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• Desktop Notifications, aka Internal Alert System

  - by Refracted Paladin

  It has become apparent that where I work needs, internally, a "notification system". The issue being that we are very spread out throughout multiple buildings and the bulk of the work force regularly keeps there email closed for hours at a time. I need to create a simple way to be able to push out a message and have it "pop up" on everyones computer(or a single computer). My first thought was to write a windows service that calls a winform/wpf app that resides on each computer that simply pops up with the message. Not sure how viable an idea that is but this is just brain-storming. A different route, I thought, could be an app that resides in the systray on each computer that polls a db table and using the Query Notifications could pop up a message each time a new row is added. Then simply create an insanely basic app for writing a row to that table. So, what I am asking is if any one else has walked this path. If so, how? What things did you take into consideration? Are either of my ideas valid starting points or are "egg and my face in perfect alignment"? Is there a different way that is even simpler? Thanks

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• How can I disable keep-alive on ASP.NET Web Service client requests?

  - by Matthew Brindley

  I have a few web servers behind an Amazon EC2 load balancer. I'm using TCP balancing on port 80 (rather than HTTP balancing). I have a client polling a Web Service (running on all web servers) for new items every few seconds. However, the client seems to stay connected to one server and polls that same server each time. I've tried using ServicePointManager to disable KeepAlive, but that didn't change anything. The outgoing connection still had its "connection: keep-alive" HTTP header, and the server kept the TCP connection open. I've also tried adding an override of GetWebRequest to the proxy class created by VS, which inherits from SoapHttpClientProtocol, but I still see the keep-alive header. If I kill the client's process and restart, it'll connect to a new server via the load balancer, but it'll continue polling that new server forever. Is there a way to force it to connect to a random server each time? I want the load from the one client to be spread across all of the web servers. The client is written in C# (as is the server) and uses a Web Reference (not a Service Reference), which points to the load balancer.

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• RDP through TCP Proxy

  - by johng100

  Hi, First time in Stackoverflow and I'm hoping someone can help me. I'm looking at a proof of concept to pass RDP traffic through a TCP Proxy/tunnel which will pass through firewalls using HTTPS. The problem has to do with deploying images to machines and so it can't be assumed that the .NET framework will be present, so C++ is being used at the deployment end of a connection. The basic system I have at present is a program which listens for client connections on a port then passes any data to a WCF service which stores it as a byte array. A deployment machine (using GSoap and C++) polls the WCF service for messages and if it finds them then passes the data onto the target server process via sockets. I know this sounds horrible, but it works for simple test clients and server passing data to and from simple test client and server programs via this WCF/C++/C# proxy layer. But I have to support traffic from RDP, VNC and possibly others, so I need a transparent proxy to do this and am wondering whether the above approach is worth pursuing. I've read up on SSH tunneling and that seems a possibility. My basic question is is it possible to tunnel RDP traffic over HTTPS using custom code. Thanks John

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• ScriptingBridge causes iTunes to relaunch after quit

  - by Justin Voss

  I'm working on a Cocoa app that monitors what you're listening to in iTunes, and since I'm targeting Mac OS 10.5 and higher, I've decided to use Scripting Bridge. If I try to close iTunes too close to the time that my app polls it for the current track, iTunes will immediately relaunch! The only way to reliably prevent this behavior is to quit my app first, then quit iTunes. Switching to EyeTunes solves the problem, but it's a fairly old codebase and I was hoping that I could accomplish this without an external library. Surely I'm doing something wrong that's causing the relaunch? Here's some sample code; this snippet is run every few seconds, triggered by an NSTimer. #import "iTunesBridge.h" // auto-generated according to Apple's docs -(void)updateTrackInfo { iTunesApplication *iTunes = [[SBApplication alloc] initWithBundleIdentifier:@"com.apple.iTunes"]; iTunesTrack *currentTrack = [iTunes currentTrack]; // inspect currentTrack to determine what's being played... [iTunes release]; } Is this a known issue with Scripting Bridge, or am I using it incorrectly?

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• Efficient cron job utilizing Zend_Mail_Storage_Imap.

  - by fireeyedboy

  I'm new to the IMAP protocol and Zend_Mail_Storage and I'm writing a small php script for a cron job that should regularly poll an IMAP account and check for new messages, and send an e-mail if new messages have arrived. As you can imagine, I want to only poll the IMAP account for relevant messages, and I only want to send a new e-mail if new messages have arrived since the last polled new message. So I thought of keeping track of the last message I polled with some unique identifier for a message. But I'm a bit uncertain about whether the methods I want to utilize for this do what I expect them to do though. So my questions are: Does the iterator position of Zend_Mail_Storage_Imap actually resemble some IMAP unique identifier for messages, or is it simply only and internal position of Zend_Mail_Storage_Abstract? For instance, if I tell it to seek() to message 5 (which I stored from an earlier session) will it indeed seek to the appropriate message on the IMAP server, even if for instance messages have been deleted since last session? Would keeping track of this latest polled message id in a file suffice for a cron job that, say, polls the account every 5 or 10 minutes? Or is this too naive, and should I be using a database for instance. Or is there maybe a much easier way to keep track of such state with Zend_Mail_Storage_Abstract? Also, do I need to poll every IMAP folder? Or is everything accumulated when I poll INBOX? If you could shed some light on any of these matters, I'ld appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

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• How CPU finds ISR and distinguishes between devices

  - by ripunjay-tripathi-gmail-com

  I should first share all what I know - and that is complete chaos. There are several different questions on the topic, so please don't get irritated :). 1) To find an ISR, CPU is provided with a interrupt number. In x86 machines (286/386 and above) there is a IVT with ISRs in it; each entry of 4 bytes in size. So we need to multiply interrupt number by 4 to find the ISR. So first bunch of questions is - I am completely confused in mechanism of CPU receiving the interrupt. To raise an interrupt, firstly device shall probe for IRQ - then what ? The interrupt number travels "on IRQ" towards CPU? I also read something like device putting ISR address on data bus ; whats that then ? What is the concept of devices overriding the ISR. Can somebody tell me few example devices where CPU polls for interrupts? And where does it finds ISR for them ? 2) If two devices share an IRQ (which is very much possible), how does CPU differs amongst them ? What if both devices raise an interrupt of same priority simultaneously. I got to know there will be masking of same type and low priority interrupts - but how this communication happens between CPU and device controller? I studied the role of PIC and APIC for this problem, but could not understand. Thanks for reading. Thank you very much for answering.

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• Calling a method within Portlet when submitting form

  - by Roland

  I have a Portlet that contains a form. Now what I want to achieve is the following. 1) A Porlet containing a form is called within a page via <?php $this->widget('form'); ?> 2) The user fills in this form and clicks on submit "The submit button should be an ajax button" 3) When submit has been pressed the form should call a method within the form portlet class and the form should be replaced with a Thank you message. 4) I only want the current view in the portlet replaced with another view. My portlet class looks like this Yii::import('zii.widgets.CPortlet'); class Polls extends CPortlet{ public $usr_id=''; public function init(){ $cs = Yii::app()->clientScript; $cs->registerCoreScript('jquery'); parent::init(); } protected function renderContent(){ $this->render('form'); } public function update(){ $this->render('thankyou'); } } } Any advise, help would be highly appreciated.

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• Module not found

  - by TMP

  Hi There! I've been working on this one quite a bit and haven't gotten any closer to a solution. I juut dug up my old copy of the WindowsHookLib again - It's available with source at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/DLL/WindowsHookLib.aspx. This library allows Global Windows Mouse/Keyboard/Clipboard Hooks, which is very useful. I'm trying to use the Mouse Hook in here to Capture Mouse-Motion (I could use a Timer that always polls Cursor.Position, but I plan on using more features of WindowsHookLib later). Code as follows: MouseHook mh = new MouseHook(); mh.InstallHook(); mh.MouseMove += new EventHandler<WindowsHookLib.MouseEventArgs>(mh_MouseMove); But on the call to InstallHook(), I get an Exception: "The specified Module could not be found". Strange. Searching, I found that someone thought this occurs because a DLL is not in a place included in the Windows PATH variable, and because placing it in system32 didn't help I went the whole hog and translated the thing to C# for inclusion directly in my project (I was curious how it works). However the error was obstinately persistent, so I dug a bit on this, and found the Code in the Library that is responsible: In InstallHook(), we have IntPtr hinstDLL = Marshal.GetHINSTANCE(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetModules()[0]); this._hMouseHook = UnsafeNativeMethods.SetWindowsHookEx(14, this._mouseProc, hinstDLL, 0); if (this._hMouseHook == IntPtr.Zero) { throw new MouseHookException(new Win32Exception(Marshal.GetLastWin32Error()).Message); } And this (after modification and recompile) tells me that what I'm really getting is a Windows error "ERROR_MOD_NOT_FOUND"! Now, Here I'm stumped. Didn't I just compile the Hook Library directly into my project? (UnsafeMethods.SetWindowsHookEx is just a DllImported Method from user32) Any Answers, or Prods in the right direction, or any hints, pointers or similar are very much appreciated!

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• Rewrite a URL that's already been redirected?

  - by Jack

  Hi guys, I'm running an Apache2 web server with a dynamic IP address. I bought exampledomain.net, and I use no-ip.com's domain-update service to redirect any visitors to my current ip address (endnote #1). For example, someone visits exampledomain.net and they get redirected to 73.181.57.34. It works like a charm. However, it isn't all that user-friendly. Can I rewrite the redirected, ip-address URL? I tried these rewrite rules in the root folder's .htaccess... RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^73\.181\.57\.34:88 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.exampledomain.net/$1 [L,NC] # I simplified the RewriteCond. I would use regex in a real situation. Of course, this creates an infinite loop. The user visits www.exampledomain.net. They're redirected to 73.181.57.34:88 by no-ip. Apache redirects them to www.exampledomain.net which redirects them back to 73.181.57.34:88... so on and so forth. I'm a noob when it comes to rewriting, but is there a way to rewrite a URL without redirecting? I tried these rewrite rules too (a shot in the dark)... RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^73\.181\.57\.34:88 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ my.exampledomain.net/$1 [L,NC] # I'd read that Apache replied with a redirect header when you include http Thanks! (1) No-IP works like this: You download and install their dynamic update client on your server. Every couple of minutes it polls your server for its current external ip address. If it's changed, it updates your server's ip address in no-ip's records.

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• SQL Server: preventing dirty reads in a stored procedure

  - by pcampbell

  Consider a SQL Server database and its two stored procs: *1. A proc that performs 3 important things in a transaction: Create a customer, call a sproc to perform another insert, and conditionally insert a third record with the new identity. BEGIN TRAN INSERT INTO Customer(CustName) (@CustomerName) SELECT @NewID = SCOPE_IDENTITY() EXEC CreateNewCustomerAccount @NewID, @CustomerPhoneNumber IF @InvoiceTotal > 100000 INSERT INTO PreferredCust(InvoiceTotal, CustID) VALUES (@InvoiceTotal, @NewID) COMMIT TRAN *2. A stored proc which polls the Customer table for new entries that don't have a related PreferredCust entry. The client app performs the polling by calling this stored proc every 500ms. A problem has arisen where the polling stored procedure has found an entry in the Customer table, and returned it as part of its results. The problem was that it has picked up that record, I am assuming, as part of a dirty read. The record ended up having an entry in PreferredCust later, and ended up creating a problem downstream. Question How can you explicitly prevent dirty reads by that second stored proc? The environment is SQL Server 2005 with the default configuration out of the box. No other locking hits are given in either of these stored procedures.

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• Why is alert not run even though $.getJSON runs fine? (Callback not executed, even though the reques

  - by Emre Sevinç

  I have a snippet of code such as: $.getJSON("http://mysite.org/polls/saveLanguageTest?url=" + escape(window.location.href) + "&callback=?", function (data) { var serverResponse = data.result; console.log(serverResponse); alert(serverResponse); }); It works fine in the sense that it makes a cross-domain request to my server and the server saves the data as I expect. Unfortunately, even though the server saves data and sends back a response I just can't get any alert or the console.log run. Why may be that? The server side code is (if that is relevant): def saveLanguageTest(request): callback = request.GET.get('callback', '') person = Person(firstName = 'Anonymous', ipAddress = request.META['REMOTE_ADDR']) person.save() webPage = WebPage(url = request.GET.get('url')) webPage.save() langTest = LanguageTest(type = 'prepositionTest') langTest.person = person langTest.webPage = webPage langTest.save() req ['result'] = 'Your test is saved.' response = json.dumps(req) response = callback + '(' + response + ');' return HttpResponse(response, mimetype = "application/json") What am I missing? (I tried the same code both within my web pages and inside the Firebug and I always have the problem stated above.)

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• Why does multiple sessions started on the same page gets the same session id?

  - by Calmarius

  I tryed the following: <?php session_name('user'); session_start(); // sets an 'user' cookie with session id. // This session stores the user's login data. // Its an ordinary session. $USERSESSION=$_SESSION; // saving this session $userSessId=session_id(); session_write_close(); //closing this session session_name('chatroom'); session_start(); // set a 'chatroom' cookie but contains the same session id and points to the same data :( . // This session would be used to store the chat text. This session would be // shared between all users joined in this chat room by setting the same session id for all members. // by calling session_regenerate_id would make a diffent session id for every user and it won't be a chat room anymore. ?> So I want to do a chat like thing with sessions. On the client side it would be done with ajax that polls this php page in every 5-10 seconds. Sessions may be cached in the server's memory so it can be accessible fast. I can store the chat in the database but my service runs on a free webhost which is limited, only 4 mysql connections allowed at a time which is almost nothing. I try to touch my database as least times as possible.

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• Progressbar behaves strangely

  - by wanderameise

  I just created an application in C# that uses a thread which polls the UART for a receive event. If data is received an event is triggered in my main thread (GUI) and a progress bar is controlled via PerformStep() method (of course, I previously set the Max value accordingly). PerformStep is invoked using the following expression to handle cross threading this.Invoke((Action)delegate{progressBar2.PerformStep();}) When running this application the progressbar never hits its final value. It stops at 80%. When debugging and stopping at the line mentioned above, everything works fine using single steps. I have no idea what is going one! Start read thread on main thread: pThreadWrite = new Thread(new ThreadStart(ReadThread)); pThreadWrite.Start(); Read Thread: private void ReadThread() { while(1) { if (ReceiveEvent) { FlashProgressBar(); } } } Event that is triggered in main thread: private void FlashProgressBar() { this.Invoke((Action)delegate { progressBar2.PerformStep();}); } (It's a simplified representation of my code) It seems as if the internal progress is faster than the visual one.

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• Is NFS capable of preserving order of operations?

  - by JustJeff

  I have a diskless host 'A', that has a directory NFS mounted on server 'B'. A process on A writes to two files F1 and F2 in that directory, and a process on B monitors these files for changes. Assume that B polls for changes faster than A is expected to make them. Process A seeks the head of the files, writes data, and flushes. Process B seeks the head of the files and does reads. Are there any guarantees about how the order of the changes performed by A will be detected at B? Specifically, if A alternately writes to one file, and then the other, is it reasonable to expect that B will notice alternating changes to F1 and F2? Or could B conceivably detect a series of changes on F1 and then a series on F2? I know there are a lot of assumptions embedded in the question. For instance, I am virtually certain that, even operating on just one file, if A performs 100 operations on the file, B may see a smaller number of changes that give the same result, due to NFS caching some of the actions on A before they are communicated to B. And of course there would be issues with concurrent file access even if NFS weren't involved and both the reading and the writing process were running on the same real file system. The reason I'm even putting the question up here is that it seems like most of the time, the setup described above does detect the changes at B in the same order they are made at A, but that occasionally some events come through in transposed order. So, is it worth trying to make this work? Is there some way to tune NFS to make it work, perhaps cache settings or something? Or is fine-grained behavior like this just too much expect from NFS?

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• The Krewe App Post-Mortem

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2014/05/23/the-krewe-app-post-mortem.aspxNow that teched has come and gone, I thought I would use this opportunity to do a little post-mortem on The Krewe app. It is one thing to test the app at home. It is a completely different animal to see how it responds in the environment TechEd creates. At a future time, I will list all the things that I would like to change with the app. At this point, I will find some good way to get community feedback. I want to break all this down screen by screen. We'll start with the screen I got right. The first of these is the events calendar. This is the one screen that, to you guys, just worked. However, there was an issue here. When I wrote v1 for last year, I was lazy and placed everything in CST. This caused problems with the achievements, which I will explain later. Furthermore, the event locations were not check-in locations. This created another problem with the achievements. Next, we get to the Twitter page. For what this page does, it works great. For those that don't know, I have an Azure Worker Role that polls Twitter pretty close to the rate limit. I cache these results in my database, and serve them upon request. This gives me great control over the content. I just have to remember to flush past tweets after a period, to save database growth. The next screen is the check-in screen. This screen has been the bane of my existence since I first created the thing. Last year, I used a background task to check people out of locations after they traveled. This year, I removed the background task in favor of a foursquare model. You are checked out after 3 hours or when you check-in to some other location. This seemed to work well, until those pesky achievements came into the mix. Again, more on this later. Next, I want to address the Connect and Connections screens together. I wanted to use some of the capabilities of the phone, and NFC seemed a natural choice. From this, I came up with the gamification aspects of the app. Since we are, fundamentally, a networking organization, I wanted to encourage people to actually network. Users could make and share a profile, similar to a virtual business card. I just had to figure out how to get people to use the feature. Why not just give someone a business card? Thus, the achievements were born. This was such a good idea. It would have been a great idea, if I have come up with it about two months earlier... When I came up with these ideas, I had about 2 weeks to implement them. Version 1 of the app was, basically, a pure consumption app. We provided data and centralized it. With version 2, the app became a much more interactive experience. The API was not ready for this change in such a short period of time. Most of this became apparent when I started implementing the achievements. The achievements based on count and specific person when fairly easy. The problem came with tying them to locations and events. This took some true SQL kung fu. This also showed me the rookie mistake of putting CST, not UTC, in the database. Once I got all of that cleaned up, I had to find a way to get the achievement system to talk to the phone. I knew I needed to be able to dynamically add achievements. I wouldn't know the precise location of some things until I got to Houston. I wanted the server to approve the achievements. This, unfortunately, required a decent data connection. Some achievements required GPS levels of location accuracy in areas of network triangulation. All of this became a huge nightmare. My flagship feature was based on some silly assumptions. Still, I managed to get 31 people to get the first achievement (Make 1 Connection.) Quite a few of those managed to get to the higher levels. Soon, I will post a list of the feature and changes that need to happen to the API. This includes things like proper objects for communication, geo-fencing, and caching. However, that is for another day.

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• To Bit or Not To Bit

  - by Johnm

  'Twas a long day of troubleshooting and firefighting and now, with most of the office vacant, you face a blank scripting window to create a new table in his database. Many questions circle your mind like dirty water gurgling down the bathtub drain: "How normalized should this table be?", "Should I use an identity column?", "NVarchar or Varchar?", "Should this column be NULLABLE?", "I wonder what apple blue cheese bacon cheesecake tastes like?" Well, there are times when the mind goes it's own direction. A Bit About Bit At some point during your table creation efforts you will encounter the decision of whether to use the bit data type for a column. The bit data type is an integer data type that recognizes only the values of 1, 0 and NULL as valid. This data type is often utilized to store yes/no or true/false values. An example of its use would be a column called [IsGasoline] which would be intended to contain the value of 1 if the row's subject (a car) had a gasoline engine and a 0 if the subject did not have a gasoline engine. The bit data type can even be found in some of the system tables of SQL Server. For example, the sysssispackages table in the msdb database which contains SQL Server Integration Services Package information for the packages stored in SQL Server. This table contains a column called [IsEncrypted]. A value of 1 indicates that the package has been encrypted while the value of 0 indicates that it is not. I have learned that the most effective way to disperse the crowd that surrounds the office coffee machine is to engage into SQL Server debates. The bit data type has been one of the most reoccurring, as well as the most enjoyable, of these topics. It contains a practical side and a philosophical side. Practical Consideration This data type certainly has its place and is a valuable option for database design; but it is often used in situations where the answer is really not a pure true/false response. In addition, true/false values are not very informative or scalable. Let's use the previously noted [IsGasoline] column for illustration. While on the surface it appears to be a rather simple question when evaluating a car: "Does the car have a gasoline engine?" If the person entering data is entering a row for a Jeep Liberty, the response would be a 1 since it has a gasoline engine. If the person is entering data is entering a row for a Chevrolet Volt, the response would be a 0 since it is an electric engine. What happens when a person is entering a row for the gasoline/electric hybrid Toyota Prius? Would one person's conclusion be consistent with another person's conclusion? The argument could be made that the current intent for the database is to be used only for pure gasoline and pure electric engines; but this is where the scalability issue comes into play. With the use of a bit data type a database modification and data conversion would be required if the business decided to take on hybrid engines. Whereas, alternatively, if the int data type were used as a foreign key to a reference table containing the engine type options, the change to include the hybrid option would only require an entry into the reference table. Philosophical Consideration Since the bit data type is often used for true/false or yes/no data (also called Boolean) it presents a philosophical conundrum of what to do about the allowance of the NULL value. The inclusion of NULL in a true/false or yes/no response simply violates the logical principle of bivalence which states that "every proposition is either true or false". If NULL is not true, then it must be false. The mathematical laws of Boolean logic support this concept by stating that the only valid values of this scenario are 1 and 0. There is another way to look at this conundrum: NULL is also considered to be the absence of a response. In other words, it is the equivalent to "undecided". Anyone who watches the news can tell you that polls always include an "undecided" option. This could be considered a valid option in the world of yes/no/dunno. Through out all of these considerations I have discovered one absolute certainty: When you have found a person, or group of persons, who are willing to entertain a philosophical debate of the bit data type, you have found some true friends.

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• Cloud to On-Premise Connectivity Patterns

  - by Rajesh Raheja

  Do you have a requirement to convert an Opportunity in Salesforce.com to an Order/Quote in Oracle E-Business Suite? Or maybe you want the creation of an Oracle RightNow Incident to trigger an on-premise Oracle E-Business Suite Service Request creation for RMA and Field Scheduling? If so, read on. In a previous blog post, I discussed integrating TO cloud applications, however the use cases above are the reverse i.e. receiving data FROM cloud applications (SaaS) TO on-premise applications/databases that sit behind a firewall. Oracle SOA Suite is assumed to be on-premise with with Oracle Service Bus as the mediation and virtualization layer. The main considerations for the patterns are are security i.e. shielding enterprise resources; and scalability i.e. minimizing firewall latency. Let me use an analogy to help visualize the patterns: the on-premise system is your home - with your most valuable possessions - and the SaaS app is your favorite on-line store which regularly ships (inbound calls) various types of parcels/items (message types/service operations). You need the items at home (on-premise) but want to safe guard against misguided elements of society (internet threats) who may masquerade as postal workers and vandalize property (denial of service?). Let's look at the patterns. Pattern: Pull from Cloud The on-premise system polls from the SaaS apps and picks up the message instead of having it delivered. This may be done using Oracle RightNow Object Query Language or SOAP APIs. This is particularly suited for certain integration approaches wherein messages are trickling in, can be centralized and batched e.g. retrieving event notifications on an hourly schedule from the Oracle Messaging Service. To compare this pattern with the home analogy, you are avoiding any deliveries to your home and instead go to the post office/UPS/Fedex store to pick up your parcel. Every time. Pros: On-premise assets not exposed to the Internet, firewall issues avoided by only initiating outbound connections Cons: Polling mechanisms may affect performance, may not satisfy near real-time requirements Pattern: Open Firewall Ports The on-premise system exposes the web services that needs to be invoked by the cloud application. This requires opening up firewall ports, routing calls to the appropriate internal services behind the firewall. Fusion Applications uses this pattern, and auto-provisions the services on the various virtual hosts to secure the topology. This works well for service integration, but may not suffice for large volume data integration. Using the home analogy, you have now decided to receive parcels instead of going to the post office every time. A door mail slot cut out allows the postman can drop small parcels, but there is still concern about cutting new holes for larger packages. Pros: optimal pattern for near real-time needs, simpler administration once the service is provisioned Cons: Needs firewall ports to be opened up for new services, may not suffice for batch integration requiring direct database access Pattern: Virtual Private Networking The on-premise network is "extended" to the cloud (or an intermediary on-demand / managed service offering) using Virtual Private Networking (VPN) so that messages are delivered to the on-premise system in a trusted channel. Using the home analogy, you entrust a set of keys with a neighbor or property manager who receives the packages, and then drops it inside your home. Pros: Individual firewall ports don't need to be opened, more suited for high scalability needs, can support large volume data integration, easier management of one connection vs a multitude of open ports Cons: VPN setup, specific hardware support, requires cloud provider to support virtual private computing Pattern: Reverse Proxy / API Gateway The on-premise system uses a reverse proxy "API gateway" software on the DMZ to receive messages. The reverse proxy can be implemented using various mechanisms e.g. Oracle API Gateway provides firewall and proxy services along with comprehensive security, auditing, throttling benefits. If a firewall already exists, then Oracle Service Bus or Oracle HTTP Server virtual hosts can provide reverse proxy implementations on the DMZ. Custom built implementations are also possible if specific functionality (such as message store-n-forward) is needed. In the home analogy, this pattern sits in between cutting mail slots and handing over keys. Instead, you install (and maintain) a mailbox in your home premises outside your door. The post office delivers the parcels in your mailbox, from where you can securely retrieve it. Pros: Very secure, very flexible Cons: Introduces a new software component, needs DMZ deployment and management Pattern: On-Premise Agent (Tunneling) A light weight "agent" software sits behind the firewall and initiates the communication with the cloud, thereby avoiding firewall issues. It then maintains a bi-directional connection either with pull or push based approaches using (or abusing, depending on your viewpoint) the HTTP protocol. Programming protocols such as Comet, WebSockets, HTTP CONNECT, HTTP SSH Tunneling etc. are possible implementation options. In the home analogy, a resident receives the parcel from the postal worker by opening the door, however you still take precautions with chain locks and package inspections. Pros: Light weight software, IT doesn't need to setup anything Cons: May bypass critical firewall checks e.g. virus scans, separate software download, proliferation of non-IT managed software Conclusion The patterns above are some of the most commonly encountered ones for cloud to on-premise integration. Selecting the right pattern for your project involves looking at your scalability needs, security restrictions, sync vs asynchronous implementation, near real-time vs batch expectations, cloud provider capabilities, budget, and more. In some cases, the basic "Pull from Cloud" may be acceptable, whereas in others, an extensive VPN topology may be well justified. For more details on the Oracle cloud integration strategy, download this white paper.

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• Cloud to On-Premise Connectivity Patterns

  - by Rajesh Raheja

  Do you have a requirement to convert an Opportunity in Salesforce.com to an Order/Quote in Oracle E-Business Suite? Or maybe you want the creation of an Oracle RightNow Incident to trigger an on-premise Oracle E-Business Suite Service Request creation for RMA and Field Scheduling? If so, read on. In a previous blog post, I discussed integrating TO cloud applications, however the use cases above are the reverse i.e. receiving data FROM cloud applications (SaaS) TO on-premise applications/databases that sit behind a firewall. Oracle SOA Suite is assumed to be on-premise with with Oracle Service Bus as the mediation and virtualization layer. The main considerations for the patterns are are security i.e. shielding enterprise resources; and scalability i.e. minimizing firewall latency. Let me use an analogy to help visualize the patterns: the on-premise system is your home - with your most valuable possessions - and the SaaS app is your favorite on-line store which regularly ships (inbound calls) various types of parcels/items (message types/service operations). You need the items at home (on-premise) but want to safe guard against misguided elements of society (internet threats) who may masquerade as postal workers and vandalize property (denial of service?). Let's look at the patterns. Pattern: Pull from Cloud The on-premise system polls from the SaaS apps and picks up the message instead of having it delivered. This may be done using Oracle RightNow Object Query Language or SOAP APIs. This is particularly suited for certain integration approaches wherein messages are trickling in, can be centralized and batched e.g. retrieving event notifications on an hourly schedule from the Oracle Messaging Service. To compare this pattern with the home analogy, you are avoiding any deliveries to your home and instead go to the post office/UPS/Fedex store to pick up your parcel. Every time. Pros: On-premise assets not exposed to the Internet, firewall issues avoided by only initiating outbound connections Cons: Polling mechanisms may affect performance, may not satisfy near real-time requirements Pattern: Open Firewall Ports The on-premise system exposes the web services that needs to be invoked by the cloud application. This requires opening up firewall ports, routing calls to the appropriate internal services behind the firewall. Fusion Applications uses this pattern, and auto-provisions the services on the various virtual hosts to secure the topology. This works well for service integration, but may not suffice for large volume data integration. Using the home analogy, you have now decided to receive parcels instead of going to the post office every time. A door mail slot cut out allows the postman can drop small parcels, but there is still concern about cutting new holes for larger packages. Pros: optimal pattern for near real-time needs, simpler administration once the service is provisioned Cons: Needs firewall ports to be opened up for new services, may not suffice for batch integration requiring direct database access Pattern: Virtual Private Networking The on-premise network is "extended" to the cloud (or an intermediary on-demand / managed service offering) using Virtual Private Networking (VPN) so that messages are delivered to the on-premise system in a trusted channel. Using the home analogy, you entrust a set of keys with a neighbor or property manager who receives the packages, and then drops it inside your home. Pros: Individual firewall ports don't need to be opened, more suited for high scalability needs, can support large volume data integration, easier management of one connection vs a multitude of open ports Cons: VPN setup, specific hardware support, requires cloud provider to support virtual private computing Pattern: Reverse Proxy / API Gateway The on-premise system uses a reverse proxy "API gateway" software on the DMZ to receive messages. The reverse proxy can be implemented using various mechanisms e.g. Oracle API Gateway provides firewall and proxy services along with comprehensive security, auditing, throttling benefits. If a firewall already exists, then Oracle Service Bus or Oracle HTTP Server virtual hosts can provide reverse proxy implementations on the DMZ. Custom built implementations are also possible if specific functionality (such as message store-n-forward) is needed. In the home analogy, this pattern sits in between cutting mail slots and handing over keys. Instead, you install (and maintain) a mailbox in your home premises outside your door. The post office delivers the parcels in your mailbox, from where you can securely retrieve it. Pros: Very secure, very flexible Cons: Introduces a new software component, needs DMZ deployment and management Pattern: On-Premise Agent (Tunneling) A light weight "agent" software sits behind the firewall and initiates the communication with the cloud, thereby avoiding firewall issues. It then maintains a bi-directional connection either with pull or push based approaches using (or abusing, depending on your viewpoint) the HTTP protocol. Programming protocols such as Comet, WebSockets, HTTP CONNECT, HTTP SSH Tunneling etc. are possible implementation options. In the home analogy, a resident receives the parcel from the postal worker by opening the door, however you still take precautions with chain locks and package inspections. Pros: Light weight software, IT doesn't need to setup anything Cons: May bypass critical firewall checks e.g. virus scans, separate software download, proliferation of non-IT managed software Conclusion The patterns above are some of the most commonly encountered ones for cloud to on-premise integration. Selecting the right pattern for your project involves looking at your scalability needs, security restrictions, sync vs asynchronous implementation, near real-time vs batch expectations, cloud provider capabilities, budget, and more. In some cases, the basic "Pull from Cloud" may be acceptable, whereas in others, an extensive VPN topology may be well justified. For more details on the Oracle cloud integration strategy, download this white paper.

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• Compare NSArray with NSMutableArray adding delta objects to NSMutableArray

  - by Hooligancat

  I have an NSMutableArray that is populated with objects of strings. For simplicity sake we'll say that the objects are a person and each person object contains information about that person. Thus I would have an NSMutableArray that is populated with person objects: person.firstName person.lastName person.age person.height And so on. The initial source of data comes from a web server and is populated when my application loads and completes it's initialization with the server. Periodically my application polls the server for the latest list of names. Currently I am creating an NSArray of the result set, emptying the NSMutableArray and then re-populating the NSMutableArray with NSArray results before destroying the NSArray object. This seems inefficient to me on a few levels and also presents me with a problem losing table row references which I can work around, but might be creating more work for myself in doing so. The inefficiency seems to be that I should be able to compare the two arrays and end up with a filtered NSArray. I could then add the filtered set to the NSMutableArray. This would mean that I can simply append new data to the NSMutableArray instead of throwing everything out and re-populating. Conversely I would need to do the same filter in reverse to see if there are records that need removing from the NSMutableArray. Is there any method to do this in a more efficient manner? Have I overlooked something in the docs some place that refers to a simpler technique? I have a problem when I empty the NSMutableArray and re-populate in that any referencing tables lose their selected row state. I can track it and re-select it, but my theory is that using some form of compare and adding objects and removing objects instead of dealing with the whole array in one block might mean I keep my row reference (assuming the item isn't deleted of course). Any suggestions or help much appreciated. Update Would it be just as fast to do a fast enumeration over each comparing each line item as I go? It seems like an expensive operation, but with the last fast enumeration code it might be pretty efficient...

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• WCF Duplex Interaction with Web Server

  - by Mark Struzinski

  Here is my scenario, and it is causing us a considerable amount of grief at the moment: We have a vendor web service which provides base level telephony functionality. This service has a SOAP api, which we are leveraging to build up a custom UI that is integrated into our in house web apps. The api functions on 2 levels. You make standard client calls into the service to initiate actions, such as Login, Place Call, Hang Up, etc. On a different thread, the service sends events back to the client to alert the user of things that are occurring on the system (agent successfully logged in, call was disconnected, etc). I implemented a WCF service to sit between the web server and the vendor service. This WCF service operates in duplex mode, establishing a 2 way connection with the web server. The web server makes outbound calls to the WCF service, which routes them to the vendor's web service. Events are received back to the WCF service, which passes them onto the web server via a callback channel on the WCF client. As events are received on the web server, they are placed into a hash table with the user's name as the key, and a .NET queue as the value to hold the event. Each event is enqueued to the agent who owns it. On a 2 second interval, the web page polls the web server via an ajax request to get new events for the logged in user. It hits the hash table for the user key, dequeues any events that are present, and serializes them back up to the web page. From there, they are processed in order and appropriate messages are displayed to the user. This implementation performs well in a single user scenario. The second I put more than 1 user on the system, I start getting frequent timeouts with the following CommunicationException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond We are running Windows Server 2008 R2 both servers. Both the web app and WCF service are running on .NET 3.5. The WCF service is running under the net.tcp protocol in duplex mode. The web app is ASP.NET MVC 2. Has anyone dealt with anything like this scenario? Is there a more efficient way (or a widely accepted pattern) to implement this?

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• BindException/Too many file open while using HttpClient under load

  - by Langali

  I have got 1000 dedicated Java threads where each thread polls a corresponding url every one second. public class Poller { public static Node poll(Node node) { GetMethod method = null; try { HttpClient client = new HttpClient(new SimpleHttpConnectionManager(true)); ...... } catch (IOException ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } finally { method.releaseConnection(); } } } The threads are run every one second: for (int i=0; i <1000; i++) { MyThread thread = threads.get(i) // threads is a static field if(thread.isAlive()) { // If the previous thread is still running, let it run. } else { thread.start(); } } The problem is if I run the job every one second I get random exceptions like these: java.net.BindException: Address already in use INFO httpclient.HttpMethodDirector: I/O exception (java.net.BindException) caught when processing request: Address already in use INFO httpclient.HttpMethodDirector: Retrying request But if I run the job every 2 seconds or more, everything runs fine. I even tried shutting down the instance of SimpleHttpConnectionManager() using shutDown() with no effect. If I do netstat, I see thousands of TCP connections in TIME_WAIT state, which means they are have been closed and are clearing up. So to limit the no of connections, I tried using a single instance of HttpClient and use it like this: public class MyHttpClientFactory { private static MyHttpClientFactory instance = new HttpClientFactory(); private MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager connectionManager; private HttpClient client; private HttpClientFactory() { init(); } public static HttpClientFactory getInstance() { return instance; } public void init() { connectionManager = new MultiThreadedHttpConnectionManager(); HttpConnectionManagerParams managerParams = new HttpConnectionManagerParams(); managerParams.setMaxTotalConnections(1000); connectionManager.setParams(managerParams); client = new HttpClient(connectionManager); } public HttpClient getHttpClient() { if (client != null) { return client; } else { init(); return client; } } } However after running for exactly 2 hours, it starts throwing 'too many open files' and eventually cannot do anything at all. ERROR java.net.SocketException: Too many open files INFO httpclient.HttpMethodDirector: I/O exception (java.net.SocketException) caught when processing request: Too many open files INFO httpclient.HttpMethodDirector: Retrying request I should be able to increase the no of connections allowed and make it work, but I would just be prolonging the evil. Any idea what is the best practise to use HttpClient in a situation like above? Btw, I am still on HttpClient3.1.

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• Can I use WCF to replace my current Web Service and Window Service combination?

  - by gun_shy

  I need a little bit of advise regarding the situation I am faced with. The current arrangement I have been tasked with improving just doesn't sit well with me and I feel like there is a better way to do it. The more I read about WCF, the more I get the feeling that it might be what I am looking for. Right now, I have an asp.net client, a .net web service, a windows service, a ms sql database, and a third party application that is used for processing a group of 'project' files into a finalized file. Since the third party application can only handle processing one 'project' at a time, the combination of the web service, window service, and database have been arranged to create a job queue manager for the third party application. The client sends a zip 'project' file containing multiple sub files to the web service. The web service adds a new 'project' line to the database, generating a unique job id. The zip file is expanded to a folder location on the server using the job id as the folder name. The web service then returns the job id to the client. The client will use this id to poll the web service for the status of the job submitted. When the job is complete, the client will request the processed file. The windows service polls the database every x minutes. If a new job exists, the service will pull the oldest job and send it to the third party app for processing. If the processing succeeds, the window service updates the project line in the database, marking the job complete. The window service will continue to process any non complete jobs in the database until there are no more. When it stops finding any jobs, it will sleep x minutes and then poll the database again. I do not like the fact that the window service has to poll the database. If there is only one job submitted, the client will have to wait for the window service to poll and then wait while the 'project' is being processed. It seems like WCF could be used to combine the web and window services using a combination of the InstanceContextMode.Single and ConcurrencyMode.Multiple. So far, I have been unable to find any articles or examples that would point me in the right direction. Can WCF be utilized to accomplish the job queue logic of the current arrangement in a better way? As always, any help is more than appreciated.

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• SATA drive problems with two SIL RAID cards

  - by Jon Topper

  I've just put a second SiI 3114 SATARaid card in my home server so that I could add another pair of SATA drives and increase my storage space. Annoyingly, it doesn't seem to work: [ 32.816030] ata5: lost interrupt (Status 0x0) [ 32.816072] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen [ 32.816091] ata5.00: cmd c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in [ 32.816094] res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout) [ 32.816101] ata5.00: status: { DRDY } [ 32.816117] ata5: hard resetting link [ 33.136082] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) [ 36.060940] irq 18: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option) [ 36.060949] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.31-20-generic #58-Ubuntu [ 36.060954] Call Trace: [ 36.060977] [] ? printk+0x18/0x1c [ 36.060997] [] __report_bad_irq+0x27/0x90 [ 36.061005] [] note_interrupt+0x150/0x190 [ 36.061011] [] handle_fasteoi_irq+0xac/0xd0 [ 36.061023] [] handle_irq+0x18/0x30 [ 36.061029] [] do_IRQ+0x47/0xc0 [ 36.061042] [] ? irq_exit+0x50/0x70 [ 36.061058] [] ? smp_apic_timer_interrupt+0x57/0x90 [ 36.061065] [] common_interrupt+0x30/0x40 [ 36.061075] [] ? native_safe_halt+0x5/0x10 [ 36.061082] [] default_idle+0x46/0xd0 [ 36.061088] [] cpu_idle+0x8c/0xd0 [ 36.061103] [] rest_init+0x55/0x60 [ 36.061111] [] start_kernel+0x2e6/0x2ec [ 36.061117] [] ? unknown_bootoption+0x0/0x19e [ 36.061133] [] i386_start_kernel+0x7c/0x83 [ 36.061137] handlers: [ 36.061139] [] (sil_interrupt+0x0/0xb0) [ 36.061151] Disabling IRQ #18 [ 38.136014] ata5: hard resetting link [ 38.456022] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) [ 43.456013] ata5: hard resetting link [ 43.776022] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0) [ 43.776035] ata5.00: disabled [ 43.776055] ata5.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0 [ 43.776074] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 43.776082] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Sense Key : Aborted Command [current] [descriptor] [ 43.776092] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex): [ 43.776097] 72 0b 00 00 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00 [ 43.776112] 00 00 00 00 [ 43.776118] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 43.776127] end_request: I/O error, dev sde, sector 0 [ 43.776136] Buffer I/O error on device sde, logical block 0 [ 43.776170] ata5: EH complete [ 43.776187] ata5.00: detaching (SCSI 4:0:0:0) root@core:~# cat /proc/interrupts CPU0 0: 47 IO-APIC-edge timer 1: 8 IO-APIC-edge i8042 6: 3 IO-APIC-edge floppy 7: 0 IO-APIC-edge parport0 8: 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc0 9: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi 14: 53069 IO-APIC-edge pata_sis 15: 53004 IO-APIC-edge pata_sis 17: 112265 IO-APIC-fasteoi sata_sil 18: 200002 IO-APIC-fasteoi sata_sil, SiS SI7012 19: 111140 IO-APIC-fasteoi eth0 20: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ohci_hcd:usb2 21: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ohci_hcd:usb3 23: 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_hcd:usb1 NMI: 0 Non-maskable interrupts LOC: 6650492 Local timer interrupts SPU: 0 Spurious interrupts CNT: 0 Performance counter interrupts PND: 0 Performance pending work RES: 0 Rescheduling interrupts CAL: 0 Function call interrupts TLB: 0 TLB shootdowns TRM: 0 Thermal event interrupts THR: 0 Threshold APIC interrupts MCE: 0 Machine check exceptions MCP: 160 Machine check polls ERR: 0 MIS: 0 root@core:~# lspci | grep Raid 00:09.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) 00:0a.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02) root@core:~# lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 9.10 Release: 9.10 Codename: karmic root@core:~# uname -a Linux core.topper.me.uk 2.6.31-20-generic #58-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 12 05:23:09 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux I've tried a combination of different kernel options (irqpoll, noapic, noacpi, pci=noapic) all to no avail. Does anyone have any bright ideas about how I can go about making this work? Swapping PCI cards around isn't an option as there are only two slots in this motherboard (an ASRock K7S41GX). The BIOS doesn't look to have too much in the way of configuration options regarding IRQ usage. Plan B is to ditch this server completely and buy a new QNAP for these drives to go in, but I was hoping to avoid doing this right now.

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• Ajax Control Toolkit and Superexpert

  - by Stephen Walther

  Microsoft has asked my company, Superexpert Consulting, to take ownership of the development and maintenance of the Ajax Control Toolkit moving forward. In this blog entry, I discuss our strategy for improving the Ajax Control Toolkit. Why the Ajax Control Toolkit? The Ajax Control Toolkit is one of the most popular projects on CodePlex. In fact, some have argued that it is among the most successful open-source projects of all time. It consistently receives over 3,500 downloads a day (not weekends -- workdays). A mind-boggling number of developers use the Ajax Control Toolkit in their ASP.NET Web Forms applications. Why does the Ajax Control Toolkit continue to be such a popular project? The Ajax Control Toolkit fills a strong need in the ASP.NET Web Forms world. The Toolkit enables Web Forms developers to build richly interactive JavaScript applications without writing any JavaScript. For example, by taking advantage of the Ajax Control Toolkit, a Web Forms developer can add modal dialogs, popup calendars, and client tabs to a web application simply by dragging web controls onto a page. The Ajax Control Toolkit is not for everyone. If you are comfortable writing JavaScript then I recommend that you investigate using jQuery plugins instead of the Ajax Control Toolkit. However, if you are a Web Forms developer and you don’t want to get your hands dirty writing JavaScript, then the Ajax Control Toolkit is a great solution. The Ajax Control Toolkit is Vast The Ajax Control Toolkit consists of 40 controls. That’s a lot of controls (For the sake of comparison, jQuery UI consists of only 8 controls – those slackers J). Furthermore, developers expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work on browsers both old and new. For example, people expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work with Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 9 and every version of Internet Explorer in between. People also expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work on the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. And, people expect the Ajax Control Toolkit to work with different operating systems. Yikes, that is a lot of combinations. The biggest challenge which my company faces in supporting the Ajax Control Toolkit is ensuring that the Ajax Control Toolkit works across all of these different browsers and operating systems. Testing, Testing, Testing Because we wanted to ensure that we could easily test the Ajax Control Toolkit with different browsers, the very first thing that we did was to set up a dedicated testing server. The dedicated server -- named Schizo -- hosts 4 virtual machines so that we can run Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 at the same time (We also use the virtual machines to host the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari). The five developers on our team (plus me) can each publish to a separate FTP website on the testing server. That way, we can quickly test how changes to the Ajax Control Toolkit affect different browsers. QUnit Tests for the Ajax Control Toolkit Introducing regressions – introducing new bugs when trying to fix existing bugs – is the concern which prevents me from sleeping well at night. There are so many people using the Ajax Control Toolkit in so many unique scenarios, that it is difficult to make improvements to the Ajax Control Toolkit without introducing regressions. In order to avoid regressions, we decided early on that it was extremely important to build good test coverage for the 40 controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit. We’ve been focusing a lot of energy on building automated JavaScript unit tests which we can use to help us discover regressions. We decided to write the unit tests with the QUnit test framework. We picked QUnit because it is quickly becoming the standard unit testing framework in the JavaScript world. For example, it is the unit testing framework used by the jQuery team, the jQuery UI team, and many jQuery UI plugin developers. We had to make several enhancements to the QUnit framework in order to test the Ajax Control Toolkit. For example, QUnit does not support tests which include postbacks. We modified the QUnit framework so that it works with IFrames so we could perform postbacks in our automated tests. At this point, we have written hundreds of QUnit tests. For example, we have written 135 QUnit tests for the Accordion control. The QUnit tests are included with the Ajax Control Toolkit source code in a project named AjaxControlToolkit.Tests. You can run all of the QUnit tests contained in the project by opening the Default.aspx page. Automating the QUnit Tests across Multiple Browsers Automated tests are useless if no one ever runs them. In order for the QUnit tests to be useful, we needed an easy way to run the tests automatically against a matrix of browsers. We wanted to run the unit tests against Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari automatically. Expecting a developer to run QUnit tests against every browser after every check-in is just too much to expect. It takes 20 seconds to run the Accordion QUnit tests. We are testing against 8 browsers. That would require the developer to open 8 browsers and wait for the results after each change in code. Too much work. Therefore, we built a JavaScript Test Server. Our JavaScript Test Server project was inspired by John Resig’s TestSwarm project. The JavaScript Test Server runs our QUnit tests in a swarm of browsers (running on different operating systems) automatically. Here’s how the JavaScript Test Server works: 1. We created an ASP.NET page named RunTest.aspx that constantly polls the JavaScript Test Server for a new set of QUnit tests to run. After the RunTest.aspx page runs the QUnit tests, the RunTest.aspx records the test results back to the JavaScript Test Server. 2. We opened the RunTest.aspx page on instances of Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, FireFox, Chrome, Opera, Google, and Safari. Now that we have the JavaScript Test Server setup, we can run all of our QUnit tests against all of the browsers which we need to support with a single click of a button. A New Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit Each Month The Ajax Control Toolkit Issue Tracker contains over one thousand five hundred open issues and feature requests. So we have plenty of work on our plates J At CodePlex, anyone can vote for an issue to be fixed. Originally, we planned to fix issues in order of their votes. However, we quickly discovered that this approach was inefficient. Constantly switching back and forth between different controls was too time-consuming. It takes time to re-familiarize yourself with a control. Instead, we decided to focus on two or three controls each month and really focus on fixing the issues with those controls. This way, we can fix sets of related issues and avoid the randomization caused by context switching. Our team works in monthly sprints. We plan to do another release of the Ajax Control Toolkit each and every month. So far, we have competed one release of the Ajax Control Toolkit which was released on April 1, 2011. We plan to release a new version in early May. Conclusion Fortunately, I work with a team of smart developers. We currently have 5 developers working on the Ajax Control Toolkit (not full-time, they are also building two very cool ASP.NET MVC applications). All the developers who work on our team are required to have strong JavaScript, jQuery, and ASP.NET MVC skills. In the interest of being as transparent as possible about our work on the Ajax Control Toolkit, I plan to blog frequently about our team’s ongoing work. In my next blog entry, I plan to write about the two Ajax Control Toolkit controls which are the focus of our work for next release.

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• Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business - Q&A from the Webcast

  - by [email protected]

  A few weeks ago, Vince Casarez and I presented with KMWorld on the Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business. It was an enjoyable, interactive webcast in which Vince and I discussed the ways Enterprise 2.0 can transform your business and more importantly, highlighted key customer examples of how to do so. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay here. We had a lot of audience participation in some of the polls we conducted and in the Q&A session. We weren't able to address all of the questions during the broadcast, so we attempted to answer them here: Q: Which area within your firm focuses on Web 2.0? Meaning, do you find new departments developing just to manage the web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) user experience or are you structuring current departments? A: There are three distinct efforts within Oracle. The first is around delivery of these Web 2.0 services for enterprise deployments. This is the focus of the WebCenter team. The second effort is injecting these Web 2.0 services into use cases that drive the different enterprise applications. This effort is focused on how to manage these external services and bring them into a cohesive flow for marketing programs, customer care, and purchasing. The third effort is how we consume these services internally to enhance Oracle's business delivery. It leverages the technologies and use cases of the first two but also pushes the envelope with regards to future directions of these other two areas. Q: In a business, Web 2.0 is mostly like action logs. How can we leverage the official process practice versus the logs of a recent action? Example: a system configuration modified last night on a call out versus the official practice that everybody would use in the morning.A: The key thing to remember is that most Web 2.0 actions / activity streams today are based on collaboration and communication type actions. At least with public social sites like Facebook and Twitter. What we're delivering as part of the WebCenter Suite are not just these types of activities but also enterprise application activities. These enterprise application activities come from different application modules: purchasing, HR, order entry, sales opportunity, etc. The actions within these systems are normally tied to a business object or process: purchase order/customer, employee or department, customer and supplier, customer and product, respectively. Therefore, the activities or "logs" as you name them are able to be "typed" so that as a viewer, you can filter or decide to see only certain types of information. In your example, you could have a view that only showed you recent "configuration" changes and this could be right next to a view that showed off the items to be watched every morning. Q: It's great to hear about customers using the software but is there any plan for future webinars to show what the products/installs look like? That would be very helpful.A: We don't have a webinar planned to show off the install process. However, we have a viewlet that's posted on Oracle Technology Network. You can see it here:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/testcontent/wcs-install-098014.htmlAnd we've got excellent documentation that walks you through the steps here:http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/install.1111/e12001/install.htmAnd there's a whole set of demos and examples of what WebCenter can do at this URL:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/release11-demos-097468.html Q: How do you anticipate managing metadata across the enterprise to make content findable?A: We need to first make sure we are all talking about the same thing when we use a word like "metadata". Here's why...  For a developer, metadata means information that describes key elements of the portal or application and what the portal or application can do. For content systems, metadata means key terms that provide a taxonomy or folksonomy about the information that is being indexed, ordered, and managed. For business intelligence systems, metadata means key terms that provide labels to groups of data that most non-mathematicians need to understand. And for SOA, metadata means labels for parts of the processes that business owners should understand that connect development terminology. There are also additional requirements for metadata to be available to the team building these new solutions as well as requirements to make this metadata available to the running system. These requirements are often separated by "design time" and "run time" respectively. So clearly, a general goal of managing metadata across the enterprise is very challenging. We've invested a huge amount of resources around Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) to be able to provide a more generic system for all of these elements. No other vendor has anything like this technology foundation in their products. This provides a huge benefit to our customers as they will now be able to find content, processes, people, and information from a common set of search interfaces with consistent enterprise wide results. Q: Can you give your definition of terms as to document and content, please?A: Content applies to a broad category of information from Word documents, presentations and reports through attachments to invoices and/or purchase orders. Content is essentially any type of digital asset including images, video, and voice. A document is just one type of content. Q: Do you have special integration tools to realize an interaction between UCM and WebCenter Spaces/Services?A: Yes, we've dedicated a whole team of engineers to exploit the key features of Oracle UCM within WebCenter.  While ensuring that WebCenter can connect to other non-Oracle systems, we've made sure that with the combined set of Oracle technology, no other solution can match the combined power and integration.  This is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy which is to provide best in class capabilities for Content and Portals.  When combined together, the synergy between the two products enables users to quickly add capabilities when they are needed.  For example, simple document sharing is part of the combined product offering, but if legal discovery or archiving is required, Oracle UCM product includes these capabilities that can be quickly added.  There's no need to move content around or add another system to support this, it's just a feature that gets turned on within Oracle UCM. Q: All customers have some interaction with their applications and have many older versions, how do you see some of these new Enterprise 2.0 capabilities adding value to existing enterprise application deployments?A: Just as Service Oriented Architectures allowed for connecting the processes of different applications systems to work together, there's a need for a similar approach with regards to these enterprise 2.0 capabilities. Oracle WebCenter is built on a core architecture that allows for SOA of these Enterprise 2.0 services so that one set of scalable services can be used and integrated directly into any type of application. In this way, users can get immediate value out of the Enterprise 2.0 capabilities without having to wait for the next major release or upgrade. These centrally managed WebCenter services expose a set of standard interfaces that make it extremely easy to add them into existing applications no matter what technology the application has been implemented. Q: We've heard about Oracle Next Generation applications called "Fusion Applications", can you tell me how all this works together?A: Oracle WebCenter powers the core collaboration and social computing services found within Fusion Applications. It is the core user experience technology for how all the application screens have been implemented. And the core concept of task flows allows for all the Fusion Applications modules to be adaptable and composable by business users and IT without needing to be a professional developer. Oracle WebCenter is at the heart of the new Fusion Applications. In addition, the same patterns and technologies are now being added to the existing applications including JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, and eBusiness Suite. The core technology enables all these customers to have a much smoother upgrade path to Fusion Applications. They get immediate benefits of injecting new user interactions into their existing applications without having to completely move to Fusion Applications. And then when the time comes, their users will already be well versed in how the new capabilities work. Q: Does any of this work with non Oracle software? Other databases? Other application servers? etc.A: We have made sure that Oracle WebCenter delivers the broadest set of development choices so that no matter what technology you developers are using, WebCenter capabilities can be quickly and easily added to the site or application. In addition, we have certified Oracle WebCenter to run against non-Oracle databases like DB2 and SQLServer. We have stated plans for certification against MySQL as well. Later in CY 2011, Oracle will provide certification on non-Oracle application servers such as WebSphere and JBoss. Q: How do we balance User and IT requirements in regards to Enterprise 2.0 technologies?A: Wrong decisions are often made because employee knowledge is not tapped efficiently and opportunities to innovate are often missed because the right people do not work together. Collaboration amongst workers in the right business context is critical for success. While standalone Enterprise 2.0 technologies can improve collaboration for collaboration's sake, using social collaboration tools in the context of business applications and processes will improve business responsiveness and lead companies to a more competitive position. As these systems become more mission critical it is essential that they maintain the highest level of performance and availability while scaling to support larger communities. Q: What are the ways in which Enterprise 2.0 can improve business responsiveness?A: With a wide range of Enterprise 2.0 tools in the marketplace, CIOs need to deploy solutions that will meet the requirements from users as well as address the requirements from IT. Workers want a next-generation user experience that is personalized and aggregates their daily tools and tasks, while IT needs to ensure the solution is secure, scalable, flexible, reliable and easily integrated with existing systems. An open and integrated approach to deploying portals, content management, and collaboration can enhance your business by addressing both the needs of knowledge workers for better information and the IT mandate to conserve resources by simplifying, consolidating and centralizing infrastructure and administration.  

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