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• Sprite sorting issues

  - by TheBroodian

  I apologize for the vague title, I'm not sure how else to phrase this problem. I am using tIDE to assist me in my game's world development. To give a dynamic effect to map layers within tIDE, it has events that can be wired up to draw sprites before or after the draw of layers, to create foreground or background effects during runtime. This all works fine and well, however, the only way that I understand that this works, is by calling tIDE's internal spritebatch to create this effect. This creates a problem for me, because within tIDE's source code, its spritebatch's call block is set to SpriteSortMode.Deferred, and my characters have particle elements that I would like to draw in front of and behind themselves, via a drawdepth value. I can use a separate instance of spritebatch and call my character's draw method, and set sprite sorting there, but then my character is drawn ontop of all layers in my tIDE map. Which is even worse to me than my particles not being drawn as I want them to be. So, in summary, I want all of my crap to work, but at the moment the only way I can figure to do that is to ghetto rig the spritebatch within my characters' draw methods by calling a spritebatch.End();, then starting a new call to Begin() with SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, doing all of my characters' draw logic, and then calling another spritebatch.End(); followed once again by a new spritebatch.Begin(). Obviously that is pretty undesirable, but I don't know any other feasible alternatives. Anybody got any wisdom they could impart unto me as to how I could handle this?

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• Adding delay between damage

  - by iQue

  I have a bunch of enemies chasing my main-character, and if they intersect I want them to damage him and that's all good. The problem is that right now they damage him as long as they stand around him, every frame! and since it gets called every frame my character's HP reaches 0 almost instantly. I've tried adding delay and I've tried a timertask, but can't get it to work. This is the code I use to check for intersection: private void checkCollision(Canvas canvas) { synchronized (getHolder()) { Rect h1 = happy.getBounds(); for (int i = 0; i < enemies.size(); i++) { for (int j = 0; j < bullets.size(); j++) { Rect b1 = bullets.get(j).getBounds(); Rect e1 = enemies.get(i).getBounds(); if (b1.intersect(e1)) { enemies.get(i).damageHP(5); bullets.remove(j); } if(e1.intersect(h1)){ happy.damageHP(5); // this is the statement that needs some sort of delay, I want them to damage him every 2 seconds they intersect him. } if(enemies.get(i).getHP() <= 0){ enemies.get(i).death(canvas, enemies); score.incScore(5); break; } if(happy.getHP() <= 0){ score.incScore(-50); //end-screen } } } } } If anyone knows the logic to do this please do tell.

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• How to implement behavior in a component-based game architecture?

  - by ghostonline

  I am starting to implement player and enemy AI in a game, but I am confused about how to best implement this in a component-based game architecture. Say I have a following player character that can be stationary, running and swinging a sword. A player can transit to the swing sword state from both the stationary and running state, but then the swing must be completed before the player can resume standing or running around. During the swing, the player cannot walk around. As I see it, I have two implementation approaches: Create a single AI-component containing all player logic (either decoupled from the actual component or embedded as a PlayerAIComponent). I can easily how to enforce the state restrictions without creating coupling between individual components making up the player entity. However, the AI-component cannot be broken up. If I have, for example, an enemy that can only stand and walk around or only walks around and occasionally swing a sword, I have to create new AI-components. Break the behavior up in components, each identifying a specific state. I then get a StandComponent, WalkComponent and SwingComponent. To enforce the transition rules, I have to couple each component. SwingComponent must disable StandComponent and WalkComponent for the duration of the swing. When I have an enemy that only stands around, swinging a sword occasionally, I have to make sure SwingComponent only disables WalkComponent if it is present. Although this allows for better mix-and-matching components, it can lead to a maintainability nightmare as each time a dependency is added, the existing components must be updated to play nicely with the new requirements the dependency places on the character. The ideal situation would be that a designer can build new enemies/players by dragging components into a container, without having to touch a single line of engine or script code. Although I am not sure script coding can be avoided, I want to keep it as simple as possible. Summing it all up: Should I lob all AI logic into one component or break up each logic state into separate components to create entity variants more easily?

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• Brief pause after keypress

  - by user36324

  After i press and hold the key it goes forward once then pauses for a second or less then goes forward on forever. My problem is the brief pause I cant locate the issue. Thanks for your help. while(game){ while (SDL_PollEvent(&e)){ mainChar.manageEvents(e); } background.renderChar(); mainChar.renderChar(); SDL_RenderPresent(ren); } void Character::manageEvents(SDL_Event event) { switch(event.type){ case SDL_KEYDOWN: KEYS[event.key.keysym.sym] = true; printf("true"); handleInput(); break; case SDL_KEYUP: KEYS[event.key.keysym.sym] = false; printf("false"); break; default: break; } } void Character::handleInput() { if(KEYS[SDLK_a]) { dst.x--; } if(KEYS[SDLK_d]) { dst.x++; } if(KEYS[SDLK_w]) { dst.y++; } if(KEYS[SDLK_s]) { dst.y--; } }

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• Sub-systems in game engines

  - by Hillel

  So here's the problem- I'm writing my own engine library, and it works fine with stuff like menus and the actual game screen. The thing is, I can't really figure out how to integrate something like an intro or dialogue preceding certain levels into this system. Let's look at another example- say I have a game-specific engine which gets a Level object and runs it. Engine would have its own collision and physics system, all hard coded. Now, what if at some point in a level, I want the player to enter a mini-game with different rules? How do I morph the Engine class to support these sub-systems without having to deal with their code all the time (as in: if(regular game) ... else if(mini game) ...)? And what if I want an intro animation at the start of a level, and I want the player to be able to assume control of his character once the animation ends, do I implement the animation into the Engine class itself? Or maybe I need to run another class, CutScene, and when it ends, it calls Engine and starts the level? What if I want to add a dialogue system, where at the start of each level there's a short dialogue and the player can't control his character, and once it ends, he can? Would I then run the dialogue code inside the Engine code? Maybe these sub-systems should all be scripted? I don't know anything about scripting, is it necessary for this kind of situation? Any help would be appreciated.

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• Need a Quick Sure Method to Produce a Formatted Explain Plan? This will help!

  - by user702295

  Please use the following on the production machine to get formatted explain plan and sql trace using the SLOW sql (e.g. 'T_COMB_LIST.COMB_ID = 216') or any other value that takes longer: -- Open new session is SQL*Plus */ -- Make sure you are using updated PLAN_TABLE -- This can be done by dropping it and recreate it by running: -- SQL> @?/rdbms/admin/utlxplan.sql) set lines 1000 set pages 1000 spool xplan_1.txt EXPLAIN PLAN FOR <<<<Replace this line with exactly the same query you used above. Force hard parse by modifying the case of a character>>>> @?/rdbms/admin/utlxplp spool off EXIT --Open a second session is SQL*Plus ALTER SESSION SET max_dump_file_size = unlimited; ALTER SESSION SET tracefile_identifier = '10046'; ALTER SESSION SET statistics_level = ALL; ALTER SESSION SET events '10046 trace name context forever, level 12'; <<<<Replace this line with exactly the same query you used above. Force hard parse by modifying the case of a character>>>> select 'verify cursor closed' from dual; ALTER SYSTEM SET EVENTS '10046 trace name context off'; EXIT Make sure spooled file is formatted properly and that the 10046 trace has relevant explain plan in it.  Please Upload both files (10046 trace is generated in udump). Need instructions to find udump?   sqlplus "/ as sysdba" show parameters dump_dest This will show you bdump, cdump and udump locations.

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• 301 redirect from HTTP to HTTPS - how to be sure Google is fetching the correct information?

  - by user33692

  I'm hoping somebody might be able to provide a bit of advice on an issue I am having. I have one site where we implemented a 301 redirect on the homepage from HTTP to HTTPS. We have links on the homepage to other parts of the site that are not under SSL (in fact there is only one other page under SSL). When I go to our Webmaster Tools account I notice that we are not being provided with any webmaster information (e.g., search queries, backlinks, etc...) related to our homepage under SSL. I performed a Fetch as Google on the homepage and the information it returned is: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 17:26:24 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.16 (Debian) Location: https://mysite.com/ Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 242 Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN"> <html><head> <title>301 Moved Permanently</title> </head><body> <h1>Moved Permanently</h1> <p>The document has moved <a href="https://mysite.com/">here</a>.</p> <hr> <address>Apache/2.2.16 (Debian) Server at mysite.com</address> </body></html> I am worried by the fact that Google fetch is not getting the correct Title tags and Meta information from our homepage and that this is hurting our search results. Additionally, I am worried that we need to do something specific with the sitemap to ensure that Google is correctly indexing all our pages and being able to flow from the HTTPS to the HTTP without issues. Does anybody have any advice on how we can correctly set this up or be sure that Google is fetching the correct information?

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• How should I compress a file with multiple bytes that are the same with Huffman coding?

  - by Omega

  On my great quest for compressing/decompressing files with a Java implementation of Huffman coding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding) for a school assignment, I am now at the point of building a list of prefix codes. Such codes are used when decompressing a file. Basically, the code is made of zeroes and ones, that are used to follow a path in a Huffman tree (left or right) for, ultimately, finding a byte. In this Wikipedia image, to reach the character m the prefix code would be 0111 The idea is that when you compress the file, you will basically convert all the bytes of the file into prefix codes instead (they tend to be smaller than 8 bits, so there's some gain). So every time the character m appears in a file (which in binary is actually 1101101), it will be replaced by 0111 (if we used the tree above). Therefore, 1101101110110111011011101101 becomes 0111011101110111 in the compressed file. I'm okay with that. But what if the following happens: In the file to be compressed there exists only one unique byte, say 1101101. There are 1000 of such byte. Technically, the prefix code of such byte would be... none, because there is no path to follow, right? I mean, there is only one unique byte anyway, so the tree has just one node. Therefore, if the prefix code is none, I would not be able to write the prefix code in the compressed file, because, well, there is nothing to write. Which brings this problem: how would I compress/decompress such file if it is impossible to write a prefix code when compressing? (using Huffman coding, due to the school assignment's rules) This tutorial seems to explain a bit better about prefix codes: http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/computersciencetheory/huffman.html but doesn't seem to address this issue either.

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• Find last of match string automatically

  - by jowan

  I want to make id for entries as long as 7 digits.. while first entry is created, it will get id is 0000001 And my problem is i want to get id and add to 1 every time new entry is created.. I have a bunch of code and still confuse to implement it. $str_rep = "0000123"; $str_rep2 = "0005123"; // My character string can be like this $str_rep3 = "0009123"; // My character string can be like this $match_number= array(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9); // I create array to do it automatically but it was not work. // I do it manually $get_str = strstr($str_rep, "1"); $get_str = strstr($str_rep2, "5"); $get_str = strstr($str_rep3, "9"); // Result echo $get_str . "<br>"; echo $get_str2 . "<br>"; echo $get_str3 . "<br>"; Thanks in advance

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• HTML5 - Does it have the power to handle a large 2D game with a huge world?

  - by user15858

  I have been using XNA game studio, but due to private reasons (as well as the ability to publish anywhere & my heavy interest in isogenic engine), I would like to switch to HTML5. However, I have very high 2D graphic demands for my game. The game itself will have a HDD size of anywhere between 6GB (min) to 12GB (max) which would be a full game deployed offline. The size of the images aren't significantly large, so streaming would be entirely possible if only those assets required were streamed as needed. The game has a massive file size because of the sheer amount of content. For some images or spritesheets, they would be quite massive. (ex. a very large Dragon, which if animated in a spritesheet would be split into two 4096x4096 sheets or one 8192x8192 sheet). Most assets would be very small, and about 7MB for a full character with 15 animations in every direction (all animations not required immediately) so in the size of a few hundred KB to download before the game loads. My question, however, is if the graphical power of HTML5 is enough to animate several characters on screen at once, when it flips through frames quite rapidly. All my sprites have about 25 frames per animation, 5 directions (a spritesheet for each direction & animation), and run at 30fps. Upon changing direction, animation, or a new character entering, spritesheets would change and be constantly loading/unloading. If I pack all directions in a single sheet, it would be about 2048x2048 per sheet. Most frameworks have no problem with this, but I am afraid from what I read that HTML5's graphical capabilities will limit me. Since it takes significant time simply to animate characters in any language, I'd like a quick answer.

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• D20 java engine

  - by javydreamercsw

  I'm trying to incorporate PCGen into my application to avoid recreating the wheel for D20 system. (Are there any other libraries out there?) In other words I would like to use PCGen as a library and do things like: CRUD characters (and all related information) Experience/level managements I don't need the GUI part of it just the information to pass to my application. This is a scenario I can think of: 1. Load available custom classes 2. Create a new Character/NPC 3. Transfer the stats to my system 4. Player keeps playing so I need to update experience 5. Save player in my system and recreate it later. I'm trying to start to create a character from PCClass with no luck. Looking at the code it seems it'll try to load it. I assume load from a file generated from the GUI. Is there a way of bypassing the GUI for all this? I was looking for a tutorial of some sorts without luck. I was able to figure out how to use the dice within PCGen but that's about it. Any ideas?

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• Uneditable file and Unreadable(for further processing) file( WHY? ) after processing it through C++

  - by mgj

  Hi...:) This might look to be a very long question to you I understand, but trust me on this its not long. I am not able to identify why after processing this text is not being able to be read and edited. I tried using the ord() function in python to check if the text contains any Unicode characters( non ascii characters) apart from the ascii ones.. I found quite a number of them. I have a strong feeling that this could be due to the original text itself( The INPUT ). Input-File: Just copy paste it into a file "acle5v1.txt" The objective of this code below is to check for upper case characters and to convert it to lower case and also to remove all punctuations so that these words are taken for further processing for word alignment #include<iostrea> #include<fstream> #include<ctype.h> #include<cstring> using namespace std; ifstream fin2("acle5v1.txt"); ofstream fin3("acle5v1_op.txt"); ofstream fin4("chkcharadded.txt"); ofstream fin5("chkcharntadded.txt"); ofstream fin6("chkprintchar.txt"); ofstream fin7("chknonasci.txt"); ofstream fin8("nonprinchar.txt"); int main() { char ch,ch1; fin2.seekg(0); fin3.seekp(0); int flag = 0; while(!fin2.eof()) { ch1=ch; fin2.get(ch); if (isprint(ch))// if the character is printable flag = 1; if(flag) { fin6<<"Printable character:\t"<<ch<<"\t"<<(int)ch<<endl; flag = 0; } else { fin8<<"Non printable character caught:\t"<<ch<<"\t"<<int(ch)<<endl; } if( isalnum(ch) || ch == '@' || ch == ' ' )// checks for alpha numeric characters { fin4<<"char added: "<<ch<<"\tits ascii value: "<<int(ch)<<endl; if(isupper(ch)) { //tolower(ch); fin3<<(char)tolower(ch); } else { fin3<<ch; } } else if( ( ch=='\t' || ch=='.' || ch==',' || ch=='#' || ch=='?' || ch=='!' || ch=='"' || ch != ';' || ch != ':') && ch1 != ' ' ) { fin3<<' '; } else if( (ch=='\t' || ch=='.' || ch==',' || ch=='#' || ch=='?' || ch=='!' || ch=='"' || ch != ';' || ch != ':') && ch1 == ' ' ) { //fin3<<" '; } else if( !(int(ch)>=0 && int(ch)<=127) ) { fin5<<"Char of ascii within range not added: "<<ch<<"\tits ascii value: "<<int(ch)<<endl; } else { fin7<<"Non ascii character caught(could be a -ve value also)\t"<<ch<<int(ch)<<endl; } } return 0; } I have a similar code as the above written in python which gives me an otput which is again not readable and not editable The code in python looks like this: #!/usr/bin/python # -*- coding: UTF-8 -*- import sys input_file=sys.argv[1] output_file=sys.argv[2] list1=[] f=open(input_file) for line in f: line=line.strip() #line=line.rstrip('.') line=line.replace('.','') line=line.replace(',','') line=line.replace('#','') line=line.replace('?','') line=line.replace('!','') line=line.replace('"','') line=line.replace('?','') line=line.replace('|','') line = line.lower() list1.append(line) f.close() f1=open(output_file,'w') f1.write(' '.join(list1)) f1.close() the file takes ip and op at runtime.. as: python punc_remover.py acle5v1.txt acle5v1_op.txt The output of this file is in "acle5v1_op.txt" now after processing this particular output file is needed for further processing. This particular file "aclee5v1_op.txt" is the UNREADABLE Aand UNEDITABLE File that I am not being able to use for further processing. I need this for Word alignment in NLP. I tried readin this output with the following program #include<iostream> #include<fstream> using namespace std; ifstream fin1("acle5v1_op.txt"); ofstream fout1("chckread_acle5v1_op.txt"); ofstream fout2("chcknotread_acle5v1_op.txt"); int main() { char ch; int flag = 0; long int r = 0; long int nr = 0; while(!(fin1)) { fin1.get(ch); if(ch) { flag = 1; } if(flag) { fout1<<ch; flag = 0; r++; } else { fout2<<"Char not been able to be read from source file\n"; nr++; } } cout<<"Number of characters able to be read: "<<r; cout<<endl<<"Number of characters not been able to be read: "<<nr; return 0; } which prints the character if its readable and if not it doesn't print them but I observed the output of both the file is blank thus I could draw a conclusion that this file "acle5v1_op.txt" is UNREADABLE AND UNEDITABLE. Could you please help me on how to deal with this problem.. To tell you a bit about the statistics wrt the original input file "acle5v1.txt" file it has around 3441 lines in it and around 3 million characters in it. Keeping in mind the number of characters in the file you editor might/might not be able to manage to open the file.. I was able to open the file in gedit of Fedora 10 which I am currently using .. This is just to notify you that opening with a particular editor was not actually an issue at least in my case... Can I use scripting languages like Python and Perl to deal with this problem if Yes how? could please be specific on that regard as I am a novice to Perl and Python. Or could you please tell me how do I solve this problem using C++ itself.. Thank you...:) I am really looking forward to some help or guidance on how to go about this problem....

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• C# Persistent WebClient

  - by Nullstr1ng

  I have a class written in C# (Windows Forms) It's a WebClient class which I intent to use in some website and for Logging In and navigation. Here's the complete class pastebin.com (the class has 197 lines so I just use pastebin. Sorry if I made a little bit harder for you to read the class, also below this post) The problem is, am not sure why it's not persistent .. I was able to log in, but when I navigate to other page (without leaving the domain), I was thrown back to log in page. Can you help me solving this problem? one issue though is, the site I was trying to connect is "HTTPS" protocol. I have not yet tested this on just a regular HTTP. Thank you in advance. /* * Web Client v1.2 * --------------- * Date: 12/17/2010 * author: Jayson Ragasa */ using System; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Specialized; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.IO; using System.Net; using System.Web; namespace Nullstring.Modules.WebClient { public class WebClientLibrary { #region vars string _method = string.Empty; ArrayList _params; CookieContainer cookieko; HttpWebRequest req = null; HttpWebResponse resp = null; Uri uri = null; #endregion #region properties public string Method { set { _method = value; } } #endregion #region constructor public WebClientLibrary() { _method = "GET"; _params = new ArrayList(); cookieko = new CookieContainer(); } #endregion #region methods public void ClearParameter() { _params.Clear(); } public void AddParameter(string key, string value) { _params.Add(string.Format("{0}={1}", WebTools.URLEncodeString(key), WebTools.URLEncodeString(value))); } public string GetResponse(string URL) { StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder(); #region create web request { uri = new Uri(URL); req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(URL); req.Method = "GET"; req.GetLifetimeService(); } #endregion #region get web response { resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse(); Stream resStream = resp.GetResponseStream(); int bytesReceived = 0; string tempString = null; int count = 0; byte[] buf = new byte[8192]; do { count = resStream.Read(buf, 0, buf.Length); if (count != 0) { bytesReceived += count; tempString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buf, 0, count); response.Append(tempString); } } while (count > 0); } #endregion return response.ToString(); } public string GetResponse(string URL, bool HasParams) { StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder(); #region create web request { uri = new Uri(URL); req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(URL); req.MaximumAutomaticRedirections = 20; req.AllowAutoRedirect = true; req.Method = this._method; req.Accept = "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8"; req.KeepAlive = true; req.CookieContainer = this.cookieko; req.UserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_8; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/8.0.552.224 Safari/534.10"; } #endregion #region build post data { if (HasParams) { if (this._method.ToUpper() == "POST") { string Parameters = String.Join("&", (String[])this._params.ToArray(typeof(string))); UTF8Encoding encoding = new UTF8Encoding(); byte[] loginDataBytes = encoding.GetBytes(Parameters); req.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"; req.ContentLength = loginDataBytes.Length; Stream stream = req.GetRequestStream(); stream.Write(loginDataBytes, 0, loginDataBytes.Length); stream.Close(); } } } #endregion #region get web response { resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse(); Stream resStream = resp.GetResponseStream(); int bytesReceived = 0; string tempString = null; int count = 0; byte[] buf = new byte[8192]; do { count = resStream.Read(buf, 0, buf.Length); if (count != 0) { bytesReceived += count; tempString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buf, 0, count); response.Append(tempString); } } while (count > 0); } #endregion return response.ToString(); } #endregion } public class WebTools { public static string EncodeString(string str) { return HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(str); } public static string DecodeString(string str) { return HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(str); } public static string URLEncodeString(string str) { return HttpUtility.UrlEncode(str); } public static string URLDecodeString(string str) { return HttpUtility.UrlDecode(str); } } } UPDATE Dec 22GetResponse overload public string GetResponse(string URL) { StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder(); #region create web request { //uri = new Uri(URL); req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(URL); req.Method = "GET"; req.CookieContainer = this.cookieko; } #endregion #region get web response { resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse(); Stream resStream = resp.GetResponseStream(); int bytesReceived = 0; string tempString = null; int count = 0; byte[] buf = new byte[8192]; do { count = resStream.Read(buf, 0, buf.Length); if (count != 0) { bytesReceived += count; tempString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buf, 0, count); response.Append(tempString); } } while (count 0); } #endregion return response.ToString(); } But still I got thrown back to login page. UPDATE: Dec 23 I tried listing the cookie and here's what I get at first, I have to login to a webform and this I have this Cookie JSESSIONID=368C0AC47305282CBCE7A566567D2942 then I navigated to another page (but on the same domain) I got a different Cooke? JSESSIONID=9FA2D64DA7669155B9120790B40A592C What went wrong? I use the code updated last Dec 22

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• Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• ASP.NET MVC 3: Razor’s @: and <text> syntax

  - by ScottGu

  This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features: New @model keyword in Razor (Oct 19th) Layouts with Razor (Oct 22nd) Server-Side Comments with Razor (Nov 12th) Razor’s @: and <text> syntax (today) In today’s post I’m going to discuss two useful syntactical features of the new Razor view-engine – the @: and <text> syntax support. Fluid Coding with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to the existing .aspx view engine).  You can learn more about Razor, why we are introducing it, and the syntax it supports from my Introducing Razor blog post.  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type. For example, the Razor snippet below can be used to iterate a list of products: When run, it generates output like:   One of the techniques that Razor uses to implicitly identify when a code block ends is to look for tag/element content to denote the beginning of a content region.  For example, in the code snippet above Razor automatically treated the inner <li></li> block within our foreach loop as an HTML content block because it saw the opening <li> tag sequence and knew that it couldn’t be valid C#.  This particular technique – using tags to identify content blocks within code – is one of the key ingredients that makes Razor so clean and productive with scenarios involving HTML creation. Using @: to explicitly indicate the start of content Not all content container blocks start with a tag element tag, though, and there are scenarios where the Razor parser can’t implicitly detect a content block. Razor addresses this by enabling you to explicitly indicate the beginning of a line of content by using the @: character sequence within a code block.  The @: sequence indicates that the line of content that follows should be treated as a content block: As a more practical example, the below snippet demonstrates how we could output a “(Out of Stock!)” message next to our product name if the product is out of stock: Because I am not wrapping the (Out of Stock!) message in an HTML tag element, Razor can’t implicitly determine that the content within the @if block is the start of a content block.  We are using the @: character sequence to explicitly indicate that this line within our code block should be treated as content. Using Code Nuggets within @: content blocks In addition to outputting static content, you can also have code nuggets embedded within a content block that is initiated using a @: character sequence.  For example, we have two @: sequences in the code snippet below: Notice how within the second @: sequence we are emitting the number of units left within the content block (e.g. - “(Only 3 left!”). We are doing this by embedding a @p.UnitsInStock code nugget within the line of content. Multiple Lines of Content Razor makes it easy to have multiple lines of content wrapped in an HTML element.  For example, below the inner content of our @if container is wrapped in an HTML <p> element – which will cause Razor to treat it as content: For scenarios where the multiple lines of content are not wrapped by an outer HTML element, you can use multiple @: sequences: Alternatively, Razor also allows you to use a <text> element to explicitly identify content: The <text> tag is an element that is treated specially by Razor. It causes Razor to interpret the inner contents of the <text> block as content, and to not render the containing <text> tag element (meaning only the inner contents of the <text> element will be rendered – the tag itself will not).  This makes it convenient when you want to render multi-line content blocks that are not wrapped by an HTML element.  The <text> element can also optionally be used to denote single-lines of content, if you prefer it to the more concise @: sequence: The above code will render the same output as the @: version we looked at earlier.  Razor will automatically omit the <text> wrapping element from the output and just render the content within it.  Summary Razor enables a clean and concise templating syntax that enables a very fluid coding workflow.  Razor’s smart detection of <tag> elements to identify the beginning of content regions is one of the reasons that the Razor approach works so well with HTML generation scenarios, and it enables you to avoid having to explicitly mark the beginning/ending of content regions in about 95% of if/else and foreach scenarios. Razor’s @: and <text> syntax can then be used for scenarios where you want to avoid using an HTML element within a code container block, and need to more explicitly denote a content region. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Connecting to DB2 from SSIS

  - by Christopher House

  The project I'm currently working on involves moving various pieces of data from a legacy DB2 environment to some SQL Server and flat file locations.  Most of the data flows are real time, so they were a natural fit for the client's MQSeries on their iSeries servers and BizTalk to handle the messaging.  Some of the data flows, however, are daily batch type transmissions.  For the daily batch transmissions, it was decided that we'd use SSIS to pull the data direct from DB2 to either a SQL Server or flat file.  I'm not at all an SSIS guy, I've done a bit here and there, but mainly for situations were we needed to move data from a dev environment to QA, mostly informal stuff like that.  And, as much as I'm not an SSIS guy, I'm even less a DB2/iSeries guy.  Prior to this engagement, my knowledge of DB2 was limited to the fact that it's an IBM product and that it was probably a DBMS flatform (that's what the DB in DB2 means, right?).   One of my first goals when I came onto this project was to develop of POC SSIS package to pull some data from DB2 and dump it to a flat file.  It sounded like a pretty straight forward task.  As always, the devil is in the details.  Configuring the DB2 connection manager took a bit of trial and error.  As such, I thought I'd post my experiences here in hopes that they might save someone the efforts I went through.  That being said, please keep in mind, as I pointed out, I'm not at all a DB2 guy, so my terminology and explanations may not be 100% spot on. Before you get started, you need to figure out how you're going to connect to DB2.  From the research I did, it looks like there are a few options.  IBM has both an OLE DB and .Net data provider which can be found here.  I installed their client access tools and tried to use both the .Net and OLE DB providers but I received an error message from both when attempting to connect to the iSeries that indicated I needed a license for a product called DB2 Connect.  I inquired with one of my client's iSeries resources about a license for this product and it appears they didn't have one, so that meant the IBM drivers were out.  The other option that I found quite a bit of discussion around was Microsoft's OLE DB Provider for DB2.  This driver is part of the feature pack for SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition and can be downloaded here. As it turns out, I already had Microsoft's driver installed on my dev VM, which stuck me as odd since I hadn't installed it.  I discovered that the driver is installed with the BizTalk adapter pack for host systems, which was also installed on my VM.  However, it looks like the version used by the adapter pack is newer than the version provided in the SQL Server feature pack.   Once you get the driver installed, create a connection manager in your package just like you normally would and select the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for DB2 from the list of available drivers. After you select the driver, you'll need to enter in your host name, login credentials and initial catalog. A couple of things to note here.  First, the Initial catalog needs to be the same as your host name.  Not sure why that is, but trust me, it just does.  Second, for credentials, in my environment, we're using what the client's iSeries people refer to as "profiles".  I guess this is similar to SQL auth in the SQL Server world.  In other words, they've given me a username and password for connecting to DB, so I've entered it here. Next, click the Data Links button.  On the Data Links screen, enter your package collection on the first tab. Package collection is one of those DB2 concepts I'm still trying to figure out.  From the little bit I've read, packages are used to control SQL compilation and each DB2 connection needs one.  The package collection, I believe, controls where your package is created.  One of the iSeries folks I've been working with told me that I should always use QGPL for my package collection, as QGPL is "general purpose" and doesn't require any additional authority. Next click the ellipsis next to the Network drop-down.  Here you'll want to enter your host name again. Again, not sure why you need to do this, but trust me, my connection wouldn't work until I entered my hostname here. Finally, go to the Advanced tab, select your DBMS platform and check Process binary as character. My environment is DB2 on the iSeries and iSeries is the replacement for AS/400, so I selected DB2/AS400 for my platform.  Process binary as character was necessary to handle some of the DB2 data types.  I had a few columns that showed all their data as "System.Byte[]".  Checking Process binary as character resolved this. At this point, you should be good to go.  You can go back to the Connection tab on the Data Links dialog to perform a couple of tests to validate your configuration.  The Test Connection button is obvious, this just verifies you can connect to the host using the configuration data you've entered.  The Packages button will attempt to connect to the host and create the packages required to execute queries. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive look SSIS and DB2, these are just some of the notes I've come up with since I've started working with DB2 and SSIS.  I'm sure as I continue developing my packages, I'll find more quirks and will post them here.

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• Look Inside WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP with an LDAP Explorer

  - by james.bayer

  Today a question came up on our internal WebLogic Server mailing lists about an issue deleting a Group from WebLogic Server.  The group had a special character in the name. The WLS console refused to delete the group with the message a java.net.MalformedURLException and another message saying “Errors must be corrected before proceeding.” as shown below. The group aa:bb is the one with the issue.  Click to enlarge. WebLogic Server includes an embedded LDAP server that can be used for managing users and groups for “reasonably small environments (10,000 or fewer users)”.  For organizations scaling larger or using more high-end features, I recommend looking at one of Oracle’s very popular enterprise directory services products like Oracle Internet Directory or Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition.  You can configure multiple authenicators in WebLogic Server so that you can use multiple directories at the same time. I am not sure WebLogic Server supports special characters in group names for the Embedded LDAP server, but in this case both the console and WLST reported the same issue deleting the group with the special character in the name.  Here’s the WLST output: wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig/SecurityConfiguration/hotspot_domain/Realms/myrealm/AuthenticationProviders/DefaultAuthenticator> cmo.removeGroup('aa:bb') Traceback (innermost last): File "<console>", line 1, in ? weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegateException: [Security:090296]invalid URL ldap:///ou=people,ou=myrealm,dc=hotspot_domain??sub?(&(objectclass=person)(wlsMemberOf=cn=aa:bb,ou=groups,ou=myrealm,dc=hotspot_domain)) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.advance(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:254) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.<init>(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:119) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegate.listGroupMembers(LDAPAtnDelegate.java:1392) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnDelegate.removeGroup(LDAPAtnDelegate.java:1989) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.DefaultAuthenticatorImpl.removeGroup(DefaultAuthenticatorImpl.java:242) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.DefaultAuthenticatorMBeanImpl.removeGroup(DefaultAuthenticatorMBeanImpl.java:407) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at weblogic.management.jmx.modelmbean.WLSModelMBean.invoke(WLSModelMBean.java:437) at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:836) at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:761) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase$16.run(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:449) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.invoke(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:447) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXContextInterceptor.invoke(JMXContextInterceptor.java:263) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase$16.run(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:449) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.invoke(WLSMBeanServerInterceptorBase.java:447) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.SecurityInterceptor.invoke(SecurityInterceptor.java:444) at weblogic.management.jmx.mbeanserver.WLSMBeanServer.invoke(WLSMBeanServer.java:323) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder$11$1.run(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:663) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder$11.run(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:661) at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363) at weblogic.management.mbeanservers.internal.JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.invoke(JMXConnectorSubjectForwarder.java:654) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1427) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.access$200(RMIConnectionImpl.java:72) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl$PrivilegedOperation.run(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1265) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.doPrivilegedOperation(RMIConnectionImpl.java:1367) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl.invoke(RMIConnectionImpl.java:788) at javax.management.remote.rmi.RMIConnectionImpl_WLSkel.invoke(Unknown Source) at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.invoke(BasicServerRef.java:667) at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef$1.run(BasicServerRef.java:522) at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363) at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:146) at weblogic.rmi.internal.BasicServerRef.handleRequest(BasicServerRef.java:518) at weblogic.rmi.internal.wls.WLSExecuteRequest.run(WLSExecuteRequest.java:118) at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:207) at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:176) Caused by: java.net.MalformedURLException at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.readNextConstruct(LDAPUrl.java:651) at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.parseUrl(LDAPUrl.java:277) at netscape.ldap.LDAPUrl.<init>(LDAPUrl.java:114) at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.advance(LDAPAtnGroupMembersNameList.java:224) ... 41 more It’s fairly clear that in order to work that the : character needs to be URL encoded to %3A or similar.  But all is not lost, there is another way.  You can configure an LDAP Explorer like JXplorer to WebLogic Server Embedded LDAP and browse/edit the entries. Follow the instructions here, being sure to change the authentication credentials to the Embedded LDAP server to some value you know, as by default they are some unknown value.  You’ll need to reboot the WebLogic Server Admin Server after making this change. Now configure JXplorer to connect as described in the documentation.  I’ve circled the important inputs.  In this example, my domain name is “hotspot_domain” which listens on the localhost listen address and port 7001.  The cn=Admin user name is a constant identifier for the Administrator of the embedded LDAP and that does not change, but you need to know what it is so you can enter it into the tool you use. Once you connect successfully, you can explore the entries and in this case delete the group that is no longer desired.

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• TFS 2010 SDK: Integrating Twitter with TFS Programmatically

  - by Tarun Arora

  Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp   Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing them in your social eco-system. Download Working Demo: Integrate Twitter - Tfs Programmatically   1. Setting up Twitter API Download Tweet Sharp from => https://github.com/danielcrenna/tweetsharp  Before you can start playing around with this, you will need to register an application on twitter. This is because Twitter uses the OAuth authentication protocol and will not issue an Access token unless your application is registered with them. Go to https://dev.twitter.com/ and register your application   Once you have registered your application, you will need ‘Customer Key’, ‘Customer Secret’, ‘Access Token’, ‘Access Token Secret’ 2. Connecting to Twitter using the Tweet Sharp API Create a new C# windows forms project and add reference to ‘Hammock.ClientProfile’, ‘Newtonsoft.Json’, ‘TweetSharp’ Add the following keys to the App.config (Note – The values for the keys below are in correct and if you try and connect using them then you will get an authorization failure error). Add a new class ‘TwitterProxy’ and use the following code to connect to the TwitterService (Read more about OAuthentication - http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth) using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;using System.Configuration;using TweetSharp; namespace WindowsFormsApplication2{ public class TwitterProxy { private static string _hero; private static string _consumerKey; private static string _consumerSecret; private static string _accessToken; private static string _accessTokenSecret;  public static TwitterService ConnectToTwitter() { _consumerKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerKey"]; _consumerSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerSecret"]; _accessToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessToken"]; _accessTokenSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessTokenSecret"];  return new TwitterService(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret, _accessToken, _accessTokenSecret); } }} Time to Tweet! _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); SendTweet will return the TweetStatus, If you do not get a 200 OK status that means you have failed authentication, please revisit the Access tokens. --RESPONSE: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Transaction: 1308476106-69292-41752 X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-Runtime: 0.03040 X-Transaction-Mask: a6183ffa5f44ef11425211f25 Pragma: no-cache X-Access-Level: read-write X-Revision: DEV X-MID: bd8aa0abeccb6efba38bc0a391a73fab98e983ea Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Server: hi Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked   3. Integrate with TFS In my blog post Connect to TFS Programmatically i have in depth demonstrated how to connect to TFS using the TFS API. 1: // Update the AppConfig with the URI of the Team Foundation Server you want to connect to, Make sure you have View Team Project Collection Details permissions on the server 2: private static string _myUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TfsUri"]; 3: private static TwitterService _twitterService = null; 4:   5: private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 6: { 7: lblNotes.Text = string.Empty; 8:   9: try 10: { 11: StringBuilder notes = new StringBuilder(); 12:   13: _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); 14:   15: _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); 16:   17: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 18: TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri)); 19:   20: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 21:   22: ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> tpcNodes = catalogNode.QueryChildren( 23: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 24: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 25:   26: // tpc = Team Project Collection 27: foreach (CatalogNode tpcNode in tpcNodes) 28: { 29: Guid tpcId = new Guid(tpcNode.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"]); 30: TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = configurationServer.GetTeamProjectCollection(tpcId); 31:   32: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project Collection : {1}{0}", Environment.NewLine, tpc.Name); 33: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format("http://Lunartech.codeplex.com - Connecting to Team Project Collection : {0} ", tpc.Name)); 34:   35: // Get catalog of tp = 'Team Projects' for the tpc = 'Team Project Collection' 36: var tpNodes = tpcNode.QueryChildren( 37: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, 38: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 39:   40: foreach (var p in tpNodes) 41: { 42: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project : {1} - {2}{0}", Environment.NewLine, p.Resource.DisplayName,  "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex"); 43: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format(" Connected to Team Project: '{0}' – '{1}' ", p.Resource.DisplayName, "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex")); 44: } 45: } 46: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Updates posted on Twitter : {1} {0}", Environment.NewLine, @"http://twitter.com/lunartech1"); 47: lblNotes.Text = notes.ToString(); 48: } 49: catch (Exception ex) 50: { 51: lblError.Text = " Message : " + ex.Message + (ex.InnerException != null ? " Inner Exception : " + ex.InnerException : string.Empty); 52: } 53: }   The extensions you can build integrating TFS and Twitter are incredible!   Share this post :

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• Getting App.config to be configuration specific in VS2010

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently wanted to have a console application that had configuration specific settings. For instance, if I had two configurations “Debug” and “Release”, depending on the currently selected configuration I wanted it to use a specific configuration file (either debug or config). If you are wanting to do something similar, here is a potential solution that worked for me. Setting up a demo app to illustrate the point First, let’s set up an application that will demonstrate the most basic concept. using System; using System.Configuration; namespace ConsoleSpecificConfiguration { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Config"); Console.WriteLine(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Example Config"]); Console.ReadLine(); } } }   This does a really simple thing. Display a config when run. To do this, you also need a config file set up. My default looks as follows… <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Default"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   Your entire solution will look as follows… Running the project you will get the following amazing output…   Let’s now say instead of having one config file we want depending on whether we are running in “Debug” or “Release” for the solution configuration we want different config settings to be propagated across you can do the following… Step 1 – Create alternate config Files First add additional config files to your solution. You should have some form of naming convention for these config files, I have decided to follow a similar convention to the one used for web.config, so in my instance I am going to add a App.Debug.config and a App.Release.config file BUT you can follow any naming convention you want provided you wire up the rest of the approach to use this convention. My files look as follows.. App.Debug.config <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Debug"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   App.Release.config <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Release"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   Your solution will now look as follows… Step 2 – Create a bat file that will overwrite files The next step is to create a bat file that will overwrite one file with another. If you right click on the solution in the solution explorer there will be a menu option to add new items to the solution. Create a text file called “copyifnewer.bat” which will be our copy script. It’s contents should look as follows… @echo off echo Comparing two files: %1 with %2 if not exist %1 goto File1NotFound if not exist %2 goto File2NotFound fc %1 %2 /A if %ERRORLEVEL%==0 GOTO NoCopy echo Files are not the same. Copying %1 over %2 copy %1 %2 /y & goto END :NoCopy echo Files are the same. Did nothing goto END :File1NotFound echo %1 not found. goto END :File2NotFound copy %1 %2 /y goto END :END echo Done. Your solution should now look as follows…   Step 3 – Customize the Post Build event command line We now need to wire up everything – which we will do using the post build event command line in VS2010. Right click on your project and go to it’s properties We are now going to wire up the script so that when we build our project it will overwrite the default App.config with whatever file we want. The syntax goes as follows… call "$(SolutionDir)copyifnewer.bat" "$(ProjectDir)App.$(ConfigurationName).config" "$(ProjectDir)$(OutDir)\$(TargetFileName).config" Testing it If I now change my project configuration to Release   And then run my application I get the following output… Toggling between Release and Debug mode will show that the config file is changing each time. And that is it!

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• Actionscript 3.0 - Enemies do not move right in my platformer game

  - by Christian Basar

  I am making a side-scrolling platformer game in Flash (Actionscript 3.0). I have made lots of progress lately, but I have come across a new problem. I will give some background first. My game level's terrain (or 'floor') is referenced by a MovieClip variable called 'floor.' My desire is to have the Player and enemy characters walk along the terrain. I have gotten the Player character to move on the terrain just fine; he walks up/down hills and falls whenever there is no ground beneath him. Here is the code I created to allow the Player to follow the terrain correctly. Much more code is used to control the Player, but only this code deals with the Player character's following of the terrain and gravity. // If the Player's not on the ground (not touching the 'floor' MovieClip)... if (!onGround) { // Disable ducking downKeyPressed = false; // Increase the Player's 'y' position by his 'y' velocity player.y += playerYVel; } // Increase the 'playerYVel' variable so that the Player will fall // progressively faster down the screen. This code technically // runs "all the time" but in reality it only affects the player // when he's off the ground. playerYVel += gravity; // Give the Player a terminal velocity of 15 px/frame if (playerYVel > 15) { playerYVel = 15; } // If the Player has not hit the 'floor,' increase his falling //speed if (! floor.hitTestPoint(player.x, player.y, true)) { player.y += playerYVel; // The Player is not on the ground when he's not touching it onGround = false; } Since getting this code to work for the Player, I have created a 'SkullDemon' class, which is one of the planned enemies for my game. I want the 'SkullDemon' objects to move along the terrain like the Player does. With lots of great help, I have already coded the EventListeners, etc. necessary for the 'SkullDemons' to move. Unfortunately, I am having trouble getting them to move along the terrain. In fact, they do not touch the terrain at all; they move along the top of the boundary of the 'floor' MovieClip! I had a simple text diagram showing what I mean, but unfortunately Stackoverflow does not format it correctly. I hope my problem is clear from my description. Strangely enough, my code for the Player's movement and the 'SkullDemon's' movement is almost exactly the same, yet the 'SkullDemons' do not move like the Player does. Here is my code for the SkullDemon movement: // Move all of the Skull Demons using this method protected function moveSkullDemons():void { // Go through the whole 'skullDemonContainer' for (var skullDi:int = 0; skullDi < skullDemonContainer.numChildren; skullDi++) { // Set the SkullDemon 'instance' variable to equal the current SkullDemon skullDIns = SkullDemon(skullDemonContainer.getChildAt(skullDi)); // For now, just move the Skull Demons left at 5 units per second skullDIns.x -= 5; // If the Skull Demon has not hit the 'floor,' increase his falling //speed if (! floor.hitTestPoint(skullDIns.x, skullDIns.y, true)) { // Increase the Skull Demon's 'y' position by his 'y' velocity skullDIns.y += skullDIns.sdYVel; // The Skull Demon is not on the ground when he's not touching it skullDIns.sdOnGround = false; } // Increase the 'sdYVel' variable so that the Skull Demon will fall // progressively faster down the screen. This code technically // runs "all the time" but in reality it only affects the Skull Demon // when he's off the ground. if (! skullDIns.sdOnGround) { skullDIns.sdYVel += skullDIns.sdGravity; // Give the Skull Demon a terminal velocity of 15 px/frame if (skullDIns.sdYVel > 15) { skullDIns.sdYVel = 15; } } // What happens when the Skull Demon lands on the ground after a fall? // The Skull Demon is only on the ground ('onGround == true') when // the ground is touching the Skull Demon MovieClip's origin point, // which is at the Skull Demon's bottom centre for (var i:int = 0; i < 10; i++) { // The Skull Demon is only on the ground ('onGround == true') when // the ground is touching the Skull Demon MovieClip's origin point, // which is at the Skull Demon's bottom centre if (floor.hitTestPoint(skullDIns.x, skullDIns.y, true)) { skullDIns.y = skullDIns.y; // Set the Skull Demon's y-axis speed to 0 skullDIns.sdYVel = 0; // The Skull Demon is on the ground again skullDIns.sdOnGround = true; } } } } // End of 'moveSkullDemons()' function It is almost like the 'SkullDemons' are interacting with the 'floor' MovieClip using the hitTestObject() function, and not the hitTestPoint() function which is what I want, and which works for the Player character. I am confused about this problem and would appreciate any help you could give me. Thanks!

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• Setting up and using Bing Translate API Service for Machine Translation

  - by Rick Strahl

  Last week I spent quite a bit of time trying to set up the Bing Translate API service. I can honestly say this was one of the most screwed up developer experiences I've had in a long while - specifically related to the byzantine sign up process that Microsoft has in place. Not only is it nearly impossible to find decent documentation on the required signup process, some of the links in the docs are just plain wrong, and some of the account pages you need to access the actual account information once signed up are not linked anywhere from the administration UI. To make things even harder is the fact that the APIs changed a while back, with a completely new authentication scheme that's described and not directly linked documentation topic also made for a very frustrating search experience. It's a bummer that this is the case too, because the actual API itself is easy to use and works very well - fast and reasonably accurate (as accurate as you can expect machine translation to be). But the sign up process is a pain in the ass doubtlessly leaving many people giving up in frustration. In this post I'll try to hit all the points needed to set up to use the Bing Translate API in one place since such a document seems to be missing from Microsoft. Hopefully the API folks at Microsoft will get their shit together and actually provide this sort of info on their site… Signing Up The first step required is to create a Windows Azure MarketPlace account. Go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/ Sign in with your Windows Live Id If you don't have an account you will be taken to a registration page which you have to fill out. Follow the links and complete the registration. Once you're signed in you can start adding services. Click on the Data Link on the main page Select Microsoft Translator from the list This adds the Microsoft Bing Translator to your services. Pricing The page shows the pricing matrix and the free service which provides 2 megabytes for translations a month for free. Prices go up steeply from there. Pricing is determined by actual bytes of the result translations used. Max translations are 1000 characters so at minimum this means you get around 2000 translations a month for free. However most translations are probable much less so you can expect larger number of translations to go through. For testing or low volume translations this should be just fine. Once signed up there are no further instructions and you're left in limbo on the MS site. Register your Application Once you've created the Data association with Translator the next step is registering your application. To do this you need to access your developer account. Go to https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/register Provide a ClientId, which is effectively the unique string identifier for your application (not your customer id!) Provide your name The client secret was auto-created and this becomes your 'password' For the redirect url provide any https url: https://microsoft.com works Give this application a description of your choice so you can identify it in the list of apps Now, once you've registered your application, keep track of the ClientId and ClientSecret - those are the two keys you need to authenticate before you can call the Translate API. Oddly the applications page is hidden from the Azure Portal UI. I couldn't find a direct link from anywhere on the site back to this page where I can examine my developer application keys. To find them you can go to: https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications You can come back here to look at your registered applications and pick up the ClientID and ClientSecret. Fun eh? But we're now ready to actually call the API and do some translating. Using the Bing Translate API The good news is that after this signup hell, using the API is pretty straightforward. To use the translation API you'll need to actually use two services: You need to call an authentication API service first, before you can call the actual translator API. These two APIs live on different domains, and the authentication API returns JSON data while the translator service returns XML. So much for consistency. Authentication The first step is authentication. The service uses oAuth authentication with a  bearer token that has to be passed to the translator API. The authentication call retrieves the oAuth token that you can then use with the translate API call. The bearer token has a short 10 minute life time, so while you can cache it for successive calls, the token can't be cached for long periods. This means for Web backend requests you typically will have to authenticate each time unless you build a more elaborate caching scheme that takes the timeout into account (perhaps using the ASP.NET Cache object). For low volume operations you can probably get away with simply calling the auth API for every translation you do. To call the Authentication API use code like this:/// /// Retrieves an oAuth authentication token to be used on the translate /// API request. The result string needs to be passed as a bearer token /// to the translate API. /// /// You can find client ID and Secret (or register a new one) at: /// https://datamarket.azure.com/developer/applications/ /// /// The client ID of your application /// The client secret or password /// public string GetBingAuthToken(string clientId = null, string clientSecret = null) { string authBaseUrl = https://datamarket.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/OAuth2-13; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientId) || string.IsNullOrEmpty(clientSecret)) { ErrorMessage = Resources.Resources.Client_Id_and_Client_Secret_must_be_provided; return null; } var postData = string.Format("grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={0}" + "&client_secret={1}" + "&scope=http://api.microsofttranslator.com", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientId), HttpUtility.UrlEncode(clientSecret)); // POST Auth data to the oauth API string res, token; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.UploadString(authBaseUrl, postData); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } var ser = new JavaScriptSerializer(); var auth = ser.Deserialize<BingAuth>(res); if (auth == null) return null; token = auth.access_token; return token; } private class BingAuth { public string token_type { get; set; } public string access_token { get; set; } } This code basically takes the client id and secret and posts it at the oAuth endpoint which returns a JSON string. Here I use the JavaScript serializer to deserialize the JSON into a custom object I created just for deserialization. You can also use JSON.NET and dynamic deserialization if you are already using JSON.NET in your app in which case you don't need the extra type. In my library that houses this component I don't, so I just rely on the built in serializer. The auth method returns a long base64 encoded string which can be used as a bearer token in the translate API call. Translation Once you have the authentication token you can use it to pass to the translate API. The auth token is passed as an Authorization header and the value is prefixed with a 'Bearer ' prefix for the string. Here's what the simple Translate API call looks like:/// /// Uses the Bing API service to perform translation /// Bing can translate up to 1000 characters. /// /// Requires that you provide a CLientId and ClientSecret /// or set the configuration values for these two. /// /// More info on setup: /// http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/ /// /// Text to translate /// Two letter culture name /// Two letter culture name /// Pass an access token retrieved with GetBingAuthToken. /// If not passed the default keys from .config file are used if any /// public string TranslateBing(string text, string fromCulture, string toCulture, string accessToken = null) { string serviceUrl = "http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Http.svc/Translate"; if (accessToken == null) { accessToken = GetBingAuthToken(); if (accessToken == null) return null; } string res; try { var web = new WebClient(); web.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Bearer " + accessToken); string ct = "text/plain"; string postData = string.Format("?text={0}&from={1}&to={2}&contentType={3}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(text), fromCulture, toCulture, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(ct)); web.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8; res = web.DownloadString(serviceUrl + postData); } catch (Exception e) { ErrorMessage = e.GetBaseException().Message; return null; } // result is a single XML Element fragment var doc = new XmlDocument(); doc.LoadXml(res); return doc.DocumentElement.InnerText; } The first of this code deals with ensuring the auth token exists. You can either pass the token into the method manually or let the method automatically retrieve the auth code on its own. In my case I'm using this inside of a Web application and in that situation I simply need to re-authenticate every time as there's no convenient way to manage the lifetime of the auth cookie. The auth token is added as an Authorization HTTP header prefixed with 'Bearer ' and attached to the request. The text to translate, the from and to language codes and a result format are passed on the query string of this HTTP GET request against the Translate API. The translate API returns an XML string which contains a single element with the translated string. Using the Wrapper Methods It should be pretty obvious how to use these two methods but here are a couple of test methods that demonstrate the two usage scenarios:[TestMethod] public void TranslateBingWithAuthTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string clientId = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientId; string clientSecret = DbResourceConfiguration.Current.BingClientSecret; string auth = translate.GetBingAuthToken(clientId, clientSecret); Assert.IsNotNull(auth); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!", "en", "de",auth); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } [TestMethod] public void TranslateBingIntegratedTest() { var translate = new TranslationServices(); string text = translate.TranslateBing("Hello World we're back home!","en","de"); Assert.IsNotNull(text, translate.ErrorMessage); Console.WriteLine(text); } Other API Methods The Translate API has a number of methods available and this one is the simplest one but probably also the most common one that translates a single string. You can find additional methods for this API here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512419.aspx Soap and AJAX APIs are also available and documented on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd576287.aspx These links will be your starting points for calling other methods in this API. Dual Interface I've talked about my database driven localization provider here in the past, and it's for this tool that I added the Bing localization support. Basically I have a localization administration form that allows me to translate individual strings right out of the UI, using both Google and Bing APIs: As you can see in this example, the results from Google and Bing can vary quite a bit - in this case Google is stumped while Bing actually generated a valid translation. At other times it's the other way around - it's pretty useful to see multiple translations at the same time. Here I can choose from one of the values and driectly embed them into the translated text field. Lost in Translation There you have it. As I mentioned using the API once you have all the bureaucratic crap out of the way calling the APIs is fairly straight forward and reasonably fast, even if you have to call the Auth API for every call. Hopefully this post will help out a few of you trying to navigate the Microsoft bureaucracy, at least until next time Microsoft upends everything and introduces new ways to sign up again. Until then - happy translating… Related Posts Translation method Source on Github Translating with Google Translate without Google API Keys Creating a data-driven ASP.NET Resource Provider© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in Localization  ASP.NET  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• An easy way to create Side by Side registrationless COM Manifests with Visual Studio

  - by Rick Strahl

  Here's something I didn't find out until today: You can use Visual Studio to easily create registrationless COM manifest files for you with just a couple of small steps. Registrationless COM lets you use COM component without them being registered in the registry. This means it's possible to deploy COM components along with another application using plain xcopy semantics. To be sure it's rarely quite that easy - you need to watch out for dependencies - but if you know you have COM components that are light weight and have no or known dependencies it's easy to get everything into a single folder and off you go. Registrationless COM works via manifest files which carry the same name as the executable plus a .manifest extension (ie. yourapp.exe.manifest) I'm going to use a Visual FoxPro COM object as an example and create a simple Windows Forms app that calls the component - without that component being registered. Let's take a walk down memory lane… Create a COM Component I start by creating a FoxPro COM component because that's what I know and am working with here in my legacy environment. You can use VB classic or C++ ATL object if that's more to your liking. Here's a real simple Fox one: DEFINE CLASS SimpleServer as Session OLEPUBLIC FUNCTION HelloWorld(lcName) RETURN "Hello " + lcName ENDDEFINE Compile it into a DLL COM component with: BUILD MTDLL simpleserver FROM simpleserver RECOMPILE And to make sure it works test it quickly from Visual FoxPro: server = CREATEOBJECT("simpleServer.simpleserver") MESSAGEBOX( server.HelloWorld("Rick") ) Using Visual Studio to create a Manifest File for a COM Component Next open Visual Studio and create a new executable project - a Console App or WinForms or WPF application will all do. Go to the References Node Select Add Reference Use the Browse tab and find your compiled DLL to import  Next you'll see your assembly in the project. Right click on the reference and select Properties Click on the Isolated DropDown and select True Compile and that's all there's to it. Visual Studio will create a App.exe.manifest file right alongside your application's EXE. The manifest file created looks like this: xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? assembly xsi:schemaLocation="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1 assembly.adaptive.xsd" manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:co.v1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:clickonce.v1" xmlns:co.v2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:clickonce.v2" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" asmv2:size="27293" hash xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" dsig:Transforms dsig:Transform Algorithm="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:HashTransforms.Identity" / dsig:Transforms dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1" / dsig:DigestValuepuq+ua20bbidGOWhPOxfquztBCU=dsig:DigestValue hash typelib tlbid="{f10346e2-c9d9-47f7-81d1-74059cc15c3c}" version="1.0" helpdir="" resourceid="0" flags="HASDISKIMAGE" / comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" tlbid="{f10346e2-c9d9-47f7-81d1-74059cc15c3c}" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file assembly Now let's finish our super complex console app to test with: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static voidMain(string[] args)         { Type type = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("simpleserver.simpleserver",true); dynamic server = Activator.CreateInstance(type); Console.WriteLine(server.HelloWorld("rick")); Console.ReadLine(); } } } Now run the Console Application… As expected that should work. And why not? The COM component is still registered, right? :-) Nothing tricky about that. Let's unregister the COM component and then re-run and see what happens. Go to the Command Prompt Change to the folder where the DLL is installed Unregister with: RegSvr32 -u simpleserver.dll      To be sure that the COM component no longer works, check it out with the same test you used earlier (ie. o = CREATEOBJECT("SimpleServer.SimpleServer") in your development environment or VBScript etc.). Make sure you run the EXE and you don't re-compile the application or else Visual Studio will complain that it can't find the COM component in the registry while compiling. In fact now that we have our .manifest file you can remove the COM object from the project. When you run run the EXE from Windows Explorer or a command prompt to avoid the recompile. Watch out for embedded Manifest Files Now recompile your .NET project and run it… and it will most likely fail! The problem is that .NET applications by default embeds a manifest file into the compiled EXE application which results in the externally created manifest file being completely ignored. Only one manifest can be applied at a time and the compiled manifest takes precedency. Uh, thanks Visual Studio - not very helpful… Note that if you use another development tool like Visual FoxPro to create your EXE this won't be an issue as long as the tool doesn't automatically add a manifest file. Creating a Visual FoxPro EXE for example will work immediately with the generated manifest file as is. If you are using .NET and Visual Studio you have a couple of options of getting around this: Remove the embedded manifest file Copy the contents of the generated manifest file into a project manifest file and compile that in To remove an embedded manifest in a Visual Studio project: Open the Project Properties (Alt-Enter on project node) Go down to Resources | Manifest and select | Create Application without a Manifest   You can now add use the external manifest file and it will actually be respected when the app runs. The other option is to let Visual Studio create the manifest file on disk and then explicitly add the manifest file into the project. Notice on the dialog above I did this for app.exe.manifest and the manifest actually shows up in the list. If I select this file it will be compiled into the EXE and be used in lieu of any external files and that works as well. Remove the simpleserver.dll reference so you can compile your code and run the application. Now it should work without COM registration of the component. Personally I prefer external manifests because they can be modified after the fact - compiled manifests are evil in my mind because they are immutable - once they are there they can't be overriden or changed. So I prefer an external manifest. However, if you are absolutely sure nothing needs to change and you don't want anybody messing with your manifest, you can also embed it. The option to either is there. Watch for Manifest Caching While working trying to get this to work I ran into some problems at first. Specifically when it wasn't working at first (due to the embedded schema) I played with various different manifest layouts in different files etc.. There are a number of different ways to actually represent manifest files including offloading to separate folder (more on that later). A few times I made deliberate errors in the schema file and I found that regardless of what I did once the app failed or worked no amount of changing of the manifest file would make it behave differently. It appears that Windows is caching the manifest data for a given EXE or DLL. It takes a restart or a recompile of either the EXE or the DLL to clear the caching. Recompile your servers in order to see manifest changes unless there's an outright failure of an invalid manifest file. If the app starts the manifest is being read and caches immediately. This can be very confusing especially if you don't know that it's happening. I found myself always recompiling the exe after each run and before making any changes to the manifest file. Don't forget about Runtimes of COM Objects In the example I used above I used a Visual FoxPro COM component. Visual FoxPro is a runtime based environment so if I'm going to distribute an application that uses a FoxPro COM object the runtimes need to be distributed as well. The same is true of classic Visual Basic applications. Assuming that you don't know whether the runtimes are installed on the target machines make sure to install all the additional files in the EXE's directory alongside the COM DLL. In the case of Visual FoxPro the target folder should contain: The EXE  App.exe The Manifest file (unless it's compiled in) App.exe.manifest The COM object DLL (simpleserver.dll) Visual FoxPro Runtimes: VFP9t.dll (or VFP9r.dll for non-multithreaded dlls), vfp9rENU.dll, msvcr71.dll All these files should be in the same folder. Debugging Manifest load Errors If you for some reason get your manifest loading wrong there are a couple of useful tools available - SxSTrace and SxSParse. These two tools can be a huge help in debugging manifest loading errors. Put the following into a batch file (SxS_Trace.bat for example): sxstrace Trace -logfile:sxs.bin sxstrace Parse -logfile:sxs.bin -outfile:sxs.txt Then start the batch file before running your EXE. Make sure there's no caching happening as described in the previous section. For example, if I go into the manifest file and explicitly break the CLSID and/or ProgID I get a detailed report on where the EXE is looking for the manifest and what it's reading. Eventually the trace gives me an error like this: INFO: Parsing Manifest File C:\wwapps\Conf\SideBySide\Code\app.EXE.     INFO: Manifest Definition Identity is App.exe,processorArchitecture="x86",type="win32",version="1.0.0.0".     ERROR: Line 13: The value {AAaf2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff} of attribute clsid in element comClass is invalid. ERROR: Activation Context generation failed. End Activation Context Generation. pinpointing nicely where the error lies. Pay special attention to the various attributes - they have to match exactly in the different sections of the manifest file(s). Multiple COM Objects The manifest file that Visual Studio creates is actually quite more complex than is required for basic registrationless COM object invokation. The manifest file can be simplified a lot actually by stripping off various namespaces and removing the type library references altogether. Here's an example of a simplified manifest file that actually includes references to 2 COM servers: xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file file name = "sidebysidedeploy.dll" comClass clsid="{EF82B819-7963-4C36-9443-3978CD94F57C}" progid="sidebysidedeploy.SidebysidedeployServer" description="SidebySideDeploy Server" threadingModel="apartment" / file assembly Simple enough right? Routing to separate Manifest Files and Folders In the examples above all files ended up in the application's root folder - all the DLLs, support files and runtimes. Sometimes that's not so desirable and you can actually create separate manifest files. The easiest way to do this is to create a manifest file that 'routes' to another manifest file in a separate folder. Basically you create a new 'assembly identity' via a named id. You can then create a folder and another manifest with the id plus .manifest that points at the actual file. In this example I create: App.exe.manifest A folder called App.deploy A manifest file in App.deploy All DLLs and runtimes in App.deploy Let's start with that master manifest file. This file only holds a reference to another manifest file: App.exe.manifest xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / dependency dependentAssembly assemblyIdentity name="App.deploy" version="1.0.0.0" type="win32" / dependentAssembly dependency assembly   Note this file only contains a dependency to App.deploy which is another manifest id. I can then create App.deploy.manifest in the current folder or in an App.deploy folder. In this case I'll create App.deploy and in it copy the DLLs and support runtimes. I then create App.deploy.manifest. App.deploy.manifest xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.deploy" type="win32" version="1.0.0.0" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file file name="sidebysidedeploy.dll" comClass clsid="{EF82B819-7963-4C36-9443-3978CD94F57C}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="sidebysidedeploy.SidebysidedeployServer" description="SidebySideDeploy Server" / file assembly   In this manifest file I then host my COM DLLs and any support runtimes. This is quite useful if you have lots of DLLs you are referencing or if you need to have separate configuration and application files that are associated with the COM object. This way the operation of your main application and the COM objects it interacts with is somewhat separated. You can see the two folders here:   Routing Manifests to different Folders In theory registrationless COM should be pretty easy in painless - you've seen the configuration manifest files and it certainly doesn't look very complicated, right? But the devil's in the details. The ActivationContext API (SxS - side by side activation) is very intolerant of small errors in the XML or formatting of the keys, so be really careful when setting up components, especially if you are manually editing these files. If you do run into trouble SxsTrace/SxsParse are a huge help to track down the problems. And remember that if you do have problems that you'll need to recompile your EXEs or DLLs for the SxS APIs to refresh themselves properly. All of this gets even more fun if you want to do registrationless COM inside of IIS :-) But I'll leave that for another blog post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in COM  .NET  FoxPro   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011Popular ReleasesASP.NET Comet Ajax Library (Reverse Ajax - Server Push): Reverse Ajax Samples v1.53: 16 Comprehensive ASP.NET Ajax / Reverse Ajax / WCF / MVC / Mono samplesReactive Extensions - Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.1: What's NewRelated Work Items Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. About LabsAll "Labs" downloads include the Rxx.dll assembly, so only a single download is required. To start RxxLabs.exe, right-mouse click and select Run as Administrator; otherwise, do not run the Reactive WebClient lab because it will crash the program. RxxLabs.exe requires administrator privileges for the Reactive WebClient lab to register a local HTTP port. To launch the Silverlight labs...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Final: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.7Documentation 6738 6503 New 6535 Enhancements 6759 6748 6583 6737datajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.0.0: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.4: Fix for http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/workitem/6869 was incomplete. Back button wouldn't return app bar. Corrected now. High impact bugSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.528.279): Added keyboard shortcuts: - Cut (CTRL+X) - Copy (CTRL+C) - Paste (CTRL+V) - Delete (CTRL+D) - Move up (CTRL+UP ARROW) - Move down (CTRL+DOWN ARROW) Added ability to save/load SiteMap from/to a Xml file on disk Bug fix: - Connect to a server through the status bar was throwing error "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" - Rename TreeNode.Name after changing TreeNode.TextMicrosoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample: V2.01 ALPHA N-Layered SampleApp .NET 4.0 and EF4.1: V2.0.01 - ALPHARequired Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power ...Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 261: - Fixed crash when pinning applications in x64 OS - Added Hub to video widget. It shows videos from Video library (only .wmv and .avi). Can work slow if there are too much files. - Fixed some issues with scrolling - Fixed bug with html widgets - Fixed bug in Gmail widget - Added html today widget missed in previous release - Now Mosaic saves running widgets if you restarting from optionsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.9 BETA: 2.4.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.2 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in some of th....NET Reflector Add-Ins: Reflector V7 Add-Ins: All the add-ins compiled for Reflector V7TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v4.1 [4.0 Bug Fixes]: Version 4.1 ChangelogChanged how users will Open Player files (This change makes it much easier) This allowed me to remove the "Current player file" labels that were present Changed file control icons Added submit bug button Various Bug Fixes Fixed crashes related to clicking on buffs before a character is loaded Fixed crashes related to selecting "No Buff" when choosing a new buff Fixed crashes related to clicking on a "Max" button on the buff tab before a character is loaded Cor...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta8: ??AcDown???????????????，?????????????????????。????????????????????，??Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、?????，???????????、???????。 AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 AcDown???????C#??，?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ??v3.0 Beta8 ?? ??????????????? ???????????????(??????????) ???????...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.5 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.2 for IIS 7: This release contains all the functionality available in 62183 plus the following additions: Command Line Support via PowerShell - now it is possible to manage and script PHP installations on IIS by using Windows PowerShell. More information is available at Managing PHP installations with PHP Manager command line. Detection and alert when using local PHP handler - if a web site or a directory has a local copy of PHP handler mapping then the configuration changes made on upper configuration ...MiniTwitter: 1.71: MiniTwitter 1.71 ???? ?? OAuth ???????????? ????????、??????????????????? ???????????????????????SizeOnDisk: 1.0.10.0: Fix: issue 327: size format error when save settings Fix: some UI bindings trouble (sorting, refresh) Fix: user settings file deletion when corrupted Feature: TreeView virtualization (better speed with many folders) Feature: New file type DataGrid column Feature: In KByte view, show size of file < 1024B and > 0 with 3 decimal Feature: New language: Italian Task: Cleanup for speedRawr: Rawr 4.2.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...N2 CMS: 2.2: * Web platform installer support available ** Nuget support available What's newDinamico Templates (beta) - an MVC3 & Razor based template pack using the template-first! development paradigm Boilerplate CSS & HTML5 Advanced theming with css comipilation (concrete, dark, roadwork, terracotta) Template-first! development style Content, news, listing, slider, image sizes, search, sitemap, globalization, youtube, google map Display Tokens - replaces text tokens with rendered content (usag...KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5New Projects{Adjunct} functionality for the .NET framework: A project to provide Ingots for the .NET framework.3Webee.net: 3Webee.net is the First Navigator dedicated to Web.3.0 by P2P. Developped in C# for DotNet-3.5 or Mono.net, compatible with Linux ready. Website.fr : http://3webee.net/ Download Win32 : http://3webee.net/Download/3Webee.net.beta.0.0.Win32.exe AB Donor Choose Planner: The goal of this doantion planner is to allow you to coordinate the completion of one or more Donors Choose projects. The tool gives you a portfolio view of the donations you would like to invest in by targeting your investments in a location/regional focused manner.appperu1: asdasdsaddas: ColinTestingasdfFindClone: Find clone files, find duplicate files, remove duplicate filesfirstcpapp: This is my appForecast Parser: The NOAA hosts forecast data accessible over the web. These libraries download and parse seven day hourly forecast data and encapsulates the data in an easy to use class.Future Apple Osx: Future Apple Osx, Is a free operating system to use. It was built from the ground up with the help of Cosmos. It is free to use and download. So please check it out today.Glimpse: Glimpse is a web debugger and diagnostics tool for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC. You can find out more at getGlimpse.comiAdm: ?? iToday ??? wince 6 R2 ?????ImagineCup Worldwide Finals Tracker: An open-source Windows Phone application that is used to track the events going on at the ImagineCup Worldwide Finals.John Owl: John OwlLAM - Local Area Messaging: A VB.NET local area chat application. Finds the lan clients and communicates through the lan with old Ms-Winsock Interop.MessyBrain: Organize your tasks in an efficient way. Assign tasks to members of your team. Create workflows for your team. Written in C# and ASP.NET MVC. Why did I start this project? Making mistakes is part of the learning process. They can be painful especially when they are made at work; there’s a cost attached to it. Why not start a project on my own? Mistakes will be less painful (only my ego will be damaged), I learn something new and there isn’t a cost attached to it. I can share the code ...Navigation Light Toolkit: Navigation Light add support for View Navigation in WPF and SilverlightRight Click Calculator: a mini calculator with numpad that opens in a dialogbox. it can combined with a textbox. bir textbox üzerinde sag tus ile açabileceginiz ufak bir hesap makinesi örnegi.Shaaps & Ladders: It's a modern software implementation of the popular classic board game Snakes & Ladders. The Bengali translation of "Snakes" pronounces "Shaaps" and thus the name of the game is such. The game is being developed on top of the Shaaps & Ladders GDK. Source for both are released.SharePoint PowerShell Scripts: Usefull PowerShell scripts written for SharePoint that helps organizations with governance.Smith Web Tools: Smith Web Tools are some useful controls to help to build web application. They are written in pure JavaScript and CSS without introducing any other JavaScript framework. At present, the Smith Calendar, Smith Editor, and Smith Dialog are available.SSAS Query Log Decoder & Analyzer: The Crisp description for the project will be "CUBE FOR CUBE". This is an end-to-end BI solution for analyzing the Query log created by SSAS Server. The Query Log data is loaded into a dimensional model and a cube is built on top of it for analysis of cube usage.takcandmansys: takcandmansysTestHG1: TestHG1TESTProjHG: TESTProjHGTestTFS1: TestTFS1TESTTFSAAA: TESTTFSAAATower: tower showTransit Feed Generator: Library for help the integration with Google Transit. This library generates the zipped file with data for Google Transit Feed, in the GTFS formatVRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010: VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010 VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010 WebPart Collapser: WebPart Collapser is a lightweight, customizable jQuery plugin for SharePoint 2007 that allows visitors to expand/collapse WebParts. Through the use of cookies, the collapsed state of any webparts will be saved and collapsed each time a user visits a page. WPF Hex Editor: hex editor which is created with WPF with a xaml designed UI.Xoorscript: A proprietary scripting language created by Jared Thomson for the purpose of script defining an easy to use make system. The plans for this project are minimal for now, but if things go well I may expand it. This is low priority for me.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 29, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 29, 2011Popular ReleasesCandescent NUI: Candescent NUI (8263): This is the binary version of the source code in change set 8263.Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.4: Fix for http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/workitem/6869 was incomplete. Back button wouldn't return app bar. Corrected now. High impact bugSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.528.279): Added keyboard shortcuts: - Cut (CTRL+X) - Copy (CTRL+C) - Paste (CTRL+V) - Delete (CTRL+D) - Move up (CTRL+UP ARROW) - Move down (CTRL+DOWN ARROW) Added ability to save/load SiteMap from/to a Xml file on disk Bug fix: - Connect to a server through the status bar was throwing error "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" - Rename TreeNode.Name after changing TreeNode.TextMicrosoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample: V2.01 ALPHA N-Layered SampleApp .NET 4.0 and EF4.1: V2.0.01 - ALPHARequired Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power ...Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 261: - Fixed crash when pinning applications in x64 OS - Added Hub to video widget. It shows videos from Video library (only .wmv and .avi). Can work slow if there are too much files. - Fixed some issues with scrolling - Fixed bug with html widgets - Fixed bug in Gmail widget - Added html today widget missed in previous release - Now Mosaic saves running widgets if you restarting from optionsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.9 BETA: 2.4.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.2 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in some of th....NET Reflector Add-Ins: Reflector V7 Add-Ins: All the add-ins compiled for Reflector V7TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v4.1 [4.0 Bug Fixes]: Version 4.1 ChangelogChanged how users will Open Player files (This change makes it much easier) This allowed me to remove the "Current player file" labels that were present Changed file control icons Added submit bug button Various Bug Fixes Fixed crashes related to clicking on buffs before a character is loaded Fixed crashes related to selecting "No Buff" when choosing a new buff Fixed crashes related to clicking on a "Max" button on the buff tab before a character is loaded Cor...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta8: ??AcDown???????????????，?????????????????????。????????????????????，??Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、?????，???????????、???????。 AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 AcDown???????C#??，?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ??v3.0 Beta8 ?? ??????????????? ???????????????(??????????) ???????...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.5 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.2 for IIS 7: This release contains all the functionality available in 62183 plus the following additions: Command Line Support via PowerShell - now it is possible to manage and script PHP installations on IIS by using Windows PowerShell. More information is available at Managing PHP installations with PHP Manager command line. Detection and alert when using local PHP handler - if a web site or a directory has a local copy of PHP handler mapping then the configuration changes made on upper configuration ...MiniTwitter: 1.71: MiniTwitter 1.71 ???? ?? OAuth ???????????? ????????、??????????????????? ???????????????????????SizeOnDisk: 1.0.10.0: Fix: issue 327: size format error when save settings Fix: some UI bindings trouble (sorting, refresh) Fix: user settings file deletion when corrupted Feature: TreeView virtualization (better speed with many folders) Feature: New file type DataGrid column Feature: In KByte view, show size of file < 1024B and > 0 with 3 decimal Feature: New language: Italian Task: Cleanup for speedRawr: Rawr 4.2.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...N2 CMS: 2.2: * Web platform installer support available ** Nuget support available What's newDinamico Templates (beta) - an MVC3 & Razor based template pack using the template-first! development paradigm Boilerplate CSS & HTML5 Advanced theming with css comipilation (concrete, dark, roadwork, terracotta) Template-first! development style Content, news, listing, slider, image sizes, search, sitemap, globalization, youtube, google map Display Tokens - replaces text tokens with rendered content (usag...KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5Kinect Earth Move: KinectEarthMove sample code: Sample code releasedThis is a sample code for Kinect for Windows SDK beta, which was demonstrated on Channel 9 Kinect for Windows SKD beta launch event on June 17 2011. Using color image and skeleton data from Kinect and user in front of Kinect can manipulate the earth between his/her hands.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9b: Changes: - fix critical issue 262334 (AccessViolationException while using events in a COMAddin) - remove x64 Assemblies (not necessary) Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 12 - June 22, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Minor code changes. New "Introduction" chapter. New "Modularity" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Updated "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To ins...New ProjectsA web interface for data search and download to CUAHSI HIS: Hydroweb is an innovative user interface (GUI) created for web driven hydrology data search and download from CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS). The project has been developed in c#/Silverlight programming environment by leveraging the Bing map Silverlight tools.AcesUp: It's a desktop game developed using Windows Forms. The Game can currently run only if the screen resolution is 1024 x 786. It's a modern implementation of the classic cards game Aces Up. The version that is currently available is called AcesUp Ultimate. Enjoy!AES Encryptor: AES Encryptor (AES.E) is an simple, user-friendly text file encryption program using the Advanced Encryption System (AES). Encryption keys are based on the password that is registered with the program. AES.E is written in Visual Basic.AML Studio: AML Studio makes it easier for developers who are extending Aras Innovator to develop AML queries. Queries can be developed and run using a smart editor with syntax highlighting, code folding, and Intellisense. It's developed in C#.Arca4: Arca4 is a chat server for the Ares Galaxy File Sharing Network. It's developed in C# 4.0.Basic SharePoint-Google-Maps-WebPart for SharePoint-Lists: This JavaScript-Solution improves the standard-functionality of SharePoint-Lists. It displays a new Menu-Link in the standard Menu-Toolbar of a SharePoint-List (which contains addresses / coordinates). By clicking this link Google-Maps will be displayed under the SharePoint-List.BikeBouncer, bike protection for all: Bike registration and protection for free! BikeBouncer helps cyclists keeping their bikes away from thieves. Website: http://bikebouncer.com. The source is now open so people can contribute with new ideas.Cli: General purpose commandline interface for c# projects. Inherit this class and get cli for free. Plan for other languages in the future.CLIRES-3 Clinical Study/Trial Research (MVC3 - Web Application) by Tateeda.com: Clinical Study/trials research application to track subjects and their medication, visits. Dynamically create questioners/survey forms, visits, manage medications, sites, visit schedules and so on. Application is pre loaded with forms for Bipolar disorder study and 2500 related medications. Full administrative functionality HIPPA and CFR part 11 implementation. Easy to adopt for any other type of clinical study research. Technology: MVC3, C3 4.0, EF 4.0, jQuery 1.6, MS SQL 2008 R2CloudShot: CloudShot is a simple application to create screenshots and automatically upload it to your dropbox.CodingWheels.DataTypes: DataTypes tries to make it easier for developers to have concrete typesafe objects for working with many common forms of data. Many times these data objects are just doubles or ints floating through your code with abbreviations on them describing what they represent.CommonLibrary.NET Extensions: Highly re-usable code and components that are extensions to CommonLibrary.NET.CommonLibrary.NET Web: Highly re-usable web based code and components that are extensions to the CommonLibrary.NET.CRM 2011 Maintenance Job Editor: This utility is to be used for editing the CRM 2011 maintenance jobs which are automatically scheduled by the installation of CRM. This utility provides similar functionality to CRM 4.0's Scale Group Job Editor [url:http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/ScaleGroupJobEditor]. Due to the changes in CRM 2011 many modifications had to be made and the functionality has been altered slightly. I look forward to your thoughts and comments on the changes. Excel add-in for BLAS routines: summaryExcel add-in for floating point numbers: Excel add-in for floating point number routines and utilities.Excel add-in for LAPACK routines: LAPACKExcel add-in for market aware date and time routines.: Date and time functions for Excel that know about market conventions such as day count and roll conventions.F# Math Visualizer: MathVisualizer, scirtto in F#, permette di visualizzare espressioni matematiche. Le espressioni devo essere scritte dall'utente seguendo una determinata sintassi. In particolare un espressione puo' essere scritta in maniera estesa, contratta o ibrida.FSharp Toolkit: Contents for build applications on F#.HiFreamWork: Hi,FreamWork C# Custom Library Used Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary. ruiyuxing MSN/Mail:ryx1984ryx#hotmail.com QQ:120897051 http://www.cnfield.comhozoroghiab: hozoroghiab is absent o present systemHtml Parametric Web Part: A Web Part to build html with parameters taken from the context of SharePoint 2007ios-framework: ios framework projectITextSharp Sample: ????IText Sharp????，????????PDF??，????flash,????LinGoRoom: Language lab technology-based "thin client". NAudio used for audio capture and playback. The project was developed in C #.Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization Editor: Visual Studio 2010 and stand-alone tool that will allow the Customizations.xml to be viewed in a tree structure, with custom editors for each component. Initially editors for the supported Ribbon Editor, Sitemap and ISV.config will be included, with Read-only views for Forms.Modbus for .NET: C# implementation of Modbus communication protocol.Multi-Server MVC Elmah Log Viewer: An Elmah Log viewer for multiple elmah logs.MVC Scaffolding for WCF Data Services: This project contains a set of custom templates for MVC Scaffolding that will allow you to scaffold against a WCF Data Service (oData). Using these templates you can scaffold your client side DataServiceContext, Controller and Views using MVC Scaffolding, allowing you to quickly get a milti tiered MVC application up and running. You can use pretty much any oData feed as long as you have the entities for your ADO .NET Data Service defined in your solution these templates should work. OABValidate: This tool is for tracking down unresolvable DNs on directory objects when you have an Exchange server where Offline Address List generation (oabgen) is failing with event 9339 and error code 8004010e.onForms: Weekly fresh this is deletedOpenNETCF Calendar Controls: OpenNETCF Calendar Controls provide a Month View, Week View and Agenda View similar to what is used in the Pocket Outlook Calendar application. Pedal Architecture: Pedal Architecture allows you to quickly build enteprise applications. It currently supports building and hosting composable Windows Communication Foundation services using MEF.powerdown: ?????。rl: rlRooBooks: RooBooks - Books management tool for students and such. (circa 2004)SciFun: simple playground..SIGPRO Desktop: FUNCERNSistema De Tallet: Vehicles tallerSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 helps developer and customizers to configure the Site Map in a graphical way. You'll no longer have to create solution, add component, export, update Xml and reimport the solution to update the SiteMap.The Electrolytes Website: The Electrolytes Band WebsiteThe Professions: The Professions work items are generalised for professional use. The professions are for highly skilled professionals who have earned their place in society through education, dedication, and specialization in some cases. The associations for particular professions are encouragedUpdateTool: A tool used to update client This project is for personal use. Please do not download in now.WcfFront: Automatic publisher of WCF ServicesWolfpack.Contrib: Contrib project for WolfPack monitoring

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• MERGE Bug with Filtered Indexes

  - by Paul White

  A MERGE statement can fail, and incorrectly report a unique key violation when: The target table uses a unique filtered index; and No key column of the filtered index is updated; and A column from the filtering condition is updated; and Transient key violations are possible Example Tables Say we have two tables, one that is the target of a MERGE statement, and another that contains updates to be applied to the target.  The target table contains three columns, an integer primary key, a single character alternate key, and a status code column.  A filtered unique index exists on the alternate key, but is only enforced where the status code is ‘a’: CREATE TABLE #Target ( pk integer NOT NULL, ak character(1) NOT NULL, status_code character(1) NOT NULL,   PRIMARY KEY (pk) );   CREATE UNIQUE INDEX uq1 ON #Target (ak) INCLUDE (status_code) WHERE status_code = 'a'; The changes table contains just an integer primary key (to identify the target row to change) and the new status code: CREATE TABLE #Changes ( pk integer NOT NULL, status_code character(1) NOT NULL,   PRIMARY KEY (pk) ); Sample Data The sample data for the example is: INSERT #Target (pk, ak, status_code) VALUES (1, 'A', 'a'), (2, 'B', 'a'), (3, 'C', 'a'), (4, 'A', 'd');   INSERT #Changes (pk, status_code) VALUES (1, 'd'), (4, 'a');          Target                     Changes +-----------------------+    +------------------+ ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦ status_code ¦    ¦ pk ¦ status_code ¦ ¦----+----+-------------¦    ¦----+-------------¦ ¦  1 ¦ A  ¦ a           ¦    ¦  1 ¦ d           ¦ ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦ a           ¦    ¦  4 ¦ a           ¦ ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦ a           ¦    +------------------+ ¦  4 ¦ A  ¦ d           ¦ +-----------------------+ The target table’s alternate key (ak) column is unique, for rows where status_code = ‘a’.  Applying the changes to the target will change row 1 from status ‘a’ to status ‘d’, and row 4 from status ‘d’ to status ‘a’.  The result of applying all the changes will still satisfy the filtered unique index, because the ‘A’ in row 1 will be deleted from the index and the ‘A’ in row 4 will be added. Merge Test One Let’s now execute a MERGE statement to apply the changes: MERGE #Target AS t USING #Changes AS c ON c.pk = t.pk WHEN MATCHED AND c.status_code <> t.status_code THEN UPDATE SET status_code = c.status_code; The MERGE changes the two target rows as expected.  The updated target table now contains: +-----------------------+ ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦ status_code ¦ ¦----+----+-------------¦ ¦  1 ¦ A  ¦ d           ¦ <—changed from ‘a’ ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦ a           ¦ ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦ a           ¦ ¦  4 ¦ A  ¦ a           ¦ <—changed from ‘d’ +-----------------------+ Merge Test Two Now let’s repopulate the changes table to reverse the updates we just performed: TRUNCATE TABLE #Changes;   INSERT #Changes (pk, status_code) VALUES (1, 'a'), (4, 'd'); This will change row 1 back to status ‘a’ and row 4 back to status ‘d’.  As a reminder, the current state of the tables is:          Target                        Changes +-----------------------+    +------------------+ ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦ status_code ¦    ¦ pk ¦ status_code ¦ ¦----+----+-------------¦    ¦----+-------------¦ ¦  1 ¦ A  ¦ d           ¦    ¦  1 ¦ a           ¦ ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦ a           ¦    ¦  4 ¦ d           ¦ ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦ a           ¦    +------------------+ ¦  4 ¦ A  ¦ a           ¦ +-----------------------+ We execute the same MERGE statement: MERGE #Target AS t USING #Changes AS c ON c.pk = t.pk WHEN MATCHED AND c.status_code <> t.status_code THEN UPDATE SET status_code = c.status_code; However this time we receive the following message: Msg 2601, Level 14, State 1, Line 1 Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'dbo.#Target' with unique index 'uq1'. The duplicate key value is (A). The statement has been terminated. Applying the changes using UPDATE Let’s now rewrite the MERGE to use UPDATE instead: UPDATE t SET status_code = c.status_code FROM #Target AS t JOIN #Changes AS c ON t.pk = c.pk WHERE c.status_code <> t.status_code; This query succeeds where the MERGE failed.  The two rows are updated as expected: +-----------------------+ ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦ status_code ¦ ¦----+----+-------------¦ ¦  1 ¦ A  ¦ a           ¦ <—changed back to ‘a’ ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦ a           ¦ ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦ a           ¦ ¦  4 ¦ A  ¦ d           ¦ <—changed back to ‘d’ +-----------------------+ What went wrong with the MERGE? In this test, the MERGE query execution happens to apply the changes in the order of the ‘pk’ column. In test one, this was not a problem: row 1 is removed from the unique filtered index by changing status_code from ‘a’ to ‘d’ before row 4 is added.  At no point does the table contain two rows where ak = ‘A’ and status_code = ‘a’. In test two, however, the first change was to change row 1 from status ‘d’ to status ‘a’.  This change means there would be two rows in the filtered unique index where ak = ‘A’ (both row 1 and row 4 meet the index filtering criteria ‘status_code = a’). The storage engine does not allow the query processor to violate a unique key (unless IGNORE_DUP_KEY is ON, but that is a different story, and doesn’t apply to MERGE in any case).  This strict rule applies regardless of the fact that if all changes were applied, there would be no unique key violation (row 4 would eventually be changed from ‘a’ to ‘d’, removing it from the filtered unique index, and resolving the key violation). Why it went wrong The query optimizer usually detects when this sort of temporary uniqueness violation could occur, and builds a plan that avoids the issue.  I wrote about this a couple of years ago in my post Beware Sneaky Reads with Unique Indexes (you can read more about the details on pages 495-497 of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Internals or in Craig Freedman’s blog post on maintaining unique indexes).  To summarize though, the optimizer introduces Split, Filter, Sort, and Collapse operators into the query plan to: Split each row update into delete followed by an inserts Filter out rows that would not change the index (due to the filter on the index, or a non-updating update) Sort the resulting stream by index key, with deletes before inserts Collapse delete/insert pairs on the same index key back into an update The effect of all this is that only net changes are applied to an index (as one or more insert, update, and/or delete operations).  In this case, the net effect is a single update of the filtered unique index: changing the row for ak = ‘A’ from pk = 4 to pk = 1.  In case that is less than 100% clear, let’s look at the operation in test two again:          Target                     Changes                   Result +-----------------------+    +------------------+    +-----------------------+ ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦ status_code ¦    ¦ pk ¦ status_code ¦    ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦ status_code ¦ ¦----+----+-------------¦    ¦----+-------------¦    ¦----+----+-------------¦ ¦  1 ¦ A  ¦ d           ¦    ¦  1 ¦ d           ¦    ¦  1 ¦ A  ¦ a           ¦ ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦ a           ¦    ¦  4 ¦ a           ¦    ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦ a           ¦ ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦ a           ¦    +------------------+    ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦ a           ¦ ¦  4 ¦ A  ¦ a           ¦                            ¦  4 ¦ A  ¦ d           ¦ +-----------------------+                            +-----------------------+ From the filtered index’s point of view (filtered for status_code = ‘a’ and shown in nonclustered index key order) the overall effect of the query is:   Before           After +---------+    +---------+ ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦    ¦ pk ¦ ak ¦ ¦----+----¦    ¦----+----¦ ¦  4 ¦ A  ¦    ¦  1 ¦ A  ¦ ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦    ¦  2 ¦ B  ¦ ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦    ¦  3 ¦ C  ¦ +---------+    +---------+ The single net change there is a change of pk from 4 to 1 for the nonclustered index entry ak = ‘A’.  This is the magic performed by the split, sort, and collapse.  Notice in particular how the original changes to the index key (on the ‘ak’ column) have been transformed into an update of a non-key column (pk is included in the nonclustered index).  By not updating any nonclustered index keys, we are guaranteed to avoid transient key violations. The Execution Plans The estimated MERGE execution plan that produces the incorrect key-violation error looks like this (click to enlarge in a new window): The successful UPDATE execution plan is (click to enlarge in a new window): The MERGE execution plan is a narrow (per-row) update.  The single Clustered Index Merge operator maintains both the clustered index and the filtered nonclustered index.  The UPDATE plan is a wide (per-index) update.  The clustered index is maintained first, then the Split, Filter, Sort, Collapse sequence is applied before the nonclustered index is separately maintained. There is always a wide update plan for any query that modifies the database. The narrow form is a performance optimization where the number of rows is expected to be relatively small, and is not available for all operations.  One of the operations that should disallow a narrow plan is maintaining a unique index where intermediate key violations could occur. Workarounds The MERGE can be made to work (producing a wide update plan with split, sort, and collapse) by: Adding all columns referenced in the filtered index’s WHERE clause to the index key (INCLUDE is not sufficient); or Executing the query with trace flag 8790 set e.g. OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 8790). Undocumented trace flag 8790 forces a wide update plan for any data-changing query (remember that a wide update plan is always possible).  Either change will produce a successfully-executing wide update plan for the MERGE that failed previously. Conclusion The optimizer fails to spot the possibility of transient unique key violations with MERGE under the conditions listed at the start of this post.  It incorrectly chooses a narrow plan for the MERGE, which cannot provide the protection of a split/sort/collapse sequence for the nonclustered index maintenance. The MERGE plan may fail at execution time depending on the order in which rows are processed, and the distribution of data in the database.  Worse, a previously solid MERGE query may suddenly start to fail unpredictably if a filtered unique index is added to the merge target table at any point. Connect bug filed here Tests performed on SQL Server 2012 SP1 CUI (build 11.0.3321) x64 Developer Edition © 2012 Paul White – All Rights Reserved Twitter: @SQL_Kiwi Email: [email protected]

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