Search Results

Search found 4775 results on 191 pages for 'permissions'.

Page 98/191 | < Previous Page | 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105  | Next Page >

• Allow members of a group to be unlocked by a specific account on AD

  - by JohnLBevan

  Background I'm creating a service to allow support staff to enable their firecall accounts out of hours (i.e. if there's an issue in the night and we can't get hold of someone with admin rights, another member of the support team can enable their personal firecall account on AD, which has previously been setup with admin rights). This service also logs a reason for the change, alerts key people, and a bunch of other bits to ensure that this change of access is audited / so we can ensure these temporary admin rights are used in the proper way. To do this I need the service account which my service runs under to have permissions to enable users on active directory. Ideally I'd like to lock this down so that the service account can only enable/disable users in a particular AD security group. Question How do you grant access to an account to enable/disable users who are members of a particular security group in AD? Backup Question If it's not possible to do this by security group, is there a suitable alternative? i.e. could it be done by OU, or would it be best to write a script to loop through all members of the security group and update the permissions on the objects (firecall accounts) themselves? Thanks in advance. Additional Tags (I don't yet have access to create new tags here, so listing below to help with keyword searches until it can be tagged & this bit editted/removed) DSACLS, DSACLS.EXE, FIRECALL, ACCOUNT, SECURITY-GROUP

  Read the article

• What is best configuration settings for Wordpress and MySQL on Win2008 + IIS7 stack?

  - by holiveira

  I currently have four blogs that uses Wordpress running on a shared hosting company. This blogs have a considerable amount of visits and I'm constantly receiving warnings from the hosting company saying that I'm consuming too much server CPU. Considering the fact that I have a dedicated server in another company with plenty of idle resources (it has a quad core Xeon 2.5GHz and 8GB of Ram and run on Win2008) I'm planning to move the blogs to this server in order to have some more freedom. I'm currently using this server to host some web applications using ASP.Net and SQL Express. I've installed a blog to test and it worked fine, but some issues appeared and raised some questions in my mind: How to properly set the permissions in the folders used by wordpress plugins, I mean, what permissions should I set for the IIS_User in some folders so that the plugins works correctly? What's the best caching plugin to use considering this is a Window Server? In the previous hosting company I used the WPSuperCache, but it was a Linux Stack. Or should I ignore the caching plugins and use the Dynamic Caching Feature of IIS7? How can I optmize the MySQL server running in this server (specially the settings regarding memory and caching) How can I protect the admin folders against hacker attacks? I know some people will advice me not to run Wordpress in a Windows stack, but that's my only choice. I don't even know were to start managing and LAMP stack, don't have the time to do so nor the money to rent another server.

  Read the article

• Copied a file with winscp; only winscp can see it

  - by nilbus

  I recently copied a 25.5GB file from another machine using WinSCP. I copied it to C:\beth.tar.gz, and WinSCP can still see the file. However no other app (including Explorer) can see the file. What might cause this, and how can I fix it? The details that might or might not matter WinSCP shows the size of the file (C:\beth.tar.gz) correctly as 27,460,124,080 bytes, which matches the filesize on the remote host Neither explorer, cmd (command line prompt w/ dir C:\), the 7Zip archive program, nor any other File Open dialog can see the beth.tar.gz file under C:\ I have configured Explorer to show hidden files I can move the file to other directories using WinSCP If I try to move the file to Users/, UAC prompts me for administrative rights, which I grant, and I get this error: Could not find this item The item is no longer located in C:\ When I try to transfer the file back to the remote host in a new directory, the transfer starts successfully and transfers data The transfer had about 30 minutes remaining when I left it for the night The morning after the file transfer, I was greeted with a message saying that the connection to the server had been lost. I don't think this is relevant, since I did not tell it to disconnect after the file was done transferring, and it likely disconnected after the file transfer finished. I'm using an old version of WinSCP - v4.1.8 from 2008 I can view the file properties in WinSCP: Type of file: 7zip (.gz) Location: C:\ Attributes: none (Ready-only, Hidden, Archive, or Ready for indexing) Security: SYSTEM, my user, and Administrators group have full permissions - everything other than "special permissions" is checked under Allow for all 3 users/groups (my user, Administrators, SYSTEM) What's going on?!

  Read the article

• How do I fully share a Hard Drive on my Local Network?

  - by GingerLee

  I have 4 computers connected to a router (DD-WRT) My main PC is Windows 7 (Home Premium). This machine has 2 Hard Disks: HD1 is used for my OS and the other (HD2) is used to store files. My 3 other machines are 1. Ubuntu Destop that I use to learn about linux, 2. A Mac OSX laptop, and 3. A netbook running windows 7. How do I easily share HD2 with my other machines? I would like all my machines to have full access & permissions to HD2 however I would like to RESTRICT access to only PCs that are connected to my router (either via LAN and WiFi) --- btw, I know this is not very secure due to WiFi vulnerability , however, I currently MAC address restrict WiFi connections my router. Extra Info: I have already tried to use the Windows Folder Sharing feature: i.e. I right click over the icon of HD2, and click on the Sharing Tab, but in sub-window labeled "Network File and Folder Sharing", the "Share" button is grayed out. I can click on "Advanced Shared" but that just takes me to a screen in which I have to set certain permissions. What is not clear to me is: How do I set a criteria that shares HD2 with all computer connected to my router?

  Read the article

• Is it logical that file system acls would be corrupted in a way that adds permission for another user?

  - by wilbbe01

  I was having issues on a shared hosting provider with the host's web server instance not serving some files. I asked the companies support about the issue and they responded with the results of getfacl on my home directory, and added the necessary line to allow their web server to obtain the necessary permissions. All is working happily now, but I noticed a line in the getfacl that was for what appeared to be another username to which I had no relation. I asked them about this and their response was that it was likely some minor corruption and that I could remove the unwanted line with the setfacl -x option. I know I never added the user to my home directory, and I also find it weird that that could truly happen due to corruption. So now that it is fixed I'm a little bit weary of whether or not they were trying to cover up a problem they accidentally gave someone permissions to my account, or if this kind of thing can really be corrupted in that way. Especially when that user is a real user on the same server. Any thoughts? Thanks.

  Read the article

• What's the safest way to kick off a root-level process via cgi on an Apache server?

  - by MartyMacGyver

  The problem: I have a script that runs periodically via a cron job as root, but I want to give people a way to kick it off asynchronously too, via a webpage. (The script will be written to ensure it doesn't run overlapping instances or such.) I don't need the users to log in or have an account, they simply click a button and if the script is ready to be run it'll run. The users may select arguments for the script (heavily filtered as inputs) but for simplicity we'll say they just have the button to choose to press. As a simple test, I've created a Python script in cgi-bin. chown-ing it to root:root and then applying "chmod ug+" to it didn't have the desired results: it still thinks it has the effective group of the web server account... from what I can tell this isn't allowed. I read that wrapping it with a compiled cgi program would do the job, so I created a C wrapper that calls my script (its permissions restored to normal) and gave the executable the root permissions and setuid bit. That worked... the script ran as if root ran it. My main question is, is this normal (the need for the binary wrapper to get the job done) and is this the secure way to do this? It's not world-facing but still, I'd like to learn best practices. More broadly, I often wonder why a compiled binary is more "trusted" than a script in practice? I'd think you'd trust a file that was human-readable over a cryptic binaryy. If an attacker can edit a file then you're already in trouble, more so if it's one you can't easily examine. In short, I'd expect it to be the other way 'round on that basis. Your thoughts?

  Read the article

• Trouble with Remote Desktop pulling through printers. Drive Redirection works, and the ports created but not the printers

  - by Windex

  I've run out of things to look into. All the support documents have been gone through and still provide no resolution. I've checked the service permissions, (sc sdshow spooler) they all match up with other systems and what is output on the support documents. I'm nearly positive that the issue can't be permissions anyway as the software requires all users to be an administrator, so all users are a local administrator. (I haven't looked into why yet but its on the list, I was just recently brought into this team and we've put procedures in place for quick recovery.) We've applied hot fixes relating to RDS and printing, though I'm not sure which ones they were. I've combed through group policy and no where is printer redirection disabled. It's setup with all default values regarding the use and redirection of printers and a quick install of W2k8 R2 shows that it works by default. This dev install was joined to the same domain, placed in the same OU, shows the same policies applied, etc, etc, etc, The server generates all the correct redirected ports but no printers are created. It will also redirect drives without issue, this would seem to rule out the usermode service that handles redirects being broken. No events are logged related to any of the events and there are no events from the TerminalServices-Printer source. There were local printers setup. I didn't think it would mattter but as I was running out of ideas I tried deleting them all with no change. The TS was configured for the software it will be running before we checked out the redirection of printers so the other team responsible to setting up new servers wants to find a fix instead of reloading a new server. I'm not sure where or what else to look for. Any ideas?

  Read the article

• File exists but is unreadable by PHP

  - by Aron

  More than once I have ran into this issue: I have a cache file that is automatically generated by PHP. It contains some generated PHP code. However for some reason the file cannot be read and parsed by PHP. These are the symptoms: File actually exists on file system. Using Terminal you can navigate to the file, view its contents (which are fully intact), etcetc. PHP file_exists() will report that the file exists...which is correct since it does :) Then I include() the file. But when actually parsing the file, PHP will just consider it an empty file. No fatal error, just no PHP code actually executed. Again, its as if the file was completely empty (which I assure you, it is not)... It is not a permissions issue. Permissions are set as needed. Workaround: open the file in Terminal via 'nano' or some other text editor and just save it to the disk again. After that (despite no changes to the content) PHP will run it just fine... As a clarification, I'd like to add that this happens rarely, but frequently enough to be a problem. And even when it does, there are hundreds of other similar files on the same system that work without a problem... If this were an issue affecting only my own scripts, I would consider that there must be a bug in the way I generate the PHP code. But no, the issue has occurred more than once when deploying to a server (usually from Beanstalk repository via FTP). The issue has been present on various servers, Debian and Ubuntu running Zend Community Server. Any ideas? One that crossed my mind was opcode cache-ing (part of Zend Server CE)...could it be that an empty version of the file is cached if it is requested while the write operation is still in progress?

  Read the article

• Winodws server 2003 Setup

  - by Barracksbuilder

  I work at a university maintaining the computer science department server. I am looking for a more economical way to stream line the set up of student accounts. CS students are granted a Username and password an IIS virtual directory, FTP virtual directory, and a mysql database. Server is running windows server 2003R2 (Possibly migrating to 2008R2) The server is running a domain though no students physically log a terminal into it (No computers are part of my domain.) Creating the account is a manual process. I did right a PHP script to query the Universities AD and copy the information and write it to my AD. I then have to create basically the users home directory. I tried having AD do it but since the user never physically logs in it never creates the directory. Permissions on this folder are set to User - full, Instructors (group) - full, Users (group) - read, IUSER - read. Inside of the users folder their is a "Private" folder with permissions User - full, instructors (group) - full. Next step is IIS I create a virtual directory in the default web site pointed to the users home directory so they have a website. Same goes for FTP virtual directory in the default ftp configuration to allow the users to upload files to their website. Mysql I have to create a user and password then create a mysql scheme (database) full access for the user and full access to the instructors account to be able to access the students database. All of this is done manually and takes me a week to do. The closest description is maybe a shared hosting environment. Is there a better way to do this? Scripting wise, or better structure setup?

  Read the article

• Revoke directory access for a particular user in Solaris

  - by permissiontomars

  I have a need to allow directory access to a particular user on my file system. I want this user to be unable to access any other directory in my file system (initially anyway. It may need access to some directories later). For example: I have a directory called /opt/mydir. - I want my dedicated user to only be able to access this directory, and nothing else. - I want all other users to be able to access this directory as normal. I'm new to Linux and its permissions. I've read a fair bit of background material but I'm a little confused. Is there anyway to revoke permissions to /opt/mydir for a single dedicated user? A possible flawed method would be to only allow access to /opt/mydir and exclude every other user. This won't work because I want all other users to work as normal; accessing the directory. I'm working on Solaris 10. Any suggestions are appreciated.

  Read the article

• setting up bind to work with nsupdate (SERVFAIL)

  - by funny_ha_ha

  I'm trying to update my DNS-Server dynamically using nsupdate. Prerequisite I'm using Debian 6 on my DNS-Server and Debian 4 on my client. I created a public/private key pair using: dnssec-keygen -C -a HMAC-MD5 -b 512 -n USER sub.example.com. I then edited my named.conf.local to contain my public key and the new zone i wish to update. It now looks like this (note: I also tried allow-update { any; }; without success): zone "example.com" { type master; file "/etc/bind/primary/example.com"; notify yes; allow-update { none; }; allow-query { any; }; }; zone "sub.example.com" { type master; file "/etc/bind/primary/sub.example.com"; notify yes; allow-update { key "sub.example.com."; }; allow-query { any; }; }; key sub.example.com. { algorithm HMAC-MD5; secret "xxxx xxxx"; }; Next, I copied the private key file (key.private) to another server I want to update the zone from. I also created a textfile (update) on this server which contained the update information (note: I tried toying around with this stuff too. no success): server example.com zone sub.example.com update add sub.example.com. 86400 A 10.10.10.1 show send Now I'm trying to update the zone using: nsupdate -k key.private -v update The Problem Said command gives me the following output: Outgoing update query: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: UPDATE, status: NOERROR, id: 0 ;; flags: ; ZONE: 0, PREREQ: 0, UPDATE: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; ZONE SECTION: ;sub.example.com. IN SOA ;; UPDATE SECTION: sub.example.com. 86400 IN A 10.10.10.1 update failed: SERVFAIL named debug Level 3 gives me the following information when I issue the nsupdate command on the remote server (note: I obfuscated the client IP): 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.977 client X.X.X.X#33182: new TCP connection 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.977 client X.X.X.X#33182: replace 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 clientmgr @0x2ada3c7ee760: createclients 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 clientmgr @0x2ada3c7ee760: recycle 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client @0x2ada475f1120: accept 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: read 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: TCP request 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: request has valid signature 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: recursion not available 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: update 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: send 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.978 client X.X.X.X#33182: sendto 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: senddone 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: next 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: endrequest 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.979 client X.X.X.X#33182: read 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: next 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: request failed: end of file 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: endrequest 06-Aug-2012 14:51:33.986 client X.X.X.X#33182: closetcp But it doesn't do anything. The zone isn't updated, nor does my nsupdate change anything. I'm not sure if the file /etc/bind/primary/sub.example.com should exist prior to the first update or not. I tried it without the file, with an empty file and with a pre-configured zone file. Without success. The sparse information I found on the net pointed me towards file and folder permissions regarding the bind working directory, so I changed the permissions of both /etc/bind and /var/cache/bind (which is the home dir of my "bind" user). I'm not a 100% sure if the permissions are correct.. but it looks good to me: ls -lah /var/cache/bind/ total 224K drwxrwxr-x 2 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 03:13 . drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4.0K Jul 21 11:27 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 211K Aug 6 03:21 named.run ls -lah /etc/bind/ total 72K drwxr-sr-x 3 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 14:41 . drwxr-xr-x 87 root root 4.0K Jul 30 01:24 .. -rw------- 1 bind bind 125 Aug 6 02:54 key.public -rw------- 1 bind bind 156 Aug 6 02:54 key.private -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 2.5K Aug 6 03:07 bind.keys -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 237 Aug 6 03:07 db.0 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 271 Aug 6 03:07 db.127 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 237 Aug 6 03:07 db.255 -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 353 Aug 6 03:07 db.empty -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 270 Aug 6 03:07 db.local -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 3.0K Aug 6 03:07 db.root -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 493 Aug 6 03:32 named.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 490 Aug 6 03:07 named.conf.default-zones -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 1.2K Aug 6 14:18 named.conf.local -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 666 Jul 29 22:51 named.conf.options drwxr-sr-x 2 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 03:57 primary/ -rw-r----- 1 root bind 77 Mar 19 02:57 rndc.key -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 1.3K Aug 6 03:07 zones.rfc1918 ls -lah /etc/bind/primary/ total 20K drwxr-sr-x 2 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 03:57 . drwxr-sr-x 3 bind bind 4.0K Aug 6 14:41 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 356 Jul 30 00:45 example.com

  Read the article

• Open source CMS for a university department

  - by Greg Kuperberg

  I realize that this type of question gets asked over and over again. Nonetheless, I want to ask a more specific version. I'm in a university math department. Long ago our sysadmins (or just one at the time) switched to a web content management system. At the time, Zope looked like an informed choice. We have used Zope for years, but at least in my opinion, it has always been a controversial decision. At the time I didn't understand why it was so important to have a web CMS. Now I see that it certainly is important, but I don't know that it should be Zope. The good (even necessary) features of Zope for us are: It's free and Linux-based. It is a true CMS and not something else (e.g. wiki or blog) It lets you write HTML and scripts. What I really don't like about Zope is that the outcome of using it is all-or-nothing in a lot of ways. At least in convenient use, it ends up dividing the enterprise into superusers who can do everything, and lusers who can't do anything (except write their own home pages in plain HTML). It has a huge user manual, which end users won't have time to read. Somehow with the access permissions, the simple thing to do is to let a few admins access all of the source and data and that's it. Since this is a math department, the user base varies from real novices to people who understand computers reasonably well. But as it stands, any change that involves Zope has to go through the sysadmins. When the sysadmins are in a hurry, sometimes they will also just add plain HTML pages to the web site instead of using the Zope framework. It doesn't help matters that Zope is fairly disk-intensive and fairly hype-intensive. Not to dwell on Zope too much, but I am wondering what is the right web CMS for a mixed user base of terminal novices, quick studies, and experienced users. Some users might want intermediate permissions, e.g. read permission but not write permission, or permission to change some subset of the pages or see some subset of the database tables. Also it should be Linux-based and open source and a little bit scalable, and of course widely used and well-supported is a good idea. I might guess that the answer is Drupal just because that was the general answer before, but I don't know if it is the right type of CMS for this purpose. (But note that Python is a relatively popular language in a math department, among other reasons because Sage is based on Python.) I can see that I didn't completely define the question and that people are guessing what type of site it is. It is the UC Davis Math Department. The main structure of the site is not suitable for a wiki and it is also not the same thing as a course environment like Moodle. Rather, the site is mostly structured as a generic medium-small enterprise. Some components of the site could be a wiki, Moodle, LaTeX plugin, Request Tracker, etc. However, the main issue is not these components. The main issue is that it would be better to decentralize management of the site. Right now, everything that is in the Zope CMS has to go through the sysadmins. Every other user in the department either has to put in a request to them, or write their own web pages with no help from Zope. There are two main reasons for this: (1) Other people in the department don't have time to read the Zope manual. (2) It's a hassle to set up intermediate permissions in Zope. However, there are other people in the department who know how to write computer programs and use markup languages. I wouldn't want a solution that assumes that users either can't be trusted with much more than drag-and-drop, or that they are IT professionals who sleep with documentation manuals. I'm wondering if Plone/Zope still has this quality, since certainly Zope by itself does. But I also wonder sometimes if common-sense flexibility is unfashionable these days, and that things in general have be either mindlessly easy or incredibly powerful.

  Read the article

• When should I use Areas in TFS instead of Team Projects

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Well, it depends…. If you are a small company that creates a finite number of internal projects then you will find it easier to create a single project for each of your products and have TFS do the heavy lifting with reporting, SharePoint sites and Version Control. But what if you are not… Update 9th March 2010 Michael Fourie gave me some feedback which I have integrated. Ed Blankenship via @edblankenship offered encouragement and a nice quote. Ewald Hofman gave me a couple of Cons, and maybe a few more soon. Ewald’s company, Avanade, currently uses Areas, but it looks like the manual management is getting too much and the project is getting cluttered. What if you are likely to have hundreds of projects, possibly with a multitude of internal and external projects? You might have 1 project for a customer or 10. This is the situation that most consultancies find themselves in and thus they need a more sustainable and maintainable option. What I am advocating is that we should have 1 “Team Project” per customer, and use areas to create “sub projects” within that single “Team Project”. "What you describe is what we generally do internally and what we recommend. We make very heavy use of area path to categorize the work within a larger project." - Brian Harry, Microsoft Technical Fellow & Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server   "We tend to use areas to segregate multiple projects in the same team project and it works well." - Tiago Pascoal, Visual Studio ALM MVP   "In general, I believe this approach provides consistency [to multi-product engagements] and lowers the administration and maintenance costs. All good." - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   “@MrHinsh BTW, I'm very much a fan of very large, if not huge, team projects in TFS. Just FYI :) Use Areas & Iterations.” Ed Blankenship, Visual Studio ALM MVP   This would mean that SSW would have a single Team Project called “SSW” that contains all of our internal projects and consequently all of the Areas and Iteration move down one hierarchy to accommodate this. Where we would have had “\SSW\Sprint 1” we now have “\SSW\SqlDeploy\Sprint1” with “SqlDeploy” being our internal project. At the moment SSW has over 70 internal projects and more than 170 total projects in TFS. This method has long term benefits that help to simplify the support model for companies that often have limited internal support time and many projects. But, there are implications as TFS does not provide this model “out-of-the-box”. These implications stretch across Areas, Iterations, Queries, Project Portal and Version Control. Michael made a good comment, he said: I agree with your approach, assuming that in a multi-product engagement with a client, they are happy to adopt the same process template across all products. If they are not, then it’ll either be easy to convince them or there is a valid reason for having a different template - Michael Fourie, Visual Studio ALM MVP   At SSW we have a standard template that we use and this is applied across the board, to all of our projects. We even apply any changes to the core process template to all of our existing projects as well. If you have multiple projects for the same clients on multiple templates and you want to keep it that way, then this approach will not work for you. However, if you want to standardise as we have at SSW then this approach may benefit you as well. Implications around Areas Areas should be used for topological classification/isolation of work items. You can think of this as architecture areas, organisational areas or even the main features of your application. In our scenario there is an additional top level item that represents the Project / Product that we want to chop our Team Project into. Figure: Creating a sub area to represent a product/project is easy. <teamproject> <teamproject>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Becomes: <teamproject> <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\ <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\<Functional Area/module whatever> Implications around Iterations Iterations should be used for chronological classification/isolation of work items. This could include isolated time boxes, milestones or release timelines and really depends on the logical flow of your project or projects. Due to the new level in Area we need to add the same level to Iteration. This is primarily because it is unlikely that the sprints in each of your projects/products will start and end at the same time. This is just a reality of managing multiple projects. Figure: Adding the same Area value to Iteration as the top level item adds flexibility to Iteration. <teamproject>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Sprint 1 Or <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\Release 1\Sprint 1 Implications around Queries Queries are used to filter your work items based on a specified level of granularity. There are a number of queries that are built into a project created using the MSF Agile 5.0 template, but we now have multiple projects and it would be a pain to have to edit all of the work items every time we changed project, and that would only allow one team to work on one project at a time.   Figure: The Queries that are created in a normal MSF Agile 5.0 project do not quite suit our new needs. In order for project contributors to be able to query based on their project we need a couple of things. The first thing I did was to create an “_Area Template” folder that has a copy of the project layout with all the queries setup to filter based on the “_Area Template” Area and the “_Sprint template” you can see in the Area and Iteration views. Figure: The template is currently easily drag and drop, but you then need to edit the queries to point at the right Area and Iteration. This needs a tool. I then created an “Areas” folder to hold all of the area specific queries. So, when you go to create a new TFS Sub-Project you just drag “_Area Template” while holding “Ctrl” and drop it onto “Areas”. There is a little setup here. That said I managed it in around 10 minutes which is not so bad, and I can imagine it being quite easy to build a tool to create these queries Figure: These new queries can be configured in around 10 minutes, which includes setting up the Area and Iteration as well. Version Control What about your source code? Well, that is the easiest of the lot. Just create a sub folder for each of your projects/products.   Figure: Creating sub folders in source control is easy as “Right click | Create new folder”. <teamproject>\DEV\Main\ Becomes: <teamproject>\<ProjectName>\DEV\Main\ Conclusion I think it is up to each company to make a call on how you want to configure your Team Projects and it depends completely on how many projects/products you are going to have for each customer including yourself. If we decide to utilise this route it will require some configuration to get our 170+ projects into this format, and I will probably be writing some tools to help. Pros You only have one project to upgrade when a process template changes – After going through an upgrade of over 170 project prior to the changes in the RC I can tell you that that many projects is no fun. Standardises your Process Template – You will always have the same Process implementation across projects/products without exception You get tighter control over the permissions – Yes, you can do this on a standard Team Project, but it gets a lot easier with practice. You can “move” work items from one “product” to another – Have we not always wanted to do that. You can rename your projects – Wahoo: everyone wants to do this, now you can. One set of Reporting Services reports to manage – You set an area and iteration to run reports anyway, so you may as well set both. Simplified Check-In Policies– There is only one set of check-in policies per client. This simplifies administration of policies. Simplified Alerts – As alerts are applied across multiple projects this simplifies your alert rules as per client. Cons All of these cons could be mitigated by a custom tool that helps automate creation of “Sub-projects” within Team Projects. This custom tool could create areas, Iteration, permissions, SharePoint and queries. It just does not exist yet :) You need to configure the Areas and Iterations You need to configure the permissions You may need to configure sub sites for SharePoint (depends on your requirement) – If you have two projects/products in the same Team Project then you will not see the burn down for each one out-of-the-box, but rather a cumulative for the Team Project. This is not really that much of a problem as you would have to configure your burndown graphs for your current iteration anyway. note: When you create a sub site to a TFS linked portal it will inherit the settings of its parent site :) This is fantastic as it means that you can easily create sub sites and then set the Area and Iteration path in each of the reports to be the correct one. Every team wants their own customization (via Ewald Hofman) - small teams of 2 persons against teams of 30 – or even outsourcing – need their own process, you cannot allow that because everybody gets the same work item types. note: Luckily at SSW this is not a problem as our template is standardised across all projects and customers. Large list of builds (via Ewald Hofman) – As the build list in Team Explorer is just a flat list it can get very cluttered. note: I would mitigate this by removing any build that has not been run in over 30 days. The build template and workflow will still be available in version control, but it will clean the list. Feedback Now that I have explained this method, what do you think? What other pros and cons can you see? What do you think of this approach? Will you be using it? What tools would you like to support you?   Technorati Tags: Visual Studio ALM,TFS Administration,TFS,Team Foundation Server,Project Planning,TFS Customisation

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 10, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, October 10, 2013Popular ReleasesDynamics AX 2012 R2 Kitting: First Beta release of Kitting: First Beta release of Kitting Install by using XPO or Models.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.8.0: - fixed document formatting artifacts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.8.0: - fixed document formatting artifacts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.Generic Unit of Work and Repositories Framework: v2.0: Async methods for Repostiories - Ivan (@ifarkas) OData Async - Ivan (@ifarkas) Glimpse MVC4 workig with MVC5 Glimpse EF6 Northwind.Repostiory Project (layer) best practices for extending the Repositories Northwind.Services Project (layer), best practices for implementing business facade Live Demo: http://longle.azurewebsites.net/Spa/Product#/list Documentation: http://blog.longle.net/2013/10/09/upgrading-to-async-with-entity-framework-mvc-odata-asyncentitysetcontroller-kendo-ui-gli...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.581b: Fix in place for TVDB xml issue. New* Movie - General Preferences, allow saving of ignored 'The' or 'A' to end of movie title, stored in sorttitle field. * Movie - New Way for Cropping Posters. Fixed* Movie - Rename of folders/filename. caught error message. * Movie - Fixed Bug in Save Cropped image, only saving in Pre-Frodo format if Both model selected. * Movie - Fixed Cropped image didn't take zoomed ratio into effect. * Movie - Separated Folder Renaming and File Renaming fuctions durin...Ghostscript.NET: Ghostscript.NET v.1.1.1.: v.1.1.1. fixed problem in GhostscriptRasterizer and GhostscriptViewer when MediaBox contains negative llx or lly values. (problem reported by "Prasenjit Das"). added GhostscriptPngDevice, a friendly output device class with all png devices related switches. (GhostscriptPngDevice supports: png16m, pngalpha, pnggray, png256, png16, pngmono, pngmonod). added GhostscriptJpegDevice, a friendly output device class with all jpeg devices related switches. (GhostscriptJpegDevice supports: jpeg, jp...xFunc: xFunc 2.7.3: Fixed memory leak. Small fixes.SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...AD ACL Scanner: 1.3: New features:Effective rights, select a security principal and match it agains the permissions in AD. Color coded permissions based on criticality when using effective rights scan. Search levels : Base, One Level, Subtree. List you domains and select one from the list. Get the size of the security descriptor (bytes). Rerporting on disabled inheritance . Better search functianlity; you can use wildcards on Trustee. Get all inherited permissions in report.MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.2: Release 1.11.2 Full 1.2 Support =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== We have all markers solsund made sure the tile and background colors are correct. (map looks correct with no missing pink) Added better error tracking for those having trouble.Fast YouTube Downloader: Youtube Downloader 2.1: Youtube Downloader 2.1NuGet: NuGet 2.7.1: Released October 07, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.7.1 Important note: After downloading the signed build of NuGet.exe, if you perform an update using the "nuget.exe update -self" command, it will revert back to the unsigned build.Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit 2.0: IntroductionMugen MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight, WPF, WinRT and WP applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern. The purpose of the toolkit is to provide a simple framework and set of tools for getting up to speed quickly with applications based on the MVVM design pattern. The core of Toolkit contains a navigation system, windows management system, models, validation, etc. Mugen MVVM Toolkit contains all the MVVM classes such as ViewModelBase, RelayCommand,...Office Ribbon Project (under active development): Ribbon (07. Oct. 2013): Fixed Scrollbar Bug if DropDown Button is bigger than screen Added Office 2013 Theme Fixed closing the Ribbon caused a null reference exception in the RibbonButton.Dispose if the DropDown was not created yet Fixed Memory leak fix (unhooked events after Dispose) Fixed ToolStrip Selected Text 2013 and 2007 for Blue and Standard themesGhostscript Studio: Ghostscript.Studio v.1.0.2: Ghostscript Studio is easy to use Ghostscript IDE, a tool that facilitates the use of the Ghostscript interpreter by providing you with a graphical interface for postscript editing and file conversions. Ghostscript Studio allows you to preview postscript files, edit the code and execute them in order to convert PDF documents and other formats. The program allows you to convert between PDF, Postscript, EPS, TIFF, JPG and PNG by using the Ghostscript.NET Processor. v.1.0.2. added custom -c s...cmdradio: v0.1.1 binary: Default download in win32. For other OS see here. This is alpha version. Please report all bugs.Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.3 Alpha: Allow using environment variables in configuration file (history db connection string, download folder location, display name, group and message) Fix for history viewer to show the correct history entries History saved with UTC timestamp This is alpha release and not recommended for use in productionVidCoder: 1.5.7 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 4819. About dialog now pulls down HandBrake version from the DLL. Added a confirmation dialog to Stop if the encode has been going on for more than 5 minutes. Fixed handling of unicode characters for input and output filenames. We now encode to UTF-8 before passing to HandBrake. Fixed a crash in the queue multiple titles dialog. Added code to rescue tool windows which get placed outside of the visible screen area.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.05: Enhance the "Reboot Remote Computers", by adding a timer before the reboot occure. So that remote users can save their documents and close applications. You can also add a message to be display. In 'Tools'->'Settings'-> Misc Tab, you can set a default message. Enhance the "Compare Computers against AD", by choosing OUs to include in the comparison.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Menu Option to delete an Forum Account NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links FIXED: Fixed Ripping of http://forum.babeunion.com ForumsNew ProjectsAphid: Aphid is an embeddable, cross-platform, multi-paradigm, and highly interoperable .NET scripting language.CCSP: De online plek voor de V-ICT-OR CCSP communityCLOSED: CLOSEDCorporation Wars: Corporation WarsEntityFramework.BulkInsert: Bulk insert extension for EntityFramework 5. Can be used with Code First approach only.HelpersLib: Simple set of helper libs to aid you with DVLUP challenges or general WP improvementsID3 Algorithm: ID3 algorithm from Machine Learning field. ID3 was implemented in .NET 4.0 using WinForms and C#.Impacta - C# - módulo II: Roteiro de aula para o módulo II de C# da Impacta.InstaSharp: InstaSharp is a C# library that wraps the Instagram API and makes it easy to write applications with Instagram data.iRateMyApp: Project Title iRateMyApp Project Description This is a project for Assignment 2 of Web Scripting and Content Creation (University of Hertfordshire) The projeiRateMyApps: This is a project for Assignment 2 of Web Scripting and Content Creation (University of Hertfordshire)MapLite: Android Tile Map, fork from osmdroidMileage Demo: This is a quick tool to help keep track of your mileage and translate the results to multiple output formats.multiples3and5: Small projectNido Framework with .Net 4.0 and Entity Framework help you standardize your BLL.: Nido is a reusable generic code library developed using .NET/ C# (4.0, EF) providing a common platform (Web, Windows Form, Web Service, Services and Libraries).pgist: gist, GitHubpsi56: ??ERPSharePoint QB Rating App: QB Rating App is a SharePoint 2013 App that calculates a QB's NFL and NCAA passing efficiency ratings.TFS PS Integration Editor: TFS PS Integration Editor is a tool that manage the main functionally of "TfsAdmin ProjectServer" command line tool.Tfs Test: A test TFS project.Windows Service Manager: The Service Manager is management of “Services”, wither these services are local (instance) or remote. Features 1. Start, Stop and Restart service. Work Smart: Work Smart helps prevent computer related health issues.XcbWeiXin: haha

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 09, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, October 09, 2013Popular ReleasesxFunc: xFunc 2.7.3: Fixed memory leak. Small fixes.SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 1.2.0: HighlightsMulti-store support "Trusted Shops" plugins Highly improved SmartStore.biz Importer plugin Add custom HTML content to pages Performance optimization New FeaturesMulti-store-support: now multiple stores can be managed within a single application instance (e.g. for building different catalogs, brands, landing pages etc.) Added 3 new Trusted Shops plugins: Seal, Buyer Protection, Store Reviews Added Display as HTML Widget to CMS Topics (store owner now can add arbitrary HT...Wrangle for Windows: Wrangle Beta 0.1.0.6: + Various Bugs Fixes + Notification are now available + Many small features added - Does not contain user profiles yet - Conclusions not available yetAD ACL Scanner: 1.3: New features:Effective rights, select a security principal and match it agains the permissions in AD. Color coded permissions based on criticality when using effective rights scan. Search levels : Base, One Level, Subtree. List you domains and select one from the list. Get the size of the security descriptor (bytes). Rerporting on disabled inheritance . Better search functianlity; you can use wildcards on Trustee. Get all inherited permissions in report.MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.2: Release 1.11.2 Full 1.2 Support =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== We have all markers solsund made sure the tile and background colors are correct. (map looks correct with no missing pink) Added better error tracking for those having trouble.Fast YouTube Downloader: Youtube Downloader 2.1: Youtube Downloader 2.1MSCRM ToolKit: MSCRMToolKit 0.5.5: Increased MaxStringContextLength property in the Reference Data Transporter in response of the Issue: https://mscrmtoolkit.codeplex.com/workitem/1520NuGet: NuGet 2.7.1: Released October 07, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.7.1 Important note: After downloading the signed build of NuGet.exe, if you perform an update using the "nuget.exe update -self" command, it will revert back to the unsigned build.Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit 2.0: IntroductionMugen MVVM Toolkit makes it easier to develop Silverlight, WPF, WinRT and WP applications using the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern. The purpose of the toolkit is to provide a simple framework and set of tools for getting up to speed quickly with applications based on the MVVM design pattern. The core of Toolkit contains a navigation system, windows management system, models, validation, etc. Mugen MVVM Toolkit contains all the MVVM classes such as ViewModelBase, RelayCommand,...Office Ribbon Project (under active development): Ribbon (07. Oct. 2013): Fixed Scrollbar Bug if DropDown Button is bigger than screen Added Office 2013 Theme Fixed closing the Ribbon caused a null reference exception in the RibbonButton.Dispose if the DropDown was not created yet Fixed Memory leak fix (unhooked events after Dispose) Fixed ToolStrip Selected Text 2013 and 2007 for Blue and Standard themesGhostscript.NET: Ghostscript.NET v.1.1.0.: v.1.1.0. added GhostscriptViewer state handling (SaveState, RestoreState) GhostscriptRasterizer constructor is extended in order to support usage of the existing GhostscriptViewer instance. fixed problem while using a 32-bit assembly with 32-bit version of Ghostscript on 64-bit Windows: It couldn't find a registry key of installed Ghostscript. Reported and fixed by "r0land". v.1.0.9. implemented EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) support for the GhostscriptViewer. added GhostscriptRasterize...Ghostscript Studio: Ghostscript.Studio v.1.0.2: Ghostscript Studio is easy to use Ghostscript IDE, a tool that facilitates the use of the Ghostscript interpreter by providing you with a graphical interface for postscript editing and file conversions. Ghostscript Studio allows you to preview postscript files, edit the code and execute them in order to convert PDF documents and other formats. The program allows you to convert between PDF, Postscript, EPS, TIFF, JPG and PNG by using the Ghostscript.NET Processor. v.1.0.2. added custom -c s...cmdradio: v0.1.1 binary: Default download in win32. For other OS see here. This is alpha version. Please report all bugs.Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.3 Alpha: Allow using environment variables in configuration file (history db connection string, download folder location, display name, group and message) Fix for history viewer to show the correct history entries History saved with UTC timestamp This is alpha release and not recommended for use in productionMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.579b: Fixed IMDB actor scraping for Movies and TV. Note: there are a couple of new functions that are not active, as this release needed to be done due to IMDB change. New* TV - context menu for rescrapeing Poster image/Banner image Fixed* Both - Fixed actor scraping from IMDB * Movie - Fixed Tableview if Movie's movieset was not in MC's list of moviesets * Movie - Rename with mediainfo now lowercase. * Both - added ignore "A " in titles. Separate option in General Preferences. * Tv - Changing ...VidCoder: 1.5.7 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 4819. About dialog now pulls down HandBrake version from the DLL. Added a confirmation dialog to Stop if the encode has been going on for more than 5 minutes. Fixed handling of unicode characters for input and output filenames. We now encode to UTF-8 before passing to HandBrake. Fixed a crash in the queue multiple titles dialog. Added code to rescue tool windows which get placed outside of the visible screen area.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1310.05: Enhance the "Reboot Remote Computers", by adding a timer before the reboot occure. So that remote users can save their documents and close applications. You can also add a message to be display. In 'Tools'->'Settings'-> Misc Tab, you can set a default message. Enhance the "Compare Computers against AD", by choosing OUs to include in the comparison.Pulse: Pulse 0.6.7.3: Pulse is now accepting donations. To donate by Bitcoin or PayPal see https://pulse.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Donations Lots of updates in v0.6.7.3: (Feature) New option allows you to disable wallpaper changing when a full screen application is running. This way Pulse doesn't slow down/lag your videos and games :) (Fix) Some users were getting Wallbase errors when logging in. This has been fixed. (Feature) Right click a provider and you can now make a copy of it by selecting the "Dupl...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Menu Option to delete an Forum Account NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links FIXED: Fixed Ripping of http://forum.babeunion.com ForumsSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.New ProjectsA library of helpers to augment InfoPath code behind development.: A library providing useful helpers to augment and speed up deveopment of complex InfoPath forms requiring code behind.A Simple Online Document Management System Using Asp.net MVC 3: A system to manage documents on-line.ASP.NET Testing: ASP.NET testingAutoSPUpdater: Automated Updating for SharePoint Server 2010/2013Currency Calculator for Microsoft Dynamics AX: The Currency calculator is a tool for calculating amounts between currencies which uses the rates as setup in the Exchange rates of Microsoft Dynamics AX.Daystate Configuration Manager: To be filled later.Djikstra's Algorithm SGGW: It's university student project presenting Djikstra algorithm usage in finding the shortest path between two points in single graph.eCommMongo: eCommMongoFast YouTube Downloader: Fast Youtube Downloader downloads video from YouTube. You could choose different video formats and qualities, and download multiple videos at the same time.FirebirdWars: Firebird Wars online strategy game.FlowSimulation: ???????????? ????????????? ???????????? ?????????Guild Wars 2 VALORUS Command and Control System: The VALORUS Command and Control System is a tool to help track and manage large numbers of people on Guild Wars 2. Useful for WvW and Guild Missions.IntelliCommand: Visual Studio Extension. Helps to remember shortcut keys. This extension is supported for Visual Studio 2010/2012/2013... Professional and higher.myonlyle: gaoOnline War Game: aOracle Portal to SharePoint Migration Scripts: These scripts will assit you in moving from Oracle Portal 10g to SharePoint!OrderingPlatform: OrderingPlatform ?? ??PSEncrypt: Powershell cmdlets to do common encryption\decryption stuffReorderListBox: ReorderListBox is an enhancement to the standard ListBox control for Windows Phone apps that allows users to drag-and-drop list items to reorder the list.SampleTileAnimation: The Windows store application targets to create a Image to appear as a tile and Animate it using StoryBoard feature using C# /Xaml code. SharePoint Friends: Open source SharePoint app library projectSharing memory between user and kernel mode processes- WinCE 6/WEC7/2013: This is a sample driver that explain how to share a block of memory between Kernel mode driver and user mode application in Windows CE 6.0/ WEC7 and WEC2013.SharpHadoop: SharpHadoop facilitates access to WebHDFS from .Net. The library can easily be dependencies and solely relies on the .net standard library Features: 1) UploaSSRS Admin Tasks: Admin GUI Tool for SQL Server Reporting ServicesTimeWatcher: TimeWatcher is an application allowing you keep track of the time passed on tasks, even across multiple working sessions. A good tool for developers who need toTinyMIS: TinyMistmask: tmaskVitaliyPianykhStuff: Here I'll publish handy code snippets.World Simulator: Will the universe expand or will it collapse? Hundreds of experts are about to discuss this question and this program was designed to give an answer... :-)WSccTravel: This is the project created during class WScc 2013

  Read the article

• ASMLib

  - by wcoekaer

  Oracle ASMlib on Linux has been a topic of discussion a number of times since it was released way back when in 2004. There is a lot of confusion around it and certainly a lot of misinformation out there for no good reason. Let me try to give a bit of history around Oracle ASMLib. Oracle ASMLib was introduced at the time Oracle released Oracle Database 10g R1. 10gR1 introduced a very cool important new features called Oracle ASM (Automatic Storage Management). A very simplistic description would be that this is a very sophisticated volume manager for Oracle data. Give your devices directly to the ASM instance and we manage the storage for you, clustered, highly available, redundant, performance, etc, etc... We recommend using Oracle ASM for all database deployments, single instance or clustered (RAC). The ASM instance manages the storage and every Oracle server process opens and operates on the storage devices like it would open and operate on regular datafiles or raw devices. So by default since 10gR1 up to today, we do not interact differently with ASM managed block devices than we did before with a datafile being mapped to a raw device. All of this is without ASMLib, so ignore that one for now. Standard Oracle on any platform that we support (Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, ...) does it the exact same way. You start an ASM instance, it handles storage management, all the database instances use and open that storage and read/write from/to it. There are no extra pieces of software needed, including on Linux. ASM is fully functional and selfcontained without any other components. In order for the admin to provide a raw device to ASM or to the database, it has to have persistent device naming. If you booted up a server where a raw disk was named /dev/sdf and you give it to ASM (or even just creating a tablespace without asm on that device with datafile '/dev/sdf') and next time you boot up and that device is now /dev/sdg, you end up with an error. Just like you can't just change datafile names, you can't change device filenames without telling the database, or ASM. persistent device naming on Linux, especially back in those days ways to say it bluntly, a nightmare. In fact there were a number of issues (dating back to 2004) : Linux async IO wasn't pretty persistent device naming including permissions (had to be owned by oracle and the dba group) was very, very difficult to manage system resource usage in terms of open file descriptors So given the above, we tried to find a way to make this easier on the admins, in many ways, similar to why we started working on OCFS a few years earlier - how can we make life easier for the admins on Linux. A feature of Oracle ASM is the ability for third parties to write an extension using what's called ASMLib. It is possible for any third party OS or storage vendor to write a library using a specific Oracle defined interface that gets used by the ASM instance and by the database instance when available. This interface offered 2 components : Define an IO interface - allow any IO to the devices to go through ASMLib Define device discovery - implement an external way of discovering, labeling devices to provide to ASM and the Oracle database instance This is similar to a library that a number of companies have implemented over many years called libODM (Oracle Disk Manager). ODM was specified many years before we introduced ASM and allowed third party vendors to implement their own IO routines so that the database would use this library if installed and make use of the library open/read/write/close,.. routines instead of the standard OS interfaces. PolyServe back in the day used this to optimize their storage solution, Veritas used (and I believe still uses) this for their filesystem. It basically allowed, in particular, filesystem vendors to write libraries that could optimize access to their storage or filesystem.. so ASMLib was not something new, it was basically based on the same model. You have libodm for just database access, you have libasm for asm/database access. Since this library interface existed, we decided to do a reference implementation on Linux. We wrote an ASMLib for Linux that could be used on any Linux platform and other vendors could see how this worked and potentially implement their own solution. As I mentioned earlier, ASMLib and ODMLib are libraries for third party extensions. ASMLib for Linux, since it was a reference implementation implemented both interfaces, the storage discovery part and the IO part. There are 2 components : Oracle ASMLib - the userspace library with config tools (a shared object and some scripts) oracleasm.ko - a kernel module that implements the asm device for /dev/oracleasm/* The userspace library is a binary-only module since it links with and contains Oracle header files but is generic, we only have one asm library for the various Linux platforms. This library is opened by Oracle ASM and by Oracle database processes and this library interacts with the OS through the asm device (/dev/asm). It can install on Oracle Linux, on SuSE SLES, on Red Hat RHEL,.. The library itself doesn't actually care much about the OS version, the kernel module and device cares. The support tools are simple scripts that allow the admin to label devices and scan for disks and devices. This way you can say create an ASM disk label foo on, currently /dev/sdf... So if /dev/sdf disappears and next time is /dev/sdg, we just scan for the label foo and we discover it as /dev/sdg and life goes on without any worry. Also, when the database needs access to the device, we don't have to worry about file permissions or anything it will be taken care of. So it's a convenience thing. The kernel module oracleasm.ko is a Linux kernel module/device driver. It implements a device /dev/oracleasm/* and any and all IO goes through ASMLib - /dev/oracleasm. This kernel module is obviously a very specific Oracle related device driver but it was released under the GPL v2 so anyone could easily build it for their Linux distribution kernels. Advantages for using ASMLib : A good async IO interface for the database, the entire IO interface is based on an optimal ASYNC model for performance A single file descriptor per Oracle process, not one per device or datafile per process reducing # of open filehandles overhead Device scanning and labeling built-in so you do not have to worry about messing with udev or devlabel, permissions or the likes which can be very complex and error prone. Just like with OCFS and OCFS2, each kernel version (major or minor) has to get a new version of the device drivers. We started out building the oracleasm kernel module rpms for many distributions, SLES (in fact in the early days still even for this thing called United Linux) and RHEL. The driver didn't make sense to get pushed into upstream Linux because it's unique and specific to the Oracle database. As it takes a huge effort in terms of build infrastructure and QA and release management to build kernel modules for every architecture, every linux distribution and every major and minor version we worked with the vendors to get them to add this tiny kernel module to their infrastructure. (60k source code file). The folks at SuSE understood this was good for them and their customers and us and added it to SLES. So every build coming from SuSE for SLES contains the oracleasm.ko module. We weren't as successful with other vendors so for quite some time we continued to build it for RHEL and of course as we introduced Oracle Linux end of 2006 also for Oracle Linux. With Oracle Linux it became easy for us because we just added the code to our build system and as we churned out Oracle Linux kernels whether it was for a public release or for customers that needed a one off fix where they also used asmlib, we didn't have to do any extra work it was just all nicely integrated. With the introduction of Oracle Linux's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and our interest in being able to exploit ASMLib more, we started working on a very exciting project called Data Integrity. Oracle (Martin Petersen in particular) worked for many years with the T10 standards committee and storage vendors and implemented Linux kernel support for DIF/DIX, data protection in the Linux kernel, note to those that wonder, yes it's all in mainline Linux and under the GPL. This basically gave us all the features in the Linux kernel to checksum a data block, send it to the storage adapter, which can then validate that block and checksum in firmware before it sends it over the wire to the storage array, which can then do another checksum and to the actual DISK which does a final validation before writing the block to the physical media. So what was missing was the ability for a userspace application (read: Oracle RDBMS) to write a block which then has a checksum and validation all the way down to the disk. application to disk. Because we have ASMLib we had an entry into the Linux kernel and Martin added support in ASMLib (kernel driver + userspace) for this functionality. Now, this is all based on relatively current Linux kernels, the oracleasm kernel module depends on the main kernel to have support for it so we can make use of it. Thanks to UEK and us having the ability to ship a more modern, current version of the Linux kernel we were able to introduce this feature into ASMLib for Linux from Oracle. This combined with the fact that we build the asm kernel module when we build every single UEK kernel allowed us to continue improving ASMLib and provide it to our customers. So today, we (Oracle) provide Oracle ASMLib for Oracle Linux and in particular on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. We did the build/testing/delivery of ASMLib for RHEL until RHEL5 but since RHEL6 decided that it was too much effort for us to also maintain all the build and test environments for RHEL and we did not have the ability to use the latest kernel features to introduce the Data Integrity features and we didn't want to end up with multiple versions of asmlib as maintained by us. SuSE SLES still builds and comes with the oracleasm module and they do all the work and RHAT it certainly welcome to do the same. They don't have to rebuild the userspace library, it's really about the kernel module. And finally to re-iterate a few important things : Oracle ASM does not in any way require ASMLib to function completely. ASMlib is a small set of extensions, in particular to make device management easier but there are no extra features exposed through Oracle ASM with ASMLib enabled or disabled. Often customers confuse ASMLib with ASM. again, ASM exists on every Oracle supported OS and on every supported Linux OS, SLES, RHEL, OL withoutASMLib Oracle ASMLib userspace is available for OTN and the kernel module is shipped along with OL/UEK for every build and by SuSE for SLES for every of their builds ASMLib kernel module was built by us for RHEL4 and RHEL5 but we do not build it for RHEL6, nor for the OL6 RHCK kernel. Only for UEK ASMLib for Linux is/was a reference implementation for any third party vendor to be able to offer, if they want to, their own version for their own OS or storage ASMLib as provided by Oracle for Linux continues to be enhanced and evolve and for the kernel module we use UEK as the base OS kernel hope this helps.

  Read the article

• AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure

  - by jamiet

  Three days ago I tweeted this: Idea. MSFT could host read-only copies of all the [AdventureWorks] DBs up on #sqlazure for the SQL community to use. RT if agree #sqlfamily — Jamie Thomson (@jamiet) March 24, 2012 Evidently I wasn't the only one that thought this was a good idea because as you can see from the screenshot that tweet has, so far, been retweeted more than fifty times. Clearly there is a desire to see the AdventureWorks databases made available for the community to noodle around on so I am pleased to announce that as of today you can do just that - [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use* for their own means. *By use I mean "issue some SELECT statements". You don't have permission to issue INSERTs, UPDATEs, DELETEs or EXECUTEs I'm afraid - if you want to do that then you can get the bits and host it yourself. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected]: Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more that we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. OK, with the prickly subject of begging for cash out of the way let me share the details that you need to connect to [AdventureWorks2012] on SQL Azure: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly That user sqlfamily has all the permissions required to enable you to query away to your heart's content. Here is the code that I used to set it up: CREATE USER sqlfamily FOR LOGIN sqlfamily;CREATE ROLE sqlfamilyrole;EXEC sp_addrolemember 'sqlfamilyrole','sqlfamily';GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON Database::AdventureWorks2012 TO sqlfamilyrole;GRANT VIEW DATABASE STATE ON Database::AdventureWorks2012 TO sqlfamilyrole;GRANT SHOWPLAN TO sqlfamilyrole;EXEC sp_addrolemember 'db_datareader','sqlfamilyrole'; You can connect to the database using SQL Server Management Studio (instructions to do that are provided at Walkthrough: Connecting to SQL Azure via the SSMS) or you can use the web interface at https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net: Lastly, just for a bit of fun I created a table up there called [dbo].[SqlFamily] into which you can leave a small calling card. Simply execute the following SQL statement (changing the values of course): INSERT [dbo].[SqlFamily]([Name],[Message],[TwitterHandle],[BlogURI])VALUES ('Your name here','Some Message','your twitter handle (optional)','Blog URI (optional)'); [Id] is an IDENTITY field and there is a default constraint on [DT] hence there is no need to supply a value for those. Note that you only have INSERT permissions, not UPDATE or DELETE so make sure you get it right first time! Any offensive or distasteful remarks will of course be deleted :) Thank you for reading this far and have fun using AdventureWorks on Azure. I hope it proves to be useful for some of you. @jamiet AdventureWorks on Azure - Provided by the SQL Server community, for the SQL Server community!

  Read the article

• How does the Trash Can work, and where can I find official documentation, reference, or specification for it?

  - by MestreLion

  When trying to manage trash can from mounted NTFS volumes, I ended up reading FreeDesktop.org's reference on it. Poking around and doing some tests, I realized Ubuntu/Gnome does not follow the specs 100%. Here's why: For non-/ partitions, it always uses <driveroot>/.Trash-<uid>, It never used <driveroot>/.Trash/<uid>, even when i created it in advance. While this works, it's annoying: if I have 15 users, I end up with 15 /.Trash-xxx folders in my drive, while the other approach would still give a single folder (with 15 sub-folders). That "pollution" in my drives is very unpleasant. And specs say "If an $topdir/.Trash directory is absent, an $topdir/.Trash-$uid directory is to be used". Well, it IS present, so why does it never use it? root trash does not work, at least not out of the box. Open nautilus as root and click on trash; it gives an error. Try to delete any file, it says "it can't move to trash". Ok, I know this can be fixed by creating /root/.local/share. But specs says "A “home trash” directory SHOULD be automatically created for any new user. If this directory is needed for a trashing operation but does not exist, the implementation SHOULD automatically create it, without any warnings or delays.". Why the error then? Bug? Why must I change /etc/fstab entries for mounted volumes, adding options like uid and guid, if the volumes are already mounted as RW for everyone? These are just some examples of deviation from the standard. So, the question is: "If Ubuntu does not adhere 100% to the spec, HOW exactly does the trash work? WHERE can i find a technical reference for Ubuntu's implementation of the trash?" By the way: if Ubuntu does happen to follow specs, please tell me what I am doing wrong, especially regarding the /.Trash-<uid> vs /.Trash/<uid> issue. Thanks! EDIT: Some more info: If a given fs has no support for the sticky bit (VFAT, NTFS), it probably doesn't have for permissions either (at least VFAT surely doesn't). So what prevents one user from purging / restoring other users' ./Trash-xxx ? If one can read/write his own Trash, one can do the same for the whole drive, including other's trashes, correct? Or does Gnome have some kind of "extra" protection on ./Trash-xxx folders on VFAT/NTFS fs? If Linux can "emulate" file permissions on NTFS mounting by editing /fstab uid and gid options, can it also "emulate" the sticky bit? I would really prefer to use /.Trash/xxx format... For the root issue: for the / partition, I can use trash as root, and it goes to /root/.local/shate/Trash. But if I click on Nautilus "Trash" (as root), I get an error. Don't you? So files are correctly trashed, but I can't access it. All I can do is manually "purge" them (by deleting files on /root/.local/shate/Trash), but restoring would be very tricky (opening info files and manually moving, etc.). For non-/ partitions (or at least for VFAT/NTFS), I can not even use trash as root: it does not create a ./Trash-0 folder, it simply says "Cannot trash, want to permanently delete?" Why? About fstab: i use it for a permanent mount for my NTFS partitions. I have several, and if not "pre-mounted" they really clutter the desktop and/or Nautilus. I'd rather have it pre-mounted, integrated in my fs, in mounts like /data , /windows/xp , /windows/vista , and so on, and leave /media and its "mount/unmount" flexibility just for truly removable drives. So, if Ubuntu/Gnome truly follows the spec, is there any way to fix the root issues and to "emulate" the sticky bit for (at least) my fstab'ed NTFS fixed partitions?

  Read the article

• SQL Server Date Comparison Functions

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  A few months ago, I found myself working with a repetitive cursor that looped until the data had been manipulated enough times that it was finally correct.  The cursor was heavily dependent upon dates, every time requiring the earlier of two (or several) dates in one stored procedure, while requiring the later of two dates in another stored procedure. In short what I needed was a function that would allow me to perform the following evaluation: WHERE MAX(Date1, Date2) < @SomeDate The problem is, the MAX() function in SQL Server does not perform this functionality.  So, I set out to put these functions together.  They are titled: EarlierOf() and LaterOf(). /**********************************************************                               EarlierOf.sql   **********************************************************/ /**********************************************************   Return the later of two DATETIME variables.   Parameter 1: DATETIME1 Parameter 2: DATETIME2   Works for a variety of DATETIME or NULL values. Even though comparisons with NULL are actually indeterminate, we know conceptually that NULL is not earlier or later than any other date provided.   SYNTAX: SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('1/1/2000','12/1/2009') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('2009-12-01 00:00:00.000','2009-12-01 00:00:00.521') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('11/15/2000',NULL) SELECT dbo.EarlierOf(NULL,'1/15/2004') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf(NULL,NULL)   **********************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE name = 'EarlierOf'       AND xtype = 'FN'       ) BEGIN             DROP FUNCTION EarlierOf END GO   CREATE FUNCTION EarlierOf (       @Date1                              DATETIME,       @Date2                              DATETIME )   RETURNS DATETIME   AS BEGIN       DECLARE @ReturnDate     DATETIME         IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = NULL             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NOT NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NOT NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             IF @Date2 < @Date1                   SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         EndOfFunction:       RETURN @ReturnDate   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON EarlierOf TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON EarlierOf TO UserRole2 --GO                                                                                             The inverse of this function is only slightly different. /**********************************************************                               LaterOf.sql   **********************************************************/ /**********************************************************   Return the later of two DATETIME variables.   Parameter 1: DATETIME1 Parameter 2: DATETIME2   Works for a variety of DATETIME or NULL values. Even though comparisons with NULL are actually indeterminate, we know conceptually that NULL is not earlier or later than any other date provided.   SYNTAX: SELECT dbo.LaterOf('1/1/2000','12/1/2009') SELECT dbo.LaterOf('2009-12-01 00:00:00.000','2009-12-01 00:00:00.521') SELECT dbo.LaterOf('11/15/2000',NULL) SELECT dbo.LaterOf(NULL,'1/15/2004') SELECT dbo.LaterOf(NULL,NULL)   **********************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE name = 'LaterOf'       AND xtype = 'FN'       ) BEGIN             DROP FUNCTION LaterOf END GO   CREATE FUNCTION LaterOf (       @Date1                              DATETIME,       @Date2                              DATETIME )   RETURNS DATETIME   AS BEGIN       DECLARE @ReturnDate     DATETIME         IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = NULL             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NOT NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NOT NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             IF @Date2 > @Date1                   SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         EndOfFunction:       RETURN @ReturnDate   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON LaterOf TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON LaterOf TO UserRole2 --GO                                                                                             The interesting thing about this function is its simplicity and the built-in NULL handling functionality.  Its interesting, because it seems like something should already exist in SQL Server that does this.  From a different vantage point, if you create this functionality and it is easy to use (ideally, intuitively self-explanatory), you have made a successful contribution. Interesting is good.  Self-explanatory, or intuitive is FAR better.  Happy coding! Graeme

  Read the article

• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

  Read the article

• Getting Audio from a Zone

  - by bleonard

  Now that I have Firefox and Java Web Start running from a zone, the last piece of the puzzle was audio (essential because most Flash content is accompanied by sound).  In the global zone there's a nice little utility called audiotest for testing your sound: bleonard@solaris:~$ audiotest Sound subsystem and version: SunOS Audio 4.0 (0x00040003) Platform: SunOS 5.11 snv_151a i86pc *** Scanning sound adapter #1 *** /dev/sound/audio810:0dsp (audio engine 0): audio810#0 - Performing audio playback test... <left> ................OK <right> ...............OK <stereo> ..............OK <measured sample rate 47727.00 Hz (-0.57%)> *** All tests completed OK *** Of course, before you can try audiotest in a zone, it must be installed: root@myzone:~# pkg install audio-utilities Packages to install: 1 Create boot environment: No DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) Completed 1/1 6/6 0.4/0.4 PHASE ACTIONS Install Phase 20/20 PHASE ITEMS Package State Update Phase 1/1 Image State Update Phase 2/2 However, we'll need to do more than just install audiotest: root@myzone:~# audiotest /dev/mixer: No such file or directory The device file is missing from /dev. The audio devices also need to be added to the zone. For this we modify the zone configuration as follows: bleonard@solaris:~$ sudo zonecfg -z myzone Password: zonecfg:myzone> add device zonecfg:myzone:device> set match=/dev/audio* zonecfg:myzone:device> end zonecfg:myzone> add device zonecfg:myzone:device> set match=/dev/sound/* zonecfg:myzone:device> end zonecfg:myzone> add device zonecfg:myzone:device> set match=/dev/mixer* zonecfg:myzone:device> end zonecfg:myzone> add device zonecfg:myzone:device> set match=/dev/sndstat zonecfg:myzone:device> end zonecfg:myzone> verify zonecfg:myzone> exit Then reboot the zone: bleonard@solaris:~$ sudo zoneadm -z myzone reboot After which, audiotest should work: root@myzone:~# audiotest Sound subsystem and version: SunOS Audio 4.0 (0x00040003) Platform: SunOS 5.11 snv_151a i86pc *** Scanning sound adapter #1 *** /dev/sound/audio810:0dsp (audio engine 0): audio810#0 - Performing audio playback test... <left> ................OK <right> ...............OK <stereo> ..............OK <measured sample rate 48208.00 Hz (0.43%)> *** All tests completed OK *** You can also examine /dev/sndstat for additional information: root@myzone:~# cat /dev/sndstat SunOS Audio Framework Audio Devices: 0: audio810#0 Intel AC'97, ICH (DUPLEX) Mixers: 0: audio810#0 Intel AC'97, ICH AC'97 codec: SigmaTel STAC9700 However, when testing the sound from Firefox (from a user account other than root), such as this recent Flash presentation on Solaris availability, you may still be disappointed. This is simply a permissions problem, as the devices only have read and write permissions for root: root@myzone:~# ls -l /dev/audio* crw------- 1 root root 99, 3 Jul 1 10:21 /dev/audio crw------- 1 root root 99, 4 Jul 1 10:21 /dev/audioctl To address this: root@myzone:~# chmod 777 /dev/audio* root@myzone:~# chmod 777 /dev/sound/* And you should be all set.

  Read the article

• Creating a Corporate Data Hub

  - by BuckWoody

  The Windows Azure Marketplace has a rich assortment of data and software offerings for you to use – a type of Software as a Service (SaaS) for IT workers, not necessarily for end-users. Among those offerings is the “Data Hub” – a  codename for a project that ironically actually does what the codename says. In many of our organizations, we have multiple data quality issues. Finding data is one problem, but finding it just once is often a bigger problem. Lots of departments and even individuals have stored the same data more than once, and in some cases, made changes to one of the copies. It’s difficult to know which location or version of the data is authoritative. Then there’s the problem of accessing the data. It’s fairly straightforward to publish a database, share or other location internally to store the data. But then you have to figure out who owns it, how it is controlled, and pass out the various connection strings to those who want to use it. And then you need to figure out how to let folks access the internal data externally – bringing up all kinds of security issues. Finally, in many cases our user community wants us to combine data from the internally sources with external data, bringing up the security, strings, and exploration features up all over again. Enter the Data Hub. This is an online offering, where you assign an administrator and data stewards. You import the data into the service, and it’s available to you - and only you and your organization if you wish. The basic steps for this service are to set up the portal for your company, assign administrators and permissions, and then you assign data areas and import data into them. From there you make them discoverable, and then you have multiple options that you or your users can access that data. You’re then able, if you wish, to combine that data with other data in one location. So how does all that work? What about security? Is it really that easy? And can you really move the data definition off to the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) that know the particular data stack better than the IT team does? Well, nothing good is easy – but using the Data Hub is actually pretty simple. I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can sign up and try this yourself. Once you sign up, you assign an administrator. From there you’ll create data areas, and then use a simple interface to bring the data in. All of this is done in a portal interface – nothing to install, configure, update or manage. After the data is entered in, and you’ve assigned meta-data to describe it, your users have multiple options to access it. They can simply use the portal – which actually has powerful visualizations you can use on any platform, even mobile phones or tablets.     Your users can also hit the data with Excel – which gives them ultimate flexibility for display, all while using an authoritative, single reference for the data. Since the service is online, they can do this wherever they are – given the proper authentication and permissions. You can also hit the service with simple API calls, like this one from C#: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921924  You can make HTTP calls instead of code, and the data can even be exposed as an OData Feed. As you can see, there are a lot of options. You can check out the offering here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/data-hub.aspx and you can read the documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh921938

  Read the article

• Process for Securing Web Sites and Applications

  - by Aamir Hasan

  The following quick-start guide provides a detailed overview of how to configure security for IIS 6.0. Reduce the Attack Surface of the Web Server 1.       Enable only essential Windows Server 2003 components and services. 2.       Enable only essential IIS 6.0 components and services. 3.       Enable only essential Web service extensions. 4.       Enable only essential Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) types. 5.       Configure Windows Server 2003 security settings. Prevent Unauthorized Access to Web Sites and Applications 1.       Store content on a dedicated disk volume. 2.       Set IIS Web site permissions. 3.       Set IP address and domain name restrictions. 4.       Set the NTFS file system permissions. Isolate Web Sites and Applications 1.       Evaluate the effects of impersonation on application compatibility: 2·         Identify the impersonation behavior for ASP applications. 3·         Select the impersonation behavior for ASP.NET applications. 4.       Configure Web sites and applications for isolation. Configure User Authentication 1.       Configure Web site authentication. 2·         Select the Web site authentication method. 3·         Configure the Web site authentication method. 4.       Configure File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site authentication. Encrypt Confidential Data Exchanged with Clients 1.       Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt confidential data. 2.       Use Internet Protocol security (IPSec) or virtual private network (VPN) with remote administration. Maintain Web Site and Application Security 1.       Obtain and apply current security patches. 2.       Enable Windows Server 2003 security logs. 3.       Enable file access auditing for Web site content. 4.       Configure IIS logs. 5.       Review security policies, processes, and procedures.  Note:To secure the Web sites and applications in a Web farm, use the process described in this chapter to configure security for each server in the Web farm. Link:http://www.studentacad.com/post/2010/04/28/Process-for-Securing-Web-Sites-and-Applications.aspx

  Read the article

• PathTooLongException after migrating from ASP.NET MVC 1 to ASP.NET MVC 2

  - by admax

  I had updated my app from MVC 1 to MVC 2. After that some pages throws PathTooLongException: [PathTooLongException: The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.] System.IO.Path.SafeSetStackPointerValue(Char* buffer, Int32 index, Char value) +7493057 System.IO.Path.NormalizePathFast(String path, Boolean fullCheck) +387 System.IO.Path.NormalizePath(String path, Boolean fullCheck) +36 System.IO.Path.GetFullPathInternal(String path) +21 System.Security.Util.StringExpressionSet.CanonicalizePath(String path, Boolean needFullPath) +73 System.Security.Util.StringExpressionSet.CreateListFromExpressions(String[] str, Boolean needFullPath) +278 System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission.AddPathList(FileIOPermissionAccess access, AccessControlActions control, String[] pathListOrig, Boolean checkForDuplicates, Boolean needFullPath, Boolean copyPathList) +87 System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission..ctor(FileIOPermissionAccess access, String path) +65 System.Web.InternalSecurityPermissions.PathDiscovery(String path) +29 System.Web.HttpRequest.MapPath(VirtualPath virtualPath, VirtualPath baseVirtualDir, Boolean allowCrossAppMapping) +146 System.Web.HttpRequest.MapPath(VirtualPath virtualPath) +37 System.Web.HttpServerUtility.Execute(IHttpHandler handler, TextWriter writer, Boolean preserveForm, Boolean setPreviousPage) +43 System.Web.HttpServerUtility.Execute(IHttpHandler handler, TextWriter writer, Boolean preserveForm) +28 System.Web.HttpServerUtilityWrapper.Execute(IHttpHandler handler, TextWriter writer, Boolean preserveForm) +22 System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage.RenderView(ViewContext viewContext) +284 System.Web.Mvc.WebFormView.RenderViewPage(ViewContext context, ViewPage page) +82 System.Web.Mvc.WebFormView.Render(ViewContext viewContext, TextWriter writer) +85 System.Web.Mvc.ViewResultBase.ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context) +267 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionResult(ControllerContext controllerContext, ActionResult actionResult) +10 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +320 System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() +104 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +36 System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.System.Web.Mvc.IController.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +7 System.Web.Mvc.<c_DisplayClass8.b_4() +34 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<c_DisplayClass1.b_0() +21 System.Web.Mvc.Async.<c__DisplayClass81.<BeginSynchronous>b__7(IAsyncResult _) +12 System.Web.Mvc.Async.WrappedAsyncResult1.End() +53 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult asyncResult) +30 System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.System.Web.IHttpAsyncHandler.EndProcessRequest(IAsyncResult result) +7 System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +8678910 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +155 I know the issue with 260-character-url-lenght in ASP.NET, but my app works fine before update to ASP.NET MVC 2.0!

  Read the article

• (Fluent) NHibernate Security Exception - ReflectionPermission

  - by PeterEysermans

  I've upgraded an ASP.Net Web application to the latest build of Fluent NHibernate (1.0.0.636) and the newest version of NHibernate (v2.1.2.4000). I've checked a couple of times that the application is running in Full trust. But I keep getting the following error: Security Exception Description: The application attempted to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy. To grant this application the required permission please contact your system administrator or change the application's trust level in the configuration file. Exception Details: System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.] System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(Object demand, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean isPermSet) +0 System.Security.CodeAccessPermission.Demand() +54 System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicMethod.PerformSecurityCheck(Type owner, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean skipVisibility) +269 System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicMethod..ctor(String name, Type returnType, Type[] parameterTypes, Type owner, Boolean skipVisibility) +81 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.ReflectionOptimizer.CreateDynamicMethod(Type returnType, Type[] argumentTypes) +165 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.ReflectionOptimizer.GenerateGetPropertyValuesMethod(IGetter[] getters) +383 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.ReflectionOptimizer..ctor(Type mappedType, IGetter[] getters, ISetter[] setters) +108 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.BytecodeProviderImpl.GetReflectionOptimizer(Type mappedClass, IGetter[] getters, ISetter[] setters) +52 NHibernate.Tuple.Component.PocoComponentTuplizer..ctor(Component component) +231 NHibernate.Tuple.Component.ComponentEntityModeToTuplizerMapping..ctor(Component component) +420 NHibernate.Tuple.Component.ComponentMetamodel..ctor(Component component) +402 NHibernate.Mapping.Component.BuildType() +38 NHibernate.Mapping.Component.get_Type() +32 NHibernate.Mapping.SimpleValue.IsValid(IMapping mapping) +39 NHibernate.Mapping.RootClass.Validate(IMapping mapping) +61 NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration.ValidateEntities() +220 NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration.Validate() +16 NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration.BuildSessionFactory() +39 FluentNHibernate.Cfg.FluentConfiguration.BuildSessionFactory() in d:\Builds\FluentNH\src\FluentNHibernate\Cfg\FluentConfiguration.cs:93 Anyone had a similar error? I've seach the web / stackoverflow / NHibernate forums but only found people who had a problem when running in medium trust mode, not full trust. I've been developing for several months on this application on this machine with previous versions of Fluent NHibernate and NHibernate. The machine I'm running this on is 64-bit, you never know that this is relevant.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105  | Next Page >