inside the concurrent collections - Page 171

NHibernate Native SQL multiple joins

- by Chris

Hi all, I"m having some problems with Nhibernate and native sql. I've got an entity with alot of collections and I am doing an SQL Fulltext search on it. So when returning 100 or so entities, I dont want all collections be lazy loaded. For this I changed my SQL query: SELECT Query.* FROM (SELECT {spr.*}, {adr.*}, {adrt.*}, {cty.*}, {com.*}, {comt.*}, spft.[Rank] AS [Rak], Row_number() OVER(ORDER BY spft.[Rank] DESC) AS rownum FROM customer spr INNER JOIN CONTAINSTABLE ( customerfulltext , computedfulltextindex , '" + parsedSearchTerm + @"' ) AS spft ON spr.customerid = spft.[Key] LEFT JOIN [Address] adr ON adr.customerid = spr.customerid INNER JOIN [AddressType] adrt ON adrt.addresstypeid = adr.addresstypeid INNER JOIN [City] cty ON cty.cityid = adr.cityid LEFT JOIN [Communication] com ON com.customerid = spr.customerid INNER JOIN [CommunicationType] comt ON comt.communicationtypeid = com.communicationtypeid) as Query ORDER BY Query.[Rank] DESC This is how I setup the query: var items = GetCurrentSession() .CreateSQLQuery(query) .AddEntity("spr", typeof(Customer)) .AddJoin("adr", "spr.addresses") .AddJoin("adrt", "adr.Type") .AddJoin("cty", "adr.City") .AddJoin("com", "spr.communicationItems") .AddJoin("comt", "com.Type") .List<Customer>(); What happens now is, that the query returns customers twice (or more), I assume this is because of the joins since for each customer address, communicationItem (e.g. phone, email), a new sql row is returned. In this case I thought I could use the DistinctRootEntityResultTransformer. var items = GetCurrentSession() .CreateSQLQuery(query) .AddEntity("spr", typeof(Customer)) .AddJoin("adr", "spr.addresses") .AddJoin("adrt", "adr.Type") .AddJoin("cty", "adr.City") .AddJoin("com", "spr.communicationItems") .AddJoin("comt", "com.Type") .SetResultTransformer(new DistinctRootEntityResultTransformer()) .List<Customer>(); Doing so an exception is thrown. This is because I try to list customers .List<Customer>() but the transformer returns only entities of the last join added. E.g. in the case above, the entity with alias "comt" is returned when doing .List() instead of .List(). If I would switch last join with the join alias "cty", then the transformer returns a list of cities only... Anyone knows how I can return a clean list of customers in this case?

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Android - creating a custom preferences activity screen

- by Bill Osuch

Android applications can maintain their own internal preferences (and allow them to be modified by users) with very little coding. In fact, you don't even need to write an code to explicitly save these preferences, it's all handled automatically! Create a new Android project, with an intial activity title Main. Create two more activities: ShowPrefs, which extends Activity Set Prefs, which extends PreferenceActivity Add these two to your AndroidManifest.xml file: <activity android:name=".SetPrefs"></activity> <activity android:name=".ShowPrefs"></activity> Now we'll work on fleshing out each activity. First, open up the main.xml layout file and add a couple of buttons to it: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <Button android:text="Edit Preferences" android:id="@+id/prefButton" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> <Button android:text="Show Preferences" android:id="@+id/showButton" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal"/> </LinearLayout> Next, create a couple button listeners in Main.java to handle the clicks and start the other activities: Button editPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.prefButton); editPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View view) { Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), SetPrefs.class); startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0); } }); Button showPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.showButton); showPrefs.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View view) { Intent myIntent = new Intent(view.getContext(), ShowPrefs.class); startActivityForResult(myIntent, 0); } }); Now, we'll create the actual preferences layout. You'll need to create a file called preferences.xml inside res/xml, and you'll likely have to create the xml directory as well. Add the following xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> </PreferenceScreen> First we'll add a category, which is just a way to group similar preferences... sort of a horizontal bar. Add this inside the PreferenceScreen tags: <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> </PreferenceCategory> Now add a Checkbox and an Edittext box (inside the PreferenceCategory tags): <CheckBoxPreference android:key="checkboxPref" android:title="Checkbox Preference" android:summary="This preference can be true or false" android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference android:key="editTextPref" android:title="EditText Preference" android:summary="This allows you to enter a string" android:defaultValue="Nothing"/> The key is how you will refer to the preference in code, the title is the large text that will be displayed, and the summary is the smaller text (this will make sense when you see it). Let's say we've got a second group of preferences that apply to a different part of the app. Add a new category just below the first one: <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category"> </PreferenceCategory> In there we'll a list with radio buttons, so add: <ListPreference android:key="listPref" android:title="List Preference" android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array" android:entries="@array/listArray" android:entryValues="@array/listValues" /> When complete, your full xml file should look like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"> <PreferenceCategory android:title="First Category"> <CheckBoxPreference android:key="checkboxPref" android:title="Checkbox Preference" android:summary="This preference can be true or false" android:defaultValue="false"/> <EditTextPreference android:key="editTextPref" android:title="EditText Preference" android:summary="This allows you to enter a string" android:defaultValue="Nothing"/> </PreferenceCategory> <PreferenceCategory android:title="Second Category"> <ListPreference android:key="listPref" android:title="List Preference" android:summary="This preference lets you select an item in a array" android:entries="@array/listArray" android:entryValues="@array/listValues" /> </PreferenceCategory> </PreferenceScreen> However, when you try to save it, you'll get an error because you're missing your array definition. To fix this, add a file called arrays.xml in res/values, and paste in the following: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> <string-array name="listArray"> <item>Value 1</item> <item>Value 2</item> <item>Value 3</item> </string-array> <string-array name="listValues"> <item>1</item> <item>2</item> <item>3</item> </string-array> </resources> Finally (for the preferences screen at least...) add the code that will display the preferences layout to the SetPrefs.java file: @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.preferences); } OK, so now we've got an activity that will set preferences, and save them without the need to write custom save code. Let's throw together an activity to work with the saved preferences. Create a new layout called showpreferences.xml and give it three Textviews: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <TextView android:id="@+id/textview1" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="textview1"/> <TextView android:id="@+id/textview2" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="textview2"/> <TextView android:id="@+id/textview3" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="textview3"/> </LinearLayout> Open up the ShowPrefs.java file and have it use that layout: setContentView(R.layout.showpreferences); Then add the following code to load the DefaultSharedPreferences and display them: SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this); TextView text1 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview1); TextView text2 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview2); TextView text3 = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview3); text1.setText(new Boolean(prefs.getBoolean("checkboxPref", false)).toString()); text2.setText(prefs.getString("editTextPref", "<unset>"));; text3.setText(prefs.getString("listPref", "<unset>")); Fire up the application in the emulator and click the Edit Preferences button. Set various things, click the back button, then the Edit Preferences button again. Notice that your choices have been saved. Now click the Show Preferences button, and you should see the results of what you set: There are two more preference types that I did not include here: RingtonePreference - shows a radioGroup that lists your ringtones PreferenceScreen - allows you to embed a second preference screen inside the first - it opens up a new set of preferences when clicked

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Creating an AJAX Accordion Menu

- by jaullo

Introduction Ajax is a powerful addition to asp.net that provides new functionality in a simple and agile way This post is dedicated to creating a menu with ajax accordion type. About the Control The basic idea of this control, is to provide a serie of panels and show and hide information inside these panels. The use is very simple, we have to set each panel inside accordion control and give to each panel a Header and of course, we have to set the content of each panel. To use accordion control, u need the ajax control toolkit. know the basic propertyes of accordion control: Before start developing an accordion control, we have to know the basic properties for this control Other accordion propertyes FramesPerSecond - Number of frames per second used in the transition animations RequireOpenedPane - Prevent closing the currently opened pane when its header is clicked (which ensures one pane is always open). The default value is true. SuppressHeaderPostbacks - Prevent the client-side click handlers of elements inside a header from firing (this is especially useful when you want to include hyperlinks in your headers for accessibility) DataSource - The data source to use. DataBind() must be called. DataSourceID - The ID of the data source to use. DataMember - The member to bind to when using a DataSourceID AJAX Accordion Control Extender DataSource The Accordion Control extender of AJAX Control toolkit can also be used as DataBound control. You can bind the data retrieved from the database to the Accordion control. Accordion Control consists of properties such as DataSource and DataSourceID (we can se it above) that can be used to bind the data. HeaderTemplate can used to display the header or title for the pane generated by the Accordion control, a click on which will open or close the ContentTemplate generated by binding the data with Accordion extender. When DataSource is passed to the Accordion control, also use the DataBind method to bind the data. The Accordion control bound with data auto generates the expand/collapse panes along with their headers. This code represents the basic steps to bind the Accordion to a Datasource Collapse Public Sub getCategories() Dim sqlConn As New SqlConnection(conString) sqlConn.Open() Dim sqlSelect As New SqlCommand("SELECT * FROM Categories", sqlConn) sqlSelect.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.Text Dim sqlAdapter As New SqlDataAdapter(sqlSelect) Dim myDataset As New DataSet() sqlAdapter.Fill(myDataset) sqlConn.Close() Accordion1.DataSource = myDataset.Tables(0).DefaultView Accordion1.DataBind()End Sub Protected Sub Accordion1_ItemDataBound(sender As Object, _ e As AjaxControlToolkit.AccordionItemEventArgs) If e.ItemType = AjaxControlToolkit.AccordionItemType.Content Then Dim sqlConn As New SqlConnection(conString) sqlConn.Open() Dim sqlSelect As New SqlCommand("SELECT productName " & _ "FROM Products where categoryID = '" + _ DirectCast(e.AccordionItem.FindControl("txt_categoryID"),_ HiddenField).Value + "'", sqlConn) sqlSelect.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.Text Dim sqlAdapter As New SqlDataAdapter(sqlSelect) Dim myDataset As New DataSet() sqlAdapter.Fill(myDataset) sqlConn.Close() Dim grd As New GridView() grd = DirectCast(e.AccordionItem.FindControl("GridView1"), GridView) grd.DataSource = myDataset grd.DataBind() End If End Sub In the above code, we made two things, first, we made a sql select to database to retrieve all data from categories table, this data will be used to set the header and columns of the accordion. Collapse <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server"> </asp:ScriptManager> <ajaxToolkit:Accordion ID="Accordion1" runat="server" TransitionDuration="100" FramesPerSecond="200" FadeTransitions="true" RequireOpenedPane="false" OnItemDataBound="Accordion1_ItemDataBound" ContentCssClass="acc-content" HeaderCssClass="acc-header" HeaderSelectedCssClass="acc-selected"> <HeaderTemplate> <%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryName") %> </HeaderTemplate> <ContentTemplate> <asp:HiddenField ID="txt_categoryID" runat="server" Value='<%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryID") %>' /> <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" RowStyle-BackColor="#ededed" RowStyle-HorizontalAlign="Left" AutoGenerateColumns="false" GridLines="None" CellPadding="2" CellSpacing="2" Width="300px"> <Columns> <asp:TemplateField HeaderStyle-HorizontalAlign="Left" HeaderText="Product Name" HeaderStyle-BackColor="#d1d1d1" HeaderStyle-ForeColor="#777777"> <ItemTemplate> <%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"productName") %> </ItemTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> </Columns> </asp:GridView> </ContentTemplate> </ajaxToolkit:Accordion> Here, we use <%#DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem,"categoryName") %> to bind accordion header with categoryName, so we made on header for each element found on database. Creating a basic accordion control As we know, to use any of the ajax components, there must be a registered ScriptManager on our site, which will be responsible for managing our controls. So the first thing we will do is create our script manager. Collapse <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server"></asp:ScriptManager> Then we define our accordion element and establish some basic properties: Collapse <cc1:Accordion ID="AccordionCtrl" runat="server" SelectedIndex="0" HeaderCssClass="accordionHeader" ContentCssClass="accordionContent" AutoSize="None" FadeTransitions="true" TransitionDuration="250" FramesPerSecond="40" For our work we must declare PANES accordion inside it, these breads will be responsible for contain information, links or information that we want to show. Collapse <Panes> <cc1:AccordionPane ID="AccordionPane0" runat="server"> <Header>Matenimiento</Header> <Content> <li><a href="mypagina.aspx">My página de prueba</a></li> </Content> </cc1:AccordionPane> To end this work, we have to close all panels and our accordion Collapse </Panes> </cc1:Accordion> Finally complete our example should look like: Collapse <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server"></asp:ScriptManager> <cc1:Accordion ID="AccordionCtrl" runat="server" SelectedIndex="0" HeaderCssClass="accordionHeader" ContentCssClass="accordionContent" AutoSize="None" FadeTransitions="true" TransitionDuration="250" FramesPerSecond="40"> <Panes> <cc1:AccordionPane ID="AccordionPane0" runat="server"> <Header>Matenimiento</Header> <Content> <li><a href="mypagina.aspx">My página de prueba</a></li> </Content> </cc1:AccordionPane> </Panes> </cc1:Accordion>

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New Validation Attributes in ASP.NET MVC 3 Future

- by imran_ku07

Introduction: Validating user inputs is an very important step in collecting information from users because it helps you to prevent errors during processing data. Incomplete or improperly formatted user inputs will create lot of problems for your application. Fortunately, ASP.NET MVC 3 makes it very easy to validate most common input validations. ASP.NET MVC 3 includes Required, StringLength, Range, RegularExpression, Compare and Remote validation attributes for common input validation scenarios. These validation attributes validates most of your user inputs but still validation for Email, File Extension, Credit Card, URL, etc are missing. Fortunately, some of these validation attributes are available in ASP.NET MVC 3 Future. In this article, I will show you how to leverage Email, Url, CreditCard and FileExtensions validation attributes(which are available in ASP.NET MVC 3 Future) in ASP.NET MVC 3 application. Description: First of all you need to download ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM Source Code from here. Then extract all files in a folder. Then open MvcFutures project from mvc3-rtm-sources\mvc3\src\MvcFutures folder. Build the project. In case, if you get compile time error(s) then simply remove the reference of System.Web.WebPages and System.Web.Mvc assemblies and add the reference of System.Web.WebPages and System.Web.Mvc 3 assemblies again but from the .NET tab and then build the project again, it will create a Microsoft.Web.Mvc assembly inside mvc3-rtm-sources\mvc3\src\MvcFutures\obj\Debug folder. Now we can use Microsoft.Web.Mvc assembly inside our application. Create a new ASP.NET MVC 3 application. For demonstration purpose, I will create a dummy model UserInformation. So create a new class file UserInformation.cs inside Model folder and add the following code, public class UserInformation { [Required] public string Name { get; set; } [Required] [EmailAddress] public string Email { get; set; } [Required] [Url] public string Website { get; set; } [Required] [CreditCard] public string CreditCard { get; set; } [Required] [FileExtensions(Extensions = "jpg,jpeg")] public string Image { get; set; } } Inside UserInformation class, I am using Email, Url, CreditCard and FileExtensions validation attributes which are defined in Microsoft.Web.Mvc assembly. By default FileExtensionsAttribute allows png, jpg, jpeg and gif extensions. You can override this by using Extensions property of FileExtensionsAttribute class. Then just open(or create) HomeController.cs file and add the following code, public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } [HttpPost] public ActionResult Index(UserInformation u) { return View(); } } Next just open(or create) Index view for Home controller and add the following code, @model NewValidationAttributesinASPNETMVC3Future.Model.UserInformation @{ ViewBag.Title = "Index"; Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; } <h2>Index</h2> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.ValidationSummary(true) <fieldset> <legend>UserInformation</legend> <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Name) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Name) </div> <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Email) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Email) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Email) </div> <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Website) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Website) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Website) </div> <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.CreditCard) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.CreditCard) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.CreditCard) </div> <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Image) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Image) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Image) </div> <p> <input type="submit" value="Save" /> </p> </fieldset> } <div> @Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index") </div> Now just run your application. You will find that both client side and server side validation for the above validation attributes works smoothly. Summary: Email, URL, Credit Card and File Extension input validations are very common. In this article, I showed you how you can validate these input validations into your application. I explained this with an example. I am also attaching a sample application which also includes Microsoft.Web.Mvc.dll. So you can add a reference of Microsoft.Web.Mvc assembly directly instead of doing any manual work. Hope you will enjoy this article too. SyntaxHighlighter.all()

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LLBLGen Pro feature highlights: grouping model elements

- by FransBouma

(This post is part of a series of posts about features of the LLBLGen Pro system) When working with an entity model which has more than a few entities, it's often convenient to be able to group entities together if they belong to a semantic sub-model. For example, if your entity model has several entities which are about 'security', it would be practical to group them together under the 'security' moniker. This way, you could easily find them back, yet they can be left inside the complete entity model altogether so their relationships with entities outside the group are kept. In other situations your domain consists of semi-separate entity models which all target tables/views which are located in the same database. It then might be convenient to have a single project to manage the complete target database, yet have the entity models separate of each other and have them result in separate code bases. LLBLGen Pro can do both for you. This blog post will illustrate both situations. The feature is called group usage and is controllable through the project settings. This setting is supported on all supported O/R mapper frameworks. Situation one: grouping entities in a single model. This situation is common for entity models which are dense, so many relationships exist between all sub-models: you can't split them up easily into separate models (nor do you likely want to), however it's convenient to have them grouped together into groups inside the entity model at the project level. A typical example for this is the AdventureWorks example database for SQL Server. This database, which is a single catalog, has for each sub-group a schema, however most of these schemas are tightly connected with each other: adding all schemas together will give a model with entities which indirectly are related to all other entities. LLBLGen Pro's default setting for group usage is AsVisualGroupingMechanism which is what this situation is all about: we group the elements for visual purposes, it has no real meaning for the model nor the code generated. Let's reverse engineer AdventureWorks to an entity model. By default, LLBLGen Pro uses the target schema an element is in which is being reverse engineered, as the group it will be in. This is convenient if you already have categorized tables/views in schemas, like which is the case in AdventureWorks. Of course this can be switched off, or corrected on the fly. When reverse engineering, we'll walk through a wizard which will guide us with the selection of the elements which relational model data should be retrieved, which we can later on use to reverse engineer to an entity model. The first step after specifying which database server connect to is to select these elements. below we can see the AdventureWorks catalog as well as the different schemas it contains. We'll include all of them. After the wizard completes, we have all relational model data nicely in our catalog data, with schemas. So let's reverse engineer entities from the tables in these schemas. We select in the catalog explorer the schemas 'HumanResources', 'Person', 'Production', 'Purchasing' and 'Sales', then right-click one of them and from the context menu, we select Reverse engineer Tables to Entity Definitions.... This will bring up the dialog below. We check all checkboxes in one go by checking the checkbox at the top to mark them all to be added to the project. As you can see LLBLGen Pro has already filled in the group name based on the schema name, as this is the default and we didn't change the setting. If you want, you can select multiple rows at once and set the group name to something else using the controls on the dialog. We're fine with the group names chosen so we'll simply click Add to Project. This gives the following result: (I collapsed the other groups to keep the picture small ;)). As you can see, the entities are now grouped. Just to see how dense this model is, I've expanded the relationships of Employee: As you can see, it has relationships with entities from three other groups than HumanResources. It's not doable to cut up this project into sub-models without duplicating the Employee entity in all those groups, so this model is better suited to be used as a single model resulting in a single code base, however it benefits greatly from having its entities grouped into separate groups at the project level, to make work done on the model easier. Now let's look at another situation, namely where we work with a single database while we want to have multiple models and for each model a separate code base. Situation two: grouping entities in separate models within the same project. To get rid of the entities to see the second situation in action, simply undo the reverse engineering action in the project. We still have the AdventureWorks relational model data in the catalog. To switch LLBLGen Pro to see each group in the project as a separate project, open the Project Settings, navigate to General and set Group usage to AsSeparateProjects. In the catalog explorer, select Person and Production, right-click them and select again Reverse engineer Tables to Entities.... Again check the checkbox at the top to mark all entities to be added and click Add to Project. We get two groups, as expected, however this time the groups are seen as separate projects. This means that the validation logic inside LLBLGen Pro will see it as an error if there's e.g. a relationship or an inheritance edge linking two groups together, as that would lead to a cyclic reference in the code bases. To see this variant of the grouping feature, seeing the groups as separate projects, in action, we'll generate code from the project with the two groups we just created: select from the main menu: Project -> Generate Source-code... (or press F7 ;)). In the dialog popping up, select the target .NET framework you want to use, the template preset, fill in a destination folder and click Start Generator (normal). This will start the code generator process. As expected the code generator has simply generated two code bases, one for Person and one for Production: The group name is used inside the namespace for the different elements. This allows you to add both code bases to a single solution and use them together in a different project without problems. Below is a snippet from the code file of a generated entity class. //... using System.Xml.Serialization; using AdventureWorks.Person; using AdventureWorks.Person.HelperClasses; using AdventureWorks.Person.FactoryClasses; using AdventureWorks.Person.RelationClasses; using SD.LLBLGen.Pro.ORMSupportClasses; namespace AdventureWorks.Person.EntityClasses { //... /// <summary>Entity class which represents the entity 'Address'.<br/><br/></summary> [Serializable] public partial class AddressEntity : CommonEntityBase //... The advantage of this is that you can have two code bases and work with them separately, yet have a single target database and maintain everything in a single location. If you decide to move to a single code base, you can do so with a change of one setting. It's also useful if you want to keep the groups as separate models (and code bases) yet want to add relationships to elements from another group using a copy of the entity: you can simply reverse engineer the target table to a new entity into a different group, effectively making a copy of the entity. As there's a single target database, changes made to that database are reflected in both models which makes maintenance easier than when you'd have a separate project for each group, with its own relational model data. Conclusion LLBLGen Pro offers a flexible way to work with entities in sub-models and control how the sub-models end up in the generated code.

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Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - CLR metadata 1

- by Simon Cooper

Before we look at the bytes comprising the CLR-specific data inside an assembly, we first need to understand the logical format of the metadata (For this post I only be looking at simple pure-IL assemblies; mixed-mode assemblies & other things complicates things quite a bit). Metadata streams Most of the CLR-specific data inside an assembly is inside one of 5 streams, which are analogous to the sections in a PE file. The name of each section in a PE file starts with a ., and the name of each stream in the CLR metadata starts with a #. All but one of the streams are heaps, which store unstructured binary data. The predefined streams are: #~ Also called the metadata stream, this stream stores all the information on the types, methods, fields, properties and events in the assembly. Unlike the other streams, the metadata stream has predefined contents & structure. #Strings This heap is where all the namespace, type & member names are stored. It is referenced extensively from the #~ stream, as we'll be looking at later. #US Also known as the user string heap, this stream stores all the strings used in code directly. All the strings you embed in your source code end up in here. This stream is only referenced from method bodies. #GUID This heap exclusively stores GUIDs used throughout the assembly. #Blob This heap is for storing pure binary data - method signatures, generic instantiations, that sort of thing. Items inside the heaps (#Strings, #US, #GUID and #Blob) are indexed using a simple binary offset from the start of the heap. At that offset is a coded integer giving the length of that item, then the item's bytes immediately follow. The #GUID stream is slightly different, in that GUIDs are all 16 bytes long, so a length isn't required. Metadata tables The #~ stream contains all the assembly metadata. The metadata is organised into 45 tables, which are binary arrays of predefined structures containing information on various aspects of the metadata. Each entry in a table is called a row, and the rows are simply concatentated together in the file on disk. For example, each row in the TypeRef table contains: A reference to where the type is defined (most of the time, a row in the AssemblyRef table). An offset into the #Strings heap with the name of the type An offset into the #Strings heap with the namespace of the type. in that order. The important tables are (with their table number in hex): 0x2: TypeDef 0x4: FieldDef 0x6: MethodDef 0x14: EventDef 0x17: PropertyDef Contains basic information on all the types, fields, methods, events and properties defined in the assembly. 0x1: TypeRef The details of all the referenced types defined in other assemblies. 0xa: MemberRef The details of all the referenced members of types defined in other assemblies. 0x9: InterfaceImpl Links the types defined in the assembly with the interfaces that type implements. 0xc: CustomAttribute Contains information on all the attributes applied to elements in this assembly, from method parameters to the assembly itself. 0x18: MethodSemantics Links properties and events with the methods that comprise the get/set or add/remove methods of the property or method. 0x1b: TypeSpec 0x2b: MethodSpec These tables provide instantiations of generic types and methods for each usage within the assembly. There are several ways to reference a single row within a table. The simplest is to simply specify the 1-based row index (RID). The indexes are 1-based so a value of 0 can represent 'null'. In this case, which table the row index refers to is inferred from the context. If the table can't be determined from the context, then a particular row is specified using a token. This is a 4-byte value with the most significant byte specifying the table, and the other 3 specifying the 1-based RID within that table. This is generally how a metadata table row is referenced from the instruction stream in method bodies. The third way is to use a coded token, which we will look at in the next post. So, back to the bytes Now we've got a rough idea of how the metadata is logically arranged, we can now look at the bytes comprising the start of the CLR data within an assembly: The first 8 bytes of the .text section are used by the CLR loader stub. After that, the CLR-specific data starts with the CLI header. I've highlighted the important bytes in the diagram. In order, they are: The size of the header. As the header is a fixed size, this is always 0x48. The CLR major version. This is always 2, even for .NET 4 assemblies. The CLR minor version. This is always 5, even for .NET 4 assemblies, and seems to be ignored by the runtime. The RVA and size of the metadata header. In the diagram, the RVA 0x20e4 corresponds to the file offset 0x2e4 Various flags specifying if this assembly is pure-IL, whether it is strong name signed, and whether it should be run as 32-bit (this is how the CLR differentiates between x86 and AnyCPU assemblies). A token pointing to the entrypoint of the assembly. In this case, 06 (the last byte) refers to the MethodDef table, and 01 00 00 refers to to the first row in that table. (after a gap) RVA of the strong name signature hash, which comes straight after the CLI header. The RVA 0x2050 corresponds to file offset 0x250. The rest of the CLI header is mainly used in mixed-mode assemblies, and so is zeroed in this pure-IL assembly. After the CLI header comes the strong name hash, which is a SHA-1 hash of the assembly using the strong name key. After that comes the bodies of all the methods in the assembly concatentated together. Each method body starts off with a header, which I'll be looking at later. As you can see, this is a very small assembly with only 2 methods (an instance constructor and a Main method). After that, near the end of the .text section, comes the metadata, containing a metadata header and the 5 streams discussed above. We'll be looking at this in the next post. Conclusion The CLI header data doesn't have much to it, but we've covered some concepts that will be important in later posts - the logical structure of the CLR metadata and the overall layout of CLR data within the .text section. Next, I'll have a look at the contents of the #~ stream, and how the table data is arranged on disk.

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ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: Error Handling and CustomErrors in ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework

- by C. Miller

So, what else is new in MVC 3? MVC 3 now has a GlobalFilterCollection that is automatically populated with a HandleErrorAttribute. This default FilterAttribute brings with it a new way of handling errors in your web applications. In short, you can now handle errors inside of the MVC pipeline. What does that mean? This gives you direct programmatic control over handling your 500 errors in the same way that ASP.NET and CustomErrors give you configurable control of handling your HTTP error codes. How does that work out? Think of it as a routing table specifically for your Exceptions, it's pretty sweet! Global Filters The new Global.asax file now has a RegisterGlobalFilters method that is used to add filters to the new GlobalFilterCollection, statically located at System.Web.Mvc.GlobalFilter.Filters. By default this method adds one filter, the HandleErrorAttribute. public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication { public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters) { filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute()); } HandleErrorAttributes The HandleErrorAttribute is pretty simple in concept: MVC has already adjusted us to using Filter attributes for our AcceptVerbs and RequiresAuthorization, now we are going to use them for (as the name implies) error handling, and we are going to do so on a (also as the name implies) global scale. The HandleErrorAttribute has properties for ExceptionType, View, and Master. The ExceptionType allows you to specify what exception that attribute should handle. The View allows you to specify which error view (page) you want it to redirect to. Last but not least, the Master allows you to control which master page (or as Razor refers to them, Layout) you want to render with, even if that means overriding the default layout specified in the view itself. public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication { public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters) { filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute { ExceptionType = typeof(DbException), // DbError.cshtml is a view in the Shared folder. View = "DbError", Order = 2 }); filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute()); }Error Views All of your views still work like they did in the previous version of MVC (except of course that they can now use the Razor engine). However, a view that is used to render an error can not have a specified model! This is because they already have a model, and that is System.Web.Mvc.HandleErrorInfo @model System.Web.Mvc.HandleErrorInfo @{ ViewBag.Title = "DbError"; } <h2>A Database Error Has Occurred</h2> @if (Model != null) { <p>@Model.Exception.GetType().Name<br /> thrown in @Model.ControllerName @Model.ActionName</p> }Errors Outside of the MVC Pipeline The HandleErrorAttribute will only handle errors that happen inside of the MVC pipeline, better known as 500 errors. Errors outside of the MVC pipeline are still handled the way they have always been with ASP.NET. You turn on custom errors, specify error codes and paths to error pages, etc. It is important to remember that these will happen for anything and everything outside of what the HandleErrorAttribute handles. Also, these will happen whenever an error is not handled with the HandleErrorAttribute from inside of the pipeline. <system.web> <customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="~/error"> <error statusCode="404" redirect="~/error/notfound"></error> </customErrors>Sample Controllers public class ExampleController : Controller { public ActionResult Exception() { throw new ArgumentNullException(); } public ActionResult Db() { // Inherits from DbException throw new MyDbException(); } } public class ErrorController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } public ActionResult NotFound() { return View(); } } Putting It All Together If we have all the code above included in our MVC 3 project, here is how the following scenario's will play out: 1. A controller action throws an Exception. You will remain on the current page and the global HandleErrorAttributes will render the Error view. 2. A controller action throws any type of DbException. You will remain on the current page and the global HandleErrorAttributes will render the DbError view. 3. Go to a non-existent page. You will be redirect to the Error controller's NotFound action by the CustomErrors configuration for HTTP StatusCode 404. But don't take my word for it, download the sample project and try it yourself. Three Important Lessons Learned For the most part this is all pretty straight forward, but there are a few gotcha's that you should remember to watch out for: 1) Error views have models, but they must be of type HandleErrorInfo. It is confusing at first to think that you can't control the M in an MVC page, but it's for a good reason. Errors can come from any action in any controller, and no redirect is taking place, so the view engine is just going to render an error view with the only data it has: The HandleError Info model. Do not try to set the model on your error page or pass in a different object through a controller action, it will just blow up and cause a second exception after your first exception! 2) When the HandleErrorAttribute renders a page, it does not pass through a controller or an action. The standard web.config CustomErrors literally redirect a failed request to a new page. The HandleErrorAttribute is just rendering a view, so it is not going to pass through a controller action. But that's ok! Remember, a controller's job is to get the model for a view, but an error already has a model ready to give to the view, thus there is no need to pass through a controller. That being said, the normal ASP.NET custom errors still need to route through controllers. So if you want to share an error page between the HandleErrorAttribute and your web.config redirects, you will need to create a controller action and route for it. But then when you render that error view from your action, you can only use the HandlerErrorInfo model or ViewData dictionary to populate your page. 3) The HandleErrorAttribute obeys if CustomErrors are on or off, but does not use their redirects. If you turn CustomErrors off in your web.config, the HandleErrorAttributes will stop handling errors. However, that is the only configuration these two mechanisms share. The HandleErrorAttribute will not use your defaultRedirect property, or any other errors registered with customer errors. In Summary The HandleErrorAttribute is for displaying 500 errors that were caused by exceptions inside of the MVC pipeline. The custom errors are for redirecting from error pages caused by other HTTP codes.

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JSP Precompilation for ADF Applications

- by Duncan Mills

A question that comes up from time to time, particularly in relation to build automation, is how to best pre-compile the .jspx and .jsff files in an ADF application. Thus ensuring that the app is ready to run as soon as it's installed into WebLogic. In the normal run of things, the first poor soul to hit a page pays the price and has to wait a little whilst the JSP is compiled into a servlet. Everyone else subsequently gets a free lunch. So it's a reasonable thing to want to do... Let Me List the Ways So forth to Google (other search engines are available)... which lead me to a fairly old article on WLDJ - Removing Performance Bottlenecks Through JSP Precompilation. Technololgy wise, it's somewhat out of date, but the one good point that it made is that it's really not very useful to try and use the precompile option in the weblogic.xml file. That's a really good observation - particularly if you're trying to integrate a pre-compile step into a Hudson Continuous Integration process. That same article mentioned an alternative approach for programmatic pre-compilation using weblogic.jspc. This seemed like a much more useful approach for a CI environment. However, weblogic.jspc is now obsoleted by weblogic.appc so we'll use that instead. Thanks to Steve for the pointer there. And So To APPC APPC has documentation - always a great place to start, and supports usage both from Ant via the wlappc task and from the command line using the weblogic.appc command. In my testing I took the latter approach. Usage, as the documentation will show you, is superficially pretty simple. The nice thing here, is that you can pass an existing EAR file (generated of course using OJDeploy) and that EAR will be updated in place with the freshly compiled servlet classes created from the JSPs. Appc takes care of all the unpacking, compiling and re-packing of the EAR for you. Neat. So we're done right...? Not quite. The Devil is in the Detail OK so I'm being overly dramatic but it's not all plain sailing, so here's a short guide to using weblogic.appc to compile a simple ADF application without pain. Information You'll Need The following is based on the assumption that you have a stand-alone WLS install with the Application Development Runtime installed and a suitable ADF enabled domain created. This could of course all be run off of a JDeveloper install as well 1. Your Weblogic home directory. Everything you need is relative to this so make a note. In my case it's c:\builds\wls_ps4. 2. Next deploy your EAR as normal and have a peek inside it using your favourite zip management tool. First of all look at the weblogic-application.xml inside the EAR /META-INF directory. Have a look for any library references. Something like this: <library-ref> <library-name>adf.oracle.domain</library-name> </library-ref> Make a note of the library ref (adf.oracle.domain in this case) , you'll need that in a second. 3. Next open the nested WAR file within the EAR and then have a peek inside the weblogic.xml file in the /WEB-INF directory. Again make a note of the library references. 4. Now start the WebLogic as per normal and run the WebLogic console app (e.g. http://localhost:7001/console). In the Domain Structure navigator, select Deployments. 5. For each of the libraries you noted down drill into the library definition and make a note of the .war, .ear or .jar that defines the library. For example, in my case adf.oracle.domain maps to "C:\ builds\ WLS_PS4\ oracle_common\ modules\ oracle. adf. model_11. 1. 1\ adf. oracle. domain. ear". Note the extra spaces that are salted throughout this string as it is displayed in the console - just to make it annoying, you'll have to strip these out. 6. Finally you'll need the location of the adfsharebean.jar. We need to pass this on the classpath for APPC so that the ADFConfigLifeCycleCallBack listener can be found. In a more complex app of your own you may need additional classpath entries as well. Now we're ready to go, and it's a simple matter of applying the information we have gathered into the relevant command line arguments for the utility A Simple CMD File to Run APPC Here's the stub .cmd file I'm using on Windows to run this. @echo offREM Stub weblogic.appc Runner setlocal set WLS_HOME=C:\builds\WLS_PS4 set ADF_LIB_ROOT=%WLS_HOME%\oracle_common\modulesset COMMON_LIB_ROOT=%WLS_HOME%\wlserver_10.3\common\deployable-libraries set ADF_WEBAPP=%ADF_LIB_ROOT%\oracle.adf.view_11.1.1\adf.oracle.domain.webapp.war set ADF_DOMAIN=%ADF_LIB_ROOT%\oracle.adf.model_11.1.1\adf.oracle.domain.ear set JSTL=%COMMON_LIB_ROOT%\jstl-1.2.war set JSF=%COMMON_LIB_ROOT%\jsf-1.2.war set ADF_SHARE=%ADF_LIB_ROOT%\oracle.adf.share_11.1.1\adfsharembean.jar REM Set up the WebLogic Environment so appc can be found call %WLS_HOME%\wlserver_10.3\server\bin\setWLSEnv.cmd CLS REM Now compile away!java weblogic.appc -verbose -library %ADF_WEBAPP%,%ADF_DOMAIN%,%JSTL%,%JSF% -classpath %ADF_SHARE% %1 endlocal Running the above on a target ADF .ear file will zip through and create all of the relevant compiled classes inside your nested .war file in the \WEB-INF\classes\jsp_servlet\ directory (but don't take my word for it, run it and take a look!) And So... In the immortal words of the Pet Shop Boys, Was It Worth It? Well, here's where you'll have to do your own testing. In my case here, with a simple ADF application, pre-compilation shaved an non-scientific "3 Elephants" off of the initial page load time for the first access of each page. That's a pretty significant payback for such a simple step to add into your CI process, so why not give it a go.

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Python - Converting CSV to Objects - Code Design

- by victorhooi

Hi, I have a small script we're using to read in a CSV file containing employees, and perform some basic manipulations on that data. We read in the data (import_gd_dump), and create an Employees object, containing a list of Employee objects (maybe I should think of a better naming convention...lol). We then call clean_all_phone_numbers() on Employees, which calls clean_phone_number() on each Employee, as well as lookup_all_supervisors(), on Employees. import csv import re import sys #class CSVLoader: # """Virtual class to assist with loading in CSV files.""" # def import_gd_dump(self, input_file='Gp Directory 20100331 original.csv'): # gd_extract = csv.DictReader(open(input_file), dialect='excel') # employees = [] # for row in gd_extract: # curr_employee = Employee(row) # employees.append(curr_employee) # return employees # #self.employees = {row['dbdirid']:row for row in gd_extract} # Previously, this was inside a (virtual) class called "CSVLoader". # However, according to here (http://tomayko.com/writings/the-static-method-thing) - the idiomatic way of doing this in Python is not with a class-fucntion but with a module-level function def import_gd_dump(input_file='Gp Directory 20100331 original.csv'): """Return a list ('employee') of dict objects, taken from a Group Directory CSV file.""" gd_extract = csv.DictReader(open(input_file), dialect='excel') employees = [] for row in gd_extract: employees.append(row) return employees def write_gd_formatted(employees_dict, output_file="gd_formatted.csv"): """Read in an Employees() object, and write out each Employee() inside this to a CSV file""" gd_output_fieldnames = ('hrid', 'mail', 'givenName', 'sn', 'dbcostcenter', 'dbdirid', 'hrreportsto', 'PHFull', 'PHFull_message', 'SupervisorEmail', 'SupervisorFirstName', 'SupervisorSurname') try: gd_formatted = csv.DictWriter(open(output_file, 'w', newline=''), fieldnames=gd_output_fieldnames, extrasaction='ignore', dialect='excel') except IOError: print('Unable to open file, IO error (Is it locked?)') sys.exit(1) headers = {n:n for n in gd_output_fieldnames} gd_formatted.writerow(headers) for employee in employees_dict.employee_list: # We're using the employee object's inbuilt __dict__ attribute - hmm, is this good practice? gd_formatted.writerow(employee.__dict__) class Employee: """An Employee in the system, with employee attributes (name, email, cost-centre etc.)""" def __init__(self, employee_attributes): """We use the Employee constructor to convert a dictionary into instance attributes.""" for k, v in employee_attributes.items(): setattr(self, k, v) def clean_phone_number(self): """Perform some rudimentary checks and corrections, to make sure numbers are in the right format. Numbers should be in the form 0XYYYYYYYY, where X is the area code, and Y is the local number.""" if self.telephoneNumber is None or self.telephoneNumber == '': return '', 'Missing phone number.' else: standard_format = re.compile(r'^\+(?P<intl_prefix>\d{2})$(?P<area_code>\d)$(?P<local_first_half>\d{4})-(?P<local_second_half>\d{4})') extra_zero = re.compile(r'^\+(?P<intl_prefix>\d{2})$0(?P<area_code>\d)$(?P<local_first_half>\d{4})-(?P<local_second_half>\d{4})') missing_hyphen = re.compile(r'^\+(?P<intl_prefix>\d{2})$0(?P<area_code>\d)$(?P<local_first_half>\d{4})(?P<local_second_half>\d{4})') if standard_format.search(self.telephoneNumber): result = standard_format.search(self.telephoneNumber) return '0' + result.group('area_code') + result.group('local_first_half') + result.group('local_second_half'), '' elif extra_zero.search(self.telephoneNumber): result = extra_zero.search(self.telephoneNumber) return '0' + result.group('area_code') + result.group('local_first_half') + result.group('local_second_half'), 'Extra zero in area code - ask user to remediate. ' elif missing_hyphen.search(self.telephoneNumber): result = missing_hyphen.search(self.telephoneNumber) return '0' + result.group('area_code') + result.group('local_first_half') + result.group('local_second_half'), 'Missing hyphen in local component - ask user to remediate. ' else: return '', "Number didn't match recognised format. Original text is: " + self.telephoneNumber class Employees: def __init__(self, import_list): self.employee_list = [] for employee in import_list: self.employee_list.append(Employee(employee)) def clean_all_phone_numbers(self): for employee in self.employee_list: #Should we just set this directly in Employee.clean_phone_number() instead? employee.PHFull, employee.PHFull_message = employee.clean_phone_number() # Hmm, the search is O(n^2) - there's probably a better way of doing this search? def lookup_all_supervisors(self): for employee in self.employee_list: if employee.hrreportsto is not None and employee.hrreportsto != '': for supervisor in self.employee_list: if supervisor.hrid == employee.hrreportsto: (employee.SupervisorEmail, employee.SupervisorFirstName, employee.SupervisorSurname) = supervisor.mail, supervisor.givenName, supervisor.sn break else: (employee.SupervisorEmail, employee.SupervisorFirstName, employee.SupervisorSurname) = ('Supervisor not found.', 'Supervisor not found.', 'Supervisor not found.') else: (employee.SupervisorEmail, employee.SupervisorFirstName, employee.SupervisorSurname) = ('Supervisor not set.', 'Supervisor not set.', 'Supervisor not set.') #Is thre a more pythonic way of doing this? def print_employees(self): for employee in self.employee_list: print(employee.__dict__) if __name__ == '__main__': db_employees = Employees(import_gd_dump()) db_employees.clean_all_phone_numbers() db_employees.lookup_all_supervisors() #db_employees.print_employees() write_gd_formatted(db_employees) Firstly, my preamble question is, can you see anything inherently wrong with the above, from either a class design or Python point-of-view? Is the logic/design sound? Anyhow, to the specifics: The Employees object has a method, clean_all_phone_numbers(), which calls clean_phone_number() on each Employee object inside it. Is this bad design? If so, why? Also, is the way I'm calling lookup_all_supervisors() bad? Originally, I wrapped the clean_phone_number() and lookup_supervisor() method in a single function, with a single for-loop inside it. clean_phone_number is O(n), I believe, lookup_supervisor is O(n^2) - is it ok splitting it into two loops like this? In clean_all_phone_numbers(), I'm looping on the Employee objects, and settings their values using return/assignment - should I be setting this inside clean_phone_number() itself? There's also a few things that I'm sorted of hacked out, not sure if they're bad practice - e.g. print_employee() and gd_formatted() both use __dict__, and the constructor for Employee uses setattr() to convert a dictionary into instance attributes. I'd value any thoughts at all. If you think the questions are too broad, let me know and I can repost as several split up (I just didn't want to pollute the boards with multiple similar questions, and the three questions are more or less fairly tightly related). Cheers, Victor

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SpringMvc java.lang.NullPointerException When Posting Form To Server [closed]

- by dev_darin

I have a form with a user name field on it when i tab out of the field i use a RESTFUL Web Service that makes a call to a handler method in the controller. The method makes a call to a DAO class that checks the database if the user name exists. This works fine, however when the form is posted to the server i call the same exact function i would call in the handler method however i get a java.lang.NullPointerException when it accesses the class that makes a call to the DAO object. So it does not even access the DAO object the second time. I have exception handlers around the calls in all my classes that makes calls. Any ideas as to whats happening here why i would get the java.lang.NullPointerException the second time the function is called.Does this have anything to do with Spring instantiating DAO classes using a Singleton method or something to that effect? What can be done to resolve this? This is what happens the First Time The Method is called using the Web Service(this is suppose to happen): 13011 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.jdbc.JdbcOfficersDAO - Inside jdbcOfficersDAO 13031 [http-8084-2] DEBUG org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate - Executing prepared SQL query 13034 [http-8084-2] DEBUG org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate - Executing prepared SQL statement [SELECT userName FROM crimetrack.tblofficers WHERE userName = ?] 13071 [http-8084-2] DEBUG org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceUtils - Fetching JDBC Connection from DataSource 13496 [http-8084-2] DEBUG org.springframework.jdbc.core.StatementCreatorUtils - Setting SQL statement parameter value: column index 1, parameter value [adminz], value class [java.lang.String], SQL type unknown 13534 [http-8084-2] DEBUG org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceUtils - Returning JDBC Connection to DataSource 13537 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.jdbc.JdbcOfficersDAO - No username was found in exception 13537 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.ValidateUserNameManager - UserName :adminz does NOT exist The Second time When The Form Is 'Post' and a validation method handles the form and calls the same method the web service would call: 17199 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.OfficerRegistrationValidation - UserName is not null so going to check if its valid for :adminz 17199 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.OfficerRegistrationValidation - User Name in try.....catch block is adminz 17199 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.ValidateUserNameManager - Inside Do UserNameExist about to validate with username : adminz 17199 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.ValidateUserNameManager - UserName :adminz EXCEPTION OCCURED java.lang.NullPointerException ValidateUserNameManager.java public class ValidateUserNameManager implements ValidateUserNameIFace { private OfficersDAO officerDao; private final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(getClass()); public boolean DoesUserNameExist(String userName) throws Exception { logger.info("Inside Do UserNameExist about to validate with username : " + userName); try{ if(officerDao.OfficerExist(userName) == true){ logger.info("UserName :" + userName + " does exist"); return true; }else{ logger.info("UserName :" + userName + " does NOT exist"); return false; } }catch(Exception e){ logger.info("UserName :" + userName + " EXCEPTION OCCURED " + e.toString()); return false; } } /** * @return the officerDao */ public OfficersDAO getOfficerDao() { return officerDao; } /** * @param officerdao the officerDao to set */ public void setOfficerDao(OfficersDAO officerDao) { this.officerDao = officerDao; } } JdbcOfficersDAO.java public boolean OfficerExist(String userName){ String dbUserName; try{ logger.info("Inside jdbcOfficersDAO"); String sql = "SELECT userName FROM crimetrack.tblofficers WHERE userName = ?"; try{ dbUserName = (String)getJdbcTemplate().queryForObject(sql, new Object[]{userName},String.class); logger.info("Just Returned from database"); }catch(Exception e){ logger.info("No username was found in exception"); return false; } if(dbUserName == null){ logger.info("Database did not find any matching records"); } logger.info("after JdbcTemplate"); if (dbUserName.equals(userName)) { logger.info("User Name Exists"); return true; }else{ logger.info("User Name Does NOT Exists"); return false; } }catch(Exception e){ logger.info("Exception Message in JdbcOfficersDAO is "+e.getMessage()); return false; } } OfficerRegistrationValidation.java public class OfficerRegistrationValidation implements Validator{ private final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(getClass()); private ValidateUserNameManager validateUserNameManager; public boolean supports(Class<?> clazz) { return Officers.class.equals(clazz); } public void validate(Object target, Errors errors) { Officers officer = (Officers) target; if (officer.getUserName() == null){ errors.rejectValue("userName", "userName.required"); }else{ String userName = officer.getUserName(); logger.info("UserName is not null so going to check if its valid for :" + userName); try { logger.info("User Name in try.....catch block is " + userName); if (validateUserNameManager.DoesUserNameExist(userName)== true){ errors.rejectValue("userName", "userName.exist"); } } catch (Exception e) { logger.info("Error Occured When validating UserName"); errors.rejectValue("userName", "userName.error"); } } if(officer.getPassword()== null){ errors.rejectValue("password", "password.required"); } if(officer.getPassword2()== null){ errors.rejectValue("password2", "password2.required"); } if(officer.getfName() == null){ errors.rejectValue("fName","fName.required"); } if(officer.getlName() == null){ errors.rejectValue("lName", "lName.required"); } if (officer.getoName() == null){ errors.rejectValue("oName", "oName.required"); } if (officer.getEmailAdd() == null){ errors.rejectValue("emailAdd", "emailAdd.required"); } if (officer.getDob() == null){ errors.rejectValue("dob", "dob.required"); } if (officer.getGenderId().equals("A")){ errors.rejectValue("genderId","genderId.required"); } if(officer.getDivisionNo() == 1){ errors.rejectValue("divisionNo", "divisionNo.required"); } if(officer.getPositionId() == 1){ errors.rejectValue("positionId", "positionId.required"); } if (officer.getStartDate() == null){ errors.rejectValue("startDate","startDate.required"); } if(officer.getEndDate() == null){ errors.rejectValue("endDate","endDate.required"); } logger.info("The Gender ID is " + officer.getGenderId().toString()); if(officer.getPhoneNo() == null){ errors.rejectValue("phoneNo", "phoneNo.required"); } } /** * @return the validateUserNameManager */ public ValidateUserNameManager getValidateUserNameManager() { return validateUserNameManager; } /** * @param validateUserNameManager the validateUserNameManager to set */ public void setValidateUserNameManager( ValidateUserNameManager validateUserNameManager) { this.validateUserNameManager = validateUserNameManager; } } Update Error Log using Logger.Error("Message", e): 39024 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.OfficerRegistrationValidation - UserName is not null so going to check if its valid for :adminz 39025 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.OfficerRegistrationValidation - User Name in try.....catch block is adminz 39025 [http-8084-2] ERROR com.crimetrack.service.OfficerRegistrationValidation - Message java.lang.NullPointerException at com.crimetrack.service.OfficerRegistrationValidation.validate(OfficerRegistrationValidation.java:47) at org.springframework.validation.DataBinder.validate(DataBinder.java:725) at org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.support.HandlerMethodInvoker.doBind(HandlerMethodInvoker.java:815) at org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.support.HandlerMethodInvoker.resolveHandlerArguments(HandlerMethodInvoker.java:367) at org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.support.HandlerMethodInvoker.invokeHandlerMethod(HandlerMethodInvoker.java:171) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.invokeHandlerMethod(AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.java:436) at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.handle(AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.java:424) at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:923) at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:852) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:882) at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doPost(FrameworkServlet.java:789) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:637) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:290) at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:233) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:191) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127) at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:109) at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:293) at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:859) at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11Protocol.java:602) at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Worker.run(JIoEndpoint.java:489) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) 39025 [http-8084-2] INFO com.crimetrack.service.OfficerRegistrationValidation - Error Occured When validating UserName

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Online ALTER TABLE in MySQL 5.6

- by Marko Mäkelä

This is the low-level view of data dictionary language (DDL) operations in the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL 5.6. John Russell gave a more high-level view in his blog post April 2012 Labs Release – Online DDL Improvements. MySQL before the InnoDB Plugin Traditionally, the MySQL storage engine interface has taken a minimalistic approach to data definition language. The only natively supported operations were CREATE TABLE, DROP TABLE and RENAME TABLE. Consider the following example: CREATE TABLE t(a INT); INSERT INTO t VALUES (1),(2),(3); CREATE INDEX a ON t(a); DROP TABLE t; The CREATE INDEX statement would be executed roughly as follows: CREATE TABLE temp(a INT, INDEX(a)); INSERT INTO temp SELECT * FROM t; RENAME TABLE t TO temp2; RENAME TABLE temp TO t; DROP TABLE temp2; You could imagine that the database could crash when copying all rows from the original table to the new one. For example, it could run out of file space. Then, on restart, InnoDB would roll back the huge INSERT transaction. To fix things a little, a hack was added to ha_innobase::write_row for committing the transaction every 10,000 rows. Still, it was frustrating that even a simple DROP INDEX would make the table unavailable for modifications for a long time. Fast Index Creation in the InnoDB Plugin of MySQL 5.1 MySQL 5.1 introduced a new interface for CREATE INDEX and DROP INDEX. The old table-copying approach can still be forced by SET old_alter_table=0. This interface is used in MySQL 5.5 and in the InnoDB Plugin for MySQL 5.1. Apart from the ability to do a quick DROP INDEX, the main advantage is that InnoDB will execute a merge-sort algorithm before inserting the index records into each index that is being created. This should speed up the insert into the secondary index B-trees and potentially result in a better B-tree fill factor. The 5.1 ALTER TABLE interface was not perfect. For example, DROP FOREIGN KEY still invoked the table copy. Renaming columns could conflict with InnoDB foreign key constraints. Combining ADD KEY and DROP KEY in ALTER TABLE was problematic and not atomic inside the storage engine. The ALTER TABLE interface in MySQL 5.6 The ALTER TABLE storage engine interface was completely rewritten in MySQL 5.6. Instead of introducing a method call for every conceivable operation, MySQL 5.6 introduced a handful of methods, and data structures that keep track of the requested changes. In MySQL 5.6, online ALTER TABLE operation can be requested by specifying LOCK=NONE. Also LOCK=SHARED and LOCK=EXCLUSIVE are available. The old-style table copying can be requested by ALGORITHM=COPY. That one will require at least LOCK=SHARED. From the InnoDB point of view, anything that is possible with LOCK=EXCLUSIVE is also possible with LOCK=SHARED. Most ALGORITHM=INPLACE operations inside InnoDB can be executed online (LOCK=NONE). InnoDB will always require an exclusive table lock in two phases of the operation. The execution phases are tied to a number of methods: handler::check_if_supported_inplace_alter Checks if the storage engine can perform all requested operations, and if so, what kind of locking is needed. handler::prepare_inplace_alter_table InnoDB uses this method to set up the data dictionary cache for upcoming CREATE INDEX operation. We need stubs for the new indexes, so that we can keep track of changes to the table during online index creation. Also, crash recovery would drop any indexes that were incomplete at the time of the crash. handler::inplace_alter_table In InnoDB, this method is used for creating secondary indexes or for rebuilding the table. This is the ‘main’ phase that can be executed online (with concurrent writes to the table). handler::commit_inplace_alter_table This is where the operation is committed or rolled back. Here, InnoDB would drop any indexes, rename any columns, drop or add foreign keys, and finalize a table rebuild or index creation. It would also discard any logs that were set up for online index creation or table rebuild. The prepare and commit phases require an exclusive lock, blocking all access to the table. If MySQL times out while upgrading the table meta-data lock for the commit phase, it will roll back the ALTER TABLE operation. In MySQL 5.6, data definition language operations are still not fully atomic, because the data dictionary is split. Part of it is inside InnoDB data dictionary tables. Part of the information is only available in the *.frm file, which is not covered by any crash recovery log. But, there is a single commit phase inside the storage engine. Online Secondary Index Creation It may occur that an index needs to be created on a new column to speed up queries. But, it may be unacceptable to block modifications on the table while creating the index. It turns out that it is conceptually not so hard to support online index creation. All we need is some more execution phases: Set up a stub for the index, for logging changes. Scan the table for index records. Sort the index records. Bulk load the index records. Apply the logged changes. Replace the stub with the actual index. Threads that modify the table will log the operations to the logs of each index that is being created. Errors, such as log overflow or uniqueness violations, will only be flagged by the ALTER TABLE thread. The log is conceptually similar to the InnoDB change buffer. The bulk load of index records will bypass record locking. We still generate redo log for writing the index pages. It would suffice to log page allocations only, and to flush the index pages from the buffer pool to the file system upon completion. Native ALTER TABLE Starting with MySQL 5.6, InnoDB supports most ALTER TABLE operations natively. The notable exceptions are changes to the column type, ADD FOREIGN KEY except when foreign_key_checks=0, and changes to tables that contain FULLTEXT indexes. The keyword ALGORITHM=INPLACE is somewhat misleading, because certain operations cannot be performed in-place. For example, changing the ROW_FORMAT of a table requires a rebuild. Online operation (LOCK=NONE) is not allowed in the following cases: when adding an AUTO_INCREMENT column, when the table contains FULLTEXT indexes or a hidden FTS_DOC_ID column, or when there are FOREIGN KEY constraints referring to the table, with ON…CASCADE or ON…SET NULL option. The FOREIGN KEY limitations are needed, because MySQL does not acquire meta-data locks on the child or parent tables when executing SQL statements. Theoretically, InnoDB could support operations like ADD COLUMN and DROP COLUMN in-place, by lazily converting the table to a newer format. This would require that the data dictionary keep multiple versions of the table definition. For simplicity, we will copy the entire table, even for DROP COLUMN. The bulk copying of the table will bypass record locking and undo logging. For facilitating online operation, a temporary log will be associated with the clustered index of table. Threads that modify the table will also write the changes to the log. When altering the table, we skip all records that have been marked for deletion. In this way, we can simply discard any undo log records that were not yet purged from the original table. Off-page columns, or BLOBs, are an important consideration. We suspend the purge of delete-marked records if it would free any off-page columns from the old table. This is because the BLOBs can be needed when applying changes from the log. We have special logging for handling the ROLLBACK of an INSERT that inserted new off-page columns. This is because the columns will be freed at rollback.

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Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

- by raul.goycoolea

@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA. Introduction A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders. Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc. Purpose of Reference Architecture In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness. Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level: · Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise · Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. · Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles · Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc · A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information · Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security · Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. · Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets · Has a shorter implementation time and cost Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO). Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider: · In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. · Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. · Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. · Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. · Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. · Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. · Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape. Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges. “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum. The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture: · Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements · Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. · Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) · Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services · Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem · (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks · Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products · Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products Drivers of Reference Architecture The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure. Telecom reference architectures are today expected to: · Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems · Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services · Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure · Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. · Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g. Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. · Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations · Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) · Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management · Lower operating costs to drive profitability Enterprise Reference Architecture The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA. • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture Telecom Reference Architecture Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements: · The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. · The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. · The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. · The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes. NGOSS Architecture Standards are: · Centralized data · Loosely coupled distributed systems · Application components/re-use · A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations · Interoperability to service provider data/processes · Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios · Workflow automation The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers, · Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. · Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. · Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. · Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility. Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows: 1. Customer Relationship Management CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty. CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise. The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are · Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. · Create and manage customer profiles. · Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. · Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. · Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. · Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). · Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions. CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing. 2. Billing and Revenue Management Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services. The key functionalities provided by these applications are · To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. · To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. · To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. · Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. · Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. · Support prepaid and post-paid rating. · Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. · Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. · Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. · Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. · Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc. Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements. 3. Mediation Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution. · Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. · Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. · Validate Usage Data Records from each source. · Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. · Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. · Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. · Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. · Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. · Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window. 4. Fulfillment This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category. The key functionalities provided by these applications are · Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; · Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; · Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; · Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; · Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; · Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; · Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and · Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer. These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders. 5. Enterprise Management This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that · Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.; · Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business; · Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc. (i) Enterprise Risk Management: Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are: · Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o Interconnect bill verification. o Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized. · Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator. The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows: o Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems (ii) Knowledge Management This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions. Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to · Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. · Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse · Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. · Run report generator. · Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc. (iii) Document Management It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system. (iv) Data Management It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management. Key responsibilities of Data Management are · Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. · Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) · Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. · Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use. (v) Business Intelligence It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level: · It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. · It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. · It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. · It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. · It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. · It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions. It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer · It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence. (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations. (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment. The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below: · It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. · It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. · It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. · It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. · It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges. 6. External Interfaces/Touch Points The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including: · Exchange of emails or faxes · Call Centers · Web Portals · Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points. Typical characteristics of these touch points are · Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine · Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment · Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses. 7. Middleware The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution. · As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces · Provide a web service framework with service registry. · Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. · Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. · Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. · Use standard XML for data exchange. · Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. · Provide a tracking until the response completion. · Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. · Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. · Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. · Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component. 8. Network Elements The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service. Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc. Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment. 9. 3rd Party Applications 3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government. Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done. 10. Service Delivery Platform A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction. SOA Reference Architecture SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques. In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables: · The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services · Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface · A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs · Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services · Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change · Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services · A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits. Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers. COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives. The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers. The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1. Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation. ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc. CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc. Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components: · Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges · Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured. MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data. 2. Enterprise Component Layer: This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing. Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are: · Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc. · Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query. · Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design. Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc. 3. Integration Layer: This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime. • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework. 4. Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains. 5. Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services. 6. Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications. 7. Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications. 8. Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance. 9. EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices: EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology). Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey. Conclusions Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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Implementing Release Notes in TFS Team Build 2010

- by Jakob Ehn

In TFS Team Build (all versions), each build is associated with changesets and work items. To determine which changesets that should be associated with the current build, Team Build finds the label of the “Last Good Build” an then aggregates all changesets up unitl the label for the current build. Basically this means that if your build is failing, every changeset that is checked in will be accumulated in this list until the build is successful. All well, but there uis a dimension missing here, regarding to releases. Often you can run several release builds until you actually deploy the result of the build to a test or production system. When you do this, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send the customer a nice release note that contain all work items and changeset since the previously deployed version? At our company, we have developed a Release Repository, which basically is a siple web site with a SQL database as storage. Every time we run a Release Build, the resulting installers, zip-files, sql scripts etc, gets pushed into the release repositor together with the relevant build information. This information contains things such as start time, who triggered the build etc. Also, it contains the associated changesets and work items. When deploying the MSI’s for a new version, we mark the build as Deployed in the release repository. The depoyed status is stored in the release repository database, but it could also have been implemented by setting the Build Quality for that build to Deployed. When generating the release notes, the web site simple runs through each release build back to the previous build that was marked as Deplyed, and aggregates the work items and changesets: Here is a sample screenshot on how this looks for a sample build/application The web site is available both for us and also for the customers and testers, which means that they can easily get the latest version of a particular application and at the same time see what changes are included in this version. There is a lot going on in the Release Build Process that drives this in our TFS 2010 server, but in this post I will show how you can access and read the changeset and work item information in a custom activity. Since Team Build associates changesets and work items for each build, this information is (partially) available inside the build process template. The Associate Changesets and Work Items for non-Shelveset Builds activity (located inside the Try Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items activity) defines and populates a variable called associatedWorkItems You can see that this variable is an IList containing instances of the Changeset class (from the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client namespace). Now, if you want to access this variable later on in the build process template, you need to declare a new variable in the corresponding scope and the assign the value to this variable. In this sample, I declared a variable called assocChangesets in the RunAgent sequence, which basically covers the whol compile, test and drop part of the build process: Now, you need to assign the value from the AssociatedChangesets to this variable. This is done using the Assign workflow activity: Now you can add a custom activity any where inside the RunAgent sequence and use this variable. NB: Of course your activity must place somewhere after the variable has been poplated. To finish off, here is code snippet that shows how you can read the changeset and work item information from the variable. First you add an InArgumet on your activity where you can pass i the variable that we defined. [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<IList<Changeset>> AssociatedChangesets { get; set; } Then you can traverse all the changesets in the list, and for each changeset use the WorkItems property to get the work items that were associated in that changeset: foreach (Changeset ch in associatedChangesets) { // Add change theChangesets.Add( new AssociatedChangeset(ch.ChangesetId, ch.ArtifactUri, ch.Committer, ch.Comment, ch.ChangesetId)); foreach (var wi in ch.WorkItems) { theWorkItems.Add( new AssociatedWorkItem(wi["System.AssignedTo"].ToString(), wi.Id, wi["System.State"].ToString(), wi.Title, wi.Type.Name, wi.Id, wi.Uri)); } } NB: AssociatedChangeset and AssociatedWorkItem are custom classes that we use internally for storing this information that is eventually pushed to the release repository.

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Pure Server-Side Filtering with RadGridView and WCF RIA Services

Those of you who are familiar with WCF RIA Services know that the DomainDataSource control provides a FilterDescriptors collection that enables you to filter data returned by the query on the server. We have been using this DomainDataSource feature in our RIA Services with DomainDataSource online example for almost an year now. In the example, we are listening for RadGridViews Filtering event in order to intercept any filtering that is performed on the client and translate it to something that the DomainDataSource will understand, in this case a System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor being added or removed from its FilterDescriptors collection. Think of RadGridView.FilterDescriptors as client-side filtering and of DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors as server-side filtering. We no longer need the client-side one. With the introduction of the Custom Filtering Controls feature many new possibilities have opened. With these custom controls we no longer need to do any filtering on the client. I have prepared a very small project that demonstrates how to filter solely on the server by using a custom filtering control. As I have already mentioned filtering on the server is done through the FilterDescriptors collection of the DomainDataSource control. This collection holds instances of type System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor. The FilterDescriptor has three important properties: PropertyPath: Specifies the name of the property that we want to filter on (the left operand). Operator: Specifies the type of comparison to use when filtering. An instance of FilterOperator Enumeration. Value: The value to compare with (the right operand). An instance of the Parameter Class. By adding filters, you can specify that only entities which meet the condition in the filter are loaded from the domain context. In case you are not familiar with these concepts you might find Brad Abrams blog interesting. Now, our requirements are to create some kind of UI that will manipulate the DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors collection. When it comes to collections, my first choice of course would be RadGridView. If you are not familiar with the Custom Filtering Controls concept I would strongly recommend getting acquainted with my step-by-step tutorial Custom Filtering with RadGridView for Silverlight and checking the online example out. I have created a simple custom filtering control that contains a RadGridView and several buttons. This control is aware of the DomainDataSource instance, since it is operating on its FilterDescriptors collection. In fact, the RadGridView that is inside it is bound to this collection. In order to display filters that are relevant for the current column only, I have applied a filter to the grid. This filter is a Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor and is used to filter the little grid inside the custom control. It should not be confused with the DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors collection that RadGridView is actually bound to. These are the RIA filters. Additionally, I have added several other features. For example, if you have specified a DataFormatString on your original column, the Value column inside the custom control will pick it up and format the filter values accordingly. Also, I have transferred the data type of the column that you are filtering to the Value column of the custom control. This will help the little RadGridView determine what kind of editor to show up when you begin edit, for example a date picker for DateTime columns. Finally, I have added four buttons two of them can be used to add or remove filters and the other two will communicate the changes you have made to the server. Here is the full source code of the DomainDataSourceFilteringControl. The XAML: <UserControl x:Class="PureServerSideFiltering.DomainDataSourceFilteringControl" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:telerikGrid="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView" xmlns:telerik="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls" Width="300"> <Border x:Name="LayoutRoot" BorderThickness="1" BorderBrush="#FF8A929E" Padding="5" Background="#FFDFE2E5"> <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> <RowDefinition Height="150"/> <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <StackPanel Grid.Row="0" Margin="2" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center"> <telerik:RadButton Name="addFilterButton" Click="OnAddFilterButtonClick" Content="Add Filter" Margin="2" Width="96"/> <telerik:RadButton Name="removeFilterButton" Click="OnRemoveFilterButtonClick" Content="Remove Filter" Margin="2" Width="96"/> </StackPanel> <telerikGrid:RadGridView Name="filtersGrid" Grid.Row="1" Margin="2" ItemsSource="{Binding FilterDescriptors}" AddingNewDataItem="OnFilterGridAddingNewDataItem" ColumnWidth="*" ShowGroupPanel="False" AutoGenerateColumns="False" CanUserResizeColumns="False" CanUserReorderColumns="False" CanUserFreezeColumns="False" RowIndicatorVisibility="Collapsed" IsFilteringAllowed="False" CanUserSortColumns="False"> <telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> <telerikGrid:GridViewComboBoxColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding Operator}" UniqueName="Operator"/> <telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Value" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Value.Value}" UniqueName="Value"/> </telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> </telerikGrid:RadGridView> <StackPanel Grid.Row="2" Margin="2" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center"> <telerik:RadButton Name="filterButton" Click="OnApplyFiltersButtonClick" Content="Apply Filters" Margin="2" Width="96"/> <telerik:RadButton Name="clearButton" Click="OnClearFiltersButtonClick" Content="Clear Filters" Margin="2" Width="96"/> </StackPanel> </Grid> </Border> </UserControl> And the code-behind: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView; using System.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Controls; using Telerik.Windows.Data; namespace PureServerSideFiltering { /// <summary> /// A custom filtering control capable of filtering purely server-side. /// </summary> public partial class DomainDataSourceFilteringControl : UserControl, IFilteringControl { // The main player here. DomainDataSource domainDataSource; // This is the name of the property that this column displays. private string dataMemberName; // This is the type of the property that this column displays. private Type dataMemberType; /// <summary> /// Identifies the <see cref="IsActive"/> dependency property. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// The state of the filtering funnel (i.e. full or empty) is bound to this property. /// </remarks> public static readonly DependencyProperty IsActiveProperty = DependencyProperty.Register( "IsActive", typeof(bool), typeof(DomainDataSourceFilteringControl), new PropertyMetadata(false)); /// <summary> /// Gets or sets a value indicating whether the filtering is active. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// Set this to true if you want to lit-up the filtering funnel. /// </remarks> public bool IsActive { get { return (bool)GetValue(IsActiveProperty); } set { SetValue(IsActiveProperty, value); } } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the domain data source. /// We need this in order to work on its FilterDescriptors collection. /// </summary> /// <value>The domain data source.</value> public DomainDataSource DomainDataSource { get { return this.domainDataSource; } set { this.domainDataSource = value; } } public System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptorCollection FilterDescriptors { get { return this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors; } } public DomainDataSourceFilteringControl() { InitializeComponent(); } public void Prepare(GridViewBoundColumnBase column) { this.LayoutRoot.DataContext = this; if (this.DomainDataSource == null) { // Sorry, but we need a DomainDataSource. Can't do anything without it. return; } // This is the name of the property that this column displays. this.dataMemberName = column.GetDataMemberName(); // This is the type of the property that this column displays. // We need this in order to see which FilterOperators to feed to the combo-box column. this.dataMemberType = column.DataType; // We will use our magic Type extension method to see which operators are applicable for // this data type. You can go to the extension method body and see what it does. ((GridViewComboBoxColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Operator"]).ItemsSource = this.dataMemberType.ApplicableFilterOperators(); // This is very nice as well. We will tell the Value column its data type. In this way // RadGridView will pick up the best editor according to the data type. For example, // if the data type of the value is DateTime, you will be editing it with a DatePicker. // Nice! ((GridViewDataColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Value"]).DataType = this.dataMemberType; // Yet another nice feature. We will transfer the original DataFormatString (if any) to // the Value column. In this way if you have specified a DataFormatString for the original // column, you will see all filter values formatted accordingly. ((GridViewDataColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Value"]).DataFormatString = column.DataFormatString; // This is important. Since our little filtersGrid will be bound to the entire collection // of this.domainDataSource.FilterDescriptors, we need to set a Telerik filter on the // grid so that it will display FilterDescriptor which are relevane to this column ONLY! Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor columnFilter = new Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("PropertyPath" , Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsEqualTo , this.dataMemberName); this.filtersGrid.FilterDescriptors.Add(columnFilter); // We want to listen for this in order to activate and de-activate the UI funnel. this.filtersGrid.Items.CollectionChanged += this.OnFilterGridItemsCollectionChanged; } /// <summary> // Since the DomainDataSource is a little bit picky about adding uninitialized FilterDescriptors // to its collection, we will prepare each new instance with some default values and then // the user can change them later. Go to the event handler to see how we do this. /// </summary> void OnFilterGridAddingNewDataItem(object sender, GridViewAddingNewEventArgs e) { // We need to initialize the new instance with some values and let the user go on from here. System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor newFilter = new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor(); // This is a must. It should know what member it is filtering on. newFilter.PropertyPath = this.dataMemberName; // Initialize it with one of the allowed operators. // TypeExtensions.ApplicableFilterOperators method for more info. newFilter.Operator = this.dataMemberType.ApplicableFilterOperators().First(); if (this.dataMemberType == typeof(DateTime)) { newFilter.Value.Value = DateTime.Now; } else if (this.dataMemberType == typeof(string)) { newFilter.Value.Value = "<enter text>"; } else if (this.dataMemberType.IsValueType) { // We need something non-null for all value types. newFilter.Value.Value = Activator.CreateInstance(this.dataMemberType); } // Let the user edit the new filter any way he/she likes. e.NewObject = newFilter; } void OnFilterGridItemsCollectionChanged(object sender, System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e) { // We are active only if we have any filters define. In this case the filtering funnel will lit-up. this.IsActive = this.filtersGrid.Items.Count > 0; } private void OnApplyFiltersButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // Comment this if you want the popup to stay open after the button is clicked. this.ClosePopup(); // Since this.domainDataSource.AutoLoad is false, this will take into // account all filtering changes that the user has made since the last // Load() and pull the new data to the client. this.DomainDataSource.Load(); } private void OnClearFiltersButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // We want to remove ONLY those filters from the DomainDataSource // that this control is responsible for. this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors .Where(fd => fd.PropertyPath == this.dataMemberName) // Only "our" filters. .ToList() .ForEach(fd => this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Remove(fd)); // Bye-bye! // Comment this if you want the popup to stay open after the button is clicked. this.ClosePopup(); // After we did our housekeeping, get the new data to the client. this.DomainDataSource.Load(); } private void OnAddFilterButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // Let the user enter his/or her requirements for a new filter. this.filtersGrid.BeginInsert(); this.filtersGrid.UpdateLayout(); } private void OnRemoveFilterButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData) { return; } // Find the currently selected filter and destroy it. System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor filterToRemove = this.filtersGrid.SelectedItem as System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor; if (filterToRemove != null && this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Contains(filterToRemove)) { this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Remove(filterToRemove); } } private void ClosePopup() { System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Popup popup = this.ParentOfType<System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Popup>(); if (popup != null) { popup.IsOpen = false; } } } } Finally, we need to tell RadGridViews Columns to use this custom control instead of the default one. Here is how to do it: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using System.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Controls; using Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView; namespace PureServerSideFiltering { public partial class MainPage : UserControl { public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); this.grid.AutoGeneratingColumn += this.OnGridAutoGeneratingColumn; // Uncomment this if you want the DomainDataSource to start pre-filtered. // You will notice how our custom filtering controls will correctly read this information, // populate their UI with the respective filters and lit-up the funnel to indicate that // filtering is active. Go ahead and try it. this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("Title", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.Contains, "Assistant")); this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("HireDate", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsGreaterThan, new DateTime(1998, 12, 31))); this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("HireDate", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsLessThanOrEqualTo, new DateTime(1999, 12, 31))); this.employeesDataSource.Load(); } /// <summary> /// First of all, we will need to replace the default filtering control /// of each column with out custom filtering control DomainDataSourceFilteringControl /// </summary> private void OnGridAutoGeneratingColumn(object sender, GridViewAutoGeneratingColumnEventArgs e) { GridViewBoundColumnBase dataColumn = e.Column as GridViewBoundColumnBase; if (dataColumn != null) { // We do not like ugly dates. if (dataColumn.DataType == typeof(DateTime)) { dataColumn.DataFormatString = "{0:d}"; // Short date pattern. // Notice how this format will be later transferred to the Value column // of the grid that we have inside the DomainDataSourceFilteringControl. } // Replace the default filtering control with our. dataColumn.FilteringControl = new DomainDataSourceFilteringControl() { // Let the control know about the DDS, after all it will work directly on it. DomainDataSource = this.employeesDataSource }; // Finally, lit-up the filtering funnel through the IsActive dependency property // in case there are some filters on the DDS that match our column member. string dataMemberName = dataColumn.GetDataMemberName(); dataColumn.FilteringControl.IsActive = this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors .Where(fd => fd.PropertyPath == dataMemberName) .Count() > 0; } } } } The best part is that we are not only writing filters for the DomainDataSource we can read and load them. If the DomainDataSource has some pre-existing filters (like I have created in the code above), our control will read them and will populate its UI accordingly. Even the filtering funnel will light-up! Remember, the funnel is controlled by the IsActive property of our control. While this is just a basic implementation, the source code is absolutely yours and you can take it from here and extend it to match your specific business requirements. Below the main grid there is another debug grid. With its help you can monitor what filter descriptors are added and removed to the domain data source. Download Source Code. (You will have to have the AdventureWorks sample database installed on the default SQLExpress instance in order to run it.) Enjoy!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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Implementing Linked Lists in C#

- by nijhawan.saurabh

Why? The question is why you need Linked Lists and why it is the foundation of any Abstract Data Structure. Take any of the Data Structures - Stacks, Queues, Heaps, Trees; there are two ways to go about implementing them - Using Arrays Using Linked Lists Now you use Arrays when you know about the size of the Nodes in the list at Compile time and Linked Lists are helpful where you are free to add as many Nodes to the List as required at Runtime. How? Now, let's see how we go about implementing a Simple Linked List in C#. Note: We'd be dealing with singly linked list for time being, there's also another version of linked lists - the Doubly Linked List which maintains two pointers (NEXT and BEFORE). Class Diagram Let's see the Class Diagram first: Code 1 // ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 // <copyright file="Node.cs" company=""> 3 // TODO: Update copyright text. 4 // </copyright> 5 // ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 7 namespace CSharpAlgorithmsAndDS 8 { 9 using System; 10 using System.Collections.Generic; 11 using System.Linq; 12 using System.Text; 13 14 /// <summary> 15 /// TODO: Update summary. 16 /// </summary> 17 public class Node 18 { 19 public Object data { get; set; } 20 21 public Node Next { get; set; } 22 } 23 } 24 1 // ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 // <copyright file="LinkedList.cs" company=""> 3 // TODO: Update copyright text. 4 // </copyright> 5 // ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 7 namespace CSharpAlgorithmsAndDS 8 { 9 using System; 10 using System.Collections.Generic; 11 using System.Linq; 12 using System.Text; 13 14 /// <summary> 15 /// TODO: Update summary. 16 /// </summary> 17 public class LinkedList 18 { 19 private Node Head; 20 21 public void AddNode(Node n) 22 { 23 n.Next = this.Head; 24 this.Head = n; 25 26 } 27 28 public void printNodes() 29 { 30 31 while (Head!=null) 32 { 33 Console.WriteLine(Head.data); 34 Head = Head.Next; 35 36 } 37 38 } 39 } 40 } 41 1 using System; 2 using System.Collections.Generic; 3 using System.Linq; 4 using System.Text; 5 6 namespace CSharpAlgorithmsAndDS 7 { 8 class Program 9 { 10 static void Main(string[] args) 11 { 12 LinkedList ll = new LinkedList(); 13 Node A = new Node(); 14 A.data = "A"; 15 16 Node B = new Node(); 17 B.data = "B"; 18 19 Node C = new Node(); 20 C.data = "C"; 21 ll.AddNode(A); 22 ll.AddNode(B); 23 ll.AddNode(C); 24 25 ll.printNodes(); 26 } 27 } 28 } 29 Final Words This is just a start, I will add more posts on Linked List covering more operations like Delete etc. and will also explore Doubly Linked List / Implementing Stacks/ Heaps/ Trees / Queues and what not using Linked Lists. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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and the winner is Google Chrome

- by anirudha

Browser war really still uncompleted but here i tell that Why Google chrome better. 1. Easy to install:- as IE 9 Google chrome not force user to purchase a new OS. the chrome have a facelity that they install in minutes then less then other just like Firefox a another competitor or bloody fool IE 9. 2. Easy to test: if you want to test their beta that’s no problem as well as Firefox. if user use Firefox 4 beta that they found that they can’t use many good plugin such as a big list the Web Developer tool and many other are one of them. in Chrome beta they provide you more then the last official release of chrome. 3. Google chrome Sync:- i myself used sync inside Firefox but nothing i found good and from a long time i feel nothing good and any feature in Firefox sync. but in google chrome their sync system is much better. When user login for sync in chrome they install everything and get back the user every settings they set the last time such as apps, autofill, bookmark ,extensions preference and theme. if you want to check bookmark from other browser that you can use google docs because google provided their bookmark backup in their docs account they have. performance:- after testing a website i found that a website open in 36 seconds in Firefox that Google chrome open them in 10 seconds. i found a interesting thing that when i test offline in IE 8 they show me in one or two seconds. i wonder how it’s possible after a long puzzle i found that IE was integrated software from Microsoft that the both software Visual studio and IE was integrated with windows. if user test javascript in IE that the error they find show in visual studio not in IE as well as other software like chrome and IE. chrome not have a vast range of plugin as well as firefox so developer spent less time on chrome that would be a problem of future of chrome. interface comparison : the chrome have a common but user friendly interface then the user easily can use them. are you watching menu in Firefox 4. they make them complex as well as whole software IE 9. IE developer team thing that they can make everything fool by making a slogan HTML 5 inside IE. if anyone want to open a page in IE 9 that they show after some second. some time they show page not found even site is not gone wrong. when anyone want to use IE 9 developer tool that they thing that “ are this really a developer tool ? ”. yeah they not make them for human as well as Firebug working team make firebug inside Firefox. they thing that how they can make public fool. Are you see that if you want to install Visual studio they force you to install sql server even you use other database system. a big stupidity of their tool can be found here today we hear that they Microsoft launched silverlight 5. are you know how Microsoft make silverlight yeah he copycat the idea of Adobe and their product Adobe Flash. that’s a other matter we can use .Net language instead of actionscript , lingo or shockwave.

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Adding SQL Cache Dependencies to the Loosely coupled .NET Cache Provider

- by Rhames

This post adds SQL Cache Dependency support to the loosely coupled .NET Cache Provider that I described in the previous post (http://geekswithblogs.net/Rhames/archive/2012/09/11/loosely-coupled-.net-cache-provider-using-dependency-injection.aspx). The sample code is available on github at https://github.com/RobinHames/CacheProvider.git. Each time we want to apply a cache dependency to a call to fetch or cache a data item we need to supply an instance of the relevant dependency implementation. This suggests an Abstract Factory will be useful to create cache dependencies as needed. We can then use Dependency Injection to inject the factory into the relevant consumer. Castle Windsor provides a typed factory facility that will be utilised to implement the cache dependency abstract factory (see http://docs.castleproject.org/Windsor.Typed-Factory-Facility-interface-based-factories.ashx). Cache Dependency Interfaces First I created a set of cache dependency interfaces in the domain layer, which can be used to pass a cache dependency into the cache provider. ICacheDependency The ICacheDependency interface is simply an empty interface that is used as a parent for the specific cache dependency interfaces. This will allow us to place a generic constraint on the Cache Dependency Factory, and will give us a type that can be passed into the relevant Cache Provider methods. namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheInterfaces { public interface ICacheDependency { } } ISqlCacheDependency.cs The ISqlCacheDependency interface provides specific SQL caching details, such as a Sql Command or a database connection and table. It is the concrete implementation of this interface that will be created by the factory in passed into the Cache Provider. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheInterfaces { public interface ISqlCacheDependency : ICacheDependency { ISqlCacheDependency Initialise(string databaseConnectionName, string tableName); ISqlCacheDependency Initialise(System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand sqlCommand); } } If we want other types of cache dependencies, such as by key or file, interfaces may be created to support these (the sample code includes an IKeyCacheDependency interface). Modifying ICacheProvider to accept Cache Dependencies Next I modified the exisitng ICacheProvider<T> interface so that cache dependencies may be passed into a Fetch method call. I did this by adding two overloads to the existing Fetch methods, which take an IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> parameter (the IEnumerable allows more than one cache dependency to be included). I also added a method to create cache dependencies. This means that the implementation of the Cache Provider will require a dependency on the Cache Dependency Factory. It is pretty much down to personal choice as to whether this approach is taken, or whether the Cache Dependency Factory is injected directly into the repository or other consumer of Cache Provider. I think, because the cache dependency cannot be used without the Cache Provider, placing the dependency on the factory into the Cache Provider implementation is cleaner. ICacheProvider.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheInterfaces { public interface ICacheProvider<T> { T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry); T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry, IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> cacheDependencies); IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry); IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry, IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> cacheDependencies); U CreateCacheDependency<U>() where U : ICacheDependency; } } Cache Dependency Factory Next I created the interface for the Cache Dependency Factory in the domain layer. ICacheDependencyFactory.cs namespace CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheInterfaces { public interface ICacheDependencyFactory { T Create<T>() where T : ICacheDependency; void Release<T>(T cacheDependency) where T : ICacheDependency; } } I used the ICacheDependency parent interface as a generic constraint on the create and release methods in the factory interface. Now the interfaces are in place, I moved on to the concrete implementations. ISqlCacheDependency Concrete Implementation The concrete implementation of ISqlCacheDependency will need to provide an instance of System.Web.Caching.SqlCacheDependency to the Cache Provider implementation. Unfortunately this class is sealed, so I cannot simply inherit from this. Instead, I created an interface called IAspNetCacheDependency that will provide a Create method to create an instance of the relevant System.Web.Caching Cache Dependency type. This interface is specific to the ASP.NET implementation of the Cache Provider, so it should be defined in the same layer as the concrete implementation of the Cache Provider (the MVC UI layer in the sample code). IAspNetCacheDependency.cs using System.Web.Caching; namespace CacheDiSample.CacheProviders { public interface IAspNetCacheDependency { CacheDependency CreateAspNetCacheDependency(); } } Next, I created the concrete implementation of the ISqlCacheDependency interface. This class also implements the IAspNetCacheDependency interface. This concrete implementation also is defined in the same layer as the Cache Provider implementation. AspNetSqlCacheDependency.cs using System.Web.Caching; using CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheInterfaces; namespace CacheDiSample.CacheProviders { public class AspNetSqlCacheDependency : ISqlCacheDependency, IAspNetCacheDependency { private string databaseConnectionName; private string tableName; private System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand sqlCommand; #region ISqlCacheDependency Members public ISqlCacheDependency Initialise(string databaseConnectionName, string tableName) { this.databaseConnectionName = databaseConnectionName; this.tableName = tableName; return this; } public ISqlCacheDependency Initialise(System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand sqlCommand) { this.sqlCommand = sqlCommand; return this; } #endregion #region IAspNetCacheDependency Members public System.Web.Caching.CacheDependency CreateAspNetCacheDependency() { if (sqlCommand != null) return new SqlCacheDependency(sqlCommand); else return new SqlCacheDependency(databaseConnectionName, tableName); } #endregion } } ICacheProvider Concrete Implementation The ICacheProvider interface is implemented by the CacheProvider class. This implementation is modified to include the changes to the ICacheProvider interface. First I needed to inject the Cache Dependency Factory into the Cache Provider: private ICacheDependencyFactory cacheDependencyFactory; public CacheProvider(ICacheDependencyFactory cacheDependencyFactory) { if (cacheDependencyFactory == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("cacheDependencyFactory"); this.cacheDependencyFactory = cacheDependencyFactory; } Next I implemented the CreateCacheDependency method, which simply passes on the create request to the factory: public U CreateCacheDependency<U>() where U : ICacheDependency { return this.cacheDependencyFactory.Create<U>(); } The signature of the FetchAndCache helper method was modified to take an additional IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> parameter: private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry, IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> cacheDependencies) and the following code added to create the relevant System.Web.Caching.CacheDependency object for any dependencies and pass them to the HttpContext Cache: CacheDependency aspNetCacheDependencies = null; if (cacheDependencies != null) { if (cacheDependencies.Count() == 1) // We know that the implementations of ICacheDependency will also implement IAspNetCacheDependency // so we can use a cast here and call the CreateAspNetCacheDependency() method aspNetCacheDependencies = ((IAspNetCacheDependency)cacheDependencies.ElementAt(0)).CreateAspNetCacheDependency(); else if (cacheDependencies.Count() > 1) { AggregateCacheDependency aggregateCacheDependency = new AggregateCacheDependency(); foreach (ICacheDependency cacheDependency in cacheDependencies) { // We know that the implementations of ICacheDependency will also implement IAspNetCacheDependency // so we can use a cast here and call the CreateAspNetCacheDependency() method aggregateCacheDependency.Add(((IAspNetCacheDependency)cacheDependency).CreateAspNetCacheDependency()); } aspNetCacheDependencies = aggregateCacheDependency; } } HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, aspNetCacheDependencies, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value); The full code listing for the modified CacheProvider class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Caching; using CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheInterfaces; namespace CacheDiSample.CacheProviders { public class CacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider<T> { private ICacheDependencyFactory cacheDependencyFactory; public CacheProvider(ICacheDependencyFactory cacheDependencyFactory) { if (cacheDependencyFactory == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("cacheDependencyFactory"); this.cacheDependencyFactory = cacheDependencyFactory; } public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) { return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry, null); } public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry, IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> cacheDependencies) { return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry, cacheDependencies); } public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry) { return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry, null); } public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry, IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> cacheDependencies) { return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry, cacheDependencies); } public U CreateCacheDependency<U>() where U : ICacheDependency { return this.cacheDependencyFactory.Create<U>(); } #region Helper Methods private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry, IEnumerable<ICacheDependency> cacheDependencies) { U value; if (!TryGetValue<U>(key, out value)) { value = retrieveData(); if (!absoluteExpiry.HasValue) absoluteExpiry = Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration; if (!relativeExpiry.HasValue) relativeExpiry = Cache.NoSlidingExpiration; CacheDependency aspNetCacheDependencies = null; if (cacheDependencies != null) { if (cacheDependencies.Count() == 1) // We know that the implementations of ICacheDependency will also implement IAspNetCacheDependency // so we can use a cast here and call the CreateAspNetCacheDependency() method aspNetCacheDependencies = ((IAspNetCacheDependency)cacheDependencies.ElementAt(0)).CreateAspNetCacheDependency(); else if (cacheDependencies.Count() > 1) { AggregateCacheDependency aggregateCacheDependency = new AggregateCacheDependency(); foreach (ICacheDependency cacheDependency in cacheDependencies) { // We know that the implementations of ICacheDependency will also implement IAspNetCacheDependency // so we can use a cast here and call the CreateAspNetCacheDependency() method aggregateCacheDependency.Add( ((IAspNetCacheDependency)cacheDependency).CreateAspNetCacheDependency()); } aspNetCacheDependencies = aggregateCacheDependency; } } HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, aspNetCacheDependencies, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value); } return value; } private bool TryGetValue<U>(string key, out U value) { object cachedValue = HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get(key); if (cachedValue == null) { value = default(U); return false; } else { try { value = (U)cachedValue; return true; } catch { value = default(U); return false; } } } #endregion } } Wiring up the DI Container Now the implementations for the Cache Dependency are in place, I wired them up in the existing Windsor CacheInstaller. First I needed to register the implementation of the ISqlCacheDependency interface: container.Register( Component.For<ISqlCacheDependency>() .ImplementedBy<AspNetSqlCacheDependency>() .LifestyleTransient()); Next I registered the Cache Dependency Factory. Notice that I have not implemented the ICacheDependencyFactory interface. Castle Windsor will do this for me by using the Type Factory Facility. I do need to bring the Castle.Facilities.TypedFacility namespace into scope: using Castle.Facilities.TypedFactory; Then I registered the factory: container.AddFacility<TypedFactoryFacility>(); container.Register( Component.For<ICacheDependencyFactory>() .AsFactory()); The full code for the CacheInstaller class is: using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration; using Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration; using Castle.Windsor; using Castle.Facilities.TypedFactory; using CacheDiSample.Domain.CacheInterfaces; using CacheDiSample.CacheProviders; namespace CacheDiSample.WindsorInstallers { public class CacheInstaller : IWindsorInstaller { public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store) { container.Register( Component.For(typeof(ICacheProvider<>)) .ImplementedBy(typeof(CacheProvider<>)) .LifestyleTransient()); container.Register( Component.For<ISqlCacheDependency>() .ImplementedBy<AspNetSqlCacheDependency>() .LifestyleTransient()); container.AddFacility<TypedFactoryFacility>(); container.Register( Component.For<ICacheDependencyFactory>() .AsFactory()); } } } Configuring the ASP.NET SQL Cache Dependency There are a couple of configuration steps required to enable SQL Cache Dependency for the application and database. From the Visual Studio Command Prompt, the following commands should be used to enable the Cache Polling of the relevant database tables: aspnet_regsql -S <servername> -E -d <databasename> –ed aspnet_regsql -S <servername> -E -d CacheSample –et –t <tablename> (The –t option should be repeated for each table that is to be made available for cache dependencies). Finally the SQL Cache Polling needs to be enabled by adding the following configuration to the <system.web> section of web.config: <caching> <sqlCacheDependency pollTime="10000" enabled="true"> <databases> <add name="BloggingContext" connectionStringName="BloggingContext"/> </databases> </sqlCacheDependency> </caching> (obviously the name and connection string name should be altered as required). Using a SQL Cache Dependency Now all the coding is complete. To specify a SQL Cache Dependency, I can modify my BlogRepositoryWithCaching decorator class (see the earlier post) as follows: public IList<Blog> GetAll() { var sqlCacheDependency = cacheProvider.CreateCacheDependency<ISqlCacheDependency>() .Initialise("BloggingContext", "Blogs"); ICacheDependency[] cacheDependencies = new ICacheDependency[] { sqlCacheDependency }; string key = string.Format("CacheDiSample.DataAccess.GetAll"); return cacheProvider.Fetch(key, () => { return parentBlogRepository.GetAll(); }, null, null, cacheDependencies) .ToList(); } This will add a dependency of the “Blogs” table in the database. The data will remain in the cache until the contents of this table change, then the cache item will be invalidated, and the next call to the GetAll() repository method will be routed to the parent repository to refresh the data from the database.

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Subterranean IL: Compiling C# exception handlers

- by Simon Cooper

An exception handler in C# combines the IL catch and finally exception handling clauses into a single try statement: try { Console.WriteLine("Try block") // ... } catch (IOException) { Console.WriteLine("IOException catch") // ... } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine("Exception catch") // ... } finally { Console.WriteLine("Finally block") // ... } How does this get compiled into IL? Initial implementation If you remember from my earlier post, finally clauses must be specified with their own .try clause. So, for the initial implementation, we take the try/catch/finally, and simply split it up into two .try clauses (I have to use label syntax for this): StartTry: ldstr "Try block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndTry: StartIOECatch: ldstr "IOException catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndIOECatch: StartECatch: ldstr "Exception catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End EndECatch: StartFinally: ldstr "Finally block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... endfinally EndFinally: End: // ... .try StartTry to EndTry catch [mscorlib]System.IO.IOException handler StartIOECatch to EndIOECatch catch [mscorlib]System.Exception handler StartECatch to EndECatch .try StartTry to EndTry finally handler StartFinally to EndFinally However, the resulting program isn't verifiable, and doesn't run: [IL]: Error: Shared try has finally or fault handler. Nested try blocks What's with the verification error? Well, it's a condition of IL verification that all exception handling regions (try, catch, filter, finally, fault) of a single .try clause have to be completely contained within any outer exception region, and they can't overlap with any other exception handling clause. In other words, IL exception handling clauses must to be representable in the scoped syntax, and in this example, we're overlapping catch and finally clauses. Not only is this example not verifiable, it isn't semantically correct. The finally handler is specified round the .try. What happens if you were able to run this code, and an exception was thrown? Program execution enters top of try block, and exception is thrown within it CLR searches for an exception handler, finds catch Because control flow is leaving .try, finally block is run The catch block is run leave.s End inside the catch handler branches to End label. We're actually running the finally before the catch! What we do about it What we actually need to do is put the catch clauses inside the finally clause, as this will ensure the finally gets executed at the correct time (this time using scoped syntax): .try { .try { ldstr "Try block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.IO.IOException { ldstr "IOException catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.Exception { ldstr "Exception catch" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... leave.s End } } finally { ldstr "Finally block" call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) // ... endfinally } End: ret Returning from methods There is a further semantic mismatch that the C# compiler has to deal with; in C#, you are allowed to return from within an exception handling block: public int HandleMethod() { try { // ... return 0; } catch (Exception) { // ... return -1; } } However, you can't ret inside an exception handling block in IL. So the C# compiler does a leave.s to a ret outside the exception handling area, loading/storing any return value to a local variable along the way (as leave.s clears the stack): .method public instance int32 HandleMethod() { .locals init ( int32 retVal ) .try { // ... ldc.i4.0 stloc.0 leave.s End } catch [mscorlib]System.Exception { // ... ldc.i4.m1 stloc.0 leave.s End } End: ldloc.0 ret } Conclusion As you can see, the C# compiler has quite a few hoops to jump through to translate C# code into semantically-correct IL, and hides the numerous conditions on IL exception handling blocks from the C# programmer. Next up: catch-all blocks, and how the runtime deals with non-Exception exceptions.

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Sneak Peak: Social Developer Program at JavaOne

- by Mike Stiles

By guest blogger Roland Smart We're just days away from what is gunning to be the most exciting installment of OpenWorld to date, so how about an exciting sneak peak at the very first Social Developer Program? If your first thought is, "What's a social developer?" you're not alone. It’s an emerging term and one we think will gain prominence as social experiences become more prevalent in enterprise applications. For those who keep an eye on the ever-evolving Facebook platform, you'll recall that they recently rebranded their PDC (preferred developer consultant) group as the PMD (preferred marketing developer), signaling the importance of development resources inside the marketing organization to unlock the potential of social. The marketing developer they're referring to could be considered a social developer in a broader context. While it's true social has really blossomed in the marketing context and CMOs are winning more and more technical resources, social is starting to work its way more deeply into the enterprise with the help of developers that work outside marketing. Developers, like the rest of us, have fallen in "like" with social functionality and are starting to imagine how social can transform enterprise applications in the way it has consumer-facing experiences. The thesis of my presentation is that social developers will take many pages from the marketing playbook as they apply social inside the enterprise. To support this argument, lets walk through a range of enterprise applications and explore how consumer-facing social experiences might be interpreted in this context. Here's one example of how a social experience could be integrated into a sales enablement application. As a marketer, I spend a great deal of time collaborating with my sales colleagues, so I have good insight into their working process. While at Involver, we grew our sales team quickly, and it became evident some of our processes broke with scale. For example, we used to have weekly team meetings at which we'd discuss what was working and what wasn't from a messaging perspective. One aspect of these sessions focused on "objections" and "responses," where the salespeople would walk through common objections to purchasing and share appropriate responses. We tried to map each context to best answers and we'd capture these on a wiki page. As our team grew, however, participation at scale just wasn't tenable, and our wiki pages quickly lost their freshness. Imagine giving salespeople a place where they could submit common objections and responses for their colleagues to see, sort, comment on, and vote on. What you'd get is an up-to-date and relevant repository of information. And, if you supported an application like this with a social graph, it would be possible to make good recommendations to individual sales people about the objections they'd likely hear based on vertical, product, region or other graph data. Taking it even further, you could build in a badging/game element to reward those salespeople who participate the most. Both these examples are based on proven models at work inside consumer-facing applications. If you want to learn about how HR, Operations, Product Development and Customer Support can leverage social experiences, you’re welcome to join us at JavaOne or join our Social Developer Community to find some of the presentations after OpenWorld.

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Is This Your Idea of Disaster Recovery?

- by rickramsey

Don't just make do with less. Protect what you've got. By, for instance, deploying Oracle Solaris 10 inside a zone cluster. "Wait," you say, "what is a zone cluster?" It is a zone deployed across different physical servers. "Who would do that!" you ask in a mild panic. Why, an upstanding sysadmin citizen interested in protecting his or her employer's investment with appropriate high availability and disaster recovery. If one server gets wiped out by Hurricane Sandy along with pretty much the entire East Coast of the USA, your zone continues to run on the other server(s). Provided you set them up in Edinburgh. This white paper (pdf) explains what a zone cluster is and how to use it. If a white paper reminds you of having to read War and Peace in school, just use this Oracle RAC and Solaris Cluster Cheat Sheet, instead. "But wait!" you exclaim. "I didn't realize Solaris 10 offered zone clusters!" I didn't, either! And in an earlier version of this blog post I said that zone clusters were only available with Oracle Solaris 11. But Karoly Vegh pointed me to the documentation for Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3, which explains how to manage zone clusters in Oracle Solaris 10. Bite my fist! So, the point I was trying to make is not just that you can run Oracle Solaris 10 zone clusters, but that you can run them in an Oracle Solaris 11 environment. Now let's return to our conversation and pick up where we left off ... "Oh no! Whatever shall I do?" Fear not. Remember how Oracle Solaris 11 lets you create a Solaris 10 branded zone inside a system running Oracle Solaris 11? Well, the Solaris Cluster engineers thought that was a bang-up idea, and decided to extend Oracle Solaris Cluster so that you could run your Solaris 10 applications inside the protective cocoon of an Oracle Solaris 11 zone cluster. Take advantage of the installation improvements and network virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris 11 while still running your application on Oracle Solaris 10. You Luddite, you. That capability is in the latest release of Oracle Solaris Cluster, version 4.1, which became available last Friday. "Last Friday! Is it too late to get a copy?" You can still get a free copy from our download center (see below). And, if you'd like to know what other goodies the 4.1 release of Oracle Solaris Cluster provides, see: What's New In Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 (pdf) Free download Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 (SPARC or x86) Tech Article: How to Upgrade to Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0, by Tim Read. As always, you can get the latest information about Oracle Solaris Cluster, plus technical how-to articles, documentation, and more from Oracle Solaris Cluster Resource Page for Sysadmins and Developers. And don't forget about the online launch of Oracle Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1, scheduled for Nov 7. "I feel so much better, now!" Think nothing of it. That's what we're here for. - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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The Social Enterprise: Gangnam Style

- by Mike Stiles

Are only small and medium businesses able to put social strategies in place, generate consistent, compelling content for customers, and be nimble enough to listen and respond to the social communities they build? Or are enterprise organizations eagerly and effectively adopting social as well? It depends on whom inside the organization you ask. A study from Attensity looked at who “gets” social inside enterprise organizations. The results were unsurprising. Mostly, Generation X and Y employees who came of age with social as part of their lives and as a key communications vehicle understand it. Imagine being a 25-year-old at a company that bans employees from accessing Facebook at work. You may as well tell them they can’t use phones and must do all calculations on an abacus. To them, such policy is absent of real-world logic and signals to them the organization is destined to be the victim of an up-and-comer. After that, it’s senior management that gets social. You don’t get to be in senior management without reading a few things and paying attention. Most senior managers are well aware of the impact social has had and will have, though they may be unsure of what to do about it. The better ones will utilize those on the inside who do inherently know how to communicate and build virtual relationships using social. The very best will get the past out of the way for these social innovators, so the new communications can be enacted minus counterproductive dictums, double-clutching, meeting-creep, and all the other fading internal practices that water down content and impede change. Organizationally, the Attensity study found 81% of enterprise companies believe failing to embrace social will result in their being left behind. Yet our old friend fear still has many captive in its clutches. 79% feel overwhelmed by the volume of social data available, something a social technology partner with goal-oriented analytics expertise could go a long way toward alleviating. Then there’s the fear of social having a negative impact. This comes from a lack of belief in the product, the customer service, or both. The public uses social not to go out and slay brands. They’re using it to be honest. If the fear is that honesty will reflect badly on the brand, the brand has much bigger, broader problems than what happens on Facebook. Sadly, most enterprise organizations still see social as a megaphone, a one-way channel with which to hit people with ads. They either don’t understand social relationships, or don’t want any. The truly unenlightened manager will always say, “We help them by selling them our stuff.” “Brand affinity” is a term, it’s just not one assigned much value in enterprise organizations. Which brings us to Psy, the Korean performer whose Internet video phenom “Gangnam Style,” as of this writing, has been viewed 438,550,238 times on YouTube. It’s bigger than anything a brand will probably ever publish. Most brands would never have seen the point of making or publishing it. But a funny thing happened on the way to Internet success. The video literally doubled the stock price of Psy’s father’s software firm. NH Investment and Securities said, "The positive sentiment has attracted investors just because of the fact the company is owned by Psy's father and uncle.” The company wasn’t mentioned or seen in the video in any way, yet reaped tangible rewards just for being tangentially associated with it. Imagine your brand being visibly and directly responsible for such a smash and tell me it’s worthless. When enterprise organizations embrace the value of igniting passions, making people happier, solving their problems, informing them, helping them have fun, etc., then they will have fully embraced social, and will reap the brand affinity rewards of heightened awareness, brand loyalty and yes, sales.

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UIViewController presentModalViewController: animated: doing nothing?

- by ryyst

Hi, I recently started a project, using Apple's Utility Application example project. In the example project, there's an info button that shows an instance of FlipSideView. If you know the Weather.app, you know what the button acts like. I then changed the MainWindow.xib to contain a scrollview in the middle of the window and a page-control view at the bottom of the window (again, like the Weather.app). The scrollview gets filled with instances of MainView. When I then clicked the info button, the FlipSideView would show, but only in the area that was previously filled by the MainView instance – this means that the page-control view on the bottom of the page still showed when the FlipSideView instance got loaded. So, I thought that I would simply add a UIViewController for the top-most window, which is the one declared inside the AppDelegate created along side with the project. So, I created a subclass of UIViewController, put an instance of it inside MainWindow.xib and connected it's view outlet to the UIWindow declared as window inside the app delegate. I also changed the button's action, so that it know sends a message to the MainWindowController instance. The message does get sent (I checked with NSLog() statements), but the FlipSideView doesn't get shown. Here's the relevant (?) code: FlipsideViewController *controller = [[FlipsideViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"FlipsideView" bundle:nil]; controller.delegate = self; controller.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleFlipHorizontal; [self presentModalViewController:controller animated:YES]; [controller release]; Why's this not working? I've uploaded the entire project here for you to be able to see the whole thing. Thanks for help! -- Ry

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MDB listening a Topic in JBoss 5.1

- by fool

Hi, I have a topic configured correctly like this, in jboss 5.1: <mbean code="org.jboss.jms.server.destination.TopicService" name="jboss.messaging.destination:service=Topic,name=GreetingsTopic" xmbean-dd="xmdesc/Topic-xmbean.xml"> <depends optional-attribute-name="ServerPeer">jboss.messaging:service=ServerPeer </depends> <depends>jboss.messaging:service=PostOffice</depends> </mbean> I can see the topic being started in JBoss logs: 23:08:40,990 INFO [TopicService] Topic[/topic/GreetingsTopic] started, fullSize=200000, pageSize=2000, downCacheSize=2000 And I have this MDB: @MessageDriven(activationConfig = { @ActivationConfigProperty(propertyName = "destinationType", propertyValue = "javax.jmx.Topic"), @ActivationConfigProperty(propertyName = "destination", propertyValue = "topic/GreetingsTopic") }) public class GreetingsClientWebMDB implements MessageListener { ... ... } When I deploy the MDB, I'm getting a strange error: 3:09:30,781 ERROR [JmsActivation] Unable to reconnect org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.inflow.JmsActivationSpec@1a1d638(ra=org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.JmsResourceAdapter@1da5b5b destination=topic/GreetingsTopic destinationType=javax.jmx.Topic tx=true durable=false reconnect=10 provider=java:/DefaultJMSProvider user=null maxMessages=1 minSession=1 maxSession=15 keepAlive=60000 useDLQ=true DLQHandler=org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.inflow.dlq.GenericDLQHandler DLQJndiName=queue/DLQ DLQUser=null DLQMaxResent=5) java.lang.ClassCastException: Object at 'topic/GreetingsTopic' in context {java.naming.factory.initial=org.jnp.interfaces.NamingContextFactory, java.naming.factory.url.pkgs=org.jboss.naming:org.jnp.interfaces:org.jboss.naming:org.jnp.interfaces} is not an instance of [class=javax.jms.Queue classloader=BaseClassLoader@91e143{vfsfile:/usr/local/jboss-5.1.0.GA/server/default/conf/jboss-service.xml} interfaces={interface=javax.jms.Destination classloader=BaseClassLoader@91e143{vfsfile:/usr/local/jboss-5.1.0.GA/server/default/conf/jboss-service.xml}}] object class is [class=org.jboss.jms.destination.JBossTopic classloader=BaseClassLoader@91e143{vfsfile:/usr/local/jboss-5.1.0.GA/server/default/conf/jboss-service.xml} interfaces={interface=javax.jms.Topic classloader=BaseClassLoader@91e143{vfsfile:/usr/local/jboss-5.1.0.GA/server/default/conf/jboss-service.xml}}] at org.jboss.util.naming.Util.checkObject(Util.java:338) at org.jboss.util.naming.Util.lookup(Util.java:223) at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.inflow.JmsActivation.setupDestination(JmsActivation.java:464) at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.inflow.JmsActivation.setup(JmsActivation.java:352) at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.inflow.JmsActivation.handleFailure(JmsActivation.java:292) at org.jboss.resource.adapter.jms.inflow.JmsActivation$SetupActivation.run(JmsActivation.java:733) at org.jboss.resource.work.WorkWrapper.execute(WorkWrapper.java:205) at org.jboss.util.threadpool.BasicTaskWrapper.run(BasicTaskWrapper.java:260) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) I also try to use a deployment descriptor instead of annotations but with the same result. I really can't see the problem :(

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SunTlsRsaPremasterSecret KeyGenerator not available

- by Jill

Hi, I encountered an error when my application tries to load a RSA Algorithm provider class from JAVA. The exception stack is as follow: javax.jms.JMSException: RSA premaster secret error at org.apache.activemq.util.JMSExceptionSupport.create(JMSExceptionSupport.java:49) at org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnection.syncSendPacket(ActiveMQConnection.java:1255) at org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnection.ensureConnectionInfoSent(ActiveMQConnection.java:1350) at org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnection.setClientID(ActiveMQConnection.java:388) at com.trendmicro.tmsm.TMSMAgent.open(TMSMAgent.java:63) Caused by: javax.net.ssl.SSLKeyException: RSA premaster secret error at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.RSAClientKeyExchange.<init>(RSAClientKeyExchange.java:97) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.ClientHandshaker.serverHelloDone(ClientHandshaker.java:634) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.ClientHandshaker.processMessage(ClientHandshaker.java:226) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Handshaker.processLoop(Handshaker.java:516) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Handshaker.process_record(Handshaker.java:454) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.readRecord(SSLSocketImpl.java:884) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.performInitialHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1112) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.writeRecord(SSLSocketImpl.java:623) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.AppOutputStream.write(AppOutputStream.java:59) at org.apache.activemq.transport.tcp.TcpBufferedOutputStream.flush(TcpBufferedOutputStream.java:115) at java.io.DataOutputStream.flush(DataOutputStream.java:106) at org.apache.activemq.transport.tcp.TcpTransport.oneway(TcpTransport.java:167) at org.apache.activemq.transport.InactivityMonitor.oneway(InactivityMonitor.java:237) at org.apache.activemq.transport.WireFormatNegotiator.sendWireFormat(WireFormatNegotiator.java:168) at org.apache.activemq.transport.WireFormatNegotiator.sendWireFormat(WireFormatNegotiator.java:84) at org.apache.activemq.transport.WireFormatNegotiator.start(WireFormatNegotiator.java:74) at org.apache.activemq.transport.failover.FailoverTransport.doReconnect(FailoverTransport.java:715) at org.apache.activemq.transport.failover.FailoverTransport$2.iterate(FailoverTransport.java:115) at org.apache.activemq.thread.PooledTaskRunner.runTask(PooledTaskRunner.java:122) at org.apache.activemq.thread.PooledTaskRunner$1.run(PooledTaskRunner.java:43) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:637) Caused by: java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: SunTlsRsaPremasterSecret KeyGenerator not available at javax.crypto.KeyGenerator.<init>(DashoA13*..) at javax.crypto.KeyGenerator.getInstance(DashoA13*..) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.JsseJce.getKeyGenerator(JsseJce.java:223) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.RSAClientKeyExchange.<init>(RSAClientKeyExchange.java:89) ... 22 more I've googled the error message and most of posts says it's because JVM cannot find sunjce_provider.jar. However, I can find the file in /Library/Java/Home/lib/ext folder. The platform is Mac OS X 10.6 and Java version is 1.6.0_17. My questions are: Why JVM does not search /Library/Java/Home/lib/ext for jar files? Can we change CLASSPATH or java.ext.dirs property by modify any config file? Any suggestion to solve this problem? Thanks in advance.

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Python: nonblocking read from stdout of threaded subprocess

- by sberry2A

I have a script (worker.py) that prints unbuffered output in the form... 1 2 3 . . . n where n is some constant number of iterations a loop in this script will make. In another script (service_controller.py) I start a number of threads, each of which starts a subprocess using subprocess.Popen(stdout=subprocess.PIPE, ...); Now, in my main thread (service_controller.py) I want to read the output of each thread's worker.py subprocess and use it to calculate an estimate for the time remaining till completion. I have all of the logic working that reads the stdout from worker.py and determines the last printed number. The problem is that I can not figure out how to do this in a non-blocking way. If I read a constant bufsize then each read will end up waiting for the same data from each of the workers. I have tried numerous ways including using fcntl, select + os.read, etc. What is my best option here? I can post my source if needed, but I figured the explanation describes the problem well enough. Thanks for any help here. EDIT Adding sample code I have a worker that starts a subprocess. class WorkerThread(threading.Thread): def __init__(self): self.completed = 0 self.process = None self.lock = threading.RLock() threading.Thread.__init__(self) def run(self): cmd = ["/path/to/script", "arg1", "arg2"] self.process = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, bufsize=1, shell=False) #flags = fcntl.fcntl(self.process.stdout, fcntl.F_GETFL) #fcntl.fcntl(self.process.stdout.fileno(), fcntl.F_SETFL, flags | os.O_NONBLOCK) def get_completed(self): self.lock.acquire(); fd = select.select([self.process.stdout.fileno()], [], [], 5)[0] if fd: self.data += os.read(fd, 1) try: self.completed = int(self.data.split("\n")[-2]) except IndexError: pass self.lock.release() return self.completed I then have a ThreadManager. class ThreadManager(): def __init__(self): self.pool = [] self.running = [] self.lock = threading.Lock() def clean_pool(self, pool): for worker in [x for x in pool is not x.isAlive()]: worker.join() pool.remove(worker) del worker return pool def run(self, concurrent=5): while len(self.running) + len(self.pool) > 0: self.clean_pool(self.running) n = min(max(concurrent - len(self.running), 0), len(self.pool)) if n > 0: for worker in self.pool[0:n]: worker.start() self.running.extend(self.pool[0:n]) del self.pool[0:n] time.sleep(.01) for worker in self.running + self.pool: worker.join() and some code to run it. threadManager = ThreadManager() for i in xrange(0, 5): threadManager.pool.append(WorkerThread()) threadManager.run() I have stripped out a log of the other code in hopes to try to pinpoint the issue.

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