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• Dotfuscator Deep Dive with WP7

  - by Bil Simser

  I thought I would share some experience with code obfuscation (specifically the Dotfuscator product) and Windows Phone 7 apps. These days twitter is a buzz with black hat and white operations coming out about how the marketplace is insecure and Microsoft failed, blah, blah, blah. So it’s that much more important to protect your intellectual property. You should protect it no matter what when releasing apps into the wild but more so when someone is paying for them. You want to protect the time and effort that went into your code and have some comfort that the casual hacker isn’t going to usurp your next best thing. Enter code obfuscation. Code obfuscation is one tool that can help protect your IP. Basically it goes into your compiled assemblies, rewrites things at an IL level (like renaming methods and classes and hiding logic flow) and rewrites it back so that the assembly or executable is still fully functional but prying eyes using a tool like ILDASM or Reflector can’t see what’s going on.  You can read more about code obfuscation here on Wikipedia. A word to the wise. Code obfuscation isn’t 100% secure. More so on the WP7 platform where the OS expects certain things to be as they were meant to be. So don’t expect 100% obfuscation of every class and every method and every property. It’s just not going to happen. What this does do is give you some level of protection but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and call it done. Like I said, this is just one step in the process. There are a few tools out there that provide code obfuscation and support the Windows Phone 7 platform (see links to other tools at the end of this post). One such tool is Dotfuscator from PreEmptive solutions. The thing about Dotfuscator is that they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft to provide a *free* copy of their commercial product for Windows Phone 7. The only drawback is that it only runs until March 31, 2010. However it’s a good place to start and the focus of this article. Getting Started When you fire up Dotfuscator you’re presented with a dialog to start a new project or load a previous one. We’ll start with a new project. You’re then looking at a somewhat blank screen that shows an Input tab (among others) and you’re probably wondering what to do? Click on the folder icon (first one) and browse to where your xap file is. At this point you can save the project and click on the arrow to start the process. Bam! You’re done. Right? Think again. The program did indeed run and create a new version of your xap (doing it’s thing and rewriting back your *obfuscated* assemblies) but let’s take a look at the assembly in Reflector to see the end result. Remember a xap file is really just a glorified zip file (or cab file if you prefer). When you ran Dotfuscator for the first time with the default settings you’ll see it created a new version of your xap in a folder under “My Documents” called “Dotfuscated” (you can configure the output directory in settings). Here’s the new xap file. Since a xap is just a zip, rename it to .cab or .zip or something and open it with your favorite unarchive program (I use WinRar but it doesn’t matter as long as it can unzip files). If you already have the xap file associated with your unarchive tool the rename isn’t needed. Once renamed extract the contents of the xap to your hard drive: Now you’ll have a folder with the contents of the xap file extracted: Double click or load up your assembly (WindowsPhoneDataBoundApplication1.dll in the example) in Reflector and let’s see the results: Hmm. That doesn’t look right. I can see all the methods and the code is all there for my LoadData method I wanted to protect. Product failure. Let’s return it for a refund. Hold your horses. We need to check out the settings in the program first. Remember when we loaded up our xap file. It started us on the Input tab but there was a settings tab before that. Wonder what it does? Here’s the default settings: Renaming Taking a closer look, all of the settings in Feature are disabled. WTF? Yeah, it leaves me scratching my head why an obfuscator by default doesn’t obfuscate. However it’s a simple fix to change these settings. Let’s enable Renaming as it sounds like a good start. Renaming obscures code by renaming methods and fields to names that are not understandable. Great. Run the tool again and go through the process of unzipping the updated xap and let’s take a look in Reflector again at our project. This looks a lot better. Lots of methods named a, b, c, d, etc. That’ll help slow hackers down a bit. What about our logic that we spent days weeks on? Let’s take a look at the LoadData method: What gives? We have renaming enabled but all of our code is still there. If you look through all your methods you’ll find it’s still sitting there out in the open. Control Flow Back to the settings page again. Let’s enable Control Flow now. Control Flow obfuscation synthesizes branching, conditional, and iterative constructs (such as if, for, and while) that produce valid executable logic, but yield non-deterministic semantic results when decompilation is attempted. In other words, the code runs as before, but decompilers cannot reproduce the original code. Do the dance again and let’s see the results in Reflector. Ahh, that’s better. Methods renamed *and* nobody can look at our LoadData method now. Life is good. More than Minimum This is the bare minimum to obfuscate your xap to at least a somewhat comfortable level. However I did find that while this worked in my Hello World demo, it didn’t work on one of my real world apps. I had to do some extra tweaking with that. Below are the screens that I used on one app that worked. I’m not sure what it was about the app that the approach above didn’t work with (maybe the extra assembly?) but it works and I’m happy with it. YMMV. Remember to test your obfuscated app on your device first before submitting to ensure you haven’t obfuscated the obfuscator. settings tab: rename tab: string encryption tab: premark tab: A few final notes Play with the settings and keep bumping up the bar to try to get as much obfuscation as you can. The more the better but remember you can overdo it. Always (always, always, always) deploy your obfuscated xap to your device and test it before submitting to the marketplace. I didn’t and got rejected because I had gone overboard with the obfuscation so the app wouldn’t launch at all. Not everything is going to be obfuscated. Specifically I don’t see a way to obfuscate auto properties and a few other language features. Again, if you crank the settings up you might hide these but I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the process. Some people might say to obfuscate your xaml using string encryption but again, test, test, test. Xaml is picky so too much obfuscation (or any) might disable your app or produce odd rendering effets. Remember, obfuscation is not 100% secure! Don’t rely on it as a sole way of protecting your assets. Other Tools Dotfuscator is one just product and isn’t the end-all be-all to obfuscation so check out others below. For example, Crypto can make it so Reflector doesn’t even recognize the app as a .NET one and won’t open it. Others can encrypt resources and Xaml markup files. Here are some other obfuscators that support the Windows Phone 7 platform. Feel free to give them a try and let people know your experience with them! Dotfuscator Windows Phone Edition Crypto Obfuscator for .NET DeepSea Obfuscation

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• Metro: Understanding Observables

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe how the Observer Pattern is implemented in the WinJS library. You learn how to create observable objects which trigger notifications automatically when their properties are changed. Observables enable you to keep your user interface and your application data in sync. For example, by taking advantage of observables, you can update your user interface automatically whenever the properties of a product change. Observables are the foundation of declarative binding in the WinJS library. The WinJS library is not the first JavaScript library to include support for observables. For example, both the KnockoutJS library and the Microsoft Ajax Library (now part of the Ajax Control Toolkit) support observables. Creating an Observable Imagine that I have created a product object like this: var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; Nothing very exciting about this product. It has three properties named name, description, and price. Now, imagine that I want to be notified automatically whenever any of these properties are changed. In that case, I can create an observable product from my product object like this: var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); This line of code creates a new JavaScript object named observableProduct from the existing JavaScript object named product. This new object also has a name, description, and price property. However, unlike the properties of the original product object, the properties of the observable product object trigger notifications when the properties are changed. Each of the properties of the new observable product object has been changed into accessor properties which have both a getter and a setter. For example, the observable product price property looks something like this: price: { get: function () { return this.getProperty(“price”); } set: function (value) { this.setProperty(“price”, value); } } When you read the price property then the getProperty() method is called and when you set the price property then the setProperty() method is called. The getProperty() and setProperty() methods are methods of the observable product object. The observable product object supports the following methods and properties: · addProperty(name, value) – Adds a new property to an observable and notifies any listeners. · backingData – An object which represents the value of each property. · bind(name, action) – Enables you to execute a function when a property changes. · getProperty(name) – Returns the value of a property using the string name of the property. · notify(name, newValue, oldValue) – A private method which executes each function in the _listeners array. · removeProperty(name) – Removes a property and notifies any listeners. · setProperty(name, value) – Updates a property and notifies any listeners. · unbind(name, action) – Enables you to stop executing a function in response to a property change. · updateProperty(name, value) – Updates a property and notifies any listeners. So when you create an observable, you get a new object with the same properties as an existing object. However, when you modify the properties of an observable object, then you can notify any listeners of the observable that the value of a particular property has changed automatically. Imagine that you change the value of the price property like this: observableProduct.price = 2.99; In that case, the following sequence of events is triggered: 1. The price setter calls the setProperty(“price”, 2.99) method 2. The setProperty() method updates the value of the backingData.price property and calls the notify() method 3. The notify() method executes each function in the collection of listeners associated with the price property Creating Observable Listeners If you want to be notified when a property of an observable object is changed, then you need to register a listener. You register a listener by using the bind() method like this: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Change the price observableProduct.price = 2.99; } }; app.start(); })(); In the code above, the bind() method is used to associate the price property with a function. When the price property is changed, the function logs the new value of the price property to the Visual Studio JavaScript console. The price property is associated with the function using the following line of code: // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); Coalescing Notifications If you make multiple changes to a property – one change immediately following another – then separate notifications won’t be sent. Instead, any listeners are notified only once. The notifications are coalesced into a single notification. For example, in the following code, the product price property is updated three times. However, only one message is written to the JavaScript console. Only the last value assigned to the price property is written to the JavaScript Console window: // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Change the price observableProduct.price = 3.99; observableProduct.price = 2.99; observableProduct.price = 1.99; Only the last value assigned to price, the value 1.99, appears in the console: If there is a time delay between changes to a property then changes result in different notifications. For example, the following code updates the price property every second: // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Add 1 to price every second window.setInterval(function () { observableProduct.price += 1; }, 1000); In this case, separate notification messages are logged to the JavaScript Console window: If you need to prevent multiple notifications from being coalesced into one then you can take advantage of promises. I discussed WinJS promises in a previous blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/02/22/windows-web-applications-promises.aspx Because the updateProperty() method returns a promise, you can create different notifications for each change in a property by using the following code: // Change the price observableProduct.updateProperty("price", 3.99) .then(function () { observableProduct.updateProperty("price", 2.99) .then(function () { observableProduct.updateProperty("price", 1.99); }); }); In this case, even though the price is immediately changed from 3.99 to 2.99 to 1.99, separate notifications for each new value of the price property are sent. Bypassing Notifications Normally, if a property of an observable object has listeners and you change the property then the listeners are notified. However, there are certain situations in which you might want to bypass notification. In other words, you might need to change a property value silently without triggering any functions registered for notification. If you want to change a property without triggering notifications then you should change the property by using the backingData property. The following code illustrates how you can change the price property silently: // Simple product object var product = { name: "Milk", description: "Something to drink", price: 12.33 }; // Create observable product var observableProduct = WinJS.Binding.as(product); // Execute a function when price is changed observableProduct.bind("price", function (newValue) { console.log(newValue); }); // Change the price silently observableProduct.backingData.price = 5.99; console.log(observableProduct.price); // Writes 5.99 The price is changed to the value 5.99 by changing the value of backingData.price. Because the observableProduct.price property is not set directly, any listeners associated with the price property are not notified. When you change the value of a property by using the backingData property, the change in the property happens synchronously. However, when you change the value of an observable property directly, the change is always made asynchronously. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe observables. In particular, we discussed how to create observables from existing JavaScript objects and bind functions to observable properties. You also learned how notifications are coalesced (and ways to prevent this coalescing). Finally, we discussed how you can use the backingData property to update an observable property without triggering notifications. In the next blog entry, we’ll see how observables are used with declarative binding to display the values of properties in an HTML document.

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• Adding an Admin user to an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using a single drop-in file

  - by Jon Galloway

  I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 tutorial and wanted to set it up so just dropping a file in App_Start would create a user named "Owner" and assign them to the "Administrator" role (more explanation at the end if you're interested). There are reasons why this wouldn't fit into most application scenarios: It's not efficient, as it checks for (and creates, if necessary) the user every time the app starts up The username, password, and role name are hardcoded in the app (although they could be pulled from config) Automatically creating an administrative account in code (without user interaction) could lead to obvious security issues if the user isn't informed However, with some modifications it might be more broadly useful - e.g. creating a test user with limited privileges, ensuring a required account isn't accidentally deleted, or - as in my case - setting up an account for demonstration or tutorial purposes. Challenge #1: Running on startup without requiring the user to install or configure anything I wanted to see if this could be done just by having the user drop a file into the App_Start folder and go. No copying code into Global.asax.cs, no installing addition NuGet packages, etc. That may not be the best approach - perhaps a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator would be better - but I wanted to see if this was possible and see if it offered the best experience. Fortunately ASP.NET 4 and later provide a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute which allows you to register a method which will run when the application starts up. You drop this attribute in your application and give it two parameters: a method name and the type that contains it. I created a static class named PreApplicationTasks with a static method named, then dropped this attribute in it: [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] That's it. One small gotcha: the namespace can be a problem with assembly attributes. I decided my class didn't need a namespace. Challenge #2: Only one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly In .NET 4, the PreApplicationStartMethod is marked as AllMultiple=false, so you can only have one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly. This was fixed in .NET 4.5, as noted by Jon Skeet, so you can have as many PreApplicationStartMethods as you want (allowing you to keep your users waiting for the application to start indefinitely!). The WebActivator NuGet package solves the multiple instance problem if you're in .NET 4 - it registers as a PreApplicationStartMethod, then calls any methods you've indicated using [assembly: WebActivator.PreApplicationStartMethod(type, method)]. David Ebbo blogged about that here:  Light up your NuGets with startup code and WebActivator. In my scenario (bootstrapping a beginner level tutorial) I decided not to worry about this and stick with PreApplicationStartMethod. Challenge #3: PreApplicationStartMethod kicks in before configuration has been read This is by design, as Phil explains. It allows you to make changes that need to happen very early in the pipeline, well before Application_Start. That's fine in some cases, but it caused me problems when trying to add users, since the Membership Provider configuration hadn't yet been read - I got an exception stating that "Default Membership Provider could not be found." The solution here is to run code that requires configuration in a PostApplicationStart method. But how to do that? Challenge #4: Getting PostApplicationStartMethod without requiring WebActivator The WebActivator NuGet package, among other things, provides a PostApplicationStartMethod attribute. That's generally how I'd recommend running code that needs to happen after Application_Start: [assembly: WebActivator.PostApplicationStartMethod(typeof(TestLibrary.MyStartupCode), "CallMeAfterAppStart")] This works well, but I wanted to see if this would be possible without WebActivator. Hmm. Well, wait a minute - WebActivator works in .NET 4, so clearly it's registering and calling PostApplicationStartup tasks somehow. Off to the source code! Sure enough, there's even a handy comment in ActivationManager.cs which shows where PostApplicationStartup tasks are being registered: public static void Run() { if (!_hasInited) { RunPreStartMethods(); // Register our module to handle any Post Start methods. But outside of ASP.NET, just run them now if (HostingEnvironment.IsHosted) { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(StartMethodCallingModule)); } else { RunPostStartMethods(); } _hasInited = true; } } Excellent. Hey, that DynamicModuleUtility seems familiar... Sure enough, K. Scott Allen mentioned it on his blog last year. This is really slick - a PreApplicationStartMethod can register a new HttpModule in code. Modules are run right after application startup, so that's a perfect time to do any startup stuff that requires configuration to be read. As K. Scott says, it's this easy: using System; using System.Web; using Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper; [assembly:PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(MyAppStart), "Start")] public class CoolModule : IHttpModule { // implementation not important // imagine something cool here } public static class MyAppStart { public static void Start() { DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(CoolModule)); } } Challenge #5: Cooperating with SimpleMembership The ASP.NET MVC Internet template includes SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is a big improvement over traditional ASP.NET Membership. For one thing, rather than forcing a database schema, it can work with your database schema. In the MVC 4 Internet template case, it uses Entity Framework Code First to define the user model. SimpleMembership bootstrap includes a call to InitializeDatabaseConnection, and I want to play nice with that. There's a new [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute on the AccountController, which calls \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs::OnActionExecuting(). That comment in that method that says "Ensure ASP.NET Simple Membership is initialized only once per app start" which sounds like good advice. I figured the best thing would be to call that directly: new Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters.InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); I'm not 100% happy with this - in fact, it's my least favorite part of this solution. There are two problems - first, directly calling a method on a filter, while legal, seems odd. Worse, though, the Filter lives in the application's namespace, which means that this code no longer works well as a generic drop-in. The simplest workaround would be to duplicate the relevant SimpleMembership initialization code into my startup code, but I'd rather not. I'm interested in your suggestions here. Challenge #6: Module Init methods are called more than once When debugging, I noticed (and remembered) that the Init method may be called more than once per page request - it's run once per instance in the app pool, and an individual page request can cause multiple resource requests to the server. While SimpleMembership does have internal checks to prevent duplicate user or role entries, I'd rather not cause or handle those exceptions. So here's the standard single-use lock in the Module's init method: void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { //Do stuff } initialized = true; } } Putting it all together With all of that out of the way, here's the code I came up with: using Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters; using System.Web; using System.Web.Security; using WebMatrix.WebData; [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] public static class PreApplicationTasks { public static void Initializer() { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility .RegisterModule(typeof(UserInitializationModule)); } } public class UserInitializationModule : IHttpModule { private static bool initialized; private static object lockObject = new object(); private const string _username = "Owner"; private const string _password = "p@ssword123"; private const string _role = "Administrator"; void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { new InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); if (!WebSecurity.UserExists(_username)) WebSecurity.CreateUserAndAccount(_username, _password); if (!Roles.RoleExists(_role)) Roles.CreateRole(_role); if (!Roles.IsUserInRole(_username, _role)) Roles.AddUserToRole(_username, _role); } initialized = true; } } void IHttpModule.Dispose() { } } The Verdict: Is this a good thing? Maybe. I think you'll agree that the journey was undoubtedly worthwhile, as it took us through some of the finer points of hooking into application startup, integrating with membership, and understanding why the WebActivator NuGet package is so useful Will I use this in the tutorial? I'm leaning towards no - I think a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator might work better: It's a little more clear what's going on Installing a NuGet package might be a little less error prone than copying a file A novice user could uninstall the package when complete It's a good introduction to NuGet, which is a good thing for beginners to see This code either requires either duplicating a little code from that filter or modifying the file to use the namespace Honestly I'm undecided at this point, but I'm glad that I can weigh the options. If you're interested: Why are you doing this? I'm updating the MVC Music Store tutorial to ASP.NET MVC 4, taking advantage of a lot of new ASP.NET MVC 4 features and trying to simplify areas that are giving people trouble. One change that addresses both needs us using the new OAuth support for membership as much as possible - it's a great new feature from an application perspective, and we get a fair amount of beginners struggling with setting up membership on a variety of database and development setups, which is a distraction from the focus of the tutorial - learning ASP.NET MVC. Side note: Thanks to some great help from Rick Anderson, we had a draft of the tutorial that was looking pretty good earlier this summer, but there were enough changes in ASP.NET MVC 4 all the way up to RTM that there's still some work to be done. It's high priority and should be out very soon. The one issue I ran into with OAuth is that we still need an Administrative user who can edit the store's inventory. I thought about a number of solutions for that - making the first user to register the admin, or the first user to use the username "Administrator" is assigned to the Administrator role - but they both ended up requiring extra code; also, I worried that people would use that code without understanding it or thinking about whether it was a good fit.

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• Monitoring SQL Server Agent job run times

  - by okeofs

  Introduction A few months back, I was asked how long a particular nightly process took to run. It was a super question and the one thing that struck me was that there were a plethora of factors affecting the processing time. This said, I developed a query to ascertain process run times, the average nightly run times and applied some KPI’s to the end query. The end goal being to enable me to quickly detect anomalies and processes that are running beyond their normal times. As many of you are aware, most of the necessary data for this type of query, lies within the MSDB database. The core portion of the query is shown below.select sj.name,sh.run_date, sh.run_duration, case when len(sh.run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) when len(sh.run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration) end as tt from dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock) inner join dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock) on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where sj.name = 'My Agent Job' and [sh.Message] like '%The job%') Run_date and run_duration are obvious fields. The field ‘Name’ is the name of the job that we wish to follow. The only major challenge was that the format of the run duration which was not as ‘user friendly’ as I would have liked. As an example, the run duration 1 hour 10 minutes and 3 seconds would be displayed as 11003; whereas I wanted it to display this in a more user friendly manner as 01:10:03. In order to achieve this effect, we need to add leading zeros to the run_duration based upon the case logic shown above. At this point what we need to do add colons between the hours and minutes and one between the minutes and seconds. To achieve this I nested the query shown above (in purple) within a ‘super’ query. Thus the run time ([Run Time]) is constructed concatenating a series of substrings (See below in Blue). select run_date,substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),1,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),3,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),5,2) as [run_time] from (select sj.name,sh.run_date, sh.run_duration,case when len(sh.run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)end as ttfrom dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock)inner join dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock) on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where sj.name = 'My Agent Job'and [sh.Message] like '%The job%') a Now that I had each nightly run time in hours, minutes and seconds (01:10:03), I decided that it would very productive to calculate a rolling run time average. To do this, I decided to do the calculations in base units of seconds. This said, I encapsulated the query shown above into a further ‘super’ query (see the code in RED below). This encapsulation is shown below. The astute reader will note that I used implied casting from integer to string, which is not the best method to use however it works. This said and if I were constructing the query again I would definitely do an explicit convert. To Recap: I now have a key field of ‘1’, each and every applicable run date and the total number of SECONDS that the process ran for each run date, all of this data within the #rawdata1 temporary table. Select 1 as keyy,run_date,(substring(b.run_time,1,2)*3600) + (substring(b.run_time,4,2)*60) + (substring(b.run_time,7,2)) as run_time_in_Seconds,run_time into #rawdata1 from ( select run_date,substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),1,2) + ':' + substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),3,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),5,2) as [run_time] from (select sj.name,sh.run_date, sh.run_duration, case when len(sh.run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration)    = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration)    = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)when len(sh.run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),sh.run_duration)end as ttfrom dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock)inner join dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock)on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where sj.name = 'My Agent Job'and [sh.Message] like '%The job%') a )b   Calculating the average run time We now select each run time in seconds from #rawdata1 and place the values into another temporary table called #rawdata2. Once again we create a ‘key’, a hardwired ‘1’. select 1 as Keyy, run_time_in_Seconds into #rawdata2 from #rawdata1The purpose of doing so is to make the average time AVG() available to the query immediately without having to do adverse grouping. Applying KPI Logic At this point, we shall apply some logic to determine whether processing times are within the norms. We do this by applying colour names. Obviously, this example is a super one for SSRS and traffic light icons.select rd1.run_date, rd1.run_time, rd1.run_time_in_Seconds ,Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds) as Average_run_time_in_seconds,casewhenConvert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)<= 1.2 then 'Green' when Convert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)< 1.4 then 'Yellow' else 'Red'end as [color], Calculating the Average Run Time in Hours Minutes and Seconds and the end of the query. casewhen len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)end as [Average Run Time HH:MM:SS] from #rawdata2 rd2 innerjoin #rawdata1 rd1on rd1.keyy = rd2.keyygroup by run_date,rd1.run_time ,rd1.run_time_in_Seconds order by run_date descThe complete code example use msdbgo/*drop table #rawdata1drop table #rawdata2go*/select 1 as keyy,run_date,(substring(b.run_time,1,2)*3600) + (substring(b.run_time,4,2)*60) + (substring(b.run_time,7,2)) as run_time_in_Seconds,run_time into #rawdata1 from (select run_date,substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),1,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),3,2) + ':' +substring(convert(varchar(20),tt),5,2) as [run_time] from (select name,run_date, run_duration, casewhenlen(run_duration) = 6 then convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 5 then '0' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 4 then '00' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 3 then '000' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 2 then '0000' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)whenlen(run_duration) = 1 then '00000' + convert(varchar(8),run_duration)end as ttfrom dbo.sysjobs sj with (nolock)innerjoin dbo.sysjobHistory sh with (nolock) on sj.job_id = sh.job_id where name = 'My Agent Job'and [Message] like '%The job%') a ) bselect 1 as Keyy, run_time_in_Seconds into #rawdata2 from #rawdata1select rd1.run_date, rd1.run_time, rd1.run_time_in_Seconds ,Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds) as Average_run_time_in_seconds,casewhenConvert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)<= 1.2 then 'Green' when Convert(decimal(10,1),rd1.run_time_in_Seconds)/Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)< 1.4 then 'Yellow' else 'Red'end as [color],Case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)/(3600))end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%(3600)/60)end + ':' + case when len(convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)) = 1 then '0' + convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)else convert(varchar(2),Avg(rd2.run_time_in_Seconds)%60)end as [Average Run Time HH:MM:SS] from #rawdata2 rd2 innerjoin #rawdata1 rd1on rd1.keyy = rd2.keyygroup by run_date,rd1.run_time ,rd1.run_time_in_Seconds order by run_date desc  

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #049

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Two Connections Related Global Variables Explained – @@CONNECTIONS and @@MAX_CONNECTIONS @@CONNECTIONS Returns the number of attempted connections, either successful or unsuccessful since SQL Server was last started. @@MAX_CONNECTIONS Returns the maximum number of simultaneous user connections allowed on an instance of SQL Server. The number returned is not necessarily the number currently configured. Query Editor – Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio This post may be very simple for most of the users of SQL Server 2005. Earlier this year, I have received one question many times – Where is Query Analyzer in SQL Server 2005? I wrote small post about it and pointed many users to that post – SQL SERVER – 2005 Query Analyzer – Microsoft SQL SERVER Management Studio. Recently I have been receiving similar question. OUTPUT Clause Example and Explanation with INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL Server 2005 has a new OUTPUT clause, which is quite useful. OUTPUT clause has access to insert and deleted tables (virtual tables) just like triggers. OUTPUT clause can be used to return values to client clause. OUTPUT clause can be used with INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE to identify the actual rows affected by these statements. OUTPUT clause can generate a table variable, a permanent table, or temporary table. Even though, @@Identity will still work with SQL Server 2005, however I find the OUTPUT clause very easy and powerful to use. Let us understand the OUTPUT clause using an example. Find Name of The SQL Server Instance Based on database server stored procedures has to run different logic. We came up with two different solutions. 1) When database schema is very much changed, we wrote completely new stored procedure and deprecated older version once it was not needed. 2) When logic depended on Server Name we used global variable @@SERVERNAME. It was very convenient while writing migrating script which depended on the server name for the same database. Explanation of TRY…CATCH and ERROR Handling With RAISEERROR Function One of the developers at my company thought that we can not use the RAISEERROR function in new feature of SQL Server 2005 TRY… CATCH. When asked for an explanation he suggested SQL SERVER – 2005 Explanation of TRY… CATCH and ERROR Handling article as excuse suggesting that I did not give example of RAISEERROR with TRY…CATCH. We all thought it was funny. Just to keep records straight, TRY… CATCH can sure use RAISEERROR function. Different Types of Cache Objects Serveral kinds of objects can be stored in the procedure cache: Compiled Plans: When the query optimizer finishes compiling a query plan, the principal output is compiled plan. Execution contexts: While executing a compiled plan, SQL Server has to keep track of information about the state of execution. Cursors: Cursors track the execution state of server-side cursors, including the cursor’s current location within a resultset. Algebrizer trees: The Algebrizer’s job is to produce an algebrizer tree, which represents the logic structure of a query. Open SSMS From Command Prompt – sqlwb.exe Example This article is written by request and suggestion of Sr. Web Developer at my organization. Due to the nature of this article most of the content is referred from Book On-Line. sqlwbcommand prompt utility which opens SQL Server Management Studio. Squib command does not run queries from the command prompt. sqlcmd utility runs queries from command prompt, read for more information. 2008 Puzzle – Solution – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation Just a day before I wrote article SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation which was inspired by SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian. I suggest that before continuing this article read the original puzzle question SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation.The question was if the computed column was of datatype TINYINT how to create a Computed Column of datatype INT? 2008 – Find If Index is Being Used in Database It is very often I get a query that how to find if any index is being used in the database or not. If any database has many indexes and not all indexes are used it can adversely affect performance. If the number of indices are higher it reduces the INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE operation but increase the SELECT operation. It is recommended to drop any unused indexes from table to improve the performance. 2009 Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries If you want to see what’s going on here, I think you need to shift your point of view from an implementation-centric view to an ANSI point of view. ANSI does not guarantee processing the order. Figure 2 is interesting, but it will be potentially misleading if you don’t understand the ANSI rule-set SQL Server operates under in most cases. Implementation thinking can certainly be useful at times when you really need that multi-million row query to finish before the backup fire off, but in this case, it’s counterproductive to understanding what is going on. SQL Server Management Studio and Client Statistics Client Statistics are very important. Many a times, people relate queries execution plan to query cost. This is not a good comparison. Both parameters are different, and they are not always related. It is possible that the query cost of any statement is less, but the amount of the data returned is considerably larger, which is causing any query to run slow. How do we know if any query is retrieving a large amount data or very little data? 2010 I encourage all of you to go through complete series and write your own on the subject. If you write an article and send it to me, I will publish it on this blog with due credit to you. If you write on your own blog, I will update this blog post pointing to your blog post. SQL SERVER – ORDER BY Does Not Work – Limitation of the View 1 SQL SERVER – Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View – Limitation of the View 2 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 3 SQL SERVER – SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View – Limitation of the View 4 SQL SERVER – COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed – Limitation of the View 5 SQL SERVER – UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View – Limitation of the View 6 SQL SERVER – Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 7 SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views – Limitation of the View 8 SQL SERVER – SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 9 SQL SERVER – Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View – Limitation of the View 10 SQL SERVER – View Over the View Not Possible with Index View – Limitations of the View 11 SQL SERVER – Get Query Running in Session I was recently looking for syntax where I needed a query running in any particular session. I always remembered the syntax and ha d actually written it down before, but somehow it was not coming to mind quickly this time. I searched online and I ended up on my own article written last year SQL SERVER – Get Last Running Query Based on SPID. I felt that I am getting old because I forgot this really simple syntax. Find Total Number of Transaction on Interval In one of my recent Performance Tuning assignments I was asked how do someone know how many transactions are happening on a server during certain interval. I had a handy script for the same. Following script displays transactions happened on the server at the interval of one minute. You can change the WAITFOR DELAY to any other interval and it should work. 2011 Here are two DMV’s which are newly introduced in SQL Server 2012 and provides vital information about SQL Server. DMV – sys.dm_os_volume_stats – Information about operating system volume DMV – sys.dm_os_windows_info – Information about Operating System SQL Backup and FTP – A Quick and Handy Tool I have used this tool extensively since 2009 at numerous occasion and found it to be very impressive. What separates it from the crowd the most – it is it’s apparent simplicity and speed. When I install SQLBackupAndFTP and configure backups – all in 1 or 2 minutes, my clients are always impressed. Quick Note about JOIN – Common Questions and Simple Answers In this blog post we are going to talk about join and lots of things related to the JOIN. I recently started office hours to answer questions and issues of the community. I receive so many questions that are related to JOIN. I will share a few of the same over here. Most of them are basic, but note that the basics are of great importance. 2012 Importance of User Without Login Question: “In recent version of SQL Server we can create user without login. What is the use of it?” Great question indeed. Let me first attempt to answer this question but after reading my answer I need your help. I want you to help him as well with adding more value to it. Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. Solution – 2 T-SQL Puzzles – Display Star and Shortest Code to Display 1 Earlier on this blog we had asked two puzzles. The response from all of you is nothing but Amazing. I have received 350+ responses. Many are valid and many were indeed something I had not thought about it. I strongly suggest you read all the puzzles and their answers here - trust me if you start reading the comments you will not stop till you read every single comment. Seriously trust me on it. Personally I have learned a lot from it. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #028 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlYy-TGaaA Importance of User Without Login – T-SQL Demo Script Earlier I wrote a blog post about SQL SERVER – Importance of User Without Login and my friend and SQL Expert Vinod Kumar has written excellent follow up blog post about Contained Databases inside SQL Server 2012. Now lots of people asked me if I can also explain the same concept again so here is the small demonstration for it. Let me show you how login without user can help. Before we continue on this subject I strongly recommend that you read my earlier blog post here. In following demo I am going to demonstrate following situation. Login using the System Admin account Create a user without login Checking Access Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Give Permission to user without login Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Clean up Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Notes on Oracle BPM PS6 Adaptive Case Management

  - by gcolman

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} I have recently been looking at the  latest release of the BPM Case Management feature in the Oracle BPM PS6 release. I had put together some notes to help me gain a better understanding of the context of the PS6 BPM Case Management. Hopefully, this along with the other resources will enable you to gain a clear picture of the flexibility of this feature. Oracle BPM PS6 release includes Case Management capability. This initial release aims to provide: Case Management Framework Integration of Case Management with BPM & SOA suite It is best to regard the current PS6 case management feature as a case management framework. The framework provides the building blocks for creating a case management system that is fully integrated into Oracle BPM suite. As of the current PS6 release, no UI tooling exists to help manage cases or the case lifecycle. Mark Foster has written a good blog which outlines Case Management within PS6 in the following link. I wanted to provide more context on Case Management from my perspective in this blog. PS6 Case Management - High level View BPM PS6 includes “Case” as a first class component in a SOA Suite composite. The Case components (added to the SOA Composite) are created when a BPM process is assigned to a case in JDveloper. The SOA Case component is defined and configured within JDevloper, which allows us to specify the case data structures and metadata such as stakeholders, outcomes, milestones, document stores etc. "Activities" are associated with a case, and become available to be executed via the case apis. Activities are BPM processes, Human Activities or Java call outs. The PS6 release includes some additional database tables to store the case metadata and case instance data (data object, comments, etc…). These new tables are created within the SOA_INFRA schema and the documents associated with that case into a document repository that is configured with the case. One of the main features of Case Management is the control of the case logic through case events and case business rules. A PS6 Case has an associated business rule component, which can be configured to control the availability and execution of activities within the case. The business rules component is able to act upon events that the PS6 Case Management framework generates during the lifecycle of that case. Events are fired during the lifetime of the case (e.g. Case created, activity started, activity ended, note added, document uploaded.) Internal Case state The internal state of a case is represented by the diagram below. This shows the internal states and the transition paths for a Case from one state to the next Each transition in state will create an event that can be enacted upon via the Case rules engine. The internal case state lifecycle is defined as follows Defining a case A Case is created and defined as a component of a JDeveloper BPM project. When you create a Case as part of a BPM project, JDeveloper, creates the following components within the SCA composite: Case component Case component interfaces (WSDL etc) Case Rules component (Oracle Business Rules) Adds the Case Component and Case Rules Component to the BPM SOA composite Case Configuration The following section gives a high level overview of the items that can be configured for a BPM Case. Case Activities A Case is associated with a set of activities that are to be performed as part of that Case. Case activities can be: SOA Human Tasks BPM processes Custom Task (Java Class) Case activities are created from pre-existing BPM process or human tasks, which, once defined, can be configured additionally as Case activities in JDeveloper and made available within the lifecycle of a case. I've described the following configurable components of a case (very!) briefly as: Milestones Milestones are (optional) user defined logical milestones that can be achieved within a case. No activities are associates with a milestone, but milestone attainment can be programmatically set and events raised when milestones are reached Outcomes User defined status of a completed case. An event is fired when an outcome is attained. Case Data Defines the data that will be stored with a case XML schemas define the data that is stored with the case. Case Documents Defines the location of documents that are attached to a case (e.g. WebCenter Content) User Defined Events Optional user defined events that can be fired or captured to drive case processing rules Stakeholders Defines the actors who can participate in the case (roles, users, groups) Defines permissions for individual case permissions (read case, create document etc…) Business Rules Business rules are the main component controlling the flow of a Case Each case has an associated business ruleset Rules are fired on receiving Case events (or User defined events) Life cycle events Milestone events Activity events Data events Document events Comment events User event Managing the Case Managing the lifecycle of a case is achieved in two ways: Managing case logic with Business Rules Managing the case lifecycle via the Case APIs. A BPM Case can be viewed as a set of case data & documents along with the activities that can be performed within a case and also the case lifecycle state expressed as milestones and internal lifecycle state. The management of the case life is achieved though both the configuration of business rules and the “manual” interaction with a case instance through the Case APIs. Business Rules and Case Events A key component within the Case management framework is the event model. The BPM Case Management solution internally utilizes Oracle EDN (Event Delivery Network) to publish and subscribe to events generated by the Case framework. Events are generated by the Case framework on each of the processes and stages that a case instance will travel on its lifetime. The following case events are part of the BPM Case: Life cycle events Milestone events Activity events Data events Document events Comment events User event The Case business rules are configured to listen for these events, and business logic can be coded into the Case rules component to enact upon an event being received. Case API & Interaction Along with the business rules component, Cases can be managed via the Case API interfaces. These interfaces allow for the building of custom applications to integrate into case management framework. The API’s allow for updating case comments & documents, executing case activities, updating milestones etc. As there is no in built case management UI functions within the PS6 release, Cases need to be managed via a custom built UI, interacting with selected case instances, launching case activities, closing cases etc. (There is expected to be a UI component within subsequent releases) Logical Case Flow The diagram below is intended to depict a logical view of the case steps for a typical case. A UI or other service calls the Case interface to create a Case instance The case instance is created & database data inserted A lifecycle event is raised indicating a case activity (created) event The case business rules capture the event and decide on an action to take Additionally other parties can subscribe to Case events via EDN The business rules may handle the event, e.g. configured to execute a case activity on case creation event The BPM/Human Workflow/Custom activity is executed A case activity event is raised on the execute activity A case work UI or business service can inspect the case instance and call other actions to progress that case, such as: Execute activity Add Note Add document Add case data Update Milestone Raise user defined event Suspend case Resume case Close Case Summary Having had a little time to play around with the APIs and the case configuration, I really like the flexibility and power of combining Oracle Business Rules and the BPM Case Management event model. Creating something this flexible and powerful without BPM Case Management would take a lot of time and effort. This is hopefully going to save my customers a lot of time and effort! I may make amendments to this post as my understanding of Case Management increases! Take a look at the following links for official documentation etc. http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E28280_01/doc.1111/e15176/case_mgmt_bpmpd.htm https://blogs.oracle.com/bpm/entry/just_in_case Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}

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• How to tell if SPARC T4 crypto is being used?

  - by danx

  A question that often comes up when running applications on SPARC T4 systems is "How can I tell if hardware crypto accleration is being used?" To review, the SPARC T4 processor includes a crypto unit that supports several crypto instructions. For hardware crypto these include 11 AES instructions, 4 xmul* instructions (for AES GCM carryless multiply), mont for Montgomery multiply (optimizes RSA and DSA), and 5 des_* instructions (for DES3). For hardware hash algorithm optimization, the T4 has the md5, sha1, sha256, and sha512 instructions (the last two are used for SHA-224 an SHA-384). First off, it's easy to tell if the processor T4 crypto instructions—use the isainfo -v command and look for "sparcv9" and "aes" (and other hash and crypto algorithms) in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit sparcv9 applications crc32c cbcond pause mont mpmul sha512 sha256 sha1 md5 camellia kasumi des aes ima hpc vis3 fmaf asi_blk_init vis2 vis popc These instructions are not-privileged, so are available for direct use in user-level applications and libraries (such as OpenSSL). Here is the "openssl speed -evp" command shown with the built-in t4 engine and with the pkcs11 engine. Both run the T4 AES instructions, but the t4 engine is faster than the pkcs11 engine because it has less overhead (especially for smaller packet sizes): t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl version OpenSSL 1.0.0j 10 May 2012 t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl engine (t4) SPARC T4 engine support (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc # t4 engine used by default . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 487777.10k 816822.21k 986012.59k 1017029.97k 1053543.08k t-4 $ /usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc engine "pkcs11" set. . . . The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 31703.58k 116636.39k 350672.81k 696170.50k 993599.49k Note: The "-evp" flag indicates use the OpenSSL "EnVeloPe" API, which gives more accurate results. That's because it tells OpenSSL to use the same API that external programs use when calling OpenSSL libcrypto functions, evp(3openssl). DTrace Shows if T4 Crypto Functions Are Used OK, good enough, the isainfo(1) command shows the instructions are present, but how does one know if they are being used? Chi-Chang Lin, who works on Oracle Solaris performance, wrote a Dtrace script to show if T4 instructions are being executed. To show the T4 instructions are being used, run the following Dtrace script. Look for functions named "t4" and "yf" in the output. The OpenSSL T4 engine uses functions named "t4" and the PKCS#11 engine uses functions named "yf". To demonstrate, I'll first run "openssl speed" with the built-in t4 engine then with the pkcs11 engine. The performance numbers are not valid due to dtrace probes slowing things down. t-4 # dtrace -Z -n ' pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes . . . dtrace: pid 2029 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_init 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes_expand128 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_init_aes 5 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 6 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 59 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_final_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_init_sha1 65 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_sha1_multiblock 126 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_digest_update_sha1 261 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1432979 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_cipher_do_aes_128_cbc 1432979 t-4 # dtrace -Z -n 'pid$target::*yf*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}   pid$target::*yf*:entry,pid$target::*t4_*:entry{ @[probemod, probefunc] = count();}' \ -c "/usr/bin/openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc" dtrace: description 'pid$target::*yf*:entry' matched 101 probes engine "pkcs11" set. . . . dtrace: pid 2033 has exited libcrypto.so.1.0.0 ENGINE_load_t4 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DH 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_DSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_RSA 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_destroy 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_free_aes_ctr_NIDs 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_ciphers 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_get_all_digests 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 rijndael_key_setup_enc_yf 1 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes_expand128 1 libcrypto.so.1.0.0 t4_add_NID 3 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_cbc_encrypt 1542330 libsoftcrypto.so.1 yf_aes128_load_keys_for_encrypt 1542330 So, as shown above the OpenSSL built-in t4 engine executes t4_* functions (which are hand-coded assembly executing the T4 AES instructions) and the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine executes *yf* functions. Programmatic Use of OpenSSL T4 engine The OpenSSL t4 engine is used automatically with the /usr/bin/openssl command line. Chi-Chang Lin also points out that if you're calling the OpenSSL API (libcrypto.so) from a program, you must call ENGINE_load_built_engines(), otherwise the built-in t4 engine will not be loaded. You do not call ENGINE_set_default(). That's because "openssl speed -evp" test calls ENGINE_load_built_engines() even though the "-engine" option wasn't specified. OpenSSL T4 engine Availability The OpenSSL t4 engine is available with Solaris 11 and 11.1. For Solaris 10 08/11 (U10), you need to use the OpenSSL pkcs311 engine. The OpenSSL t4 engine is distributed only with the version of OpenSSL distributed with Solaris (and not third-party or self-compiled versions of OpenSSL). The OpenSSL engine implements the AES cipher for Solaris 11, released 11/2011. For Solaris 11.1, released 11/2012, the OpenSSL engine adds optimization for the MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2 hash algorithms, and DES-3. Although the T4 processor has Camillia and Kasumi block cipher instructions, these are not implemented in the OpenSSL T4 engine. The following charts may help view availability of optimizations. The first chart shows what's available with Solaris CLIs and APIs, the second chart shows what's available in Solaris OpenSSL. Native Solaris Optimization for SPARC T4 This table is shows Solaris native CLI and API support. As such, they are all available with the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLIs: "openssl -engine pkcs11", encrypt(1), decrypt(1), mac(1), digest(1), MD5sum(1), SHA1sum(1), SHA224sum(1), SHA256sum(1), SHA384sum(1), SHA512sum(1) APIs: PKCS#11 library libpkcs11(3LIB) (incluDES Openssl pkcs11 engine), libMD(3LIB), and Solaris kernel modules AlgorithmSolaris 1008/11 (U10)Solaris 11Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES2-ECB, DES2-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC XXX bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) XXX MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XXX SHA-224 X ARCFOUR (RC4) X Solaris OpenSSL T4 Engine Optimization This table is for the Solaris OpenSSL built-in t4 engine. Algorithms listed above are also available through the OpenSSL pkcs11 engine. CLI: openssl(1openssl) APIs: openssl(5), engine(3openssl), evp(3openssl), libcrypto crypto(3openssl) AlgorithmSolaris 11Solaris 11SRU2Solaris 11.1 AES-ECB, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, AES-CBC AES-CFB128 XXX DES3-ECB, DES3-CBC, DES-ECB, DES-CBC X bignum Montgomery multiply (RSA, DSA) X MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 XX SHA-224 X Source Code Availability Solaris Most of the T4 assembly code that called the new T4 crypto instructions was written by Ferenc Rákóczi of the Solaris Security group, with assistance from others. You can download the Solaris source for this and other parts of Solaris as a few zip files at the Oracle Download website. The relevant source files are generally under directories usr/src/common/crypto/{aes,arcfour,des,md5,modes,sha1,sha2}}/sun4v/. and usr/src/common/bignum/sun4v/. Solaris 11 binary is available from the Oracle Solaris 11 download website. OpenSSL t4 engine The source for the OpenSSL t4 engine, which is based on the Solaris source above, is viewable through the OpenGrok source code browser in directory src/components/openssl/openssl-1.0.0/engines/t4 . You can download the source from the same website or through Mercurial source code management, hg(1). Conclusion Oracle Solaris with SPARC T4 provides a rich set of accelerated cryptographic and hash algorithms. Using the latest update, Solaris 11.1, provides the best set of optimized algorithms, but alternatives are often available, sometimes slightly slower, for releases back to Solaris 10 08/11 (U10). Reference See also these earlier blogs. SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine by myself, Dan Anderson (2011), discusses the Openssl T4 engine and reviews the SPARC T4 processor for the Solaris 11 release. Exciting Crypto Advances with the T4 processor and Oracle Solaris 11 by Valerie Fenwick (2011) discusses crypto algorithms that were optimized for the T4 processor with the Solaris 11 FCS (11/11) and Solaris 10 08/11 (U10) release. T4 Crypto Cheat Sheet by Stefan Hinker (2012) discusses how to make T4 crypto optimization available to various consumers (such as SSH, Java, OpenSSL, Apache, etc.) High Performance Security For Oracle Database and Fusion Middleware Applications using SPARC T4 (PDF, 2012) discusses SPARC T4 and its usage to optimize application security. Configuring Oracle iPlanet WebServer / Oracle Traffic Director to use crypto accelerators on T4-1 servers by Meena Vyas (2012)

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• Introduction to LinqPad Driver for StreamInsight 2.1

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  We are announcing the availability of the LinqPad driver for StreamInsight 2.1. The purpose of this blog post is to offer a quick introduction into the new features that we added to the StreamInsight LinqPad driver. We’ll show you how to connect to a remote server, how to inspect the entities present of that server, how to compose on top of them and how to manage their lifetime. Installing the driver Info on how to install the driver can be found in an earlier blog post here. Establishing connections As you click on the “Add Connection” link in the left pane you will notice that now it’s possible to build the data context automatically. The new driver appears as an option in the upper list, and if you pick it you will open a connection dialog that lets you connect to a remote StreamInsight server. The connection dialog lets you specify the address of the remote server. You will notice that it’s possible to pick up the binding information from the configuration file of the LinqPad application (which is normally in the same folder as LinqPad.exe and is called LinqPad.exe.config). In order for the context to be generated you need to pick an application from the server. The control is editable hence you can create a new application if you don’t want to make changes to an existing application. If you choose a new application name you will be prompted for confirmation before this gets created. Once you click OK the connection is created and you can start issuing queries against the remote server. If there’s any connectivity error the connection is marked with a red X and you can see the error message informing you what went wrong (i.e., the remote server could not be reached etc.). The context for remote servers Let’s take a look at what happens after we are connected successfully. Every LinqPad query runs inside a context – think of it as a class that wraps all the code that you’re writing. If you’re connecting to a live server the context will contain the following: The application object itself. All entities present in this application (sources, sinks, subjects and processes). The picture below shows a snapshot of the left pane of LinqPad after a successful connection. Every entity on the server has a different icon which will allow users to figure out its purpose. You will also notice that some entities have a string in parentheses following the name. It should be interpreted as such: the first name is the name of the property of the context class and the second name is the name of the entity as it exists on the server. Not all valid entity names are valid identifier names so in cases where we had to make a transformation you see both. Note also that as you hover over the entities you get IntelliSense with their types – more on that later. Remoting is not supported As you play with the entities exposed by the context you will notice that you can’t read and write directly to/from them. If for instance you’re trying to dump the content of an entity you will get an error message telling you that in the current version remoting is not supported. This is because the entity lives on the remote server and dumping its content means reading the events produced by this entity into the local process. ObservableSource.Dump(); Will yield the following error: Reading from a remote 'System.Reactive.Linq.IQbservable`1[System.Int32]' is not supported. Use the 'Microsoft.ComplexEventProcessing.Linq.RemoteProvider.Bind' method to read from the source using a remote observer. This basically tells you that you can call the Bind() method to direct the output of this source to a sink that has to be defined on the remote machine as well. You can’t bring the results to the LinqPad window unless you write code specifically for that. Compose queries You may ask – what's the purpose of all that? After all the same information is present in the EventFlowDebugger, why bother with showing it in LinqPad? First of all, What gets exposed in LinqPad is not what you see in the debugger. In LinqPad we have a property on the context class for every entity that lives on the server. Because LinqPad offers IntelliSense we in fact have much more information about the entity, and more importantly we can compose with that entity very easily. For example, let’s say that this code creates an entity: using (var server = Server.Connect(...)) {     var a = server.CreateApplication("WhiteFish");     var src = a         .DefineObservable<int>(() => Observable.Range(0, 3))         .Deploy("ObservableSource"); If later we want to compose with the source we have to fetch it and then we can bind something to     a.GetObservable<int>("ObservableSource)").Bind(... This means that we had to know a bunch of things about this: that it’s a source, that it’s an observable, it produces a result with payload Int32 and it’s named “ObservableSource”. Only the second and last bits of information are present in the debugger, by the way. As you type in the query window you see that all the entities are present, you get IntelliSense support for them and it’s much easier to make sense of what’s available. Let’s look at a scenario where composition is plausible. With the new programming model it’s possible to create “cold” sources that are parameterized. There was a way to accomplish that even in the previous version by passing parameters to the adapters, but this time it’s much more elegant because the expression declares what parameters are required. Say that we hover the mouse over the ThrottledSource source – we will see that its type is Func<int, int, IQbservable<int>> - this in effect means that we need to pass two int parameters before we can get a source that produces events, and the type for those events is int – in the particular case of my example I had the source produce a range of integers and the two parameters were the start and end of the range. So we see how a developer can create a source that is not running yet. Then someone else (e.g. an administrator) can pass whatever parameters appropriate and run the process. Proxy Types Here’s an interesting scenario – what if someone created a source on a server but they forgot to tell you what type they used. Worse yet, they might have used an anonymous type and even though they can refer to it by name you can’t figure out how to use that type. Let’s walk through an example that shows how you can compose against types you don’t need to have the definition of. This is how we can create a source that returns an anonymous type: Application.DefineObservable(() => Observable.Range(1, 10).Select(i => new { I = i })).Deploy("O1"); Now if we refresh the connection we can see the new source named O1 appear in the list. But what’s more important is that we now have a type to work with. So we can compose a query that refers to the anonymous type. var threshold = new StreamInsightDynamicDriver.TypeProxies.AnonymousType1_0<int>(5); var filter = from i in O1              where i > threshold              select i; filter.Deploy("O2"); You will notice that the anonymous type defined with this statement: new { I = i } can now be manipulated by a client that does not have access to it because the LinqPad driver has generated another type in its stead, named StreamInsightDynamicDriver.TypeProxies.AnonymousType1_0. This type has all the properties and fields of the type defined on the server, except in this case we can instantiate values and use it to compose more queries. It is worth noting that the same thing works for types that are not anonymous – the test is if the LinqPad driver can resolve the type or not. If it’s not possible then a new type will be generated that approximates the type that exists on the server. Control metadata In addition to composing processes on top of the existing entities we can do other useful things. We can delete them – nothing new here as we simply access the entities through the Entities collection of the application class. Here is where having their real name in parentheses comes handy. There’s another way to find out what’s behind a property – dump its expression. The first line in the output tells us what’s the name of the entity used to build this property in the context. Runtime information So let’s create a process to see what happens. We can bind a source to a sink and run the resulting process. If you right click on the connection you can refresh it and see the process present in the list of entities. Then you can drag the process to the query window and see that you can have access to process object in the Processes collection of the application. You can then manipulate the process (delete it, read its diagnostic view etc.). Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• Getting Started with TypeScript – Classes, Static Types and Interfaces

  - by dwahlin

  I had the opportunity to speak on different JavaScript topics at DevConnections in Las Vegas this fall and heard a lot of interesting comments about JavaScript as I talked with people. The most frequent comment I heard from people was, “I guess it’s time to start learning JavaScript”. Yep – if you don’t already know JavaScript then it’s time to learn it. As HTML5 becomes more and more popular the amount of JavaScript code written will definitely increase. After all, many of the HTML5 features available in browsers have little to do with “tags” and more to do with JavaScript (web workers, web sockets, canvas, local storage, etc.). As the amount of JavaScript code being used in applications increases, it’s more important than ever to structure the code in a way that’s maintainable and easy to debug. While JavaScript patterns can certainly be used (check out my previous posts on the subject or my course on Pluralsight.com), several alternatives have come onto the scene such as CoffeeScript, Dart and TypeScript. In this post I’ll describe some of the features TypeScript offers and the benefits that they can potentially offer enterprise-scale JavaScript applications. It’s important to note that while TypeScript has several great features, it’s definitely not for everyone or every project especially given how new it is. The goal of this post isn’t to convince you to use TypeScript instead of standard JavaScript….I’m a big fan of JavaScript. Instead, I’ll present several TypeScript features and let you make the decision as to whether TypeScript is a good fit for your applications. TypeScript Overview Here’s the official definition of TypeScript from the http://typescriptlang.org site: “TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. Any browser. Any host. Any OS. Open Source.” TypeScript was created by Anders Hejlsberg (the creator of the C# language) and his team at Microsoft. To sum it up, TypeScript is a new language that can be compiled to JavaScript much like alternatives such as CoffeeScript or Dart. It isn’t a stand-alone language that’s completely separate from JavaScript’s roots though. It’s a superset of JavaScript which means that standard JavaScript code can be placed in a TypeScript file (a file with a .ts extension) and used directly. That’s a very important point/feature of the language since it means you can use existing code and frameworks with TypeScript without having to do major code conversions to make it all work. Once a TypeScript file is saved it can be compiled to JavaScript using TypeScript’s tsc.exe compiler tool or by using a variety of editors/tools. TypeScript offers several key features. First, it provides built-in type support meaning that you define variables and function parameters as being “string”, “number”, “bool”, and more to avoid incorrect types being assigned to variables or passed to functions. Second, TypeScript provides a way to write modular code by directly supporting class and module definitions and it even provides support for custom interfaces that can be used to drive consistency. Finally, TypeScript integrates with several different tools such as Visual Studio, Sublime Text, Emacs, and Vi to provide syntax highlighting, code help, build support, and more depending on the editor. Find out more about editor support at http://www.typescriptlang.org/#Download. TypeScript can also be used with existing JavaScript frameworks such as Node.js, jQuery, and others and even catch type issues and provide enhanced code help. Special “declaration” files that have a d.ts extension are available for Node.js, jQuery, and other libraries out-of-the-box. Visit http://typescript.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/fe3bc0bfce1f#samples%2fjquery%2fjquery.d.ts for an example of a jQuery TypeScript declaration file that can be used with tools such as Visual Studio 2012 to provide additional code help and ensure that a string isn’t passed to a parameter that expects a number. Although declaration files certainly aren’t required, TypeScript’s support for declaration files makes it easier to catch issues upfront while working with existing libraries such as jQuery. In the future I expect TypeScript declaration files will be released for different HTML5 APIs such as canvas, local storage, and others as well as some of the more popular JavaScript libraries and frameworks. Getting Started with TypeScript To get started learning TypeScript visit the TypeScript Playground available at http://www.typescriptlang.org. Using the playground editor you can experiment with TypeScript code, get code help as you type, and see the JavaScript that TypeScript generates once it’s compiled. Here’s an example of the TypeScript playground in action:   One of the first things that may stand out to you about the code shown above is that classes can be defined in TypeScript. This makes it easy to group related variables and functions into a container which helps tremendously with re-use and maintainability especially in enterprise-scale JavaScript applications. While you can certainly simulate classes using JavaScript patterns (note that ECMAScript 6 will support classes directly), TypeScript makes it quite easy especially if you come from an object-oriented programming background. An example of the Greeter class shown in the TypeScript Playground is shown next: class Greeter { greeting: string; constructor (message: string) { this.greeting = message; } greet() { return "Hello, " + this.greeting; } } Looking through the code you’ll notice that static types can be defined on variables and parameters such as greeting: string, that constructors can be defined, and that functions can be defined such as greet(). The ability to define static types is a key feature of TypeScript (and where its name comes from) that can help identify bugs upfront before even running the code. Many types are supported including primitive types like string, number, bool, undefined, and null as well as object literals and more complex types such as HTMLInputElement (for an <input> tag). Custom types can be defined as well. The JavaScript output by compiling the TypeScript Greeter class (using an editor like Visual Studio, Sublime Text, or the tsc.exe compiler) is shown next: var Greeter = (function () { function Greeter(message) { this.greeting = message; } Greeter.prototype.greet = function () { return "Hello, " + this.greeting; }; return Greeter; })(); Notice that the code is using JavaScript prototyping and closures to simulate a Greeter class in JavaScript. The body of the code is wrapped with a self-invoking function to take the variables and functions out of the global JavaScript scope. This is important feature that helps avoid naming collisions between variables and functions. In cases where you’d like to wrap a class in a naming container (similar to a namespace in C# or a package in Java) you can use TypeScript’s module keyword. The following code shows an example of wrapping an AcmeCorp module around the Greeter class. In order to create a new instance of Greeter the module name must now be used. This can help avoid naming collisions that may occur with the Greeter class.   module AcmeCorp { export class Greeter { greeting: string; constructor (message: string) { this.greeting = message; } greet() { return "Hello, " + this.greeting; } } } var greeter = new AcmeCorp.Greeter("world"); In addition to being able to define custom classes and modules in TypeScript, you can also take advantage of inheritance by using TypeScript’s extends keyword. The following code shows an example of using inheritance to define two report objects:   class Report { name: string; constructor (name: string) { this.name = name; } print() { alert("Report: " + this.name); } } class FinanceReport extends Report { constructor (name: string) { super(name); } print() { alert("Finance Report: " + this.name); } getLineItems() { alert("5 line items"); } } var report = new FinanceReport("Month's Sales"); report.print(); report.getLineItems();   In this example a base Report class is defined that has a variable (name), a constructor that accepts a name parameter of type string, and a function named print(). The FinanceReport class inherits from Report by using TypeScript’s extends keyword. As a result, it automatically has access to the print() function in the base class. In this example the FinanceReport overrides the base class’s print() method and adds its own. The FinanceReport class also forwards the name value it receives in the constructor to the base class using the super() call. TypeScript also supports the creation of custom interfaces when you need to provide consistency across a set of objects. The following code shows an example of an interface named Thing (from the TypeScript samples) and a class named Plane that implements the interface to drive consistency across the app. Notice that the Plane class includes intersect and normal as a result of implementing the interface.   interface Thing { intersect: (ray: Ray) => Intersection; normal: (pos: Vector) => Vector; surface: Surface; } class Plane implements Thing { normal: (pos: Vector) =>Vector; intersect: (ray: Ray) =>Intersection; constructor (norm: Vector, offset: number, public surface: Surface) { this.normal = function (pos: Vector) { return norm; } this.intersect = function (ray: Ray): Intersection { var denom = Vector.dot(norm, ray.dir); if (denom > 0) { return null; } else { var dist = (Vector.dot(norm, ray.start) + offset) / (-denom); return { thing: this, ray: ray, dist: dist }; } } } }   At first glance it doesn’t appear that the surface member is implemented in Plane but it’s actually included automatically due to the public surface: Surface parameter in the constructor. Adding public varName: Type to a constructor automatically adds a typed variable into the class without having to explicitly write the code as with normal and intersect. TypeScript has additional language features but defining static types and creating classes, modules, and interfaces are some of the key features it offers. So is TypeScript right for you and your applications? That’s a not a question that I or anyone else can answer for you. You’ll need to give it a spin to see what you think. In future posts I’ll discuss additional details about TypeScript and how it can be used with enterprise-scale JavaScript applications. In the meantime, I’m in the process of working with John Papa on a new Typescript course for Pluralsight that we hope to have out in December of 2012.

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• Code Reuse is (Damn) Hard

  - by James Michael Hare

  Being a development team lead, the task of interviewing new candidates was part of my job.  Like any typical interview, we started with some easy questions to get them warmed up and help calm their nerves before hitting the hard stuff. One of those easier questions was almost always: “Name some benefits of object-oriented development.”  Nearly every time, the candidate would chime in with a plethora of canned answers which typically included: “it helps ease code reuse.”  Of course, this is a gross oversimplification.  Tools only ease reuse, its developers that ultimately can cause code to be reusable or not, regardless of the language or methodology. But it did get me thinking…  we always used to say that as part of our mantra as to why Object-Oriented Programming was so great.  With polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, etc. we in essence set up the concepts to help facilitate reuse as much as possible.  And yes, as a developer now of many years, I unquestionably held that belief for ages before it really struck me how my views on reuse have jaded over the years.  In fact, in many ways Agile rightly eschews reuse as taking a backseat to developing what's needed for the here and now.  It used to be I was in complete opposition to that view, but more and more I've come to see the logic in it.  Too many times I've seen developers (myself included) get lost in design paralysis trying to come up with the perfect abstraction that would stand all time.  Nearly without fail, all of these pieces of code become obsolete in a matter of months or years. It’s not that I don’t like reuse – it’s just that reuse is hard.  In fact, reuse is DAMN hard.  Many times it is just a distraction that eats up architect and developer time, and worse yet can be counter-productive and force wrong decisions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of reusable code when it makes sense.  These are in the few cases where you are designing something that is inherently reusable.  The problem is, most business-class code is inherently unfit for reuse! Furthermore, the code that is reusable will often fail to be reused if you don’t have the proper framework in place for effective reuse that includes standardized versioning, building, releasing, and documenting the components.  That should always be standard across the board when promoting reusable code.  All of this is hard, and it should only be done when you have code that is truly reusable or you will be exerting a large amount of development effort for very little bang for your buck. But my goal here is not to get into how to reuse (that is a topic unto itself) but what should be reused.  First, let’s look at an extension method.  There’s many times where I want to kick off a thread to handle a task, then when I want to reign that thread in of course I want to do a Join on it.  But what if I only want to wait a limited amount of time and then Abort?  Well, I could of course write that logic out by hand each time, but it seemed like a great extension method: 1: public static class ThreadExtensions 2: { 3: public static bool JoinOrAbort(this Thread thread, TimeSpan timeToWait) 4: { 5: bool isJoined = false; 6:  7: if (thread != null) 8: { 9: isJoined = thread.Join(timeToWait); 10:  11: if (!isJoined) 12: { 13: thread.Abort(); 14: } 15: } 16: return isJoined; 17: } 18: } 19:  When I look at this code, I can immediately see things that jump out at me as reasons why this code is very reusable.  Some of them are standard OO principles, and some are kind-of home grown litmus tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The only reason this extension method need change is if the Thread class itself changes (one responsibility). Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method only depends on classes that are more stable than it is (System.Threading.Thread), and in itself is very stable, hence other classes may safely depend on it. It is also not dependent on any business domain, and thus isn't subject to changes as the business itself changes. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is inherently closed to change. Small and Stable Problem Domain – This method only cares about System.Threading.Thread. All-or-None Usage – A user of a reusable class should want the functionality of that class, not parts of that functionality.  That’s not to say they most use every method, but they shouldn’t be using a method just to get half of its result. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – since this class is highly stable and minimally complex, we can offer it up for reuse very cheaply by promoting it as “ready-to-go” and already unit tested (important!) and available through a standard release cycle (very important!). Okay, all seems good there, now lets look at an entity and DAO.  I don’t know about you all, but there have been times I’ve been in organizations that get the grand idea that all DAOs and entities should be standardized and shared.  While this may work for small or static organizations, it’s near ludicrous for anything large or volatile. 1: namespace Shared.Entities 2: { 3: public class Account 4: { 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: public string Name { get; set; } 8:  9: public Address HomeAddress { get; set; } 10:  11: public int Age { get; set;} 12:  13: public DateTime LastUsed { get; set; } 14:  15: // etc, etc, etc... 16: } 17: } 18:  19: ... 20:  21: namespace Shared.DataAccess 22: { 23: public class AccountDao 24: { 25: public Account FindAccount(int id) 26: { 27: // dao logic to query and return account 28: } 29:  30: ... 31:  32: } 33: } Now to be fair, I’m not saying there doesn’t exist an organization where some entites may be extremely static and unchanging.  But at best such entities and DAOs will be problematic cases of reuse.  Let’s examine those same tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The reasons to change for these classes will be strongly dependent on what the definition of the account is which can change over time and may have multiple influences depending on the number of systems an account can cover. Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method depends on the data model beneath itself which also is largely dependent on the business definition of an account which can be very inherently unstable. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is not really closed for modification.  Every time the account definition may change, you’d need to modify this class. Small and Stable Problem Domain – The definition of an account is inherently unstable and in fact may be very large.  What if you are designing a system that aggregates account information from several sources? All-or-None Usage – What if your view of the account encompasses data from 3 different sources but you only care about one of those sources or one piece of data?  Should you have to take the hit of looking up all the other data?  On the other hand, should you have ten different methods returning portions of data in chunks people tend to ask for?  Neither is really a great solution. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – DAOs are really trivial to rewrite, and unless your definition of an account is EXTREMELY stable, the cost to promote, support, and release a reusable account entity and DAO are usually far higher than the cost to recreate as needed. It’s no accident that my case for reuse was a utility class and my case for non-reuse was an entity/DAO.  In general, the smaller and more stable an abstraction is, the higher its level of reuse.  When I became the lead of the Shared Components Committee at my workplace, one of the original goals we looked at satisfying was to find (or create), version, release, and promote a shared library of common utility classes, frameworks, and data access objects.  Now, of course, many of you will point to nHibernate and Entity for the latter, but we were looking at larger, macro collections of data that span multiple data sources of varying types (databases, web services, etc). As we got deeper and deeper in the details of how to manage and release these items, it quickly became apparent that while the case for reuse was typically a slam dunk for utilities and frameworks, the data access objects just didn’t “smell” right.  We ended up having session after session of design meetings to try and find the right way to share these data access components. When someone asked me why it was taking so long to iron out the shared entities, my response was quite simple, “Reuse is hard...”  And that’s when I realized, that while reuse is an awesome goal and we should strive to make code maintainable, often times you end up creating far more work for yourself than necessary by trying to force code to be reusable that inherently isn’t. Think about classes the times you’ve worked in a company where in the design session people fight over the best way to implement a class to make it maximally reusable, extensible, and any other buzzwordable.  Then think about how quickly that design became obsolete.  Many times I set out to do a project and think, “yes, this is the best design, I can extend it easily!” only to find out the business requirements change COMPLETELY in such a way that the design is rendered invalid.  Code, in general, tends to rust and age over time.  As such, writing reusable code can often be difficult and many times ends up being a futile exercise and worse yet, sometimes makes the code harder to maintain because it obfuscates the design in the name of extensibility or reusability. So what do I think are reusable components? Generic Utility classes – these tend to be small classes that assist in a task and have no business context whatsoever. Implementation Abstraction Frameworks – home-grown frameworks that try to isolate changes to third party products you may be depending on (like writing a messaging abstraction layer for publishing/subscribing that is independent of whether you use JMS, MSMQ, etc). Simplification and Uniformity Frameworks – To some extent this is similar to an abstraction framework, but there may be one chosen provider but a development shop mandate to perform certain complex items in a certain way.  Or, perhaps to simplify and dumb-down a complex task for the average developer (such as implementing a particular development-shop’s method of encryption). And what are less reusable? Application and Business Layers – tend to fluctuate a lot as requirements change and new features are added, so tend to be an unstable dependency.  May be reused across applications but also very volatile. Entities and Data Access Layers – these tend to be tuned to the scope of the application, so reusing them can be hard unless the abstract is very stable. So what’s the big lesson?  Reuse is hard.  In fact it’s damn hard.  And much of the time I’m not convinced we should focus too hard on it. If you’re designing a utility or framework, then by all means design it for reuse.  But you most also really set down a good versioning, release, and documentation process to maximize your chances.  For anything else, design it to be maintainable and extendable, but don’t waste the effort on reusability for something that most likely will be obsolete in a year or two anyway.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Nullable static class

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Today we’re going to look at an interesting Little Wonder that can be used to mitigate what could be considered a Little Pitfall.  The Little Wonder we’ll be examining is the System.Nullable static class.  No, not the System.Nullable<T> class, but a static helper class that has one useful method in particular that we will examine… but first, let’s look at the Little Pitfall that makes this wonder so useful. Little Pitfall: Comparing nullable value types using <, >, <=, >= Examine this piece of code, without examining it too deeply, what’s your gut reaction as to the result? 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < 100) 4: { 5: Console.WriteLine("True, {0} is less than 100.", 6: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("False, {0} is NOT less than 100.", 11: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 12: } Your gut would be to say true right?  It would seem to make sense that a null integer is less than the integer constant 100.  But the result is actually false!  The null value is not less than 100 according to the less-than operator. It looks even more outrageous when you consider this also evaluates to false: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < int.MaxValue) 4: { 5: // ... 6: } So, are we saying that null is less than every valid int value?  If that were true, null should be less than int.MinValue, right?  Well… no: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // um... hold on here, x is NOT less than min value? 4: if (x < int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } So what’s going on here?  If we use greater than instead of less than, we see the same little dilemma: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // once again, null is not greater than anything either... 4: if (x > int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } It turns out that four of the comparison operators (<, <=, >, >=) are designed to return false anytime at least one of the arguments is null when comparing System.Nullable wrapped types that expose the comparison operators (short, int, float, double, DateTime, TimeSpan, etc.).  What’s even odder is that even though the two equality operators (== and !=) work correctly, >= and <= have the same issue as < and > and return false if both System.Nullable wrapped operator comparable types are null! 1: DateTime? x = null; 2: DateTime? y = null; 3:  4: if (x <= y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("You'd think this is true, since both are null, but it's not."); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("It's false because <=, <, >, >= don't work on null."); 11: } To make matters even more confusing, take for example your usual check to see if something is less than, greater to, or equal: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x < y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("X is less than Y"); 7: } 8: else if (x > y) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("X is greater than Y"); 11: } 12: else 13: { 14: // We fall into the "equals" assumption, but clearly null != 100! 15: Console.WriteLine("X is equal to Y"); 16: } Yes, this code outputs “X is equal to Y” because both the less-than and greater-than operators return false when a Nullable wrapped operator comparable type is null.  This violates a lot of our assumptions because we assume is something is not less than something, and it’s not greater than something, it must be equal.  So keep in mind, that the only two comparison operators that work on Nullable wrapped types where at least one is null are the equals (==) and not equals (!=) operators: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x == y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("False, x is null, y is not."); 7: } 8:  9: if (x != y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("True, x is null, y is not."); 12: } Solution: The Nullable static class So we’ve seen that <, <=, >, and >= have some interesting and perhaps unexpected behaviors that can trip up a novice developer who isn’t expecting the kinks that System.Nullable<T> types with comparison operators can throw.  How can we easily mitigate this? Well, obviously, you could do null checks before each check, but that starts to get ugly: 1: if (x.HasValue) 2: { 3: if (y.HasValue) 4: { 5: if (x < y) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (x > y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } 17: } 18: else 19: { 20: Console.WriteLine("x > y because y is null and x isn't"); 21: } 22: } 23: else if (y.HasValue) 24: { 25: Console.WriteLine("x < y because x is null and y isn't"); 26: } 27: else 28: { 29: Console.WriteLine("x == y because both are null"); 30: } Yes, we could probably simplify this logic a bit, but it’s still horrendous!  So what do we do if we want to consider null less than everything and be able to properly compare Nullable<T> wrapped value types? The key is the System.Nullable static class.  This class is a companion class to the System.Nullable<T> class and allows you to use a few helper methods for Nullable<T> wrapped types, including a static Compare<T>() method of the. What’s so big about the static Compare<T>() method?  It implements an IComparer compatible comparison on Nullable<T> types.  Why do we care?  Well, if you look at the MSDN description for how IComparer works, you’ll read: Comparing null with any type is allowed and does not generate an exception when using IComparable. When sorting, null is considered to be less than any other object. This is what we probably want!  We want null to be less than everything!  So now we can change our logic to use the Nullable.Compare<T>() static method: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) < 0) 5: { 6: // Yes! x is null, y is not, so x is less than y according to Compare(). 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) > 0) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } Summary So, when doing math comparisons between two numeric values where one of them may be a null Nullable<T>, consider using the System.Nullable.Compare<T>() method instead of the comparison operators.  It will treat null less than any value, and will avoid logic consistency problems when relying on < returning false to indicate >= is true and so on. Tweet   Technorati Tags: C#,C-Sharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Little Pitfalls,Nulalble

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• Introduction to LinqPad Driver for StreamInsight 2.1

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  We are announcing the availability of the LinqPad driver for StreamInsight 2.1. The purpose of this blog post is to offer a quick introduction into the new features that we added to the StreamInsight LinqPad driver. We’ll show you how to connect to a remote server, how to inspect the entities present of that server, how to compose on top of them and how to manage their lifetime. Installing the driver Info on how to install the driver can be found in an earlier blog post here. Establishing connections As you click on the “Add Connection” link in the left pane you will notice that now it’s possible to build the data context automatically. The new driver appears as an option in the upper list, and if you pick it you will open a connection dialog that lets you connect to a remote StreamInsight server. The connection dialog lets you specify the address of the remote server. You will notice that it’s possible to pick up the binding information from the configuration file of the LinqPad application (which is normally in the same folder as LinqPad.exe and is called LinqPad.exe.config). In order for the context to be generated you need to pick an application from the server. The control is editable hence you can create a new application if you don’t want to make changes to an existing application. If you choose a new application name you will be prompted for confirmation before this gets created. Once you click OK the connection is created and you can start issuing queries against the remote server. If there’s any connectivity error the connection is marked with a red X and you can see the error message informing you what went wrong (i.e., the remote server could not be reached etc.). The context for remote servers Let’s take a look at what happens after we are connected successfully. Every LinqPad query runs inside a context – think of it as a class that wraps all the code that you’re writing. If you’re connecting to a live server the context will contain the following: The application object itself. All entities present in this application (sources, sinks, subjects and processes). The picture below shows a snapshot of the left pane of LinqPad after a successful connection. Every entity on the server has a different icon which will allow users to figure out its purpose. You will also notice that some entities have a string in parentheses following the name. It should be interpreted as such: the first name is the name of the property of the context class and the second name is the name of the entity as it exists on the server. Not all valid entity names are valid identifier names so in cases where we had to make a transformation you see both. Note also that as you hover over the entities you get IntelliSense with their types – more on that later. Remoting is not supported As you play with the entities exposed by the context you will notice that you can’t read and write directly to/from them. If for instance you’re trying to dump the content of an entity you will get an error message telling you that in the current version remoting is not supported. This is because the entity lives on the remote server and dumping its content means reading the events produced by this entity into the local process. ObservableSource.Dump(); Will yield the following error: Reading from a remote 'System.Reactive.Linq.IQbservable`1[System.Int32]' is not supported. Use the 'Microsoft.ComplexEventProcessing.Linq.RemoteProvider.Bind' method to read from the source using a remote observer. This basically tells you that you can call the Bind() method to direct the output of this source to a sink that has to be defined on the remote machine as well. You can’t bring the results to the LinqPad window unless you write code specifically for that. Compose queries You may ask – what's the purpose of all that? After all the same information is present in the EventFlowDebugger, why bother with showing it in LinqPad? First of all, What gets exposed in LinqPad is not what you see in the debugger. In LinqPad we have a property on the context class for every entity that lives on the server. Because LinqPad offers IntelliSense we in fact have much more information about the entity, and more importantly we can compose with that entity very easily. For example, let’s say that this code creates an entity: using (var server = Server.Connect(...)) {     var a = server.CreateApplication("WhiteFish");     var src = a         .DefineObservable<int>(() => Observable.Range(0, 3))         .Deploy("ObservableSource"); If later we want to compose with the source we have to fetch it and then we can bind something to     a.GetObservable<int>("ObservableSource)").Bind(... This means that we had to know a bunch of things about this: that it’s a source, that it’s an observable, it produces a result with payload Int32 and it’s named “ObservableSource”. Only the second and last bits of information are present in the debugger, by the way. As you type in the query window you see that all the entities are present, you get IntelliSense support for them and it’s much easier to make sense of what’s available. Let’s look at a scenario where composition is plausible. With the new programming model it’s possible to create “cold” sources that are parameterized. There was a way to accomplish that even in the previous version by passing parameters to the adapters, but this time it’s much more elegant because the expression declares what parameters are required. Say that we hover the mouse over the ThrottledSource source – we will see that its type is Func<int, int, IQbservable<int>> - this in effect means that we need to pass two int parameters before we can get a source that produces events, and the type for those events is int – in the particular case of my example I had the source produce a range of integers and the two parameters were the start and end of the range. So we see how a developer can create a source that is not running yet. Then someone else (e.g. an administrator) can pass whatever parameters appropriate and run the process. Proxy Types Here’s an interesting scenario – what if someone created a source on a server but they forgot to tell you what type they used. Worse yet, they might have used an anonymous type and even though they can refer to it by name you can’t figure out how to use that type. Let’s walk through an example that shows how you can compose against types you don’t need to have the definition of. This is how we can create a source that returns an anonymous type: Application.DefineObservable(() => Observable.Range(1, 10).Select(i => new { I = i })).Deploy("O1"); Now if we refresh the connection we can see the new source named O1 appear in the list. But what’s more important is that we now have a type to work with. So we can compose a query that refers to the anonymous type. var threshold = new StreamInsightDynamicDriver.TypeProxies.AnonymousType1_0<int>(5); var filter = from i in O1              where i > threshold              select i; filter.Deploy("O2"); You will notice that the anonymous type defined with this statement: new { I = i } can now be manipulated by a client that does not have access to it because the LinqPad driver has generated another type in its stead, named StreamInsightDynamicDriver.TypeProxies.AnonymousType1_0. This type has all the properties and fields of the type defined on the server, except in this case we can instantiate values and use it to compose more queries. It is worth noting that the same thing works for types that are not anonymous – the test is if the LinqPad driver can resolve the type or not. If it’s not possible then a new type will be generated that approximates the type that exists on the server. Control metadata In addition to composing processes on top of the existing entities we can do other useful things. We can delete them – nothing new here as we simply access the entities through the Entities collection of the application class. Here is where having their real name in parentheses comes handy. There’s another way to find out what’s behind a property – dump its expression. The first line in the output tells us what’s the name of the entity used to build this property in the context. Runtime information So let’s create a process to see what happens. We can bind a source to a sink and run the resulting process. If you right click on the connection you can refresh it and see the process present in the list of entities. Then you can drag the process to the query window and see that you can have access to process object in the Processes collection of the application. You can then manipulate the process (delete it, read its diagnostic view etc.). Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• Using the OAM Mobile & Social SDK to secure native mobile apps - Part 2 : OAM Mobile & Social Server configuration

  - by kanishkmahajan

  Objective  In the second part of this blog post I'll now cover configuration of OAM to secure our sample native apps developed using the iOS SDK. First, here are some key server side concepts: Application Profiles: An application profile is a logical representation of your application within OAM server. It could be a web (html/javascript) or native (iOS or Android) application. Applications may have different requirements for AuthN/AuthZ, and therefore each application that interacts with OAM Mobile & Social REST services must be uniquely defined. Service Providers: Service providers represent the back end services that are accessed by applications. With OAM Mobile & Social these services are in the areas of authentication, authorization and user profile access. A Service Provider then defines a type or class of service for authentication, authorization or user profiles. For example, the JWTAuthentication provider performs authentication and returns JWT (JSON Web Tokens) to the application. In contrast, the OAMAuthentication also provides authentication but uses OAM SSO tokens Service Profiles:  A Service Profile is a logical envelope that defines a service endpoint URL for a service provider for the OAM Mobile & Social Service. You can create multiple service profiles for a service provider to define token capabilities and service endpoints. Each service provider instance requires atleast one corresponding service profile.The  OAM Mobile & Social Service includes a pre-configured service profile for each pre-configured service provider. Service Domains: Service domains bind together application profiles and service profiles with an optional security handler. So now let's configure the OAM server. Additional details are in the OAM Documentation and this post simply provides an outline of configuration tasks required to configure OAM for securing native apps.  Configuration  Create The Application Profile Log on to the Oracle Access Management console and from System Configuration -> Mobile and Social -> Mobile Services, select "Create" under Application Profiles. You would do this  step twice - once for each of the native apps - AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler. Enter the parameters for the new Application profile: Name:  The application name. In this example we use 'InventoryApp' for the AvitekInventory app and 'SchedulerApp' for the AvitekScheduler app. The application name configured here must match the application name in the settings for the deployed iOS application. BaseSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM server.  Mobile Configuration: Enable this checkbox for any mobile applications. This enables the SDK to collect and send Mobile specific attributes to the OAM server.  Webview: Controls the type of browser that the iOS application will use. The embedded browser (default) will render the browser within the application. External will use the system standalone browser. External can sometimes be preferable for debugging URLScheme: The URL scheme associated with the iOS apps that is also used as a custom URL scheme to register O/S handlers that will take control when OAM transfers control to device. For the AvitekInventory and the AvitekScheduler apps I used osa:// and client:// respectively. You set this scheme in Xcode while developing your iOS Apps under Info->URL Types.  Bundle Identifier : The fully qualified name of your iOS application. You typically set this when you create a new Xcode project or under General->Identity in Xcode. For the AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler apps these were com.us.oracle.AvitekInventory and com.us.oracle.AvitekScheduler respectively.  Create The Service Domain Select create under Service domains. Create a name for your domain (AvitekDomain is what I've used). The name configured must match the service domain set in the iOS application settings. Under "Application Profile Selection" click the browse button. Choose the application profiles that you created in the previous step one by one. Set the InventoryApp as the SSO agent (with an automatic priority of 1) and the SchedulerApp as the SSO client. This associates these applications with this service domain and configures them in a 'circle of trust'.  Advance to the next page of the wizard to configure the services for this domain. For this example we will use the following services:  Authentication:   This will use the JWT (JSON Web Token) format authentication provider. The iOS application upon successful authentication will receive a signed JWT token from OAM Mobile & Social service. This token will be used in subsequent calls to OAM. Use 'MobileOAMAuthentication' here. Authorization:  The authorization provider. The SDK makes calls to this provider endpoint to obtain authorization decisions on resource requests. Use 'OAMAuthorization' here. User Profile Service:  This is the service that provides user profile services (attribute lookup, attribute modification). It can be any directory configured as a data source in OAM.  And that's it! We're done configuring our native apps. In the next section, let's look at some additional features that were mentioned in the earlier post that are automated by the SDK for the app developer i.e. these are areas that require no additional coding by the app developer when developing with the SDK as they only require server side configuration: Additional Configuration  Offline Authentication Select this option in the service domain configuration to allow users to log in and authenticate to the application locally. Clear the box to block users from authenticating locally. Strong Authentication By simply selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin while configuring mobile related Service Domains, the OAM Mobile&Social service allows sophisticated device and client application registration logic as well as the advanced risk and fraud analysis logic found in OAAM to be applied to mobile authentication. Let's look at some scenarios where the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin gets used. First, when we configure OAM and OAAM to integrate together using the TAP scheme, then that integration kicks off by selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin in the mobile service domain. This is how the mobile device is now prompted for KBA,OTP etc depending on the TAP scheme integration and the OAM users registered in the OAAM database. Second, when we configured the service domain, there were claim attributes there that are already pre-configured in OAM Mobile&Social service and we simply accepted the default values- these are the set of attributes that will be fetched from the device and passed to the server during registration/authentication as device profile attributes. When a mobile application requests a token through the Mobile Client SDK, the SDK logic will send the Device Profile attributes as a part of an HTTP request. This set of Device Profile attributes enhances security by creating an audit trail for devices that assists device identification. When the OAAM Security Plug-in is used, a particular combination of Device Profile attribute values is treated as a device finger print, known as the Digital Finger Print in the OAAM Administration Console. Each finger print is assigned a unique fingerprint number. Each OAAM session is associated with a finger print and the finger print makes it possible to log (and audit) the devices that are performing authentication and token acquisition. Finally, if the jail broken option is selected while configuring an application profile, the SDK detects a device is jail broken based on configured policy and if the OAAM handler is configured the plug-in can allow or block access to client device depending on the OAAM policy as well as detect blacklisted, lost or stolen devices and send a wipeout command that deletes all the mobile &social relevant data and blocks the device from future access. 1024x768 Social Logins Finally, let's complete this post by adding configuration to configure social logins for mobile applications. Although the Avitek sample apps do not demonstrate social logins this would be an ideal exercise for you based on the sample code provided in the earlier post. I'll cover the server side configuration here (with Facebook as an example) and you can retrofit the code to accommodate social logins by following the steps outlined in "Invoking Authentication Services" and add code in LoginViewController and maybe create a new delegate - AvitekRPDelegate based on the description in the previous post. So, here all you will need to do is configure an application profile for social login, configure a new service domain that uses the social login application profile, register the app on Facebook and finally configure the Facebook OAuth provider in OAM with those settings. Navigate to Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and create a new application profile. Here are the relevant parameters for the new application profile (-also we're not registering the social user in OAM with this configuration below, however that is a key feature as well): Name:  The application name. This must match the name of the of mobile application profile created for your application under Mobile Services. We used InventoryApp for this example. SharedSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM Mobile and Social service.  Mobile Application Return URL: After the Relying Party (social) login, the OAM Mobile & Social service will redirect to the iOS application using this URI. This is defined under Info->URL type and we used 'osa', so we define this here as 'osa://' Login Type: Choose to allow only internet identity authentication for this exercise. Authentication Service Endpoint : Make sure that /internetidentityauthentication is selected. Login to http://developers.facebook.com using your Facebook account and click on Apps and register the app as InventoryApp. Note that the consumer key and API secret gets generated automatically by the Facebook OAuth server. Navigate back to OAM and under Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and edit the Facebook OAuth Provider. Add the consumer key and API secret from the Facebook developers site to the Facebook OAuth Provider: Navigate to Mobile Services. Click on New to create a new service domain. In this example we call the domain "AvitekDomainRP". The type should be 'Mobile Application' and the application credential type 'User Token'. Add the application "InventoryApp" to the domain. Advance the next page of the wizard. Select the  default service profiles but ensure that the Authentication Service is set to 'InternetIdentityAuthentication'. Finish the creation of the service domain.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 03, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 03, 2011Popular ReleasesFlagConsole: 1.0.1: BUGFIXES: - Fixed a bug, which caused the label not to draw a word, if it had the same length as the label's length.Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v7.0: Version 7.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: UI: Flexible layout to handle both list and table-like template layouts. Theming - Visual choice of themes: Deliver some templates on installation, export/import functionality, preview. Allow site owners to choose default list sort order for the forums. Forum latest activity. Visit the project Roadmap for more details.?????????? - ????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-11-02: http://download.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1codechs&DownloadId=216140 ??????，11??，?????20????Microsoft OneCode Sample，????6?Program Language Sample，2?Windows Base Sample，2?GDI+ Sample，4?Internet Explorer Sample?6?ASP.NET Sample。?????????????。 ????，?????。http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 Program Language CSImageFullScreenSlideShow VBImageFullScreenSlideShow CSDynamicallyBuildLambdaExpressionWithFie...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.1 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.1 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python programming language. This release includes new core IDE features, a couple of new sample libraries for interacting with Kinect and Excel, and many bug fixes for issues reported since the release of 1.0. For the core IDE features we’ve added many new features which improve the basic edit...BExplorer (Better Explorer): Better Explorer 2.0.0.631 Alpha: Changelog: Added: Some new functions in ribbon Added: Possibility to choose displayed columns Added: Basic Search Fixed: Some bugs after navigation Fixed: Attempt to fix slow navigation and slow start Known issues: - BreadcrumbBar fails on some situations - Basic search not work quite well in some situations Please if anyone find bugs be kind and report them at the Issue Tracker! Thanks!DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with upgrades on systems that had upgraded the Telerik library to 6.0.0 Fixed issue with Razor Host upgrade to 5.6.3 The logic for module administration checks contains incorrect logic in 1 place, opening the possibility of a user with edit permissions gaining access to functionality they should not have through a particularly crafted url Security FixesBrowsers support the ability to remember common strings such as usernames/addresses etc. Code was adde...Terminals: Version 2.0 - Beta 2 Release: The team has finally put the nail into the official release date for version 2.0. As bugs are winding down on the 2.0 Roadmap we decided to push out another build - the first 2.0 Beta build. Please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Check the source code page on the site, this beta includes all commits since (and including) the 90428 check-in back i...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.4.4322: Added German (unverified, apologies if incorrect) Properly source invariant resources with correct resIDs Replaced obsolete lyric providers with working providers Fix Pseudolater to correctly morph every third char Fix null reference in CatalogBaseTrack Folder Changes: Track Folder Changes 1.0: Track Folder Changes 1.0 (binary)Devpad: 4.6: Whats new for Devpad 4.6: New Recent Files New Run in Safari Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWindows Workflow Foundation on Codeplex: Microsoft.Activities v1.8.8: Microsoft.Activities Overview How do I install Microsoft.Activities? Updates in this release9318Technical Analysis Engine for .NET: Technical Analysis Engine 1.25: What's new in the 1.25 release (2011-11-01): - Added Williams %R indicator - Added Moving Average Envelopes indicatorBoxWorld: BoxWorld_2011.10.30: BoxWorld - 8.0.1110.30 This is the initial release of BoxWorld. I'd recommend downloading the installer as it contains the compiled code and everything all nicely contained. By default, you end up with this directory structure: C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Data C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Interface C:\Program Files\ViperWorks\BoxWorld\Source In the root you have the compiled EXE files, one for the main release, one for the LITE release ...VidCoder: 1.2.1: Fixed a couple regressions: video encoder was blank in queue and crashes with the High Profile preset when opening the Settings window. Fixed problem with auto-update introduced in 1.2.0. If you have 1.2.0 you will need to update manually to get this.AssaultCube Reloaded: Release 2.3: THE RELEASE YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR! IT CAN NOW BE CONSIDERED STABLE Linux has Debian 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, download the Linux package. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for linux (source included) If you are using Windows and require the source code, download the source package!A Microblog API (SINA weibo.com open API in C#, .Net???????API): AMicroblogAPI v1.0: AMicroBlogAPI is a C# implementation, a strong-typed deep encapsulation, a easy-to-use .net wrapper of SINA microblog API v1.0. App developers no longer need to parse various HTTP responses -- all responses are parsed into strong types; No longer need to construt the request query strings -- just simply gives the values of parameters; No longer need to implement the OAuth -- a single call could logs the user on. In this release (AMicroblogAPI v1.0), all basic data APIs are implemented. For ...patterns & practices: Enterprise Library Contrib: Enterprise Library Contrib - 5.0 (Oct 2011): This release of Enterprise Library Contrib is based on the Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 5.0 core and contains the following: Common extensionsTypeConfigurationElement<T> - A Polymorphic Configuration Element without having to be part of a PolymorphicConfigurationElementCollection. AnonymousConfigurationElement - A Configuration element that can be uniquely identified without having to define its name explicitly. Data Access Application Block extensionsMySql Provider - ...Network Monitor Open Source Parsers: Network Monitor Parsers 3.4.2748: The Network Monitor Parsers packages contain parsers for more than 400 network protocols, including RFC based public protocols and protocols for Microsoft products defined in the Microsoft Open Specifications for Windows and SQL Server. NetworkMonitor_Parsers.msi is the base parser package which defines parsers for commonly used public protocols and protocols for Microsoft Windows. In this release, NetowrkMonitor_Parsers.msi continues to improve quality and fix bugs. It has included the fo...Duckworth Lewis Professional Edition Calculator: DLcalc 3.0: DLcalc 3.0 can perform Duckworth/Lewis Professional Edition calculations 100% accurately. It also produces over-by-over and ball-by-ball PAR score tables.Media Companion: MC 3.420b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movies Fixed: Fanart and poster scraping issues TV Shows (Re)Added: Rebuild single show Fixed: Issue when shows are moved from original location Ability to handle " for actor nicknames Crash when episode name contains "<" (does not scrape yet) Clears fanart when switch...New ProjectsASP.NET MVC fluent validation framework: FluentMvc allow you to create validatable models without using any validation attributes.BeanPermutator: The BeanPermutator library provides a robust permutations engine. It was designed with framework API, optimal performance, and memory usage in mind. For performance, the implementation is modeled after STL's next_permutation; except with added support for conditional result sets.Cicero: Cicero is a library/application to programmatically analyze managed crash dumps. It provides a managed API to load dumps and look at managed objects, using [url:SOS|http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190764.aspx] under the covers.CodePlex Windows Phone App: This project deals with how to browse efficently through codeplex website using windows phone capabilities.Collage: A photo collage screensaver.Docs Professional Archiving System: This application basically provides a professional audit compliant archiving system with storage service.EBSCOLunch: This app simply shows ebsco's lunch menu. It runs in the system tray and when clicked on shows today's cafeteria specials.Emesary: C# Interobject communication and application mssaging: Simple quick and efficient class based interobject communcation to allow decoupled disparate parts of a system to function together without knowing about each, e.g GUI, DB and business logic.Enterprise Data Entry, Reporting and Analysis Tool: This project will have app with different modules that will show the interface tools functions based on the designation of an employee as defined in Active Directory. Example: A team manager can view all the details regarding his immediate subordinates. Financial date and time libary: Date and time routines that know about holidays, rolling conventions, and day count fractions.Frame Work Model by Patán: Proyecto de modelado de FrameworkIttxa: Is in Alpha releaseKooboo CMS data sync module: Kooboo cms data export / import module.MetroBlog: A Windows 8 Metro inspired blog. Mosque: In the name of GOD this is a portalMPO tools: A .net library for parsing .mpo stereo images (in Multi-Picture Format).mytest5: my testtttttttttNetflix MVP Example: Example .NET movie application using the MVP pattern with windows forms and WPF. Uses the Netflix Odata service to get movie information.OpenStreetMap2Oracle: OpenStreetMap2Oracle is a windows application, which exports OpenStreetMap Data (*.osm - files) in an oracle database. The geometries will be stored in oracle's SDO_GEOMETRY datatype. It is developed in C Sharp with modern WPF - UI. PSRR - Remote Registry PowerShell 3.0 Module: Remote Registry PowerShell Module to manage the registry with Windows PowerShell. This version supports the new improvement in .NET 4 to specify a 32-bit or 64-bit view of the registry with the Microsoft.Win32.RegistryView enumeration when you open base keys.Raptor-Plus-Plus: CS240 class project Reset IPv6: Troubleshooting Pack to reset virtual IPv6 interfaces on Windows 7 (ISATAP, Teredo, IPHTTPS and 6to4)resurection: Game for WP7SharePoint 2010 Google Maps Web Part for Sandbox and Farm Solutions: The Google Maps Web Part lets you quickly and easily add Google Maps to your Microsoft SharePoint 2010 pages. Compatible with SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2010 SP1 and SharePoint Online, via Office 365.SPLight UTL Sharepoint 2010 BackUp / Restore UI: Sharepoint 2010 BackUp / Restore UI Sharepoint 2010 backUp restore user interface site collection backup restore graphical user interfaceVisual Image Processing: Visual Image processing for 2d or 3d real-time video or still image from camera or web cam or scanner ... XNA4LED: XNA 4.0 LED Billboard Example

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 28, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 28, 2012Popular ReleasesScreenShot: InstallScreenShot: This is the current stable release..Net Code Samples: Code Samples: Code samples (SLNs).LINQ_Koans: LinqKoans v.02: Cleaned up a bitKeelKit: KeelKit 3.0.7600.638: ?、??MySQL?Model?? Mysql ????? ? http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/ ??? mysql-connector-net-6.5.4.msi ???， VS???KeelKit ???????MySQL , ????????? ?? DemoMySQL.rar ???， ???????????MySqL??Model. ?????? C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Config\machine.config ??? ??????。 <system.data> <DbProviderFactories> <add name="MySQL Data Provider" invariant="MySql.Data.MySqlClient" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for MySQL" type="MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlC...TwitterOAuth: TwitterOauth 0.25.16.0116: Beta releasetesttom05242012git02: d1: d1testdd05242012git001: zxczxc: zxczxczxcCODE Framework: 4.0.20524.0: This release has quite a few enhancements for WPF applications and SOA features. See change logs for more details.CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 - Final Release: 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. FluentscriptCommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 contains a scripting language called FluentScript. Application: FluentScript Version: 0.9.8 Build: 0.9.8.4 Changeset: 75050 ( CommonLibrary.NET ) Release date: May 24, 2012 Binaries: CommonLibrary.dll Namespace: ComLib.Lang Project site: http://fluentscript.codeplex.com...System Center Orchestrator Integration Packs: Active Directory 3.2: An integration pack enabling AD Automation 3.2 Updates LDAP Pathing updated to support cross forest scenarios Get Object Property Value Filtering efficiency enhancementsBunch of Small Tools: Mélangeur de vocabulaire japonais: Permet de générer des exercices de vocabulaire aléatoire à partir de listes de vocabulaire japonais. 22 listes sont fournies avec le programme.Expression Tree Visualizer for VS 2010: Expression Tree Visualizer Beta: This is a beta release, in this release some expression types are not handled and use a default visualization behavior. The first release will be published soon. Wait for it...Ulfi: Ulfi source: Build with Visual Studio 2010 Express C# or betterJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript developers to query and update data from different sources like webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook or YQL. See it in action in this 6 minutes video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJHgj1y0CU RC1 R2 Release highlights Knockout.js integrationUsing the Knockout.js module, your UI can be automatically refreshed when the data model changes, so you can develop the front-end of your data manager app even faster. Querying 1:N relations in W...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: 00.00.08 for DNN6: BEFORE USE YOU need to install the MSBuild Community Tasks available from http://msbuildtasks.tigris.org For best results you should configure your development environment as described in this blog post Then read this latest blog post about customizing and using these custom templates. Installation is simple To use this template place the ZIP (not extracted) file in your My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\Web OR for VB My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Te...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.53: fix issue #18106, where member operators on numeric literals caused the member part to be duplicated when not minifying numeric literals ADD NEW FEATURE: ability to create source map files! The first mapfile format to be supported is the Script# format. Use the new -map filename switch to create map files when building your sources.CreditAnalytics: CreditAnalytics Release 1.5: 22 May 2012 (v1.5) (Build 449) Regressor Framework: Implementation of the regressor set, tolerance check, curve scenario regressors, regression framework suite, and the eventual regression output. Discount Curve Regression: Regressing Base Curve Creation, scenario Curve creation, and calculation of spot/effective implied rates and discount factors. Credit Curve Regression: Regressing Base Curve Creation, scenario Curve creation, and calculation of spot/effective implied hazard rates, reco...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.3: 2012.05.22 Ver5.6.3 　(1) HTTP????????、ftp://??????????????????????LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.5.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionThis release is fixing start up issue.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4.2: This is a service release to address 1.4 and 1.4.1 bugs. Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4.2: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesNew Projects.Net Code Samples: Various .Net code samples. AFSAspnetPusherV1: my new wns project lolAFSAspnetPusherV2: renewed version ofAFSAspnetPusherV4: renewed one v4AgileDesign Utilities Library: This library provides common functionality usable for most software projects: Logger - Asynchronous logging on top of new Microsoft logging class TraceSource with simplified API NameOf - Avoid using string names using static reflection Various reflection helpersAssociate Many to Many Relationship Entities Tool for Dynamics CRM 2011: Associate Many to many relationship tool is used for Dynamics CRM 2011 to associate or disassociate N:N relationship entities. This tool is dynamics crm 2011 solution, which consist of one entity and one plugin. Entity "Many to Many Relationship" record is used by Many to many relationship plugin to associate or disassociate entities. If many to many relationship entity record is created then plugin associate/disassociate entities from record data.Boxhead Multiplayer Server: A PHP dedicated server for my multiplayer version of Boxhead.CodedUITraceFiletoCSV: Console Application to parse the result file generated by Coded UI Test execution ".trx" into a comma separated file for more readable and detailed result.FlipExt: FlipExt is an easy to use image converter. It converts any image to .png .bmp .jpg .gif .tif .jpeg .tiff .ico. More extensions will be added soon.Foo Values Maker: Foo creates values for your test class variables so that you can write tests faster.FoodFree: Projeto de monitoramento de enchentesHouodeProject: ????ITLand of Dreams, Codename: Waterloo: We want to create a classical Live-MMORPG you can play on your smartphone (in the first step only “Windows Phone” will be supported) with the basic idea of Ultima Online or similiar games in our mind. You can create one or more characters, choose some name, gender, basic attributes (skin and hair color, …) a race (e.g. ‘Human’) and a profession (e.g. ‘fighter’ or ‘craftsman’). Now he can freely travel through the whole world, meeting other players, fighting monsters, absolving quests, tra...Makecert UI: Makecert UI is a shell layer application on top of the Microsoft makecert.exe utility. Makecert UI makes it easy for you to create self signed certificates, even from your own CA.MS CRM Rich Text box: Rich text box plug-in for MS CRM 2011. Hope it will be helpful for many of you. Thank you for using it and let me know if any further help needed.Nivo Slider Web Part SharePoint 2010: SharePoint 2010 implementation of Nivo Slider. Easy way to put Nivo slider on any page!!Office365 Weather WebPart: Office 365 WebPart that displays a 5 day weather forecast for a given location. The weather data is retrieved from the Met Office feed hosted on the Windows Azure Data Market. This is a free data feed that provides weather data for the UK only.Private Cloud Solution Design: This project is named “Training Cloud”. It provides an appropriate solution which can be used for technical audiences self learning with a hands-on-lab experience using Microsoft technology hosted in a virtualized environment built on System Center 2012. Since it depends on hardware, such as RAM, Sotrage, Network , etc. At last, the end user could have all labs ready which deloyed on private cloud. And it can be easily matain , setup labs with cloud’s function. pyUpdater: pyupdater provides a platform for updating python based applications.SharePoint Document Navigator: SP Document Navigator is a front-end solution for navigating a document library using jQuery and jQuery Mobile Trimetable: Train schedule for WP7Upload Master Pages & Page Layouts to Master Page Gallery using PowerShell: This document details the steps to upload Master pages and Page Layouts to Master Page Gallery using the “Upload Master Pages” Utility. 1- Download the .zip file 2- Edit the “UploadMasterPages.bat” file and Change the <<site collection url>> in the text below with respect to the environment. e.g. http://sitecollectionurl 3- Save the “UploadMasterPages.bat” file and close it. 4- Put all of your master pages and page layouts to Doc folder. 5- Run “UploadMasterPages.bat” file as Administrat...vivo: vivo Vietnamese Voice Vietnamese Voice recognition project thaihung.bkhn@gmail.com http://eking.vnvnv: VNV Vietnamese Voice Vietnamese Voice recognition project thaihung.bkhn@gmail.com http://eking.vnWindows Phone 7 User Guide Page: Take your app's users through a guided tour! Make your app's hidden gems shine, make users understand your app's logic and UX better.WP-FTS: This plugin for Wordpress replaces the default search engine, implemented using a simple "LIKE" operator, with the usage of the more powerful Full-Text Engine that comes with SQL Server.

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• Key ATG architecture principles

  - by Glen Borkowski

  Overview The purpose of this article is to describe some of the important foundational concepts of ATG.  This is not intended to cover all areas of the ATG platform, just the most important subset - the ones that allow ATG to be extremely flexible, configurable, high performance, etc.  For more information on these topics, please see the online product manuals. Modules The first concept is called the 'ATG Module'.  Simply put, you can think of modules as the building blocks for ATG applications.  The ATG development team builds the out of the box product using modules (these are the 'out of the box' modules).  Then, when a customer is implementing their site, they build their own modules that sit 'on top' of the out of the box ATG modules.  Modules can be very simple - containing minimal definition, and perhaps a small amount of configuration.  Alternatively, a module can be rather complex - containing custom logic, database schema definitions, configuration, one or more web applications, etc.  Modules generally will have dependencies on other modules (the modules beneath it).  For example, the Commerce Reference Store module (CRS) requires the DCS (out of the box commerce) module. Modules have a ton of value because they provide a way to decouple a customers implementation from the out of the box ATG modules.  This allows for a much easier job when it comes time to upgrade the ATG platform.  Modules are also a very useful way to group functionality into a single package which can be leveraged across multiple ATG applications. One very important thing to understand about modules, or more accurately, ATG as a whole, is that when you start ATG, you tell it what module(s) you want to start.  One of the first things ATG does is to look through all the modules you specified, and for each one, determine a list of modules that are also required to start (based on each modules dependencies).  Once this final, ordered list is determined, ATG continues to boot up.  One of the outputs from the ordered list of modules is that each module can contain it's own classes and configuration.  During boot, the ordered list of modules drives the unified classpath and configpath.  This is what determines which classes override others, and which configuration overrides other configuration.  Think of it as a layered approach. The structure of a module is well defined.  It simply looks like a folder in a filesystem that has certain other folders and files within it.  Here is a list of items that can appear in a module: MyModule: META-INF - this is required, along with a file called MANIFEST.MF which describes certain properties of the module.  One important property is what other modules this module depends on. config - this is typically present in most modules.  It defines a tree structure (folders containing properties files, XML, etc) that maps to ATG components (these are described below). lib - this contains the classes (typically in jarred format) for any code defined in this module j2ee - this is where any web-apps would be stored. src - in case you want to include the source code for this module, it's standard practice to put it here sql - if your module requires any additions to the database schema, you should place that schema here Here's a screenshots of a module: Modules can also contain sub-modules.  A dot-notation is used when referring to these sub-modules (i.e. MyModule.Versioned, where Versioned is a sub-module of MyModule). Finally, it is important to completely understand how modules work if you are going to be able to leverage them effectively.  There are many different ways to design modules you want to create, some approaches are better than others, especially if you plan to share functionality between multiple different ATG applications. Components A component in ATG can be thought of as a single item that performs a certain set of related tasks.  An example could be a ProductViews component - used to store information about what products the current customer has viewed.  Components have properties (also called attributes).  The ProductViews component could have properties like lastProductViewed (stores the ID of the last product viewed) or productViewList (stores the ID's of products viewed in order of their being viewed).  The previous examples of component properties would typically also offer get and set methods used to retrieve and store the property values.  Components typically will also offer other types of useful methods aside from get and set.  In the ProductViewed component, we might want to offer a hasViewed method which will tell you if the customer has viewed a certain product or not. Components are organized in a tree like hierarchy called 'nucleus'.  Nucleus is used to locate and instantiate ATG Components.  So, when you create a new ATG component, it will be able to be found 'within' nucleus.  Nucleus allows ATG components to reference one another - this is how components are strung together to perform meaningful work.  It's also a mechanism to prevent redundant configuration - define it once and refer to it from everywhere. Here is a screenshot of a component in nucleus:  Components can be extremely simple (i.e. a single property with a get method), or can be rather complex offering many properties and methods.  To be an ATG component, a few things are required: a class - you can reference an existing out of the box class or you could write your own a properties file - this is used to define your component the above items must be located 'within' nucleus by placing them in the correct spot in your module's config folder Within the properties file, you will need to point to the class you want to use: $class=com.mycompany.myclass You may also want to define the scope of the class (request, session, or global): $scope=session In summary, ATG Components live in nucleus, generally have links to other components, and provide some meaningful type of work.  You can configure components as well as extend their functionality by writing code. Repositories Repositories (a.k.a. Data Anywhere Architecture) is the mechanism that ATG uses to access data primarily stored in relational databases, but also LDAP or other backend systems.  ATG applications are required to be very high performance, and data access is critical in that if not handled properly, it could create a bottleneck.  ATG's repository functionality has been around for a long time - it's proven to be extremely scalable.  Developers new to ATG need to understand how repositories work as this is a critical aspect of the ATG architecture.   Repositories essentially map relational tables to objects in ATG, as well as handle caching.  ATG defines many repositories out of the box (i.e. user profile, catalog, orders, etc), and this is comprised of both the underlying database schema along with the associated repository definition files (XML).  It is fully expected that implementations will extend / change the out of the box repository definitions, so there is a prescribed approach to doing this.  The first thing to be sure of is to encapsulate your repository definition additions / changes within your own module (as described above).  The other important best practice is to never modify the out of the box schema - in other words, don't add columns to existing ATG tables, just create your own new tables.  These will help ensure you can easily upgrade your application at a later date. xml-combination As mentioned earlier, when you start ATG, the order of the modules will determine the final configpath.  Files within this configpath are 'layered' such that modules on top can override configuration of modules below it.  This is the same concept for repository definition files.  If you want to add a few properties to the out of the box user profile, you simply need to create an XML file containing only your additions, and place it in the correct location in your module.  At boot time, your definition will be combined (hence the term xml-combination) with the lower, out of the box modules, with the result being a user profile that contains everything (out of the box, plus your additions).  Aside from just adding properties, there are also ways to remove and change properties. types of properties Aside from the normal 'database backed' properties, there are a few other interesting types: transient properties - these are properties that are in memory, but not backed by any database column.  These are useful for temporary storage. java-backed properties - by nature, these are transient, but in addition, when you access this property (by called the get method) instead of looking up a piece of data, it performs some logic and returns the results.  'Age' is a good example - if you're storing a birth date on the profile, but your business rules are defined in terms of someones age, you could create a simple java-backed property to look at the birth date and compare it to the current date, and return the persons age. derived properties - this is what allows for inheritance within the repository structure.  You could define a property at the category level, and have the product inherit it's value as well as override it.  This is useful for setting defaults, with the ability to override. caching There are a number of different caching modes which are useful at different times depending on the nature of the data being cached.  For example, the simple cache mode is useful for things like user profiles.  This is because the user profile will typically only be used on a single instance of ATG at one time.  Simple cache mode is also useful for read-only types of data such as the product catalog.  Locked cache mode is useful when you need to ensure that only one ATG instance writes to a particular item at a time - an example would be a customers order.  There are many options in terms of configuring caching which are outside the scope of this article - please refer to the product manuals for more details. Other important concepts - out of scope for this article There are a whole host of concepts that are very important pieces to the ATG platform, but are out of scope for this article.  Here's a brief description of some of them: formhandlers - these are ATG components that handle form submissions by users. pipelines - these are configurable chains of logic that are used for things like handling a request (request pipeline) or checking out an order. special kinds of repositories (versioned, files, secure, ...) - there are a couple different types of repositories that are used in various situations.  See the manuals for more information. web development - JSP/ DSP tag library - ATG provides a traditional approach to developing web applications by providing a tag library called the DSP library.  This library is used throughout your JSP pages to interact with all the ATG components. messaging - a message sub-system used as another way for components to interact. personalization - ability for business users to define a personalized user experience for customers.  See the other blog posts related to personalization.

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• How to make a player stay within bounds of world with 2D Camera

  - by Craig

  Im creating a simple top down survival game. At the moment, i have the sprite which is a ship and moves by rotating left or right then going forward in that direction. I have implemented a 2D camera, its always centered on the player. However, when i move towards the bounds of the world that the sprite is in it just keeps on going :( How to i sort it that it stops at the edge of the world and cant go beyond it? Cheers :) Below is the main game class using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace GamesCoursework_1 { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; // player variables Texture2D Ship; Vector2 Ship_Position; float Ship_Rotation = 0.0f; Vector2 Ship_Origin; Vector2 Ship_Velocity; const float tangentialVelocity = 4f; float friction = 0.05f; static Point CameraViewport = new Point(800, 800); Camera2d cam = new Camera2d((int)CameraViewport.X, (int)CameraViewport.Y); //Size of world static Point worldSize = new Point(1600, 1600); // Screen variables static Point worldCenter = new Point(worldSize.X / 2, worldSize.Y / 2); Rectangle playerBounds = new Rectangle(CameraViewport.X / 2, CameraViewport.Y / 2, worldSize.X - CameraViewport.X, worldSize.Y - CameraViewport.Y); Rectangle worldBounds = new Rectangle(0, 0, worldSize.X, worldSize.Y); Texture2D background; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = CameraViewport.X; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = CameraViewport.Y; Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here Ship = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Ship"); Ship_Origin.X = Ship.Width / 2; Ship_Origin.Y = Ship.Height / 2; background = Content.Load<Texture2D>("aus"); Ship_Position = new Vector2(worldCenter.X, worldCenter.Y); cam.Pos = Ship_Position; cam.Zoom = 1f; } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { // Allows the game to exit if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); // TODO: Add your update logic here Ship_Position = Ship_Velocity + Ship_Position; keyPressed(); base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); // TODO: Add your drawing code here spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Deferred, BlendState.AlphaBlend, null, null, null,null, cam.get_transformation(GraphicsDevice)); spriteBatch.Draw(background, Vector2.Zero, Color.White); spriteBatch.Draw(Ship, Ship_Position, Ship.Bounds, Color.White, Ship_Rotation, Ship_Origin, 1.0f, SpriteEffects.None, 0f); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } private void Ship_Move(Vector2 move) { Ship_Position += move; } private void keyPressed() { KeyboardState keyState; // Move right keyState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { Ship_Rotation = Ship_Rotation + 0.1f; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { Ship_Rotation = Ship_Rotation - 0.1f; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { Ship_Velocity.X = (float)Math.Cos(Ship_Rotation) * tangentialVelocity; Ship_Velocity.Y = (float)Math.Sin(Ship_Rotation) * tangentialVelocity; if ((int)Ship_Position.Y < playerBounds.Bottom && (int)Ship_Position.Y > playerBounds.Top) cam._pos.Y = Ship_Position.Y; if ((int)Ship_Position.X > playerBounds.Left && (int)Ship_Position.X < playerBounds.Right) cam._pos.X = Ship_Position.X; //tried world bounds here if (!worldBounds.Contains(new Point((int)Ship_Position.X, (int)Ship_Position.Y))) Ship_Position -= new Vector2(0.0f, -tangentialVelocity * 2); if (!worldBounds.Contains(new Point((int)Ship_Position.X, (int)Ship_Position.Y))) Ship_Position -= new Vector2(0.0f, 2 * tangentialVelocity); } else if(Ship_Velocity != Vector2.Zero) { float i = Ship_Velocity.X; float j = Ship_Velocity.Y; Ship_Velocity.X = i -= friction * i; Ship_Velocity.Y = j -= friction * j; if ((int)Ship_Position.Y < playerBounds.Bottom && (int)Ship_Position.Y > playerBounds.Top) cam._pos.Y = Ship_Position.Y; if ((int)Ship_Position.X > playerBounds.Left && (int)Ship_Position.X < playerBounds.Right) cam._pos.X = Ship_Position.X; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Q)) { if (cam.Zoom < 2f) cam.Zoom += 0.05f; } if (keyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.A)) { if (cam.Zoom > 0.3f) cam.Zoom -= 0.05f; } } } } my 2d camera class using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; namespace GamesCoursework_1 { public class Camera2d { protected float _zoom; // Camera Zoom public Matrix _transform; // Matrix Transform public Vector2 _pos; // Camera Position protected float _rotation; // Camera Rotation public int _viewportWidth, _viewportHeight; // viewport size public Camera2d(int ViewportWidth, int ViewportHeight) { _zoom = 1.0f; _rotation = 0.0f; _pos = Vector2.Zero; _viewportWidth = ViewportWidth; _viewportHeight = ViewportHeight; } // Sets and gets zoom public float Zoom { get { return _zoom; } set { _zoom = value; if (_zoom < 0.1f) _zoom = 0.1f; } // Negative zoom will flip image } public float Rotation { get { return _rotation; } set { _rotation = value; } } // Auxiliary function to move the camera public void Move(Vector2 amount) { _pos += amount; } // Get set position public Vector2 Pos { get { return _pos; } set { _pos = value; } } public Matrix get_transformation(GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { _transform = // Thanks to o KB o for this solution Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(-_pos.X, -_pos.Y, 0)) * Matrix.CreateRotationZ(Rotation) * Matrix.CreateScale(new Vector3(Zoom, Zoom, 1)) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(new Vector3(_viewportWidth * 0.5f, _viewportHeight * 0.5f, 0)); return _transform; } } }

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• Thread not behaving correctly

  - by ivor

  Hello, I wonder if anyone can help me to understand where I could be going wrong with this code; Basically I'm working on a turorial and calling the class below from another class - and it is getting the following error; Exception in thread "Thread-1" java.lang.NullPointerException at org.newdawn.spaceinvaders.TCPChat.run(TCPChat.java:322) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) I realise the error is beibg flagged in another class- but I have tested the other class with a small class which sets up a separate thread - and it works fine, but as soon as I try and implement a new thread in this class - it causes all sorts of problems. Am I setting up the thread correctly in this class? Basically I can set up a thread in this class, with a test loop and it's fine, but when I bring in the functionality of the rest of the game it sometimes hangs, or does not display at all. Any suggestions on where I could be going wrong would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for looking. package org.newdawn.spaceinvaders; import java.awt.BorderLayout; import java.awt.Canvas; import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Dimension; import java.awt.FlowLayout; import java.awt.Graphics2D; import java.awt.GridLayout; import java.awt.event.ActionEvent; import java.awt.event.ActionListener; import java.awt.event.KeyAdapter; import java.awt.event.KeyEvent; import java.awt.event.WindowAdapter; import java.awt.event.WindowEvent; import java.awt.image.BufferStrategy; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Scanner; import java.awt.*;//maybe not needed import javax.swing.*;//maybenot needed import java.util.Random; //import java.io.*; /** * The main hook of our game. This class with both act as a manager * for the display and central mediator for the game logic. * * Display management will consist of a loop that cycles round all * entities in the game asking them to move and then drawing them * in the appropriate place. With the help of an inner class it * will also allow the player to control the main ship. * * As a mediator it will be informed when entities within our game * detect events (e.g. alient killed, played died) and will take * appropriate game actions. * * @author Kevin Glass */ public class Game extends Canvas implements Runnable{ /** The stragey that allows us to use accelerate page flipping */ private BufferStrategy strategy; /** True if the game is currently "running", i.e. the game loop is looping */ private boolean gameRunning = true; /** The list of all the entities that exist in our game */ private ArrayList entities = new ArrayList(); /** The list of entities that need to be removed from the game this loop */ private ArrayList removeList = new ArrayList(); /** The entity representing the player */ private Entity ship; /** The speed at which the player's ship should move (pixels/sec) */ private double moveSpeed = 300; /** The time at which last fired a shot */ private long lastFire = 0; /** The interval between our players shot (ms) */ private long firingInterval = 500; /** The number of aliens left on the screen */ private int alienCount; /** The number of levels progressed */ private double levelCount; /** high score for the user */ private int highScore; /** high score for the user */ private String player = "bob"; //private GetUserInput getPlayer; /** The list of entities that need to be removed from the game this loop */ /** The message to display which waiting for a key press */ private String message = ""; /** True if we're holding up game play until a key has been pressed */ private boolean waitingForKeyPress = true; /** True if the left cursor key is currently pressed */ private boolean leftPressed = false; /** True if the right cursor key is currently pressed */ private boolean rightPressed = false; /** True if we are firing */ private boolean firePressed = false; /** True if game logic needs to be applied this loop, normally as a result of a game event */ private boolean logicRequiredThisLoop = false; //private Thread cThread = new Thread(this); //public Thread t = new Thread(this); //private Thread g = new Thread(this); void setHighscore(int setHS) { highScore = setHS; } public int getHighscore() { return highScore; } public void setPlayer(String setPlayer) { player = setPlayer; } public String getPlayer() { return player; } public void run() { //setup(); System.out.println("hello im running bob"); /*int count = 1; do { System.out.println("Count is: " + count); count++; try{Thread.sleep(1);} catch(InterruptedException e){} } while (count <= 2000000);*/ //Game g =new Game(); //Game g = this; // Start the main game loop, note: this method will not // return until the game has finished running. Hence we are // using the actual main thread to run the game. //setup(); //this.gameLoop(); //try{thread.sleep(1);} //catch{InterruptedException e} } /** * Construct our game and set it running. */ public Game () { //Thread t = new Thread(this);//set up new thread for invaders game //t.run();//run the run method of the game //Game g =new Game(); //setup(); //Thread t = new Thread(this); //thread.start(); //SwingUtilities.invokeLater(this); Thread er = new Thread(this); er.start(); } public void setup(){ //initialise highscore setHighscore(0); // create a frame to contain our game JFrame container = new JFrame("Space Invaders 101"); // get hold the content of the frame and set up the resolution of the game JPanel panel = (JPanel) container.getContentPane(); panel.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(800,600)); //panel.setLayout(null); // setup our canvas size and put it into the content of the frame setBounds(0,0,800,600); panel.add(this); // Tell AWT not to bother repainting our canvas since we're // going to do that our self in accelerated mode setIgnoreRepaint(true); // finally make the window visible container.pack(); container.setResizable(false); container.setVisible(true); // add a listener to respond to the user closing the window. If they // do we'd like to exit the game container.addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() { public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) { //cThread.interrupt(); System.exit(0); } }); // add a key input system (defined below) to our canvas // so we can respond to key pressed addKeyListener(new KeyInputHandler()); // request the focus so key events come to us requestFocus(); // create the buffering strategy which will allow AWT // to manage our accelerated graphics createBufferStrategy(2); strategy = getBufferStrategy(); // initialise the entities in our game so there's something // to see at startup initEntities(); } /** * Start a fresh game, this should clear out any old data and * create a new set. */ private void startGame() { // clear out any existing entities and intialise a new set entities.clear(); initEntities(); //initialise highscore setHighscore(0); // blank out any keyboard settings we might currently have leftPressed = false; rightPressed = false; firePressed = false; } /** * Initialise the starting state of the entities (ship and aliens). Each * entitiy will be added to the overall list of entities in the game. */ //private void initEntities() { public void initEntities() { Random randomAlien = new Random(); // create the player ship and place it roughly in the center of the screen //ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",370,550);//orignal ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",700,300);//changed postioning to right hand side entities.add(ship); // create a block of aliens (5 rows, by 12 aliens, spaced evenly) alienCount = 0; levelCount = 1.02; for (int row=0;row<7;row++) {//altered number of rows for (int x=0;x<5;x++) { int r = randomAlien.nextInt(100);//loop added to produce random aliens if (r < 50){ //Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",/*100+*/(x*50),(50)+row*30); Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",100+(x*90),(12)+row*85); entities.add(alien); alienCount++; } } } } //private void initEntities() { public void initAlienEntities() { Random randomAlien = new Random(); // create the player ship and place it roughly in the center of the screen //ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",370,550);//orignal //ship = new ShipEntity(this,"sprites/ship.gif",700,300);//changed postioning to right hand side //entities.add(ship); // create a block of aliens (5 rows, by 12 aliens, spaced evenly) alienCount = 0; levelCount = levelCount + 0.10;//this increases the speed on every level for (int row=0;row<7;row++) {//altered number of rows for (int x=0;x<5;x++) { int r = randomAlien.nextInt(100);//loop added to produce random aliens if (r < 50){//randome check to show alien //Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",/*100+*/(x*50),(50)+row*30); Entity alien = new AlienEntity(this,"sprites/alien.gif",-250+(x*90),(12)+row*85); entities.add(alien); alienCount++; } } } advanceAlienSpeed(levelCount); } /** * Notification from a game entity that the logic of the game * should be run at the next opportunity (normally as a result of some * game event) */ public void updateLogic() { logicRequiredThisLoop = true; } /** * Remove an entity from the game. The entity removed will * no longer move or be drawn. * * @param entity The entity that should be removed */ public void removeEntity(Entity entity) { removeList.add(entity); } /** * Notification that the player has died. */ public void notifyDeath() { message = "Oh no! They got you, try again?"; waitingForKeyPress = true; } /** * Notification that the player has won since all the aliens * are dead. */ public void notifyWin() { message = "Well done! You Win!"; waitingForKeyPress = true; } /** * Notification that an alien has been killed */ public void notifyAlienKilled() { // reduce the alient count, if there are none left, the player has won! alienCount--; if (alienCount == 0) { //notifyWin();win not relevant here... this.initAlienEntities();//call fresh batch of aliens } // if there are still some aliens left then they all need to get faster, so // speed up all the existing aliens advanceAlienSpeed(1.30); } public void advanceAlienSpeed(double speed) { // if there are still some aliens left then they all need to get faster, so // speed up all the existing aliens for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); if (entity instanceof AlienEntity) { // speed up by 2% entity.setHorizontalMovement(entity.getHorizontalMovement() * speed); //entity.setVerticalMovement(entity.getVerticalMovement() * 1.02); } } } /** * Attempt to fire a shot from the player. Its called "try" * since we must first check that the player can fire at this * point, i.e. has he/she waited long enough between shots */ public void tryToFire() { // check that we have waiting long enough to fire if (System.currentTimeMillis() - lastFire < firingInterval) { return; } // if we waited long enough, create the shot entity, and record the time. lastFire = System.currentTimeMillis(); ShotEntity shot = new ShotEntity(this,"sprites/shot.gif",ship.getX()+10,ship.getY()-30); entities.add(shot); } /** * The main game loop. This loop is running during all game * play as is responsible for the following activities: * <p> * - Working out the speed of the game loop to update moves * - Moving the game entities * - Drawing the screen contents (entities, text) * - Updating game events * - Checking Input * <p> */ public void gameLoop() { long lastLoopTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); // keep looping round til the game ends while (gameRunning) { // work out how long its been since the last update, this // will be used to calculate how far the entities should // move this loop long delta = System.currentTimeMillis() - lastLoopTime; lastLoopTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); // Get hold of a graphics context for the accelerated // surface and blank it out Graphics2D g = (Graphics2D) strategy.getDrawGraphics(); g.setColor(Color.black); g.fillRect(0,0,800,600); // cycle round asking each entity to move itself if (!waitingForKeyPress) { for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); entity.move(delta); } } // cycle round drawing all the entities we have in the game for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); entity.draw(g); } // brute force collisions, compare every entity against // every other entity. If any of them collide notify // both entities that the collision has occured for (int p=0;p<entities.size();p++) { for (int s=p+1;s<entities.size();s++) { Entity me = (Entity) entities.get(p); Entity him = (Entity) entities.get(s); if (me.collidesWith(him)) { me.collidedWith(him); him.collidedWith(me); } } } // remove any entity that has been marked for clear up entities.removeAll(removeList); removeList.clear(); // if a game event has indicated that game logic should // be resolved, cycle round every entity requesting that // their personal logic should be considered. if (logicRequiredThisLoop) { //g.drawString("Press any key",(800-g.getFontMetrics().stringWidth("Press any key"))/2,300); for (int i=0;i<entities.size();i++) { Entity entity = (Entity) entities.get(i); entity.doLogic(); } logicRequiredThisLoop = false; } // if we're waiting for an "any key" press then draw the // current message //show highscore at top of screen //show name at top of screen g.setColor(Color.white); g.drawString("Player : "+getPlayer()+" : Score : "+getHighscore(),20,20); if (waitingForKeyPress) { g.setColor(Color.white); g.drawString(message,(800-g.getFontMetrics().stringWidth(message))/2,250); g.drawString("Press any key",(800-g.getFontMetrics().stringWidth("Press any key"))/2,300); } // finally, we've completed drawing so clear up the graphics // and flip the buffer over g.dispose(); strategy.show(); // resolve the movement of the ship. First assume the ship // isn't moving. If either cursor key is pressed then // update the movement appropraitely ship.setVerticalMovement(0);//set to vertical movement if ((leftPressed) && (!rightPressed)) { ship.setVerticalMovement(-moveSpeed);//**took out setHorizaontalMOvement } else if ((rightPressed) && (!leftPressed)) { ship.setVerticalMovement(moveSpeed);//**took out setHorizaontalMOvement } // if we're pressing fire, attempt to fire if (firePressed) { tryToFire(); } // finally pause for a bit. Note: this should run us at about // 100 fps but on windows this might vary each loop due to // a bad implementation of timer try { Thread.sleep(10); } catch (Exception e) {} } } /** * A class to handle keyboard input from the user. The class * handles both dynamic input during game play, i.e. left/right * and shoot, and more static type input (i.e. press any key to * continue) * * This has been implemented as an inner class more through * habbit then anything else. Its perfectly normal to implement * this as seperate class if slight less convienient. * * @author Kevin Glass */ private class KeyInputHandler extends KeyAdapter { /** The number of key presses we've had while waiting for an "any key" press */ private int pressCount = 1; /** * Notification from AWT that a key has been pressed. Note that * a key being pressed is equal to being pushed down but *NOT* * released. Thats where keyTyped() comes in. * * @param e The details of the key that was pressed */ public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) { // if we're waiting for an "any key" typed then we don't // want to do anything with just a "press" if (waitingForKeyPress) { return; } // if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_LEFT) { ////leftPressed = true; ///} //// if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT) { //rightPressed = true; if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_UP) { leftPressed = true; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_DOWN) { rightPressed = true; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_SPACE) { firePressed = true; } } /** * Notification from AWT that a key has been released. * * @param e The details of the key that was released */ public void keyReleased(KeyEvent e) { // if we're waiting for an "any key" typed then we don't // want to do anything with just a "released" if (waitingForKeyPress) { return; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_UP) {//changed from VK_LEFT leftPressed = false; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_DOWN) {//changed from VK_RIGHT rightPressed = false; } if (e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_SPACE) { firePressed = false; } } /** * Notification from AWT that a key has been typed. Note that * typing a key means to both press and then release it. * * @param e The details of the key that was typed. */ public void keyTyped(KeyEvent e) { // if we're waiting for a "any key" type then // check if we've recieved any recently. We may // have had a keyType() event from the user releasing // the shoot or move keys, hence the use of the "pressCount" // counter. if (waitingForKeyPress) { if (pressCount == 1) { // since we've now recieved our key typed // event we can mark it as such and start // our new game waitingForKeyPress = false; startGame(); pressCount = 0; } else { pressCount++; } } // if we hit escape, then quit the game if (e.getKeyChar() == 27) { //cThread.interrupt(); System.exit(0); } } } /** * The entry point into the game. We'll simply create an * instance of class which will start the display and game * loop. * * @param argv The arguments that are passed into our game */ //public static void main(String argv[]) { //Game g =new Game(); // Start the main game loop, note: this method will not // return until the game has finished running. Hence we are // using the actual main thread to run the game. //g.gameLoop(); //} }

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• How would you apply a BIOS update for a Dell M610 blade with VMware ESXi installed?

  - by Guamaniac

  Hello, all. We've got a Dell M610 blade with VMware ESXi 4 installed and we need to update it's BIOS to the latest version. Unfortunately, Dell only makes available a Windows (.exe) and Linux (.bin) versions of the BIOS update program (as well as a bootable DOS floppy version that is too big to fit on a 1.44MB floppy!). We've tried using various "LiveCD" versions of linux distributions but keep running into errors. Anyone out there with experience with Dell blades who could give us a hint or two to get this working? Thanks a lot, in advance. Joe

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• Advanced Data Source Engine coming to Telerik Reporting Q1 2010

  This is the final blog post from the pre-release series. In it we are going to share with you some of the updates coming to our reporting solution in Q1 2010. A new Declarative Data Source Engine will be added to Telerik Reporting, that will allow full control over data management, and deliver significant gains in rendering performance and memory consumption. Some of the engines new features will be: Data source parameters - those parameters will be used to limit data retrieved from the data source to just the data needed for the report. Data source parameters are processed on the data source side, however only queried data is fetched to the reporting engine, rather than the full data source. This leads to lower memory consumption, because data operations are performed on queried data only, rather than on all data. As a result, only the queried data needs to be stored in the memory vs. the whole dataset, which was the case with the old approach Support for stored procedures - they will assist in achieving a consistent implementation of logic across applications, and are especially practical for performing repetitive tasks. A stored procedure stores the SQL statements and logic, which can then be executed in different reports and/or applications. Stored Procedures will not only save development time, but they will also improve performance, because each stored procedure is compiled on the data base server once, and then is reutilized. In Telerik Reporting, the stored procedure will also be parameterized, where elements of the SQL statement will be bound to parameters. These parameterized SQL queries will be handled through the data source parameters, and are evaluated at run time. Using parameterized SQL queries will improve the performance and decrease the memory footprint of your application, because they will be applied directly on the database server and only the necessary data will be downloaded on the middle tier or client machine; Calculated fields through expressions - with the help of the new reporting engine you will be able to use field values in formulas to come up with a calculated field. A calculated field is a user defined field that is computed "on the fly" and does not exist in the data source, but can perform calculations using the data of the data source object it belongs to. Calculated fields are very handy for adding frequently used formulas to your reports; Improved performance and optimized in-memory OLAP engine - the new data source will come with several improvements in how aggregates are calculated, and memory is managed. As a result, you may experience between 30% (for simpler reports) and 400% (for calculation-intensive reports) in rendering performance, and about 50% decrease in memory consumption. Full design time support through wizards - Declarative data sources are a great advance and will save developers countless hours of coding. In Q1 2010, and true to Telerik Reportings essence, using the new data source engine and its features requires little to no coding, because we have extended most of the wizards to support the new functionality. The newly extended wizards are available in VS2005/VS2008/VS2010 design-time. More features will be revealed on the product's what's new page when the new version is officially released in a few days. Also make sure you attend the free webinar on Thursday, March 11th that will be dedicated to the updates in Telerik Reporting Q1 2010. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Looking into ASP.Net MVC 4.0 Mobile Development - part 1

  - by nikolaosk

  In this post I will be looking how ASP.Net MVC 4.0 helps us to create web solutions that target mobile devices.We all experience the magic that is the World Wide Web through mobile devices. Millions of people around the world, use tablets and smartphones to view the contents of websites,e-shops and portals.ASP.Net MVC 4.0 includes a new mobile project template and the ability to render a different set of views for different types of devices.There is a new feature that is called browser overriding which allows us to control exactly what a user is going to see from your web application regardless of what type of device he is using.In order to follow along this post you must have Visual Studio 2012 and .Net Framework 4.5 installed in your machine.Download and install VS 2012 using this link.My machine runs on Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 works just fine.It will work fine in Windows 7 as well so do not worry if you do not have the latest Microsoft operating system.1) Launch VS 2012 and create a new Web Forms application by going to File - >New Project - > ASP.Net MVC 4 Web Application and then click OKHave a look at the picture below  2) From the available templates select Mobile Application and then click OK.Have a look at the picture below 3) When I run the application I get the mobile view of the page. I would like to show you what a typical ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application looks like. So I will create a new simple ASP.Net MVC 4.0 Web Application. When I run the application I get the normal page view.Have a look at the picture below.On the left is the mobile view and on the right the normal view. As you can see we have more or less the same content in our mobile application (log in,register) compared with the normal ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application but it is optimised for mobile devices. 4) Let me explain how and when the mobile view is selected and finally rendered.There is a feature in MVC 4.0 that is called Display Modes and with this feature the runtime will select a view.If we have 2 views e.g contact.mobile.cshtml and contact.cshtml in our application the Controller at some point will instruct the runtime to select and render a view named contact.The runtime will look at the browser making the request and will determine if it is a mobile browser or a desktop browser. So if there is a request from my IPhone Safari browser for a particular site, if there is a mobile view the MVC 4.0 will select it and render it. If there is not a mobile view, the normal view will be rendered.5) In the  ASP.Net MVC 4.0 (Internet application) I created earlier (not the first project which was a mobile one) I can run it once more and see how it looks on the browser. If I want to view it with a mobile browser I must download one emulator like Opera Mobile.You can download Opera Mobile hereWhen I run the application I get the same view in both the desktop and the mobile browser. That was to be expected. Have a look at the picture below 6) Then I create another version of the _Layout.mobile.cshtml view in the Shared folder.I simply copy and paste the _Layout.cshtml  into the same folder and then rename it to _Layout.mobile.cshtml and then just alter the contents of the _Layout.mobile.cshtml.When I run again the application I get a different view on the desktop browser and a different one on the Opera mobile browser.Have a look at the picture below ?he Controller will instruct the ASP.Net runtime to select and render a view named _Layout.mobile.cshtml when the request will come from a mobile browser.?he runtime knows that a browser is a mobile one through the ASP.Net browser capability provider. Hope it helps!!!

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• JavaScript: this

  - by bdukes

  JavaScript is a language steeped in juxtaposition.  It was made to “look like Java,” yet is dynamic and classless.  From this origin, we get the new operator and the this keyword.  You are probably used to this referring to the current instance of a class, so what could it mean in a language without classes? In JavaScript, this refers to the object off of which a function is referenced when it is invoked (unless it is invoked via call or apply). What this means is that this is not bound to your function, and can change depending on how your function is invoked. It also means that this changes when declaring a function inside another function (i.e. each function has its own this), such as when writing a callback. Let's see some of this in action: var obj = { count: 0, increment: function () { this.count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(this.count); }, 1); } }; obj.increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 var increment = obj.increment; window.count = 'global count value: '; increment(); console.log(obj.count); // 1 console.log(window.count); // global count value: 1 var newObj = {count:50}; increment.call(newObj); console.log(newObj.count); // 51 obj.logAfterTimeout();// global count value: 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var proxiedFunction = $.proxy(function () { console.log(this.count); }, this); setTimeout(proxiedFunction, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 obj.logAfterTimeout = function () { var that = this; setTimeout(function () { console.log(that.count); }, 1); }; obj.logAfterTimeout(); // 1 The last couple of examples here demonstrate some methods for making sure you get the values you expect.  The first time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we use jQuery.proxy to create a new function which has its this permanently set to the passed in value (in this case, the current this).  The second time logAfterTimeout is redefined, we save the value of this in a variable (named that in this case, also often named self) and use the new variable in place of this. Now, all of this is to clarify what’s going on when you use this.  However, it’s pretty easy to avoid using this altogether in your code (especially in the way I’ve demonstrated above).  Instead of using this.count all over the place, it would have been much easier if I’d made count a variable instead of a property, and then I wouldn’t have to use this to refer to it.  var obj = (function () { var count = 0; return { increment: function () { count += 1; }, logAfterTimeout = function () { setTimeout(function () { console.log(count); }, 1); }, getCount: function () { return count; } }; }()); If you’re writing your code in this way, the main place you’ll run into issues with this is when handling DOM events (where this is the element on which the event occurred).  In that case, just be careful when using a callback within that event handler, that you’re not expecting this to still refer to the element (and use proxy or that/self if you need to refer to it). Finally, as demonstrated in the example, you can use call or apply on a function to set its this value.  This isn’t often needed, but you may also want to know that you can use apply to pass in an array of arguments to a function (e.g. console.log.apply(console, [1, 2, 3, 4])).

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• What I don&rsquo;t like about WIF&rsquo;s Claims-based Authorization

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  In my last post I wrote about what I like about WIF’s proposed approach to authorization – I also said that I definitely would build upon that infrastructure for my own systems. But implementing such a system is a little harder as it could be. Here’s why (and that’s purely my perspective): First of all WIF’s authorization comes in two “modes” Per-request authorization. When an ASP.NET/WCF request comes in, the registered authorization manager gets called. For SOAP the SOAP action gets passed in. For HTTP requests (ASP.NET, WCF REST) the URL and verb. Imperative authorization This happens when you explicitly call the claims authorization API from within your code. There you have full control over the values for action and resource. In ASP.NET per-request authorization is optional (depends on if you have added the ClaimsAuthorizationHttpModule). In WCF you always get the per-request checks as soon as you register the authorization manager in configuration. I personally prefer the imperative authorization because first of all I don’t believe in URL based authorization. Especially in the times of MVC and routing tables, URLs can be easily changed – but then you also have to adjust your authorization logic every time. Also – you typically need more knowledge than a simple “if user x is allowed to invoke operation x”. One problem I have is, both the per-request calls as well as the standard WIF imperative authorization APIs wrap actions and resources in the same claim type. This makes it hard to distinguish between the two authorization modes in your authorization manager. But you typically need that feature to structure your authorization policy evaluation in a clean way. The second problem (which is somehow related to the first one) is the standard API for interacting with the claims authorization manager. The API comes as an attribute (ClaimsPrincipalPermissionAttribute) as well as a class to use programmatically (ClaimsPrincipalPermission). Both only allow to pass in simple strings (which results in the wrapping with standard claim types mentioned earlier). Both throw a SecurityException when the check fails. The attribute is a code access permission attribute (like PrincipalPermission). That means it will always be invoked regardless how you call the code. This may be exactly what you want, or not. In a unit testing situation (like an MVC controller) you typically want to test the logic in the function – not the security check. The good news is, the WIF API is flexible enough that you can build your own infrastructure around their core. For my own projects I implemented the following extensions: A way to invoke the registered claims authorization manager with more overloads, e.g. with different claim types or a complete AuthorizationContext. A new CAS attribute (with the same calling semantics as the built-in one) with custom claim types. A MVC authorization attribute with custom claim types. A way to use branching – as opposed to catching a SecurityException. I will post the code for these various extensions here – so stay tuned.

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• Bump the Bill

  - by David Dorf

  I'm writing this from 3,400 feet in the air somewhere between Chicago and Austin. GoGo In-flight strikes again. Is there anywhere I can't get a WiFi connection? While listening to Deacon Blues by Steely Dan and skimming the news, I just came across an interesting article on mobile payments. Remember when I wrote about the iPhone Bump application and its possible use in retail? Well it looks like PayPal updated their mobile payments application to include the bump technology. Now its possible to transfer money between individuals by bumping iPhones. According to the WSJ, Paypal did 24 million transactions in 2008 and 140 million in 2009 on mobile phones. As the technology gets easier to use, that number is bound to increase. Alternatives to Paypal include Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, wireless carriers ("put it on my phone bill"), smart cards (using your phone's SIM card), and iTunes. That last one comes courtesy of a story Joe Skorupa wrote on mobile payments. It looks like Apple allows iPhone apps to take micro-payments via iTunes accounts, so there may come a time when its possible to use your iPhone to make a purchase in a retail store and have your credit card charged via your iTunes account. There are still some improvements in usability to be made before using a phone will be easier than swiping a credit card, but its already better than fussing with cash.

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• ASP.NET MVC for the php/asp noob

  - by dotjosh

  I was talking to a friend today, who's foremost a php developer, about his thoughts on Umbraco and he said "Well they're apparently working feverishly on the new version of Umbraco, which will be MVC... which i still don't know what that means, but I know you like it." I ended up giving him a ground up explanation of ASP.NET MVC, so I'm posting this so he can link this to his friends and for anyone else who finds it useful.  The whole goal was to be as simple as possible, not being focused on proper syntax. Model-View-Controller (or MVC) is just a pattern that is used for handling UI interaction with your backend.  In a typical web app, you can imagine the *M*odel as your database model, the *V*iew as your HTML page, and the *C*ontroller as the class inbetween.  MVC handles your web request different than your typical php/asp app.In your php/asp app, your url maps directly to a php/asp file that contains html, mixed with database access code and redirects.In an MVC app, your url route is mapped to a method on a class (the controller).  The body of this method can do some database access and THEN decide which *V*iew (html/aspx page) should be displayed;  putting the controller in charge and not the view... a clear seperation of concerns that provides better reusibility and generally promotes cleaner code. Mysite.com, a quick example:Let's say you hit the following url in your application: http://www.mysite.com/Product/ShowItem?Id=4 To avoid tedious configuration, MVC uses a lot of conventions by default. For instance, the above url in your app would automatically make MVC search for a .net class with the name "Product" and a method named "ShowItem" based on the pattern of the url.  So if you name things properly, your method would automatically be called when you entered the above url.  Additionally, it would automatically map/hydrate the "int id" parameter that was in your querystring, matched by name.Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        return View();    }} From this point you can write the code in the body of this method to do some database access and then pass a "bag" (also known as the ViewData) of data to your chosen *V*iew (html page) to use for display.  The view(html) ONLY needs to be worried about displaying the flattened data that it's been given in the best way it can;  this allows the view to be reused throughout your application as *just* a view, and not be coupled to HOW the data for that view get's loaded.. Product.cspublic class Product : Controller{    public ViewResult ShowItem(int id)    {        var database = new Database();        var item = database.GetItem(id);        ViewData["TheItem"] = item;        return View();    }} Again by convention, since the class' method name is "ShowItem", it'll search for a view named "ShowItem.aspx" by default, and pass the ViewData bag to it to use. ShowItem.aspx<html>     <body>      <%        var item =(Item)ViewData["TheItem"]       %>       <h1><%= item.FullProductName %></h1>     </body></html> BUT WAIT! WHY DOES MICROSOFT HAVE TO DO THINGS SO DIFFERENTLY!?They aren't... here are some other frameworks you may have heard of that use the same pattern in a their own way: Ruby On Rails Grails Spring MVC Struts Django    

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