS) Backend Authentication: Disabled Stickiness: Disabled(edit) 443 (SSL, Certificate: canvasNew) forwarding to 443 (SSL) Backend Authentication: Disabled So I switched everything to one EC2 IP address to bypass the elb to make sure things are working. It's running great. www and the non-www url work perfectly fine. Its only when I switch things to the ELB that learning.example.com hangs and www.learning.example.com works. Hopefully you can get some ideas flowing.

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  • VMware vSphere cluster design for site redundancy

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

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  • Distributed and/or Parallel SSIS processing

    - by Jeff
    Background: Our company hosts SaaS DSS applications, where clients provide us data Daily and/or Weekly, which we process & merge into their existing database. During business hours, load in the servers are pretty minimal as it's mostly users running simple pre-defined queries via the website, or running drill-through reports that mostly hit the SSAS OLAP cube. I manage the IT Operations Team, and so far this has presented an interesting "scaling" issue for us. For our daily-refreshed clients, the server is only "busy" for about 4-6 hrs at night. For our weekly-refresh clients, the server is only "busy" for maybe 8-10 hrs per week! We've done our best to use some simple methods of distributing the load by spreading the daily clients evenly among the servers such that we're not trying to process daily clients back-to-back over night. But long-term this scaling strategy creates two notable issues. First, it's going to consume a pretty immense amount of hardware that sits idle for large periods of time. Second, it takes significant Production Support over-head to basically "schedule" the ETL such that they don't over-lap, and move clients/schedules around if they out-grow the resources on a particular server or allocated time-slot. As the title would imply, one option we've tried is running multiple SSIS packages in parallel, but in most cases this has yielded VERY inconsistent results. The most common failures are DTExec, SQL, and SSAS fighting for physical memory and throwing out-of-memory errors, and ETLs running 3,4,5x longer than expected. So from my practical experience thus far, it seems like running multiple ETL packages on the same hardware isn't a good idea, but I can't be the first person that doesn't want to scale multiple ETLs around manual scheduling, and sequential processing. One option we've considered is virtualizing the servers, which obviously doesn't give you any additional resources, but moves the resource contention onto the hypervisor, which (from my experience) seems to manage simultaneous CPU/RAM/Disk I/O a little more gracefully than letting DTExec, SQL, and SSAS battle it out within Windows. Question to the forum: So my question to the forum is, are we missing something obvious here? Are there tools out there that can help manage running multiple SSIS packages on the same hardware? Would it be more "efficient" in terms of parallel execution if instead of running DTExec, SQL, and SSAS same machine (with every machine running that configuration), we run in pairs of three machines with SSIS running on one machine, SQL on another, and SSAS on a third? Obviously that would only make sense if we could process more than the three ETL we were able to process on the machine independently. Another option we've considered is completely re-architecting our SSIS package to have one "master" package for all clients that attempts to intelligently chose a server based off how "busy" it already is in terms of CPU/Memory/Disk utilization, but that would be a herculean effort, and seems like we're trying to reinvent something that you would think someone would sell (although I haven't had any luck finding it). So in summary, are we missing an obvious solution for this, and does anyone know if any tools (for free or for purchase, doesn't matter) that facilitate running multiple SSIS ETL packages in parallel and on multiple servers? (What I would call a "queue & node based" system, but that's not an official term). Ultimately VMWare's Distributed Resource Scheduler addresses this as you simply run a consistent number of clients per VM that you know will never conflict scheduleing-wise, then leave it up to VMWare to move the VMs around to balance out hardware usage. I'm definitely not against using VMWare to do this, but since we're a 100% Microsoft app stack, it seems like -someone- out there would have solved this problem at the application layer instead of the hypervisor layer by checking on resource utilization at the OS, SQL, SSAS levels. I'm open to ANY discussion on this, and remember no suggestion is too crazy or radical! :-) Right now, VMWare is the only option we've found to get away from "manually" balancing our resources, so any suggestions that leave us on a pure Microsoft stack would be great. Thanks guys, Jeff

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  • SQL SERVER – Out of the Box – Activty and Performance Reports from SSSMS

    - by pinaldave
    SQL Server management Studio 2008 is wonderful tool and has many different features. Many times, an average user does not use them as they are not aware about these features. Today, we will learn one such feature. SSMS comes with many inbuilt performance and activity reports, but we do not use it to the full potential. Let us see how we can access these standard reports. Connect to SQL Server Node >> Right Click on it >> Go to Reports >> Click on Standard Reports >> Pick Any Report. Click to Enlarge You can see there are many reports, which an average users needs right away, are available there. Let me list all the reports available. Server Dashboard Configuration Changes History Schema Changes History Scheduler Health Memory Consumption Activity – All Blocking Transactions Activity – All Cursors Activity – All Sessions Activity – Top Sessions Activity – Dormant Sessions Activity -  Top Connections Top Transactions by Age Top Transactions by Blocked Transactions Count Top Transactions by Locks Count Performance – Batch Execution Statistics Performance – Object Execution Statistics Performance – Top Queries by Average CPU Time Performance – Top Queries by Average IO Performance – Top Queries by Total CPU Time Performance – Top Queries by Total IO Service Broker Statistics Transactions Log Shipping Status In fact, when you look at the above list, it is fairly clear that they are very thought out and commonly needed reports that are available in SQL Server 2008. Let us run a couple of reports and observe their result. Performance – Top Queries by Total CPU Time Click to Enlarge Memory Consumption Click to Enlarge There are options for custom reports as well, which we can configure. We will learn about them in some other post. Additionally, you can right click on the reports and export in Excel or PDF. I think this tool can really help those who are just looking for some quick details. Does any of you use this feature, or this feature has some limitations and You would like to see more features? Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Add keyboard languages to XP, Vista, and Windows 7

    - by Matthew Guay
    Do you regularly need to type in multiple languages in Windows?  Here we’ll show you the easy way to add and change input languages to your keyboard in XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Windows Vista and 7 come preinstalled with support for viewing a wide variety of languages, so adding an input language is fairly simply.  Adding an input language is slightly more difficult in XP, and requires installing additional files if you need an Asian or Complex script language.  First we show how to add an input language in Windows Vista and 7; it’s basically the same in both versions.  Then, we show how to add a language to XP, and also how to add Complex Script support.  Please note that this is only for adding an input language, which will allow you to type in the language you select.  This does not change your user interface language. Change keyboard language in Windows 7 and Vista It is fairly simple to add or change a keyboard language in Windows 7 or Vista.  In Windows 7, enter “keyboard language” in the Start menu search box, and select “Change keyboards or other input methods”. In Windows Vista, open Control Panel and enter “input language” in the search box and select “Change keyboards or other input methods”.  This also works in Windows 7. Now, click Change Keyboards to add another keyboard language or change your default one. Our default input language is US English, and our default keyboard is the US keyboard layout.  Click Add to insert another input language while still leaving your default input language installed. Here we selected the standard Thai keyboard language (Thai Kedmanee), but you can select any language you want.  Windows offers almost any language you can imagine, so just look for the language you want, select it, and click Ok. Alternately, if you want, you can click Preview to see your layout choice before accepting it.  This is only the default characters, not ones that will be activated with Shift or other keys (many Asian languages use many more characters than English, and require the use of Shift and other keys to access them all).  Once your finished previewing, click close and then press Ok on the previous dialog. Now you will see both of your keyboard languages in the Installed services box.  You can click Add to go back and get more, or move your selected language up or down (to change its priority), or simply click Apply to add the new language. Also, you can now change the default input language from the top menu.  This is the language that your keyboard will start with when you boot your computer.  So, if you mainly use English but also use another language, usually it is best to leave English as your default input language. Once you’ve pressed Apply or Ok, you will see a new icon beside your system tray with the initials of your default input language. If you click it, you can switch between input languages.  Alternately you can switch input languages by pressing Alt+Shift on your keyboard. Some complex languages, such as Chinese, may have extra buttons to change input modes to accommodate their large alphabet. If you would like to change the keyboard shortcut for changing languages, go back to the Input Languages dialog, and select the “Advanced Key Settings” tab.  Here you can change settings for Caps Lock and change or add key sequences to change between languages. Also, the On-Screen keyboard will display the correct keyboard language (here the keyboard is displaying Thai), which can be a helpful reference if your physical keyboard doesn’t have your preferred input language printed on it.  To open this, simply enter “On-Screen keyboard” in the start menu search, or click All Programs>Accessories>On-Screen keyboard. Change keyboard language in Windows XP The process for changing the keyboard language in Windows XP is slightly different.  Open Control Panel, and select “Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options”.   Select “Add other languages”. Now, click Details to add another language.  XP does not include support for Asian and complex languages by default, so if you need to add one of those languages we have details for that below. Click Add to add an input language. Select your desired language from the list, and choose your desired keyboard layout if your language offers multiple layouts.  Here we selected Canadian French with the default layout. Now you will see both of your keyboard languages in the Installed services box.  You can click Add to go back and add more, or move your selected language up or down (to change its priority), or simply click Apply to add the new language. Once you’ve pressed Apply or Ok, you will see a new icon beside your system tray with the initials of your default input language. If you click it, you can switch between input languages.  Alternately you can switch input languages by pressing Alt+Shift on your keyboard. If you would like to change the keyboard shortcut for changing languages, go back to the Input Languages dialog, and click the “Key Settings” button on the bottom of the dialog.  Here you can change settings for Caps Lock and change or add key sequences to change between languages. Add support to XP for Asian and Complex script languages Windows XP does not include support for Asian and Complex script languages by default, but you can easily add them to your computer.  This is useful if you wish to type in one of these languages, or simply want to read text written in these languages, since XP will not display these languages correctly if they are not installed.  If you wish to install Chinese, Japanese, and/or Korean, check the “Install files for East Asian languages” box.  Or, if you need to install a complex script language (including Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew, the Indic languages, Thai, and Vietnamese), check the “Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages” box.   Choosing either of these options will open a prompt reminding you that this option will take up more disk space.  Support for complex languages will require around 10Mb of hard drive space, but East Asian language support may require 230 Mb or more free disk space.  Click Ok, and click apply to install your language files. You may have to insert your XP CD into your CD drive to install these files.  Insert the disk, and then click Ok. Windows will automatically copy the files, including fonts for these languages… …and then will ask you to reboot your computer to finalize the settings.  Click Yes, and then reopen the “Add other languages” dialog when your computer is rebooted, and add a language as before.     Now you can add Complex and/or Asian languages to XP, just as above.  Here is the XP taskbar language selector with Thai installed. Conclusion Unfortunately we haven’t found a way to add Asian and complex languages in XP without having an XP disc. If you know of a way, let us know in the comments. (No downloading the XP disc from torrent site answers please) Adding an input language is very important for bilingual individuals, and can also be useful if you simply need to occasionally view Asian or Complex languages in XP.  And by following the correct instructions for your version of Windows, it should be very easy to add, change, and remove input languages. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Show Keyboard Shortcut Access Keys in Windows VistaKeyboard Ninja: 21 Keyboard Shortcut ArticlesAnother Desktop Cube for Windows XP/VistaThe "Up" Keyboard Shortcut for Windows 7 or Vista ExplorerWhat is ctfmon.exe And Why Is It Running? 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 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 How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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  • Agile Development

    - by James Oloo Onyango
    Alot of literature has and is being written about agile developement and its surrounding philosophies. In my quest to find the best way to express the importance of agile methodologies, i have found Robert C. Martin's "A Satire Of Two Companies" to be both the most concise and thorough! Enjoy the read! Rufus Inc Project Kick Off Your name is Bob. The date is January 3, 2001, and your head still aches from the recent millennial revelry. You are sitting in a conference room with several managers and a group of your peers. You are a project team leader. Your boss is there, and he has brought along all of his team leaders. His boss called the meeting. "We have a new project to develop," says your boss's boss. Call him BB. The points in his hair are so long that they scrape the ceiling. Your boss's points are just starting to grow, but he eagerly awaits the day when he can leave Brylcream stains on the acoustic tiles. BB describes the essence of the new market they have identified and the product they want to develop to exploit this market. "We must have this new project up and working by fourth quarter October 1," BB demands. "Nothing is of higher priority, so we are cancelling your current project." The reaction in the room is stunned silence. Months of work are simply going to be thrown away. Slowly, a murmur of objection begins to circulate around the conference table.   His points give off an evil green glow as BB meets the eyes of everyone in the room. One by one, that insidious stare reduces each attendee to quivering lumps of protoplasm. It is clear that he will brook no discussion on this matter. Once silence has been restored, BB says, "We need to begin immediately. How long will it take you to do the analysis?" You raise your hand. Your boss tries to stop you, but his spitwad misses you and you are unaware of his efforts.   "Sir, we can't tell you how long the analysis will take until we have some requirements." "The requirements document won't be ready for 3 or 4 weeks," BB says, his points vibrating with frustration. "So, pretend that you have the requirements in front of you now. How long will you require for analysis?" No one breathes. Everyone looks around to see whether anyone has some idea. "If analysis goes beyond April 1, we have a problem. Can you finish the analysis by then?" Your boss visibly gathers his courage: "We'll find a way, sir!" His points grow 3 mm, and your headache increases by two Tylenol. "Good." BB smiles. "Now, how long will it take to do the design?" "Sir," you say. Your boss visibly pales. He is clearly worried that his 3 mms are at risk. "Without an analysis, it will not be possible to tell you how long design will take." BB's expression shifts beyond austere.   "PRETEND you have the analysis already!" he says, while fixing you with his vacant, beady little eyes. "How long will it take you to do the design?" Two Tylenol are not going to cut it. Your boss, in a desperate attempt to save his new growth, babbles: "Well, sir, with only six months left to complete the project, design had better take no longer than 3 months."   "I'm glad you agree, Smithers!" BB says, beaming. Your boss relaxes. He knows his points are secure. After a while, he starts lightly humming the Brylcream jingle. BB continues, "So, analysis will be complete by April 1, design will be complete by July 1, and that gives you 3 months to implement the project. This meeting is an example of how well our new consensus and empowerment policies are working. Now, get out there and start working. I'll expect to see TQM plans and QIT assignments on my desk by next week. Oh, and don't forget that your crossfunctional team meetings and reports will be needed for next month's quality audit." "Forget the Tylenol," you think to yourself as you return to your cubicle. "I need bourbon."   Visibly excited, your boss comes over to you and says, "Gosh, what a great meeting. I think we're really going to do some world shaking with this project." You nod in agreement, too disgusted to do anything else. "Oh," your boss continues, "I almost forgot." He hands you a 30-page document. "Remember that the SEI is coming to do an evaluation next week. This is the evaluation guide. You need to read through it, memorize it, and then shred it. It tells you how to answer any questions that the SEI auditors ask you. It also tells you what parts of the building you are allowed to take them to and what parts to avoid. We are determined to be a CMM level 3 organization by June!"   You and your peers start working on the analysis of the new project. This is difficult because you have no requirements. But from the 10-minute introduction given by BB on that fateful morning, you have some idea of what the product is supposed to do.   Corporate process demands that you begin by creating a use case document. You and your team begin enumerating use cases and drawing oval and stick diagrams. Philosophical debates break out among the team members. There is disagreement as to whether certain use cases should be connected with <<extends>> or <<includes>> relationships. Competing models are created, but nobody knows how to evaluate them. The debate continues, effectively paralyzing progress.   After a week, somebody finds the iceberg.com Web site, which recommends disposing entirely of <<extends>> and <<includes>> and replacing them with <<precedes>> and <<uses>>. The documents on this Web site, authored by Don Sengroiux, describes a method known as stalwart-analysis, which claims to be a step-by-step method for translating use cases into design diagrams. More competing use case models are created using this new scheme, but again, people can't agree on how to evaluate them. The thrashing continues. More and more, the use case meetings are driven by emotion rather than by reason. If it weren't for the fact that you don't have requirements, you'd be pretty upset by the lack of progress you are making. The requirements document arrives on February 15. And then again on February 20, 25, and every week thereafter. Each new version contradicts the previous one. Clearly, the marketing folks who are writing the requirements, empowered though they might be, are not finding consensus.   At the same time, several new competing use case templates have been proposed by the various team members. Each template presents its own particularly creative way of delaying progress. The debates rage on. On March 1, Prudence Putrigence, the process proctor, succeeds in integrating all the competing use case forms and templates into a single, all-encompassing form. Just the blank form is 15 pages long. She has managed to include every field that appeared on all the competing templates. She also presents a 159- page document describing how to fill out the use case form. All current use cases must be rewritten according to the new standard.   You marvel to yourself that it now requires 15 pages of fill-in-the-blank and essay questions to answer the question: What should the system do when the user presses Return? The corporate process (authored by L. E. Ott, famed author of "Holistic Analysis: A Progressive Dialectic for Software Engineers") insists that you discover all primary use cases, 87 percent of all secondary use cases, and 36.274 percent of all tertiary use cases before you can complete analysis and enter the design phase. You have no idea what a tertiary use case is. So in an attempt to meet this requirement, you try to get your use case document reviewed by the marketing department, which you hope will know what a tertiary use case is.   Unfortunately, the marketing folks are too busy with sales support to talk to you. Indeed, since the project started, you have not been able to get a single meeting with marketing, which has provided a never-ending stream of changing and contradictory requirements documents.   While one team has been spinning endlessly on the use case document, another team has been working out the domain model. Endless variations of UML documents are pouring out of this team. Every week, the model is reworked.   The team members can't decide whether to use <<interfaces>> or <<types>> in the model. A huge disagreement has been raging on the proper syntax and application of OCL. Others on the team just got back from a 5-day class on catabolism, and have been producing incredibly detailed and arcane diagrams that nobody else can fathom.   On March 27, with one week to go before analysis is to be complete, you have produced a sea of documents and diagrams but are no closer to a cogent analysis of the problem than you were on January 3. **** And then, a miracle happens.   **** On Saturday, April 1, you check your e-mail from home. You see a memo from your boss to BB. It states unequivocally that you are done with the analysis! You phone your boss and complain. "How could you have told BB that we were done with the analysis?" "Have you looked at a calendar lately?" he responds. "It's April 1!" The irony of that date does not escape you. "But we have so much more to think about. So much more to analyze! We haven't even decided whether to use <<extends>> or <<precedes>>!" "Where is your evidence that you are not done?" inquires your boss, impatiently. "Whaaa . . . ." But he cuts you off. "Analysis can go on forever; it has to be stopped at some point. And since this is the date it was scheduled to stop, it has been stopped. Now, on Monday, I want you to gather up all existing analysis materials and put them into a public folder. Release that folder to Prudence so that she can log it in the CM system by Monday afternoon. Then get busy and start designing."   As you hang up the phone, you begin to consider the benefits of keeping a bottle of bourbon in your bottom desk drawer. They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the analysis phase. BB gave a colon-stirring speech on empowerment. And your boss, another 3 mm taller, congratulated his team on the incredible show of unity and teamwork. Finally, the CIO takes the stage to tell everyone that the SEI audit went very well and to thank everyone for studying and shredding the evaluation guides that were passed out. Level 3 now seems assured and will be awarded by June. (Scuttlebutt has it that managers at the level of BB and above are to receive significant bonuses once the SEI awards level 3.)   As the weeks flow by, you and your team work on the design of the system. Of course, you find that the analysis that the design is supposedly based on is flawedno, useless; no, worse than useless. But when you tell your boss that you need to go back and work some more on the analysis to shore up its weaker sections, he simply states, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   So, you and your team hack the design as best you can, unsure of whether the requirements have been properly analyzed. Of course, it really doesn't matter much, since the requirements document is still thrashing with weekly revisions, and the marketing department still refuses to meet with you.     The design is a nightmare. Your boss recently misread a book named The Finish Line in which the author, Mark DeThomaso, blithely suggested that design documents should be taken down to code-level detail. "If we are going to be working at that level of detail," you ask, "why don't we simply write the code instead?" "Because then you wouldn't be designing, of course. And the only allowable activity in the design phase is design!" "Besides," he continues, "we have just purchased a companywide license for Dandelion! This tool enables 'Round the Horn Engineering!' You are to transfer all design diagrams into this tool. It will automatically generate our code for us! It will also keep the design diagrams in sync with the code!" Your boss hands you a brightly colored shrinkwrapped box containing the Dandelion distribution. You accept it numbly and shuffle off to your cubicle. Twelve hours, eight crashes, one disk reformatting, and eight shots of 151 later, you finally have the tool installed on your server. You consider the week your team will lose while attending Dandelion training. Then you smile and think, "Any week I'm not here is a good week." Design diagram after design diagram is created by your team. Dandelion makes it very difficult to draw these diagrams. There are dozens and dozens of deeply nested dialog boxes with funny text fields and check boxes that must all be filled in correctly. And then there's the problem of moving classes between packages. At first, these diagram are driven from the use cases. But the requirements are changing so often that the use cases rapidly become meaningless. Debates rage about whether VISITOR or DECORATOR design patterns should be used. One developer refuses to use VISITOR in any form, claiming that it's not a properly object-oriented construct. Someone refuses to use multiple inheritance, since it is the spawn of the devil. Review meetings rapidly degenerate into debates about the meaning of object orientation, the definition of analysis versus design, or when to use aggregation versus association. Midway through the design cycle, the marketing folks announce that they have rethought the focus of the system. Their new requirements document is completely restructured. They have eliminated several major feature areas and replaced them with feature areas that they anticipate customer surveys will show to be more appropriate. You tell your boss that these changes mean that you need to reanalyze and redesign much of the system. But he says, "The analysis phase is system. But he says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   You suggest that it might be better to create a simple prototype to show to the marketing folks and even some potential customers. But your boss says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." Hack, hack, hack, hack. You try to create some kind of a design document that might reflect the new requirements documents. However, the revolution of the requirements has not caused them to stop thrashing. Indeed, if anything, the wild oscillations of the requirements document have only increased in frequency and amplitude.   You slog your way through them.   On June 15, the Dandelion database gets corrupted. Apparently, the corruption has been progressive. Small errors in the DB accumulated over the months into bigger and bigger errors. Eventually, the CASE tool just stopped working. Of course, the slowly encroaching corruption is present on all the backups. Calls to the Dandelion technical support line go unanswered for several days. Finally, you receive a brief e-mail from Dandelion, informing you that this is a known problem and that the solution is to purchase the new version, which they promise will be ready some time next quarter, and then reenter all the diagrams by hand.   ****   Then, on July 1 another miracle happens! You are done with the design!   Rather than go to your boss and complain, you stock your middle desk drawer with some vodka.   **** They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the design phase and their graduation to CMM level 3. This time, you find BB's speech so stirring that you have to use the restroom before it begins. New banners and plaques are all over your workplace. They show pictures of eagles and mountain climbers, and they talk about teamwork and empowerment. They read better after a few scotches. That reminds you that you need to clear out your file cabinet to make room for the brandy. You and your team begin to code. But you rapidly discover that the design is lacking in some significant areas. Actually, it's lacking any significance at all. You convene a design session in one of the conference rooms to try to work through some of the nastier problems. But your boss catches you at it and disbands the meeting, saying, "The design phase is over. The only allowable activity is coding. Now get back to it."   ****   The code generated by Dandelion is really hideous. It turns out that you and your team were using association and aggregation the wrong way, after all. All the generated code has to be edited to correct these flaws. Editing this code is extremely difficult because it has been instrumented with ugly comment blocks that have special syntax that Dandelion needs in order to keep the diagrams in sync with the code. If you accidentally alter one of these comments, the diagrams will be regenerated incorrectly. It turns out that "Round the Horn Engineering" requires an awful lot of effort. The more you try to keep the code compatible with Dandelion, the more errors Dandelion generates. In the end, you give up and decide to keep the diagrams up to date manually. A second later, you decide that there's no point in keeping the diagrams up to date at all. Besides, who has time?   Your boss hires a consultant to build tools to count the number of lines of code that are being produced. He puts a big thermometer graph on the wall with the number 1,000,000 on the top. Every day, he extends the red line to show how many lines have been added. Three days after the thermometer appears on the wall, your boss stops you in the hall. "That graph isn't growing quickly enough. We need to have a million lines done by October 1." "We aren't even sh-sh-sure that the proshect will require a m-million linezh," you blather. "We have to have a million lines done by October 1," your boss reiterates. His points have grown again, and the Grecian formula he uses on them creates an aura of authority and competence. "Are you sure your comment blocks are big enough?" Then, in a flash of managerial insight, he says, "I have it! I want you to institute a new policy among the engineers. No line of code is to be longer than 20 characters. Any such line must be split into two or more preferably more. All existing code needs to be reworked to this standard. That'll get our line count up!"   You decide not to tell him that this will require two unscheduled work months. You decide not to tell him anything at all. You decide that intravenous injections of pure ethanol are the only solution. You make the appropriate arrangements. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. You and your team madly code away. By August 1, your boss, frowning at the thermometer on the wall, institutes a mandatory 50-hour workweek.   Hack, hack, hack, and hack. By September 1st, the thermometer is at 1.2 million lines and your boss asks you to write a report describing why you exceeded the coding budget by 20 percent. He institutes mandatory Saturdays and demands that the project be brought back down to a million lines. You start a campaign of remerging lines. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. Tempers are flaring; people are quitting; QA is raining trouble reports down on you. Customers are demanding installation and user manuals; salespeople are demanding advance demonstrations for special customers; the requirements document is still thrashing, the marketing folks are complaining that the product isn't anything like they specified, and the liquor store won't accept your credit card anymore. Something has to give.    On September 15, BB calls a meeting. As he enters the room, his points are emitting clouds of steam. When he speaks, the bass overtones of his carefully manicured voice cause the pit of your stomach to roll over. "The QA manager has told me that this project has less than 50 percent of the required features implemented. He has also informed me that the system crashes all the time, yields wrong results, and is hideously slow. He has also complained that he cannot keep up with the continuous train of daily releases, each more buggy than the last!" He stops for a few seconds, visibly trying to compose himself. "The QA manager estimates that, at this rate of development, we won't be able to ship the product until December!" Actually, you think it's more like March, but you don't say anything. "December!" BB roars with such derision that people duck their heads as though he were pointing an assault rifle at them. "December is absolutely out of the question. Team leaders, I want new estimates on my desk in the morning. I am hereby mandating 65-hour work weeks until this project is complete. And it better be complete by November 1."   As he leaves the conference room, he is heard to mutter: "Empowermentbah!" * * * Your boss is bald; his points are mounted on BB's wall. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his pate momentarily dazzle you. "Do you have anything to drink?" he asks. Having just finished your last bottle of Boone's Farm, you pull a bottle of Thunderbird from your bookshelf and pour it into his coffee mug. "What's it going to take to get this project done? " he asks. "We need to freeze the requirements, analyze them, design them, and then implement them," you say callously. "By November 1?" your boss exclaims incredulously. "No way! Just get back to coding the damned thing." He storms out, scratching his vacant head.   A few days later, you find that your boss has been transferred to the corporate research division. Turnover has skyrocketed. Customers, informed at the last minute that their orders cannot be fulfilled on time, have begun to cancel their orders. Marketing is re-evaluating whether this product aligns with the overall goals of the company. Memos fly, heads roll, policies change, and things are, overall, pretty grim. Finally, by March, after far too many sixty-five hour weeks, a very shaky version of the software is ready. In the field, bug-discovery rates are high, and the technical support staff are at their wits' end, trying to cope with the complaints and demands of the irate customers. Nobody is happy.   In April, BB decides to buy his way out of the problem by licensing a product produced by Rupert Industries and redistributing it. The customers are mollified, the marketing folks are smug, and you are laid off.     Rupert Industries: Project Alpha   Your name is Robert. The date is January 3, 2001. The quiet hours spent with your family this holiday have left you refreshed and ready for work. You are sitting in a conference room with your team of professionals. The manager of the division called the meeting. "We have some ideas for a new project," says the division manager. Call him Russ. He is a high-strung British chap with more energy than a fusion reactor. He is ambitious and driven but understands the value of a team. Russ describes the essence of the new market opportunity the company has identified and introduces you to Jane, the marketing manager, who is responsible for defining the products that will address it. Addressing you, Jane says, "We'd like to start defining our first product offering as soon as possible. When can you and your team meet with me?" You reply, "We'll be done with the current iteration of our project this Friday. We can spare a few hours for you between now and then. After that, we'll take a few people from the team and dedicate them to you. We'll begin hiring their replacements and the new people for your team immediately." "Great," says Russ, "but I want you to understand that it is critical that we have something to exhibit at the trade show coming up this July. If we can't be there with something significant, we'll lose the opportunity."   "I understand," you reply. "I don't yet know what it is that you have in mind, but I'm sure we can have something by July. I just can't tell you what that something will be right now. In any case, you and Jane are going to have complete control over what we developers do, so you can rest assured that by July, you'll have the most important things that can be accomplished in that time ready to exhibit."   Russ nods in satisfaction. He knows how this works. Your team has always kept him advised and allowed him to steer their development. He has the utmost confidence that your team will work on the most important things first and will produce a high-quality product.   * * *   "So, Robert," says Jane at their first meeting, "How does your team feel about being split up?" "We'll miss working with each other," you answer, "but some of us were getting pretty tired of that last project and are looking forward to a change. So, what are you people cooking up?" Jane beams. "You know how much trouble our customers currently have . . ." And she spends a half hour or so describing the problem and possible solution. "OK, wait a second" you respond. "I need to be clear about this." And so you and Jane talk about how this system might work. Some of her ideas aren't fully formed. You suggest possible solutions. She likes some of them. You continue discussing.   During the discussion, as each new topic is addressed, Jane writes user story cards. Each card represents something that the new system has to do. The cards accumulate on the table and are spread out in front of you. Both you and Jane point at them, pick them up, and make notes on them as you discuss the stories. The cards are powerful mnemonic devices that you can use to represent complex ideas that are barely formed.   At the end of the meeting, you say, "OK, I've got a general idea of what you want. I'm going to talk to the team about it. I imagine they'll want to run some experiments with various database structures and presentation formats. Next time we meet, it'll be as a group, and we'll start identifying the most important features of the system."   A week later, your nascent team meets with Jane. They spread the existing user story cards out on the table and begin to get into some of the details of the system. The meeting is very dynamic. Jane presents the stories in the order of their importance. There is much discussion about each one. The developers are concerned about keeping the stories small enough to estimate and test. So they continually ask Jane to split one story into several smaller stories. Jane is concerned that each story have a clear business value and priority, so as she splits them, she makes sure that this stays true.   The stories accumulate on the table. Jane writes them, but the developers make notes on them as needed. Nobody tries to capture everything that is said; the cards are not meant to capture everything but are simply reminders of the conversation.   As the developers become more comfortable with the stories, they begin writing estimates on them. These estimates are crude and budgetary, but they give Jane an idea of what the story will cost.   At the end of the meeting, it is clear that many more stories could be discussed. It is also clear that the most important stories have been addressed and that they represent several months worth of work. Jane closes the meeting by taking the cards with her and promising to have a proposal for the first release in the morning.   * * *   The next morning, you reconvene the meeting. Jane chooses five cards and places them on the table. "According to your estimates, these cards represent about one perfect team-week's worth of work. The last iteration of the previous project managed to get one perfect team-week done in 3 real weeks. If we can get these five stories done in 3 weeks, we'll be able to demonstrate them to Russ. That will make him feel very comfortable about our progress." Jane is pushing it. The sheepish look on her face lets you know that she knows it too. You reply, "Jane, this is a new team, working on a new project. It's a bit presumptuous to expect that our velocity will be the same as the previous team's. However, I met with the team yesterday afternoon, and we all agreed that our initial velocity should, in fact, be set to one perfectweek for every 3 real-weeks. So you've lucked out on this one." "Just remember," you continue, "that the story estimates and the story velocity are very tentative at this point. We'll learn more when we plan the iteration and even more when we implement it."   Jane looks over her glasses at you as if to say "Who's the boss around here, anyway?" and then smiles and says, "Yeah, don't worry. I know the drill by now."Jane then puts 15 more cards on the table. She says, "If we can get all these cards done by the end of March, we can turn the system over to our beta test customers. And we'll get good feedback from them."   You reply, "OK, so we've got our first iteration defined, and we have the stories for the next three iterations after that. These four iterations will make our first release."   "So," says Jane, can you really do these five stories in the next 3 weeks?" "I don't know for sure, Jane," you reply. "Let's break them down into tasks and see what we get."   So Jane, you, and your team spend the next several hours taking each of the five stories that Jane chose for the first iteration and breaking them down into small tasks. The developers quickly realize that some of the tasks can be shared between stories and that other tasks have commonalities that can probably be taken advantage of. It is clear that potential designs are popping into the developers' heads. From time to time, they form little discussion knots and scribble UML diagrams on some cards.   Soon, the whiteboard is filled with the tasks that, once completed, will implement the five stories for this iteration. You start the sign-up process by saying, "OK, let's sign up for these tasks." "I'll take the initial database generation." Says Pete. "That's what I did on the last project, and this doesn't look very different. I estimate it at two of my perfect workdays." "OK, well, then, I'll take the login screen," says Joe. "Aw, darn," says Elaine, the junior member of the team, "I've never done a GUI, and kinda wanted to try that one."   "Ah, the impatience of youth," Joe says sagely, with a wink in your direction. "You can assist me with it, young Jedi." To Jane: "I think it'll take me about three of my perfect workdays."   One by one, the developers sign up for tasks and estimate them in terms of their own perfect workdays. Both you and Jane know that it is best to let the developers volunteer for tasks than to assign the tasks to them. You also know full well that you daren't challenge any of the developers' estimates. You know these people, and you trust them. You know that they are going to do the very best they can.   The developers know that they can't sign up for more perfect workdays than they finished in the last iteration they worked on. Once each developer has filled his or her schedule for the iteration, they stop signing up for tasks.   Eventually, all the developers have stopped signing up for tasks. But, of course, tasks are still left on the board.   "I was worried that that might happen," you say, "OK, there's only one thing to do, Jane. We've got too much to do in this iteration. What stories or tasks can we remove?" Jane sighs. She knows that this is the only option. Working overtime at the beginning of a project is insane, and projects where she's tried it have not fared well.   So Jane starts to remove the least-important functionality. "Well, we really don't need the login screen just yet. We can simply start the system in the logged-in state." "Rats!" cries Elaine. "I really wanted to do that." "Patience, grasshopper." says Joe. "Those who wait for the bees to leave the hive will not have lips too swollen to relish the honey." Elaine looks confused. Everyone looks confused. "So . . .," Jane continues, "I think we can also do away with . . ." And so, bit by bit, the list of tasks shrinks. Developers who lose a task sign up for one of the remaining ones.   The negotiation is not painless. Several times, Jane exhibits obvious frustration and impatience. Once, when tensions are especially high, Elaine volunteers, "I'll work extra hard to make up some of the missing time." You are about to correct her when, fortunately, Joe looks her in the eye and says, "When once you proceed down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."   In the end, an iteration acceptable to Jane is reached. It's not what Jane wanted. Indeed, it is significantly less. But it's something the team feels that can be achieved in the next 3 weeks.   And, after all, it still addresses the most important things that Jane wanted in the iteration. "So, Jane," you say when things had quieted down a bit, "when can we expect acceptance tests from you?" Jane sighs. This is the other side of the coin. For every story the development team implements,   Jane must supply a suite of acceptance tests that prove that it works. And the team needs these long before the end of the iteration, since they will certainly point out differences in the way Jane and the developers imagine the system's behaviour.   "I'll get you some example test scripts today," Jane promises. "I'll add to them every day after that. You'll have the entire suite by the middle of the iteration."   * * *   The iteration begins on Monday morning with a flurry of Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators sessions. By midmorning, all the developers have assembled into pairs and are rapidly coding away. "And now, my young apprentice," Joe says to Elaine, "you shall learn the mysteries of test-first design!"   "Wow, that sounds pretty rad," Elaine replies. "How do you do it?" Joe beams. It's clear that he has been anticipating this moment. "OK, what does the code do right now?" "Huh?" replied Elaine, "It doesn't do anything at all; there is no code."   "So, consider our task; can you think of something the code should do?" "Sure," Elaine said with youthful assurance, "First, it should connect to the database." "And thereupon, what must needs be required to connecteth the database?" "You sure talk weird," laughed Elaine. "I think we'd have to get the database object from some registry and call the Connect() method. "Ah, astute young wizard. Thou perceives correctly that we requireth an object within which we can cacheth the database object." "Is 'cacheth' really a word?" "It is when I say it! So, what test can we write that we know the database registry should pass?" Elaine sighs. She knows she'll just have to play along. "We should be able to create a database object and pass it to the registry in a Store() method. And then we should be able to pull it out of the registry with a Get() method and make sure it's the same object." "Oh, well said, my prepubescent sprite!" "Hay!" "So, now, let's write a test function that proves your case." "But shouldn't we write the database object and registry object first?" "Ah, you've much to learn, my young impatient one. Just write the test first." "But it won't even compile!" "Are you sure? What if it did?" "Uh . . ." "Just write the test, Elaine. Trust me." And so Joe, Elaine, and all the other developers began to code their tasks, one test case at a time. The room in which they worked was abuzz with the conversations between the pairs. The murmur was punctuated by an occasional high five when a pair managed to finish a task or a difficult test case.   As development proceeded, the developers changed partners once or twice a day. Each developer got to see what all the others were doing, and so knowledge of the code spread generally throughout the team.   Whenever a pair finished something significant whether a whole task or simply an important part of a task they integrated what they had with the rest of the system. Thus, the code base grew daily, and integration difficulties were minimized.   The developers communicated with Jane on a daily basis. They'd go to her whenever they had a question about the functionality of the system or the interpretation of an acceptance test case.   Jane, good as her word, supplied the team with a steady stream of acceptance test scripts. The team read these carefully and thereby gained a much better understanding of what Jane expected the system to do. By the beginning of the second week, there was enough functionality to demonstrate to Jane. She watched eagerly as the demonstration passed test case after test case. "This is really cool," Jane said as the demonstration finally ended. "But this doesn't seem like one-third of the tasks. Is your velocity slower than anticipated?"   You grimace. You'd been waiting for a good time to mention this to Jane but now she was forcing the issue. "Yes, unfortunately, we are going more slowly than we had expected. The new application server we are using is turning out to be a pain to configure. Also, it takes forever to reboot, and we have to reboot it whenever we make even the slightest change to its configuration."   Jane eyes you with suspicion. The stress of last Monday's negotiations had still not entirely dissipated. She says, "And what does this mean to our schedule? We can't slip it again, we just can't. Russ will have a fit! He'll haul us all into the woodshed and ream us some new ones."   You look Jane right in the eyes. There's no pleasant way to give someone news like this. So you just blurt out, "Look, if things keep going like they're going, we're not going to be done with everything by next Friday. Now it's possible that we'll figure out a way to go faster. But, frankly, I wouldn't depend on that. You should start thinking about one or two tasks that could be removed from the iteration without ruining the demonstration for Russ. Come hell or high water, we are going to give that demonstration on Friday, and I don't think you want us to choose which tasks to omit."   "Aw forchrisakes!" Jane barely manages to stifle yelling that last word as she stalks away, shaking her head. Not for the first time, you say to yourself, "Nobody ever promised me project management would be easy." You are pretty sure it won't be the last time, either.   Actually, things went a bit better than you had hoped. The team did, in fact, have to drop one task from the iteration, but Jane had chosen wisely, and the demonstration for Russ went without a hitch. Russ was not impressed with the progress, but neither was he dismayed. He simply said, "This is pretty good. But remember, we have to be able to demonstrate this system at the trade show in July, and at this rate, it doesn't look like you'll have all that much to show." Jane, whose attitude had improved dramatically with the completion of the iteration, responded to Russ by saying, "Russ, this team is working hard, and well. When July comes around, I am confident that we'll have something significant to demonstrate. It won't be everything, and some of it may be smoke and mirrors, but we'll have something."   Painful though the last iteration was, it had calibrated your velocity numbers. The next iteration went much better. Not because your team got more done than in the last iteration but simply because the team didn't have to remove any tasks or stories in the middle of the iteration.   By the start of the fourth iteration, a natural rhythm has been established. Jane, you, and the team know exactly what to expect from one another. The team is running hard, but the pace is sustainable. You are confident that the team can keep up this pace for a year or more.   The number of surprises in the schedule diminishes to near zero; however, the number of surprises in the requirements does not. Jane and Russ frequently look over the growing system and make recommendations or changes to the existing functionality. But all parties realize that these changes take time and must be scheduled. So the changes do not cause anyone's expectations to be violated. In March, there is a major demonstration of the system to the board of directors. The system is very limited and is not yet in a form good enough to take to the trade show, but progress is steady, and the board is reasonably impressed.   The second release goes even more smoothly than the first. By now, the team has figured out a way to automate Jane's acceptance test scripts. The team has also refactored the design of the system to the point that it is really easy to add new features and change old ones. The second release was done by the end of June and was taken to the trade show. It had less in it than Jane and Russ would have liked, but it did demonstrate the most important features of the system. Although customers at the trade show noticed that certain features were missing, they were very impressed overall. You, Russ, and Jane all returned from the trade show with smiles on your faces. You all felt as though this project was a winner.   Indeed, many months later, you are contacted by Rufus Inc. That company had been working on a system like this for its internal operations. Rufus has canceled the development of that system after a death-march project and is negotiating to license your technology for its environment.   Indeed, things are looking up!

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  • Enabling Kerberos Authentication for Reporting Services

    - by robcarrol
    Recently, I’ve helped several customers with Kerberos authentication problems with Reporting Services and Analysis Services, so I’ve decided to write this blog post and pull together some useful resources in one place (there are 2 whitepapers in particular that I found invaluable configuring Kerberos authentication, and these can be found in the references section at the bottom of this post). In most of these cases, the problem has manifested itself with the Login failed for User ‘NT Authority\Anonymous’ (“double-hop”) error. By default, Reporting Services uses Windows Integrated Authentication, which includes the Kerberos and NTLM protocols for network authentication. Additionally, Windows Integrated Authentication includes the negotiate security header, which prompts the client to select Kerberos or NTLM for authentication. The client can access reports which have the appropriate permissions by using Kerberos for authentication. Servers that use Kerberos authentication can impersonate those clients and use their security context to access network resources. You can configure Reporting Services to use both Kerberos and NTLM authentication; however this may lead to a failure to authenticate. With negotiate, if Kerberos cannot be used, the authentication method will default to NTLM. When negotiate is enabled, the Kerberos protocol is always used except when: Clients/servers that are involved in the authentication process cannot use Kerberos. The client does not provide the information necessary to use Kerberos. An in-depth discussion of Kerberos authentication is beyond the scope of this post, however when users execute reports that are configured to use Windows Integrated Authentication, their logon credentials are passed from the report server to the server hosting the data source. Delegation needs to be set on the report server and Service Principle Names (SPNs) set for the relevant services. When a user processes a report, the request must go through a Web server on its way to a database server for processing. Kerberos authentication enables the Web server to request a service ticket from the domain controller; impersonate the client when passing the request to the database server; and then restrict the request based on the user’s permissions. Each time a server is required to pass the request to another server, the same process must be used. Kerberos authentication is supported in both native and SharePoint integrated mode, but I’ll focus on native mode for the purpose of this post (I’ll explain configuring SharePoint integrated mode and Kerberos authentication in a future post). Configuring Kerberos avoids the authentication failures due to double-hop issues. These double-hop errors occur when a users windows domain credentials can’t be passed to another server to complete the user’s request. In the case of my customers, users were executing Reporting Services reports that were configured to query Analysis Services cubes on a separate machine using Windows Integrated security. The double-hop issue occurs as NTLM credentials are valid for only one network hop, subsequent hops result in anonymous authentication. The client attempts to connect to the report server by making a request from a browser (or some other application), and the connection process begins with authentication. With NTLM authentication, client credentials are presented to Computer 2. However Computer 2 can’t use the same credentials to access Computer 3 (so we get the Anonymous login error). To access Computer 3 it is necessary to configure the connection string with stored credentials, which is what a number of customers I have worked with have done to workaround the double-hop authentication error. However, to get the benefits of Windows Integrated security, a better solution is to enable Kerberos authentication. Again, the connection process begins with authentication. With Kerberos authentication, the client and the server must demonstrate to one another that they are genuine, at which point authentication is successful and a secure client/server session is established. In the illustration above, the tiers represent the following: Client tier (computer 1): The client computer from which an application makes a request. Middle tier (computer 2): The Web server or farm where the client’s request is directed. Both the SharePoint and Reporting Services server(s) comprise the middle tier (but we’re only concentrating on native deployments just now). Back end tier (computer 3): The Database/Analysis Services server/Cluster where the requested data is stored. In order to enable Kerberos authentication for Reporting Services it’s necessary to configure the relevant SPNs, configure trust for delegation for server accounts, configure Kerberos with full delegation and configure the authentication types for Reporting Services. Service Principle Names (SPNs) are unique identifiers for services and identify the account’s type of service. If an SPN is not configured for a service, a client account will be unable to authenticate to the servers using Kerberos. You need to be a domain administrator to add an SPN, which can be added using the SetSPN utility. For Reporting Services in native mode, the following SPNs need to be registered --SQL Server Service SETSPN -S mssqlsvc/servername:1433 Domain\SQL For named instances, or if the default instance is running under a different port, then the specific port number should be used. --Reporting Services Service SETSPN -S http/servername Domain\SSRS SETSPN -S http/servername.domain.com Domain\SSRS The SPN should be set for the NETBIOS name of the server and the FQDN. If you access the reports using a host header or DNS alias, then that should also be registered SETSPN -S http/www.reports.com Domain\SSRS --Analysis Services Service SETSPN -S msolapsvc.3/servername Domain\SSAS Next, you need to configure trust for delegation, which refers to enabling a computer to impersonate an authenticated user to services on another computer: Location Description Client 1. The requesting application must support the Kerberos authentication protocol. 2. The user account making the request must be configured on the domain controller. Confirm that the following option is not selected: Account is sensitive and cannot be delegated. Servers 1. The service accounts must be trusted for delegation on the domain controller. 2. The service accounts must have SPNs registered on the domain controller. If the service account is a domain user account, the domain administrator must register the SPNs. In Active Directory Users and Computers, verify that the domain user accounts used to access reports have been configured for delegation (the ‘Account is sensitive and cannot be delegated’ option should not be selected): We then need to configure the Reporting Services service account and computer to use Kerberos with full delegation:   We also need to do the same for the SQL Server or Analysis Services service accounts and computers (depending on what type of data source you are connecting to in your reports). Finally, and this is the part that sometimes gets over-looked, we need to configure the authentication type correctly for reporting services to use Kerberos authentication. This is configured in the Authentication section of the RSReportServer.config file on the report server. <Authentication> <AuthenticationTypes>           <RSWindowsNegotiate/> </AuthenticationTypes> <EnableAuthPersistence>true</EnableAuthPersistence> </Authentication> This will enable Kerberos authentication for Internet Explorer. For other browsers, see the link below. The report server instance must be restarted for these changes to take effect. Once these changes have been made, all that’s left to do is test to make sure Kerberos authentication is working properly by running a report from report manager that is configured to use Windows Integrated authentication (either connecting to Analysis Services or SQL Server back-end). Resources: Manage Kerberos Authentication Issues in a Reporting Services Environment http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/E/1/BE1AABB3-6ED8-4C3C-AF91-448AB733B1AF/SSRSKerberos.docx Configuring Kerberos Authentication for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=23176 How to: Configure Windows Authentication in Reporting Services http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281253.aspx RSReportServer Configuration File http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms157273.aspx#Authentication Planning for Browser Support http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156511.aspx

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  • Maintain scroll position in ASP.NET

    - by nikolaosk
    One of the most common questions I get is " How to maintain the scroll position-location when a postback occurs in our ASP.NET application? " A lot of times when we click on a e.g a button in our application and a postback occurs, our application "loses" its scroll position. The default behaviour is to go back to the top of the page. There is a very nice feature in ASP.NET that enables us to maintain the scroll position in ASP.NET. The name of this attribute is MaintainScrollPositionOnPostBack ....(read more)

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  • SQL SERVER – How to See Active SQL Server Connections For Database

    - by Pinal Dave
    Another question received via email - “How do I I know which user is connected to my database with how many connection?” Here is the script which will give us answer to the question. SELECT DB_NAME(dbid) AS DBName, COUNT(dbid) AS NumberOfConnections, loginame FROM    sys.sysprocesses GROUP BY dbid, loginame ORDER BY DB_NAME(dbid) Here is the resultset: Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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