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  • Grep... What patterns to extract href attributes, etc. with PHP's preg_grep?

    - by inktri
    Hi, I'm having trouble with grep.. Which four patterns should I use with PHP's preg_grep to extract all instances the "____" stuff in the strings below? 1. <h2><a ....>_____</a></h2> 2. <cite><a href="_____" .... >...</a></cite> 3. <cite><a .... >________</a></cite> 4. <span>_________</span> The dots denote some arbitrary characters while the underscores denote what I want. An example string is: </style></head> <body><div id="adBlock"><h2><a href="https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=afs_violation&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">Ads by Google</a></h2> <div class="ad"><div><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&amp;ai=C4vfT4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckB5oq5sAGg6PKlDaT-kwUQASCF4p8UKARQtobS9AVgyZbRhsijoBnIAQGqBBxP0OSEnIsuRIv3ZERDm8GiSKZSnjrVf1kVq-_Y&amp;num=1&amp;sig=AGiWqtwG1qHnwpZ_5BNrjrzzXO5Or6EDMg&amp;q=http://www.crackle.com/c/Spider-Man_The_New_Animated_Series/%3Futm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dcpc%26utm_campaign%3DGST_10016_CRKL_US_PRD_S_TeleV_SPID_Tele_Spider-Man%26utm_term%3Dspiderman%26utm_content%3Ds264Yjg9f_3472685742_487lrz1638" class="titleLink" target="_parent">Spider-<b>Man</b> Animated Serie</a></div> <span>See Your Favorite Spiderman <br> Episodes for Free. Only on Crackle.</span> <cite><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&amp;ai=C4vfT4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckB5oq5sAGg6PKlDaT-kwUQASCF4p8UKARQtobS9AVgyZbRhsijoBnIAQGqBBxP0OSEnIsuRIv3ZERDm8GiSKZSnjrVf1kVq-_Y&amp;num=1&amp;sig=AGiWqtwG1qHnwpZ_5BNrjrzzXO5Or6EDMg&amp;q=http://www.crackle.com/c/Spider-Man_The_New_Animated_Series/%3Futm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dcpc%26utm_campaign%3DGST_10016_CRKL_US_PRD_S_TeleV_SPID_Tele_Spider-Man%26utm_term%3Dspiderman%26utm_content%3Ds264Yjg9f_3472685742_487lrz1638" class="domainLink" target="_parent">www.Crackle.com/Spiderman</a></cite></div> <div class="ad"><div><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=CnQFi4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckB3M7nQtyU2PQEq6bCBRACIIXinxQoBFCm15KB-f____8BYMmW0YbIo6AZoAHiq_X-A8gBAaoEIU_Q9JKLiy1MiwdnHpZoBnmpR1J8pP2jpTwMx2uj2nN4WA&amp;num=2&amp;sig=AGiWqtwDrI5pWBCncdDc80FKt32AJMAQ6A&amp;q=http://www.costumeexpress.com/browse/TV-Movies/_/N-1z141uu/Ntt-batman/results1.aspx%3FREF%3DKNC-CEgoogle" class="titleLink" target="_parent">Kids <b>Batman</b> Costumes</a></div> <span>Great Selection of <b>Batman</b> &amp; Batgirl <br> Costumes For Kids. Ships Same Day!</span> <cite><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=CnQFi4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckB3M7nQtyU2PQEq6bCBRACIIXinxQoBFCm15KB-f____8BYMmW0YbIo6AZoAHiq_X-A8gBAaoEIU_Q9JKLiy1MiwdnHpZoBnmpR1J8pP2jpTwMx2uj2nN4WA&amp;num=2&amp;sig=AGiWqtwDrI5pWBCncdDc80FKt32AJMAQ6A&amp;q=http://www.costumeexpress.com/browse/TV-Movies/_/N-1z141uu/Ntt-batman/results1.aspx%3FREF%3DKNC-CEgoogle" class="domainLink" target="_parent">www.CostumeExpress.com</a></cite></div> <div class="ad"><div><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=CAMYT4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckB3ZnWmgGdoNLrDaumwgUQAyCF4p8UKARQrqSVxwdgyZbRhsijoBmgAZH77uwDyAEBqgQYT9DU7oqLLEyLB2dHlxZFnQzyeg-yHt88&amp;num=3&amp;sig=AGiWqtzqAphZ9DLDiEFBJlb0Ou_1HyEyyA&amp;q=http://www.OfficialBatmanCostumes.com" class="titleLink" target="_parent"><b>Batman</b> Costume</a></div> <span>Official <b>Batman</b> Costumes. <br> Huge Selection &amp; Same Day Shipping!</span> <cite><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=CAMYT4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckB3ZnWmgGdoNLrDaumwgUQAyCF4p8UKARQrqSVxwdgyZbRhsijoBmgAZH77uwDyAEBqgQYT9DU7oqLLEyLB2dHlxZFnQzyeg-yHt88&amp;num=3&amp;sig=AGiWqtzqAphZ9DLDiEFBJlb0Ou_1HyEyyA&amp;q=http://www.OfficialBatmanCostumes.com" class="domainLink" target="_parent">www.OfficialBatmanCostumes.com</a></cite></div> <div class="ad"><div><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=C767t4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckBkZfSfoOppaMHq6bCBRAEIIXinxQoBFDX2bw6YMmW0YbIo6AZoAHpprP8A8gBAaoEG0_QhJSMiytMiwdnHpZoF3g0Uj8_Vl2r4TpI_g&amp;num=4&amp;sig=AGiWqtyGO2DnFq_jMhP6ufj8pufT9sWQWA&amp;q=http://www.discountsuperherocostumes.com/batman-costumes.html" class="titleLink" target="_parent">Discount <b>Batman</b> Costumes</a></div> <span>Discount adult and kids <b>batman</b> <br> superhero costumes.</span> <cite><a href="http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=C767t4Sa3S97SLYO8NN6F-ckBkZfSfoOppaMHq6bCBRAEIIXinxQoBFDX2bw6YMmW0YbIo6AZoAHpprP8A8gBAaoEG0_QhJSMiytMiwdnHpZoF3g0Uj8_Vl2r4TpI_g&amp;num=4&amp;sig=AGiWqtyGO2DnFq_jMhP6ufj8pufT9sWQWA&amp;q=http://www.discountsuperherocostumes.com/batman-costumes.html" class="domainLink" target="_parent">www.discountsuperherocostumes.com</a></cite></div></div></body> <script type="text/javascript"> var relay = ""; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/uds/?file=ads&amp;v=1&amp;packages=searchiframe&amp;nodependencyload=true"></script></html> Thanks!

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  • Trouble updating my datagrid in WPF

    - by wrigley06
    As the title indicates, I'm having trouble updating a datagrid in WPF. Basically what I'm trying to accomplish is a datagrid, that is connected to a SQL Server database, that updates automatically once a user enters information into a few textboxes and clicks a submit button. You'll notice that I have a command that joins two tables. The data from the Quote_Data table will be inserted by a different user at a later time. For now my only concern is getting the information from the textboxes and into the General_Info table, and from there into my datagrid. The code, which I'll include below compiles fine, but when I hit the submit button, nothing happens. This is the first application I've ever built working with a SQL Database so many of these concepts are new to me, which is why you'll probably look at my code and wonder what is he thinking. public partial class MainWindow : Window { public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); } public DataSet mds; // main data set (mds) private void Window_Loaded_1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { try { string connectionString = Sqtm.Properties.Settings.Default.SqtmDbConnectionString; using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString)) { connection.Open(); //Merging tables General_Info and Quote_Data SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT General_Info.Quote_ID, General_Info.Open_Quote, General_Info.Customer_Name," + "General_Info.OEM_Name, General_Info.Qty, General_Info.Quote_Num, General_Info.Fab_Drawing_Num, " + "General_Info.Rfq_Num, General_Info.Rev_Num, Quote_Data.MOA, Quote_Data.MOQ, " + "Quote_Data.Markup, Quote_Data.FOB, Quote_Data.Shipping_Method, Quote_Data.Freight, " + "Quote_Data.Vendor_Price, Unit_Price, Quote_Data.Difference, Quote_Data.Vendor_NRE_ET, " + "Quote_Data.NRE, Quote_Data.ET, Quote_Data.STI_NET, Quote_Data.Mfg_Time, Quote_Data.Delivery_Time, " + "Quote_Data.Mfg_Name, Quote_Data.Mfg_Location " + "FROM General_Info INNER JOIN dbo.Quote_Data ON General_Info.Quote_ID = Quote_Data.Quote_ID", connection); SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(cmd); DataTable dt = new DataTable(); da.Fill(dt); MainGrid.ItemsSource = dt.DefaultView; mds = new DataSet(); da.Fill(mds, "General_Info"); MainGrid.DataContext = mds.Tables["General_Info"]; } } catch (Exception ex) { MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); } // renaming column names from the database so they are easier to read in the datagrid MainGrid.Columns[0].Header = "#"; MainGrid.Columns[1].Header = "Date"; MainGrid.Columns[2].Header = "Customer"; MainGrid.Columns[3].Header = "OEM"; MainGrid.Columns[4].Header = "Qty"; MainGrid.Columns[5].Header = "Quote Number"; MainGrid.Columns[6].Header = "Fab Drawing Num"; MainGrid.Columns[7].Header = "RFQ Number"; MainGrid.Columns[8].Header = "Rev Number"; MainGrid.Columns[9].Header = "MOA"; MainGrid.Columns[10].Header = "MOQ"; MainGrid.Columns[11].Header = "Markup"; MainGrid.Columns[12].Header = "FOB"; MainGrid.Columns[13].Header = "Shipping"; MainGrid.Columns[14].Header = "Freight"; MainGrid.Columns[15].Header = "Vendor Price"; MainGrid.Columns[16].Header = "Unit Price"; MainGrid.Columns[17].Header = "Difference"; MainGrid.Columns[18].Header = "Vendor NRE/ET"; MainGrid.Columns[19].Header = "NRE"; MainGrid.Columns[20].Header = "ET"; MainGrid.Columns[21].Header = "STINET"; MainGrid.Columns[22].Header = "Mfg. Time"; MainGrid.Columns[23].Header = "Delivery Time"; MainGrid.Columns[24].Header = "Manufacturer"; MainGrid.Columns[25].Header = "Mfg. Location"; } private void submitQuotebtn_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { CustomerData newQuote = new CustomerData(); int quantity; quantity = Convert.ToInt32(quantityTxt.Text); string theDate = System.DateTime.Today.Date.ToString("d"); newQuote.OpenQuote = theDate; newQuote.CustomerName = customerNameTxt.Text; newQuote.OEMName = oemNameTxt.Text; newQuote.Qty = quantity; newQuote.QuoteNumber = quoteNumberTxt.Text; newQuote.FdNumber = fabDrawingNumberTxt.Text; newQuote.RfqNumber = rfqNumberTxt.Text; newQuote.RevNumber = revNumberTxt.Text; try { string insertConString = Sqtm.Properties.Settings.Default.SqtmDbConnectionString; using (SqlConnection insertConnection = new SqlConnection(insertConString)) { insertConnection.Open(); SqlDataAdapter adapter = new SqlDataAdapter(Sqtm.Properties.Settings.Default.SqtmDbConnectionString, insertConnection); SqlCommand updateCmd = new SqlCommand("UPDATE General_Info " + "Quote_ID = @Quote_ID, " + "Open_Quote = @Open_Quote, " + "OEM_Name = @OEM_Name, " + "Qty = @Qty, " + "Quote_Num = @Quote_Num, " + "Fab_Drawing_Num = @Fab_Drawing_Num, " + "Rfq_Num = @Rfq_Num, " + "Rev_Num = @Rev_Num " + "WHERE Quote_ID = @Quote_ID"); updateCmd.Connection = insertConnection; System.Data.SqlClient.SqlParameterCollection param = updateCmd.Parameters; // // Add new SqlParameters to the command. // param.AddWithValue("Open_Quote", newQuote.OpenQuote); param.AddWithValue("Customer_Name", newQuote.CustomerName); param.AddWithValue("OEM_Name", newQuote.OEMName); param.AddWithValue("Qty", newQuote.Qty); param.AddWithValue("Quote_Num", newQuote.QuoteNumber); param.AddWithValue("Fab_Drawing_Num", newQuote.FdNumber); param.AddWithValue("Rfq_Num", newQuote.RfqNumber); param.AddWithValue("Rev_Num", newQuote.RevNumber); adapter.UpdateCommand = updateCmd; adapter.Update(mds.Tables[0]); mds.AcceptChanges(); } } catch (Exception ex) { MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); } } Thanks in advance to anyone who can help, I really appreciate it, Andrew

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 01, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 01, 2012Popular ReleasesCleverBobCat: CleverBobCat 1.1.1: Fix for 1.1.1.0 - Energy usage on back drive -> fixed - Breaking energy recharge -> fixed - Not stopped when energy disabled -> fixed - Area transfer range -> fixeddcview: DCView 1.4.2: 1.4.0?? ??/??? ??11/29 ??? ??? ??? ?? ??? ??? ?? ???? ???? ?? ???? ?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??DirectQ: DirectQ II 2012-11-29: A (slightly) modernized port of Quake II to D3D9. You need SM3 or better hardware to run this - if you don't have it, then don't even bother. It should work on Windows Vista, 7 or 8; it may also work on XP but I haven't tested. Known bugs include: Some mods may not work. This is unfortunately due to the nature of Quake II's game DLLs; sometimes a recompile of the game DLL is all that's needed. In any event, ensure that the game DLL is compatible with the last release of Quake II first (...Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.2: new UI for the Administration console Bugs fixes and improvement version 2.2.215.3JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.5: What's new in JayData 1.2.5For detailed release notes check the release notes. Handlebars template engine supportImplement data manager applications with JayData using Handlebars.js for templating. Include JayDataModules/handlebars.js and begin typing the mustaches :) Blogpost: Handlebars templates in JayData Handlebars helpers and model driven commanding in JayData Easy JayStorm cloud data managementManage cloud data using the same syntax and data management concept just like any other data ...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.70: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Search engine optimization. ID-less URLs for products, categories, and manufacturers. • Added ACL support (access control list) on products and categories. • Minify and bundle JavaScript files. • Allow a store owner to decide which billing/shipping address fields are enabled/disabled/required (like it's already done for the registration page). • Moved to MVC 4 (.NET 4.5 is required). • Now Visual Studio 2012 is required to work ...SQL Server Partition Management: Partition Management Release 3.0: Release 3.0 adds support for SQL Server 2012 and is backward compatible with SQL Server 2008 and 2005. The release consists of: • A Readme file • The Executable • The source code (Visual Studio project) Enhancements include: -- Support for Columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 -- Ability to create TSQL scripts for staging table and index creation operations -- Full support for global date and time formats, locale independent -- Support for binary partitioning column types -- Fixes to is...Command Line Parser Library: 1.9.3.23 beta: Fixes an issue notified by github user sbambrick about parsing negative numbers.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.10: Critical Update to 2.3.9: Changelog for 2.3.10 (32bit and 64bit) 1. AsfBin executable missing from build 2. Removed extra references from build to avoid conflict 3. Showanalyzer installation now checked on remote engine machine Changelog for 2.3.9 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for WTV output profile 2. Added support for minimizing MCEBuddy to the system tray 3. Added support for custom archive folder 4. Added support to disable subdirectory monitoring 5. Added support for better TS fil...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00: Major Highlights Fixed issue that caused profiles of deleted users to be available Removed the postback after checkboxes are selected in Page Settings > Taxonomy Implemented the functionality required to edit security role names and social group names Fixed JavaScript error when using a ";" semicolon as a profile property Fixed issue when using DateTime properties in profiles Fixed viewstate error when using Facebook authentication in conjunction with "require valid profile fo...CODE Framework: 4.0.21128.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.76: Fixed a typo in ObjectLiteralProperty.IsConstant that caused all object literals to be treated like they were constants, and possibly moved around in the code when they shouldn't be.Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.3.0: New features: Dropdown/Radio/Checkbox Lists no longer references the userkey. Instead they refer to the UUID field for input value. You can now delete, export, import content from database in the site settings. Labels can now be imported and exported. You can now set the required password strength and maximum number of incorrect login attempts. Child sites can inherit plugins from its parent sites. The view parameter can be changed through the page_context.current value. Addition of c...Distributed Publish/Subscribe (Pub/Sub) Event System: Distributed Pub Sub Event System Version 3.0: Important Wsp 3.0 is NOT backward compatible with Wsp 2.1. Prerequisites You need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package. You can find it at: x64 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=14632x86 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555 Wsp now uses Rx (Reactive Extensions) and .Net 4.0 3.0 Enhancements I changed the topology from a hierarchy to peer-to-peer groups. This should provide much greater scalability and more fault-resi...datajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.1.0: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes...Team Foundation Server Administration Tool: 2.2: TFS Administration Tool 2.2 supports the Team Foundation Server 2012 Object Model. Visual Studio 2012 or Team Explorer 2012 must be installed before you can install this tool. You can download and install Team Explorer 2012 from http://aka.ms/TeamExplorer2012. There are no functional changes between the previous release (2.1) and this release.Coding Guidelines for C# 3.0, C# 4.0 and C# 5.0: Coding Guidelines for CSharp 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0: See Change History for a detailed list of modifications.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.3.0: Portable Library Build: Adds support for WP8 (.Net 4.0 and higher, SL5, WP8 and .NET for Windows Store apps) New: portable build also for F# extensions (.Net 4.5, SL5 and .NET for Windows Store apps) NuGet: portable builds are now included in the main packages, no more need for special portable packages Linear Algebra: Continued major storage rework, in this release focusing on vectors (previous release was on matrices) Thin QR decomposition (in addition to existing full QR) Static Cr...ExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: FineUI v3.2.1: +2012-11-25 v3.2.1 +????????。 -MenuCheckBox?CheckedChanged??????,??????????。 -???????window.IDS??????????????。 -?????(??TabCollection,ControlBaseCollection)???,????????????????。 +Grid??。 -??SelectAllRows??。 -??PageItems??,?????????????,?????、??、?????。 -????grid/gridpageitems.aspx、grid/gridpageitemsrowexpander.aspx、grid/gridpageitems_pagesize.aspx。 -???????????????????。 -??ExpandAllRowExpanders??,?????????????????(grid/gridrowexpanderexpandall2.aspx)。 -??????ExpandRowExpande...VidCoder: 1.4.9 Beta: Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5079. Fixed crashes when encoding DVDs with title gaps.New Projects4SQH: FourSQHackathon project repositoryASP4 Portscan: A online portscan deployed with ASP and PerlscriptAviSynth language service for Visual Studio: This project provides a Visual Studio language extension for the AviSynth scripting language. AviSynth is a scripted frameserver for video post-production and can be found at http://avisynth.orgBuildSlip: GUI interface application for creating slipsteam files (service pack and/or cumulative update) for SQL2008 installationC#apture the Flag AI: C#apture the Flag AI is a project designed to enable C# support for the excellent AI competition being held at http://aisandbox.com.Channel Performing (Windows Azure Media Service Example): Windows Azure Media Service solution example and portal + Tag + Comment + Search + Membership + Progress List + and other featuresCivilinsation: C# DLL C++ Wrapper Swig Civilization INSA de RENNES Département Informatique 4INFOClickOnceSxquer: awesome Combinator CoffeeScript Preprocessor: CoffeeScript preprocessor for the Combinator Orchard module (https://combinator.codeplex.com/).DineshTest: aDirectoryEnumeratorAsync: Proof of concept for using .NET 4.5 async/await for improving performance enumeration of of file system entries.Grahpic_Salon: It's a test web project.jQuery.gMenu: test projectLIve For Speed Statistics: UskoroMIDI.NET: MIDI.NET allows any .NET developer to access the power of MIDI without doing P/Invokes.Olympia Open College: AACS4134Peto: A college project for a claims submission application.QueuedSmtpClient: A C# library that provides an smtp client built on top of the standard SmtpClient class which is able to serialize email messages if no network connection is available. Serialized emails are sent later if a network connection is available.Simple Merge Sort: This is a simple implementation of Merge-Sort, using to sort an Array of Integers.Simple.Json: Easy to use framework for serializing to and from json. Supports typed dto objects, dynamic dto objects and immutable dto types like F# record types.Sosyal: Sosyal as.teamgujju: This Project is now in planing phase. It will be released shortlyTFS Branch Permission Removal Event Subscriber: When you create a branch in TFS, the explicit TFS source control permissions from the source branch are copied to the target branch. Let's change that...Wild Template: Simple template engine for .NETXNA in WPF: WPF Canvas component that allows hosting and presentation of an XNA window from within WPF applications. ZombieSurvival: Yo-ho-ho and the buttle og rum

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  • Fetching value from collection

    - by user334119
    public string GetProductVariantImageUrl(ShoppingCartItem shoppingCartItem) { string pictureUrl = String.Empty; ProductVariant productVariant = shoppingCartItem.ProductVariant; ProductVariantAttributeValueCollection pvaValues = shoppingCartItem.Attributes; [here the count comes 0]{case1} } public string GetAttributeDescription(ShoppingCartItem shoppingCartItem) { string result = string.Empty; ProductVariant productVariant = shoppingCartItem.ProductVariant; if (productVariant != null) { ProductVariantAttributeValueCollection pvaValues = shoppingCartItem.Attributes;[here count is 1] } } WHY am i not able to get count as 1 for the case1. /// <summary> /// Represents a shopping cart item /// </summary> public class ShoppingCartItem : BaseEntity { #region Fields private ProductVariant _cachedProductVariant; private ProductVariantAttributeValueCollection _cachedPvaValues; #endregion #region Ctor /// <summary> /// Creates a new instance of the shopping cart class /// </summary> public ShoppingCartItem() { } #endregion #region Properties /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the shopping cart item identifier /// </summary> public int ShoppingCartItemID { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the shopping cart type identifier /// </summary> public int ShoppingCartTypeID { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the customer session identifier /// </summary> public Guid CustomerSessionGUID { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the product variant identifier /// </summary> public int ProductVariantID { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the product variant attribute identifiers /// </summary> public List<int> AttributeIDs { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the text option /// </summary> public string TextOption { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the quantity /// </summary> public int Quantity { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the date and time of instance creation /// </summary> public DateTime CreatedOn { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the date and time of instance update /// </summary> public DateTime UpdatedOn { get; set; } #endregion #region Custom Properties /// <summary> /// Gets the log type /// </summary> public ShoppingCartTypeEnum ShoppingCartType { get { return (ShoppingCartTypeEnum)ShoppingCartTypeID; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the product variant /// </summary> public ProductVariant ProductVariant { get { if (_cachedProductVariant == null) { _cachedProductVariant = ProductManager.GetProductVariantByID(ProductVariantID); } return _cachedProductVariant; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the product variant attribute values /// </summary> public ProductVariantAttributeValueCollection Attributes { get { if (_cachedPvaValues == null) { ProductVariantAttributeValueCollection pvaValues = new ProductVariantAttributeValueCollection(); foreach (int attributeID in this.AttributeIDs) { ProductVariantAttributeValue pvaValue = ProductAttributeManager.GetProductVariantAttributeValueByID(attributeID); if (pvaValue != null) pvaValues.Add(pvaValue); } _cachedPvaValues = pvaValues; } return _cachedPvaValues; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the total weight /// </summary> public decimal TotalWeigth { get { decimal totalWeigth = decimal.Zero; ProductVariant productVariant = ProductVariant; if (productVariant != null) { decimal attributesTotalWeight = decimal.Zero; foreach (ProductVariantAttributeValue pvaValue in this.Attributes) { attributesTotalWeight += pvaValue.WeightAdjustment; } decimal unitWeight = productVariant.Weight + attributesTotalWeight; totalWeigth = unitWeight * Quantity; } return totalWeigth; } } /// <summary> /// Gets a value indicating whether the shopping cart item is free shipping /// </summary> public bool IsFreeShipping { get { ProductVariant productVariant = this.ProductVariant; if (productVariant != null) return productVariant.IsFreeShipping; return true; } }

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  • Unwanted character being added to string in C

    - by Church
    I have a program that gives you shipping addresses from an input file. However at the beginning of one of the strings, order.add_one, a number is being added to the beginning of the string, that number is equivalent to the variable "choice" every time. Why is it doing this? #include <stdio.h> #include <math.h> #include <string.h> //structure typedef struct {char cust_name[25]; char cust_id[3]; char add_one[30]; char add_two[30]; char bike; char risky; int number_ordered; char cust_information[500]; }ORDER; ORDER order; int main(void){ fflush(stdin); system ( "clear" ); //initialize variables float price; float m = 359.95; float s = 279.95; //while loop, runs until user declares they no longer wish to input orders while (1==1){ printf("Options: \nEnter Customer information manually : 1 \nSearch Customer by ID(input.txt reader) : 2 \n"); int option = 0; scanf(" %d", &option); if (option == 1){ //Print and scan statements printf("Enter Customer Information\n"); printf("Customer Name: "); scanf(" %[^\n]s", &order.cust_name); printf("\nEnter Address Line One: "); scanf(" %[^\n]s", &order.add_one); printf("\nEnter Addres Line Two: "); scanf(" %[^\n]s", &order.add_two); printf("\nHow Many Bicycles Are Ordered: "); scanf(" %d", &order.number_ordered); printf("\nWhat Type Of Bike Is Ordered\n M Mountain Bike \n S Street Bike"); printf("\nChoose One (M or S): "); scanf(" %c", &order.bike); printf("\nIs The Customer Risky (Y/N): "); scanf(" %c", &order.risky); system ( "clear" ); } if (option == 2){ FILE *fpt; fpt = fopen("input.txt", "r"); if (fpt==NULL){ printf("Text file did not open\n"); return 1; } printf("Enter Customer ID: "); scanf("%s", &order.cust_id); char choice; choice = order.cust_id[0]; char x[3]; int w, u, y, z; char a[10], b[10], c[10], d[10], e[20], f[10], g[10], i[1], j[1]; int h; printf("%s value of c", c); if (choice >='1'){ while ((w = fgetc(fpt)) != '\n' ){ } } if (choice >='2'){ while ((u = fgetc(fpt)) != '\n' ){ } } if (choice >='3'){ while ((y = fgetc(fpt)) != '\n' ){ } } if (choice >= '4'){ while ((z = fgetc(fpt)) != '\n' ){ } } printf("\n"); fscanf(fpt, "%s", x); fscanf(fpt, "%s", a); printf("%s", a); strcat(order.cust_name, a); fscanf(fpt, " %s", b); printf(" %s", b); strcat(order.cust_name, " "); strcat(order.cust_name, b); fscanf(fpt, "%s", c); printf(" %s", c); strcat(order.add_one, "\0"); strcat(order.add_one, c); fscanf(fpt, "%s", d); printf(" %s", d); strcat(order.add_one, " "); strcat(order.add_one, d); fscanf(fpt, "%s", e); printf(" %s", e); strcat(order.add_two, e); fscanf(fpt, "%s", f); printf(" %s", f); strcat(order.add_two, " "); strcat(order.add_two, f); fscanf(fpt, "%s", g); printf(" %s", g); strcat(order.add_two, " "); strcat(order.add_two, g); strcat(order.add_two, "\0"); fscanf(fpt, "%d", &h); printf(" %d", h); order.number_ordered = h; fscanf(fpt, "%s", i); printf(" %s", i); order.bike = i[0]; fscanf(fpt, "%s", j); printf(" %s", j); order.risky = j[0]; fclose(fpt); printf("%s %s %s %d %c %c", order.cust_name, order.add_one, order.add_two, order.number_ordered, order.bike, order.risky); }

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  • Rendering ASP.NET MVC Views to String

    - by Rick Strahl
    It's not uncommon in my applications that I require longish text output that does not have to be rendered into the HTTP output stream. The most common scenario I have for 'template driven' non-Web text is for emails of all sorts. Logon confirmations and verifications, email confirmations for things like orders, status updates or scheduler notifications - all of which require merged text output both within and sometimes outside of Web applications. On other occasions I also need to capture the output from certain views for logging purposes. Rather than creating text output in code, it's much nicer to use the rendering mechanism that ASP.NET MVC already provides by way of it's ViewEngines - using Razor or WebForms views - to render output to a string. This is nice because it uses the same familiar rendering mechanism that I already use for my HTTP output and it also solves the problem of where to store the templates for rendering this content in nothing more than perhaps a separate view folder. The good news is that ASP.NET MVC's rendering engine is much more modular than the full ASP.NET runtime engine which was a real pain in the butt to coerce into rendering output to string. With MVC the rendering engine has been separated out from core ASP.NET runtime, so it's actually a lot easier to get View output into a string. Getting View Output from within an MVC Application If you need to generate string output from an MVC and pass some model data to it, the process to capture this output is fairly straight forward and involves only a handful of lines of code. The catch is that this particular approach requires that you have an active ControllerContext that can be passed to the view. This means that the following approach is limited to access from within Controller methods. Here's a class that wraps the process and provides both instance and static methods to handle the rendering:/// <summary> /// Class that renders MVC views to a string using the /// standard MVC View Engine to render the view. /// /// Note: This class can only be used within MVC /// applications that have an active ControllerContext. /// </summary> public class ViewRenderer { /// <summary> /// Required Controller Context /// </summary> protected ControllerContext Context { get; set; } public ViewRenderer(ControllerContext controllerContext) { Context = controllerContext; } /// <summary> /// Renders a full MVC view to a string. Will render with the full MVC /// View engine including running _ViewStart and merging into _Layout /// </summary> /// <param name="viewPath"> /// The path to the view to render. Either in same controller, shared by /// name or as fully qualified ~/ path including extension /// </param> /// <param name="model">The model to render the view with</param> /// <returns>String of the rendered view or null on error</returns> public string RenderView(string viewPath, object model) { return RenderViewToStringInternal(viewPath, model, false); } /// <summary> /// Renders a partial MVC view to string. Use this method to render /// a partial view that doesn't merge with _Layout and doesn't fire /// _ViewStart. /// </summary> /// <param name="viewPath"> /// The path to the view to render. Either in same controller, shared by /// name or as fully qualified ~/ path including extension /// </param> /// <param name="model">The model to pass to the viewRenderer</param> /// <returns>String of the rendered view or null on error</returns> public string RenderPartialView(string viewPath, object model) { return RenderViewToStringInternal(viewPath, model, true); } public static string RenderView(string viewPath, object model, ControllerContext controllerContext) { ViewRenderer renderer = new ViewRenderer(controllerContext); return renderer.RenderView(viewPath, model); } public static string RenderPartialView(string viewPath, object model, ControllerContext controllerContext) { ViewRenderer renderer = new ViewRenderer(controllerContext); return renderer.RenderPartialView(viewPath, model); } protected string RenderViewToStringInternal(string viewPath, object model, bool partial = false) { // first find the ViewEngine for this view ViewEngineResult viewEngineResult = null; if (partial) viewEngineResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(Context, viewPath); else viewEngineResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(Context, viewPath, null); if (viewEngineResult == null) throw new FileNotFoundException(Properties.Resources.ViewCouldNotBeFound); // get the view and attach the model to view data var view = viewEngineResult.View; Context.Controller.ViewData.Model = model; string result = null; using (var sw = new StringWriter()) { var ctx = new ViewContext(Context, view, Context.Controller.ViewData, Context.Controller.TempData, sw); view.Render(ctx, sw); result = sw.ToString(); } return result; } } The key is the RenderViewToStringInternal method. The method first tries to find the view to render based on its path which can either be in the current controller's view path or the shared view path using its simple name (PasswordRecovery) or alternately by its full virtual path (~/Views/Templates/PasswordRecovery.cshtml). This code should work both for Razor and WebForms views although I've only tried it with Razor Views. Note that WebForms Views might actually be better for plain text as Razor adds all sorts of white space into its output when there are code blocks in the template. The Web Forms engine provides more accurate rendering for raw text scenarios. Once a view engine is found the view to render can be retrieved. Views in MVC render based on data that comes off the controller like the ViewData which contains the model along with the actual ViewData and ViewBag. From the View and some of the Context data a ViewContext is created which is then used to render the view with. The View picks up the Model and other data from the ViewContext internally and processes the View the same it would be processed if it were to send its output into the HTTP output stream. The difference is that we can override the ViewContext's output stream which we provide and capture into a StringWriter(). After rendering completes the result holds the output string. If an error occurs the error behavior is similar what you see with regular MVC errors - you get a full yellow screen of death including the view error information with the line of error highlighted. It's your responsibility to handle the error - or let it bubble up to your regular Controller Error filter if you have one. To use the simple class you only need a single line of code if you call the static methods. Here's an example of some Controller code that is used to send a user notification to a customer via email in one of my applications:[HttpPost] public ActionResult ContactSeller(ContactSellerViewModel model) { InitializeViewModel(model); var entryBus = new busEntry(); var entry = entryBus.LoadByDisplayId(model.EntryId); if ( string.IsNullOrEmpty(model.Email) ) entryBus.ValidationErrors.Add("Email address can't be empty.","Email"); if ( string.IsNullOrEmpty(model.Message)) entryBus.ValidationErrors.Add("Message can't be empty.","Message"); model.EntryId = entry.DisplayId; model.EntryTitle = entry.Title; if (entryBus.ValidationErrors.Count > 0) { ErrorDisplay.AddMessages(entryBus.ValidationErrors); ErrorDisplay.ShowError("Please correct the following:"); } else { string message = ViewRenderer.RenderView("~/views/template/ContactSellerEmail.cshtml",model, ControllerContext); string title = entry.Title + " (" + entry.DisplayId + ") - " + App.Configuration.ApplicationName; AppUtils.SendEmail(title, message, model.Email, entry.User.Email, false, false)) } return View(model); } Simple! The view in this case is just a plain MVC view and in this case it's a very simple plain text email message (edited for brevity here) that is created and sent off:@model ContactSellerViewModel @{ Layout = null; }re: @Model.EntryTitle @Model.ListingUrl @Model.Message ** SECURITY ADVISORY - AVOID SCAMS ** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home ** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping ** More Info: @(App.Configuration.ApplicationBaseUrl)scams.html Obviously this is a very simple view (I edited out more from this page to keep it brief) -  but other template views are much more complex HTML documents or long messages that are occasionally updated and they are a perfect fit for Razor rendering. It even works with nested partial views and _layout pages. Partial Rendering Notice that I'm rendering a full View here. In the view I explicitly set the Layout=null to avoid pulling in _layout.cshtml for this view. This can also be controlled externally by calling the RenderPartial method instead: string message = ViewRenderer.RenderPartialView("~/views/template/ContactSellerEmail.cshtml",model, ControllerContext); with this line of code no layout page (or _viewstart) will be loaded, so the output generated is just what's in the view. I find myself using Partials most of the time when rendering templates, since the target of templates usually tend to be emails or other HTML fragment like output, so the RenderPartialView() method is definitely useful to me. Rendering without a ControllerContext The preceding class is great when you're need template rendering from within MVC controller actions or anywhere where you have access to the request Controller. But if you don't have a controller context handy - maybe inside a utility function that is static, a non-Web application, or an operation that runs asynchronously in ASP.NET - which makes using the above code impossible. I haven't found a way to manually create a Controller context to provide the ViewContext() what it needs from outside of the MVC infrastructure. However, there are ways to accomplish this,  but they are a bit more complex. It's possible to host the RazorEngine on your own, which side steps all of the MVC framework and HTTP and just deals with the raw rendering engine. I wrote about this process in Hosting the Razor Engine in Non-Web Applications a long while back. It's quite a process to create a custom Razor engine and runtime, but it allows for all sorts of flexibility. There's also a RazorEngine CodePlex project that does something similar. I've been meaning to check out the latter but haven't gotten around to it since I have my own code to do this. The trick to hosting the RazorEngine to have it behave properly inside of an ASP.NET application and properly cache content so templates aren't constantly rebuild and reparsed. Anyway, in the same app as above I have one scenario where no ControllerContext is available: I have a background scheduler running inside of the app that fires on timed intervals. This process could be external but because it's lightweight we decided to fire it right inside of the ASP.NET app on a separate thread. In my app the code that renders these templates does something like this:var model = new SearchNotificationViewModel() { Entries = entries, Notification = notification, User = user }; // TODO: Need logging for errors sending string razorError = null; var result = AppUtils.RenderRazorTemplate("~/views/template/SearchNotificationTemplate.cshtml", model, razorError); which references a couple of helper functions that set up my RazorFolderHostContainer class:public static string RenderRazorTemplate(string virtualPath, object model,string errorMessage = null) { var razor = AppUtils.CreateRazorHost(); var path = virtualPath.Replace("~/", "").Replace("~", "").Replace("/", "\\"); var merged = razor.RenderTemplateToString(path, model); if (merged == null) errorMessage = razor.ErrorMessage; return merged; } /// <summary> /// Creates a RazorStringHostContainer and starts it /// Call .Stop() when you're done with it. /// /// This is a static instance /// </summary> /// <param name="virtualPath"></param> /// <param name="binBasePath"></param> /// <param name="forceLoad"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorFolderHostContainer CreateRazorHost(string binBasePath = null, bool forceLoad = false) { if (binBasePath == null) { if (HttpContext.Current != null) binBasePath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/"); else binBasePath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; } if (_RazorHost == null || forceLoad) { if (!binBasePath.EndsWith("\\")) binBasePath += "\\"; //var razor = new RazorStringHostContainer(); var razor = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); razor.TemplatePath = binBasePath; binBasePath += "bin\\"; razor.BaseBinaryFolder = binBasePath; razor.UseAppDomain = false; razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "ClassifiedsBusiness.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "ClassifiedsWeb.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Utilities.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Web.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Web.Mvc.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Web.dll"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("System.Web"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("ClassifiedsBusiness"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("ClassifiedsWeb"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("Westwind.Web"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("Westwind.Utilities"); _RazorHost = razor; _RazorHost.Start(); //_RazorHost.Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = false; } return _RazorHost; } The RazorFolderHostContainer essentially is a full runtime that mimics a folder structure like a typical Web app does including caching semantics and compiling code only if code changes on disk. It maps a folder hierarchy to views using the ~/ path syntax. The host is then configured to add assemblies and namespaces. Unfortunately the engine is not exactly like MVC's Razor - the expression expansion and code execution are the same, but some of the support methods like sections, helpers etc. are not all there so templates have to be a bit simpler. There are other folder hosts provided as well to directly execute templates from strings (using RazorStringHostContainer). The following is an example of an HTML email template @inherits RazorHosting.RazorTemplateFolderHost <ClassifiedsWeb.SearchNotificationViewModel> <html> <head> <title>Search Notifications</title> <style> body { margin: 5px;font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10pt;} h3 { color: SteelBlue; } .entry-item { border-bottom: 1px solid grey; padding: 8px; margin-bottom: 5px; } </style> </head> <body> Hello @Model.User.Name,<br /> <p>Below are your Search Results for the search phrase:</p> <h3>@Model.Notification.SearchPhrase</h3> <small>since @TimeUtils.ShortDateString(Model.Notification.LastSearch)</small> <hr /> You can see that the syntax is a little different. Instead of the familiar @model header the raw Razor  @inherits tag is used to specify the template base class (which you can extend). I took a quick look through the feature set of RazorEngine on CodePlex (now Github I guess) and the template implementation they use is closer to MVC's razor but there are other differences. In the end don't expect exact behavior like MVC templates if you use an external Razor rendering engine. This is not what I would consider an ideal solution, but it works well enough for this project. My biggest concern is the overhead of hosting a second razor engine in a Web app and the fact that here the differences in template rendering between 'real' MVC Razor views and another RazorEngine really are noticeable. You win some, you lose some It's extremely nice to see that if you have a ControllerContext handy (which probably addresses 99% of Web app scenarios) rendering a view to string using the native MVC Razor engine is pretty simple. Kudos on making that happen - as it solves a problem I see in just about every Web application I work on. But it is a bummer that a ControllerContext is required to make this simple code work. It'd be really sweet if there was a way to render views without being so closely coupled to the ASP.NET or MVC infrastructure that requires a ControllerContext. Alternately it'd be nice to have a way for an MVC based application to create a minimal ControllerContext from scratch - maybe somebody's been down that path. I tried for a few hours to come up with a way to make that work but gave up in the soup of nested contexts (MVC/Controller/View/Http). I suspect going down this path would be similar to hosting the ASP.NET runtime requiring a WorkerRequest. Brrr…. The sad part is that it seems to me that a View should really not require much 'context' of any kind to render output to string. Yes there are a few things that clearly are required like paths to the virtual and possibly the disk paths to the root of the app, but beyond that view rendering should not require much. But, no such luck. For now custom RazorHosting seems to be the only way to make Razor rendering go outside of the MVC context… Resources Full ViewRenderer.cs source code from Westwind.Web.Mvc library Hosting the Razor Engine for Non-Web Applications RazorEngine on GitHub© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET   ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

    - by ScottGu
    This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Using Stub Objects

    - by user9154181
    Having told the long and winding tale of where stub objects came from and how we use them to build Solaris, I'd like to focus now on the the nuts and bolts of building and using them. The following new features were added to the Solaris link-editor (ld) to support the production and use of stub objects: -z stub This new command line option informs ld that it is to build a stub object rather than a normal object. In this mode, it accepts the same command line arguments as usual, but will quietly ignore any objects and sharable object dependencies. STUB_OBJECT Mapfile Directive In order to build a stub version of an object, its mapfile must specify the STUB_OBJECT directive. When producing a non-stub object, the presence of STUB_OBJECT causes the link-editor to perform extra validation to ensure that the stub and non-stub objects will be compatible. ASSERT Mapfile Directive All data symbols exported from the object must have an ASSERT symbol directive in the mapfile that declares them as data and supplies the size, binding, bss attributes, and symbol aliasing details. When building the stub objects, the information in these ASSERT directives is used to create the data symbols. When building the real object, these ASSERT directives will ensure that the real object matches the linking interface presented by the stub. Although ASSERT was added to the link-editor in order to support stub objects, they are a general purpose feature that can be used independently of stub objects. For instance you might choose to use an ASSERT directive if you have a symbol that must have a specific address in order for the object to operate properly and you want to automatically ensure that this will always be the case. The material presented here is derived from a document I originally wrote during the development effort, which had the dual goals of providing supplemental materials for the stub object PSARC case, and as a set of edits that were eventually applied to the Oracle Solaris Linker and Libraries Manual (LLM). The Solaris 11 LLM contains this information in a more polished form. Stub Objects A stub object is a shared object, built entirely from mapfiles, that supplies the same linking interface as the real object, while containing no code or data. Stub objects cannot be used at runtime. However, an application can be built against a stub object, where the stub object provides the real object name to be used at runtime, and then use the real object at runtime. When building a stub object, the link-editor ignores any object or library files specified on the command line, and these files need not exist in order to build a stub. Since the compilation step can be omitted, and because the link-editor has relatively little work to do, stub objects can be built very quickly. Stub objects can be used to solve a variety of build problems: Speed Modern machines, using a version of make with the ability to parallelize operations, are capable of compiling and linking many objects simultaneously, and doing so offers significant speedups. However, it is typical that a given object will depend on other objects, and that there will be a core set of objects that nearly everything else depends on. It is necessary to impose an ordering that builds each object before any other object that requires it. This ordering creates bottlenecks that reduce the amount of parallelization that is possible and limits the overall speed at which the code can be built. Complexity/Correctness In a large body of code, there can be a large number of dependencies between the various objects. The makefiles or other build descriptions for these objects can become very complex and difficult to understand or maintain. The dependencies can change as the system evolves. This can cause a given set of makefiles to become slightly incorrect over time, leading to race conditions and mysterious rare build failures. Dependency Cycles It might be desirable to organize code as cooperating shared objects, each of which draw on the resources provided by the other. Such cycles cannot be supported in an environment where objects must be built before the objects that use them, even though the runtime linker is fully capable of loading and using such objects if they could be built. Stub shared objects offer an alternative method for building code that sidesteps the above issues. Stub objects can be quickly built for all the shared objects produced by the build. Then, all the real shared objects and executables can be built in parallel, in any order, using the stub objects to stand in for the real objects at link-time. Afterwards, the executables and real shared objects are kept, and the stub shared objects are discarded. Stub objects are built from a mapfile, which must satisfy the following requirements. The mapfile must specify the STUB_OBJECT directive. This directive informs the link-editor that the object can be built as a stub object, and as such causes the link-editor to perform validation and sanity checking intended to guarantee that an object and its stub will always provide identical linking interfaces. All function and data symbols that make up the external interface to the object must be explicitly listed in the mapfile. The mapfile must use symbol scope reduction ('*'), to remove any symbols not explicitly listed from the external interface. All global data exported from the object must have an ASSERT symbol attribute in the mapfile to specify the symbol type, size, and bss attributes. In the case where there are multiple symbols that reference the same data, the ASSERT for one of these symbols must specify the TYPE and SIZE attributes, while the others must use the ALIAS attribute to reference this primary symbol. Given such a mapfile, the stub and real versions of the shared object can be built using the same command line for each, adding the '-z stub' option to the link for the stub object, and omiting the option from the link for the real object. To demonstrate these ideas, the following code implements a shared object named idx5, which exports data from a 5 element array of integers, with each element initialized to contain its zero-based array index. This data is available as a global array, via an alternative alias data symbol with weak binding, and via a functional interface. % cat idx5.c int _idx5[5] = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 }; #pragma weak idx5 = _idx5 int idx5_func(int index) { if ((index 4)) return (-1); return (_idx5[index]); } A mapfile is required to describe the interface provided by this shared object. % cat mapfile $mapfile_version 2 STUB_OBJECT; SYMBOL_SCOPE { _idx5 { ASSERT { TYPE=data; SIZE=4[5] }; }; idx5 { ASSERT { BINDING=weak; ALIAS=_idx5 }; }; idx5_func; local: *; }; The following main program is used to print all the index values available from the idx5 shared object. % cat main.c #include <stdio.h> extern int _idx5[5], idx5[5], idx5_func(int); int main(int argc, char **argv) { int i; for (i = 0; i The following commands create a stub version of this shared object in a subdirectory named stublib. elfdump is used to verify that the resulting object is a stub. The command used to build the stub differs from that of the real object only in the addition of the -z stub option, and the use of a different output file name. This demonstrates the ease with which stub generation can be added to an existing makefile. % cc -Kpic -G -M mapfile -h libidx5.so.1 idx5.c -o stublib/libidx5.so.1 -zstub % ln -s libidx5.so.1 stublib/libidx5.so % elfdump -d stublib/libidx5.so | grep STUB [11] FLAGS_1 0x4000000 [ STUB ] The main program can now be built, using the stub object to stand in for the real shared object, and setting a runpath that will find the real object at runtime. However, as we have not yet built the real object, this program cannot yet be run. Attempts to cause the system to load the stub object are rejected, as the runtime linker knows that stub objects lack the actual code and data found in the real object, and cannot execute. % cc main.c -L stublib -R '$ORIGIN/lib' -lidx5 -lc % ./a.out ld.so.1: a.out: fatal: libidx5.so.1: open failed: No such file or directory Killed % LD_PRELOAD=stublib/libidx5.so.1 ./a.out ld.so.1: a.out: fatal: stublib/libidx5.so.1: stub shared object cannot be used at runtime Killed We build the real object using the same command as we used to build the stub, omitting the -z stub option, and writing the results to a different file. % cc -Kpic -G -M mapfile -h libidx5.so.1 idx5.c -o lib/libidx5.so.1 Once the real object has been built in the lib subdirectory, the program can be run. % ./a.out [0] 0 0 0 [1] 1 1 1 [2] 2 2 2 [3] 3 3 3 [4] 4 4 4 Mapfile Changes The version 2 mapfile syntax was extended in a number of places to accommodate stub objects. Conditional Input The version 2 mapfile syntax has the ability conditionalize mapfile input using the $if control directive. As you might imagine, these directives are used frequently with ASSERT directives for data, because a given data symbol will frequently have a different size in 32 or 64-bit code, or on differing hardware such as x86 versus sparc. The link-editor maintains an internal table of names that can be used in the logical expressions evaluated by $if and $elif. At startup, this table is initialized with items that describe the class of object (_ELF32 or _ELF64) and the type of the target machine (_sparc or _x86). We found that there were a small number of cases in the Solaris code base in which we needed to know what kind of object we were producing, so we added the following new predefined items in order to address that need: NameMeaning ...... _ET_DYNshared object _ET_EXECexecutable object _ET_RELrelocatable object ...... STUB_OBJECT Directive The new STUB_OBJECT directive informs the link-editor that the object described by the mapfile can be built as a stub object. STUB_OBJECT; A stub shared object is built entirely from the information in the mapfiles supplied on the command line. When the -z stub option is specified to build a stub object, the presence of the STUB_OBJECT directive in a mapfile is required, and the link-editor uses the information in symbol ASSERT attributes to create global symbols that match those of the real object. When the real object is built, the presence of STUB_OBJECT causes the link-editor to verify that the mapfiles accurately describe the real object interface, and that a stub object built from them will provide the same linking interface as the real object it represents. All function and data symbols that make up the external interface to the object must be explicitly listed in the mapfile. The mapfile must use symbol scope reduction ('*'), to remove any symbols not explicitly listed from the external interface. All global data in the object is required to have an ASSERT attribute that specifies the symbol type and size. If the ASSERT BIND attribute is not present, the link-editor provides a default assertion that the symbol must be GLOBAL. If the ASSERT SH_ATTR attribute is not present, or does not specify that the section is one of BITS or NOBITS, the link-editor provides a default assertion that the associated section is BITS. All data symbols that describe the same address and size are required to have ASSERT ALIAS attributes specified in the mapfile. If aliased symbols are discovered that do not have an ASSERT ALIAS specified, the link fails and no object is produced. These rules ensure that the mapfiles contain a description of the real shared object's linking interface that is sufficient to produce a stub object with a completely compatible linking interface. SYMBOL_SCOPE/SYMBOL_VERSION ASSERT Attribute The SYMBOL_SCOPE and SYMBOL_VERSION mapfile directives were extended with a symbol attribute named ASSERT. The syntax for the ASSERT attribute is as follows: ASSERT { ALIAS = symbol_name; BINDING = symbol_binding; TYPE = symbol_type; SH_ATTR = section_attributes; SIZE = size_value; SIZE = size_value[count]; }; The ASSERT attribute is used to specify the expected characteristics of the symbol. The link-editor compares the symbol characteristics that result from the link to those given by ASSERT attributes. If the real and asserted attributes do not agree, a fatal error is issued and the output object is not created. In normal use, the link editor evaluates the ASSERT attribute when present, but does not require them, or provide default values for them. The presence of the STUB_OBJECT directive in a mapfile alters the interpretation of ASSERT to require them under some circumstances, and to supply default assertions if explicit ones are not present. See the definition of the STUB_OBJECT Directive for the details. When the -z stub command line option is specified to build a stub object, the information provided by ASSERT attributes is used to define the attributes of the global symbols provided by the object. ASSERT accepts the following: ALIAS Name of a previously defined symbol that this symbol is an alias for. An alias symbol has the same type, value, and size as the main symbol. The ALIAS attribute is mutually exclusive to the TYPE, SIZE, and SH_ATTR attributes, and cannot be used with them. When ALIAS is specified, the type, size, and section attributes are obtained from the alias symbol. BIND Specifies an ELF symbol binding, which can be any of the STB_ constants defined in <sys/elf.h>, with the STB_ prefix removed (e.g. GLOBAL, WEAK). TYPE Specifies an ELF symbol type, which can be any of the STT_ constants defined in <sys/elf.h>, with the STT_ prefix removed (e.g. OBJECT, COMMON, FUNC). In addition, for compatibility with other mapfile usage, FUNCTION and DATA can be specified, for STT_FUNC and STT_OBJECT, respectively. TYPE is mutually exclusive to ALIAS, and cannot be used in conjunction with it. SH_ATTR Specifies attributes of the section associated with the symbol. The section_attributes that can be specified are given in the following table: Section AttributeMeaning BITSSection is not of type SHT_NOBITS NOBITSSection is of type SHT_NOBITS SH_ATTR is mutually exclusive to ALIAS, and cannot be used in conjunction with it. SIZE Specifies the expected symbol size. SIZE is mutually exclusive to ALIAS, and cannot be used in conjunction with it. The syntax for the size_value argument is as described in the discussion of the SIZE attribute below. SIZE The SIZE symbol attribute existed before support for stub objects was introduced. It is used to set the size attribute of a given symbol. This attribute results in the creation of a symbol definition. Prior to the introduction of the ASSERT SIZE attribute, the value of a SIZE attribute was always numeric. While attempting to apply ASSERT SIZE to the objects in the Solaris ON consolidation, I found that many data symbols have a size based on the natural machine wordsize for the class of object being produced. Variables declared as long, or as a pointer, will be 4 bytes in size in a 32-bit object, and 8 bytes in a 64-bit object. Initially, I employed the conditional $if directive to handle these cases as follows: $if _ELF32 foo { ASSERT { TYPE=data; SIZE=4 } }; bar { ASSERT { TYPE=data; SIZE=20 } }; $elif _ELF64 foo { ASSERT { TYPE=data; SIZE=8 } }; bar { ASSERT { TYPE=data; SIZE=40 } }; $else $error UNKNOWN ELFCLASS $endif I found that the situation occurs frequently enough that this is cumbersome. To simplify this case, I introduced the idea of the addrsize symbolic name, and of a repeat count, which together make it simple to specify machine word scalar or array symbols. Both the SIZE, and ASSERT SIZE attributes support this syntax: The size_value argument can be a numeric value, or it can be the symbolic name addrsize. addrsize represents the size of a machine word capable of holding a memory address. The link-editor substitutes the value 4 for addrsize when building 32-bit objects, and the value 8 when building 64-bit objects. addrsize is useful for representing the size of pointer variables and C variables of type long, as it automatically adjusts for 32 and 64-bit objects without requiring the use of conditional input. The size_value argument can be optionally suffixed with a count value, enclosed in square brackets. If count is present, size_value and count are multiplied together to obtain the final size value. Using this feature, the example above can be written more naturally as: foo { ASSERT { TYPE=data; SIZE=addrsize } }; bar { ASSERT { TYPE=data; SIZE=addrsize[5] } }; Exported Global Data Is Still A Bad Idea As you can see, the additional plumbing added to the Solaris link-editor to support stub objects is minimal. Furthermore, about 90% of that plumbing is dedicated to handling global data. We have long advised against global data exported from shared objects. There are many ways in which global data does not fit well with dynamic linking. Stub objects simply provide one more reason to avoid this practice. It is always better to export all data via a functional interface. You should always hide your data, and make it available to your users via a function that they can call to acquire the address of the data item. However, If you do have to support global data for a stub, perhaps because you are working with an already existing object, it is still easilily done, as shown above. Oracle does not like us to discuss hypothetical new features that don't exist in shipping product, so I'll end this section with a speculation. It might be possible to do more in this area to ease the difficulty of dealing with objects that have global data that the users of the library don't need. Perhaps someday... Conclusions It is easy to create stub objects for most objects. If your library only exports function symbols, all you have to do to build a faithful stub object is to add STUB_OBJECT; and then to use the same link command you're currently using, with the addition of the -z stub option. Happy Stubbing!

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  • Much Ado About Nothing: Stub Objects

    - by user9154181
    The Solaris 11 link-editor (ld) contains support for a new type of object that we call a stub object. A stub object is a shared object, built entirely from mapfiles, that supplies the same linking interface as the real object, while containing no code or data. Stub objects cannot be executed — the runtime linker will kill any process that attempts to load one. However, you can link to a stub object as a dependency, allowing the stub to act as a proxy for the real version of the object. You may well wonder if there is a point to producing an object that contains nothing but linking interface. As it turns out, stub objects are very useful for building large bodies of code such as Solaris. In the last year, we've had considerable success in applying them to one of our oldest and thorniest build problems. In this discussion, I will describe how we came to invent these objects, and how we apply them to building Solaris. This posting explains where the idea for stub objects came from, and details our long and twisty journey from hallway idea to standard link-editor feature. I expect that these details are mainly of interest to those who work on Solaris and its makefiles, those who have done so in the past, and those who work with other similar bodies of code. A subsequent posting will omit the history and background details, and instead discuss how to build and use stub objects. If you are mainly interested in what stub objects are, and don't care about the underlying software war stories, I encourage you to skip ahead. The Long Road To Stubs This all started for me with an email discussion in May of 2008, regarding a change request that was filed in 2002, entitled: 4631488 lib/Makefile is too patient: .WAITs should be reduced This CR encapsulates a number of cronic issues with Solaris builds: We build Solaris with a parallel make (dmake) that tries to build as much of the code base in parallel as possible. There is a lot of code to build, and we've long made use of parallelized builds to get the job done quicker. This is even more important in today's world of massively multicore hardware. Solaris contains a large number of executables and shared objects. Executables depend on shared objects, and shared objects can depend on each other. Before you can build an object, you need to ensure that the objects it needs have been built. This implies a need for serialization, which is in direct opposition to the desire to build everying in parallel. To accurately build objects in the right order requires an accurate set of make rules defining the things that depend on each other. This sounds simple, but the reality is quite complex. In practice, having programmers explicitly specify these dependencies is a losing strategy: It's really hard to get right. It's really easy to get it wrong and never know it because things build anyway. Even if you get it right, it won't stay that way, because dependencies between objects can change over time, and make cannot help you detect such drifing. You won't know that you got it wrong until the builds break. That can be a long time after the change that triggered the breakage happened, making it hard to connect the cause and the effect. Usually this happens just before a release, when the pressure is on, its hard to think calmly, and there is no time for deep fixes. As a poor compromise, the libraries in core Solaris were built using a set of grossly incomplete hand written rules, supplemented with a number of dmake .WAIT directives used to group the libraries into sets of non-interacting groups that can be built in parallel because we think they don't depend on each other. From time to time, someone will suggest that we could analyze the built objects themselves to determine their dependencies and then generate make rules based on those relationships. This is possible, but but there are complications that limit the usefulness of that approach: To analyze an object, you have to build it first. This is a classic chicken and egg scenario. You could analyze the results of a previous build, but then you're not necessarily going to get accurate rules for the current code. It should be possible to build the code without having a built workspace available. The analysis will take time, and remember that we're constantly trying to make builds faster, not slower. By definition, such an approach will always be approximate, and therefore only incremantally more accurate than the hand written rules described above. The hand written rules are fast and cheap, while this idea is slow and complex, so we stayed with the hand written approach. Solaris was built that way, essentially forever, because these are genuinely difficult problems that had no easy answer. The makefiles were full of build races in which the right outcomes happened reliably for years until a new machine or a change in build server workload upset the accidental balance of things. After figuring out what had happened, you'd mutter "How did that ever work?", add another incomplete and soon to be inaccurate make dependency rule to the system, and move on. This was not a satisfying solution, as we tend to be perfectionists in the Solaris group, but we didn't have a better answer. It worked well enough, approximately. And so it went for years. We needed a different approach — a new idea to cut the Gordian Knot. In that discussion from May 2008, my fellow linker-alien Rod Evans had the initial spark that lead us to a game changing series of realizations: The link-editor is used to link objects together, but it only uses the ELF metadata in the object, consisting of symbol tables, ELF versioning sections, and similar data. Notably, it does not look at, or understand, the machine code that makes an object useful at runtime. If you had an object that only contained the ELF metadata for a dependency, but not the code or data, the link-editor would find it equally useful for linking, and would never know the difference. Call it a stub object. In the core Solaris OS, we require all objects to be built with a link-editor mapfile that describes all of its publically available functions and data. Could we build a stub object using the mapfile for the real object? It ought to be very fast to build stub objects, as there are no input objects to process. Unlike the real object, stub objects would not actually require any dependencies, and so, all of the stubs for the entire system could be built in parallel. When building the real objects, one could link against the stub objects instead of the real dependencies. This means that all the real objects can be built built in parallel too, without any serialization. We could replace a system that requires perfect makefile rules with a system that requires no ordering rules whatsoever. The results would be considerably more robust. We immediately realized that this idea had potential, but also that there were many details to sort out, lots of work to do, and that perhaps it wouldn't really pan out. As is often the case, it would be necessary to do the work and see how it turned out. Following that conversation, I set about trying to build a stub object. We determined that a faithful stub has to do the following: Present the same set of global symbols, with the same ELF versioning, as the real object. Functions are simple — it suffices to have a symbol of the right type, possibly, but not necessarily, referencing a null function in its text segment. Copy relocations make data more complicated to stub. The possibility of a copy relocation means that when you create a stub, the data symbols must have the actual size of the real data. Any error in this will go uncaught at link time, and will cause tragic failures at runtime that are very hard to diagnose. For reasons too obscure to go into here, involving tentative symbols, it is also important that the data reside in bss, or not, matching its placement in the real object. If the real object has more than one symbol pointing at the same data item, we call these aliased symbols. All data symbols in the stub object must exhibit the same aliasing as the real object. We imagined the stub library feature working as follows: A command line option to ld tells it to produce a stub rather than a real object. In this mode, only mapfiles are examined, and any object or shared libraries on the command line are are ignored. The extra information needed (function or data, size, and bss details) would be added to the mapfile. When building the real object instead of the stub, the extra information for building stubs would be validated against the resulting object to ensure that they match. In exploring these ideas, I immediately run headfirst into the reality of the original mapfile syntax, a subject that I would later write about as The Problem(s) With Solaris SVR4 Link-Editor Mapfiles. The idea of extending that poor language was a non-starter. Until a better mapfile syntax became available, which seemed unlikely in 2008, the solution could not involve extentions to the mapfile syntax. Instead, we cooked up the idea (hack) of augmenting mapfiles with stylized comments that would carry the necessary information. A typical definition might look like: # DATA(i386) __iob 0x3c0 # DATA(amd64,sparcv9) __iob 0xa00 # DATA(sparc) __iob 0x140 iob; A further problem then became clear: If we can't extend the mapfile syntax, then there's no good way to extend ld with an option to produce stub objects, and to validate them against the real objects. The idea of having ld read comments in a mapfile and parse them for content is an unacceptable hack. The entire point of comments is that they are strictly for the human reader, and explicitly ignored by the tool. Taking all of these speed bumps into account, I made a new plan: A perl script reads the mapfiles, generates some small C glue code to produce empty functions and data definitions, compiles and links the stub object from the generated glue code, and then deletes the generated glue code. Another perl script used after both objects have been built, to compare the real and stub objects, using data from elfdump, and validate that they present the same linking interface. By June 2008, I had written the above, and generated a stub object for libc. It was a useful prototype process to go through, and it allowed me to explore the ideas at a deep level. Ultimately though, the result was unsatisfactory as a basis for real product. There were so many issues: The use of stylized comments were fine for a prototype, but not close to professional enough for shipping product. The idea of having to document and support it was a large concern. The ideal solution for stub objects really does involve having the link-editor accept the same arguments used to build the real object, augmented with a single extra command line option. Any other solution, such as our prototype script, will require makefiles to be modified in deeper ways to support building stubs, and so, will raise barriers to converting existing code. A validation script that rederives what the linker knew when it built an object will always be at a disadvantage relative to the actual linker that did the work. A stub object should be identifyable as such. In the prototype, there was no tag or other metadata that would let you know that they weren't real objects. Being able to identify a stub object in this way means that the file command can tell you what it is, and that the runtime linker can refuse to try and run a program that loads one. At that point, we needed to apply this prototype to building Solaris. As you might imagine, the task of modifying all the makefiles in the core Solaris code base in order to do this is a massive task, and not something you'd enter into lightly. The quality of the prototype just wasn't good enough to justify that sort of time commitment, so I tabled the project, putting it on my list of long term things to think about, and moved on to other work. It would sit there for a couple of years. Semi-coincidentally, one of the projects I tacked after that was to create a new mapfile syntax for the Solaris link-editor. We had wanted to do something about the old mapfile syntax for many years. Others before me had done some paper designs, and a great deal of thought had already gone into the features it should, and should not have, but for various reasons things had never moved beyond the idea stage. When I joined Sun in late 2005, I got involved in reviewing those things and thinking about the problem. Now in 2008, fresh from relearning for the Nth time why the old mapfile syntax was a huge impediment to linker progress, it seemed like the right time to tackle the mapfile issue. Paving the way for proper stub object support was not the driving force behind that effort, but I certainly had them in mind as I moved forward. The new mapfile syntax, which we call version 2, integrated into Nevada build snv_135 in in February 2010: 6916788 ld version 2 mapfile syntax PSARC/2009/688 Human readable and extensible ld mapfile syntax In order to prove that the new mapfile syntax was adequate for general purpose use, I had also done an overhaul of the ON consolidation to convert all mapfiles to use the new syntax, and put checks in place that would ensure that no use of the old syntax would creep back in. That work went back into snv_144 in June 2010: 6916796 OSnet mapfiles should use version 2 link-editor syntax That was a big putback, modifying 517 files, adding 18 new files, and removing 110 old ones. I would have done this putback anyway, as the work was already done, and the benefits of human readable syntax are obvious. However, among the justifications listed in CR 6916796 was this We anticipate adding additional features to the new mapfile language that will be applicable to ON, and which will require all sharable object mapfiles to use the new syntax. I never explained what those additional features were, and no one asked. It was premature to say so, but this was a reference to stub objects. By that point, I had already put together a working prototype link-editor with the necessary support for stub objects. I was pleased to find that building stubs was indeed very fast. On my desktop system (Ultra 24), an amd64 stub for libc can can be built in a fraction of a second: % ptime ld -64 -z stub -o stubs/libc.so.1 -G -hlibc.so.1 \ -ztext -zdefs -Bdirect ... real 0.019708910 user 0.010101680 sys 0.008528431 In order to go from prototype to integrated link-editor feature, I knew that I would need to prove that stub objects were valuable. And to do that, I knew that I'd have to switch the Solaris ON consolidation to use stub objects and evaluate the outcome. And in order to do that experiment, ON would first need to be converted to version 2 mapfiles. Sub-mission accomplished. Normally when you design a new feature, you can devise reasonably small tests to show it works, and then deploy it incrementally, letting it prove its value as it goes. The entire point of stub objects however was to demonstrate that they could be successfully applied to an extremely large and complex code base, and specifically to solve the Solaris build issues detailed above. There was no way to finesse the matter — in order to move ahead, I would have to successfully use stub objects to build the entire ON consolidation and demonstrate their value. In software, the need to boil the ocean can often be a warning sign that things are trending in the wrong direction. Conversely, sometimes progress demands that you build something large and new all at once. A big win, or a big loss — sometimes all you can do is try it and see what happens. And so, I spent some time staring at ON makefiles trying to get a handle on how things work, and how they'd have to change. It's a big and messy world, full of complex interactions, unspecified dependencies, special cases, and knowledge of arcane makefile features... ...and so, I backed away, put it down for a few months and did other work... ...until the fall, when I felt like it was time to stop thinking and pondering (some would say stalling) and get on with it. Without stubs, the following gives a simplified high level view of how Solaris is built: An initially empty directory known as the proto, and referenced via the ROOT makefile macro is established to receive the files that make up the Solaris distribution. A top level setup rule creates the proto area, and performs operations needed to initialize the workspace so that the main build operations can be launched, such as copying needed header files into the proto area. Parallel builds are launched to build the kernel (usr/src/uts), libraries (usr/src/lib), and commands. The install makefile target builds each item and delivers a copy to the proto area. All libraries and executables link against the objects previously installed in the proto, implying the need to synchronize the order in which things are built. Subsequent passes run lint, and do packaging. Given this structure, the additions to use stub objects are: A new second proto area is established, known as the stub proto and referenced via the STUBROOT makefile macro. The stub proto has the same structure as the real proto, but is used to hold stub objects. All files in the real proto are delivered as part of the Solaris product. In contrast, the stub proto is used to build the product, and then thrown away. A new target is added to library Makefiles called stub. This rule builds the stub objects. The ld command is designed so that you can build a stub object using the same ld command line you'd use to build the real object, with the addition of a single -z stub option. This means that the makefile rules for building the stub objects are very similar to those used to build the real objects, and many existing makefile definitions can be shared between them. A new target is added to the Makefiles called stubinstall which delivers the stub objects built by the stub rule into the stub proto. These rules reuse much of existing plumbing used by the existing install rule. The setup rule runs stubinstall over the entire lib subtree as part of its initialization. All libraries and executables link against the objects in the stub proto rather than the main proto, and can therefore be built in parallel without any synchronization. There was no small way to try this that would yield meaningful results. I would have to take a leap of faith and edit approximately 1850 makefiles and 300 mapfiles first, trusting that it would all work out. Once the editing was done, I'd type make and see what happened. This took about 6 weeks to do, and there were many dark days when I'd question the entire project, or struggle to understand some of the many twisted and complex situations I'd uncover in the makefiles. I even found a couple of new issues that required changes to the new stub object related code I'd added to ld. With a substantial amount of encouragement and help from some key people in the Solaris group, I eventually got the editing done and stub objects for the entire workspace built. I found that my desktop system could build all the stub objects in the workspace in roughly a minute. This was great news, as it meant that use of the feature is effectively free — no one was likely to notice or care about the cost of building them. After another week of typing make, fixing whatever failed, and doing it again, I succeeded in getting a complete build! The next step was to remove all of the make rules and .WAIT statements dedicated to controlling the order in which libraries under usr/src/lib are built. This came together pretty quickly, and after a few more speed bumps, I had a workspace that built cleanly and looked like something you might actually be able to integrate someday. This was a significant milestone, but there was still much left to do. I turned to doing full nightly builds. Every type of build (open, closed, OpenSolaris, export, domestic) had to be tried. Each type failed in a new and unique way, requiring some thinking and rework. As things came together, I became aware of things that could have been done better, simpler, or cleaner, and those things also required some rethinking, the seeking of wisdom from others, and some rework. After another couple of weeks, it was in close to final form. My focus turned towards the end game and integration. This was a huge workspace, and needed to go back soon, before changes in the gate would made merging increasingly difficult. At this point, I knew that the stub objects had greatly simplified the makefile logic and uncovered a number of race conditions, some of which had been there for years. I assumed that the builds were faster too, so I did some builds intended to quantify the speedup in build time that resulted from this approach. It had never occurred to me that there might not be one. And so, I was very surprised to find that the wall clock build times for a stock ON workspace were essentially identical to the times for my stub library enabled version! This is why it is important to always measure, and not just to assume. One can tell from first principles, based on all those removed dependency rules in the library makefile, that the stub object version of ON gives dmake considerably more opportunities to overlap library construction. Some hypothesis were proposed, and shot down: Could we have disabled dmakes parallel feature? No, a quick check showed things being build in parallel. It was suggested that we might be I/O bound, and so, the threads would be mostly idle. That's a plausible explanation, but system stats didn't really support it. Plus, the timing between the stub and non-stub cases were just too suspiciously identical. Are our machines already handling as much parallelism as they are capable of, and unable to exploit these additional opportunities? Once again, we didn't see the evidence to back this up. Eventually, a more plausible and obvious reason emerged: We build the libraries and commands (usr/src/lib, usr/src/cmd) in parallel with the kernel (usr/src/uts). The kernel is the long leg in that race, and so, wall clock measurements of build time are essentially showing how long it takes to build uts. Although it would have been nice to post a huge speedup immediately, we can take solace in knowing that stub objects simplify the makefiles and reduce the possibility of race conditions. The next step in reducing build time should be to find ways to reduce or overlap the uts part of the builds. When that leg of the build becomes shorter, then the increased parallelism in the libs and commands will pay additional dividends. Until then, we'll just have to settle for simpler and more robust. And so, I integrated the link-editor support for creating stub objects into snv_153 (November 2010) with 6993877 ld should produce stub objects PSARC/2010/397 ELF Stub Objects followed by the work to convert the ON consolidation in snv_161 (February 2011) with 7009826 OSnet should use stub objects 4631488 lib/Makefile is too patient: .WAITs should be reduced This was a huge putback, with 2108 modified files, 8 new files, and 2 removed files. Due to the size, I was allowed a window after snv_160 closed in which to do the putback. It went pretty smoothly for something this big, a few more preexisting race conditions would be discovered and addressed over the next few weeks, and things have been quiet since then. Conclusions and Looking Forward Solaris has been built with stub objects since February. The fact that developers no longer specify the order in which libraries are built has been a big success, and we've eliminated an entire class of build error. That's not to say that there are no build races left in the ON makefiles, but we've taken a substantial bite out of the problem while generally simplifying and improving things. The introduction of a stub proto area has also opened some interesting new possibilities for other build improvements. As this article has become quite long, and as those uses do not involve stub objects, I will defer that discussion to a future article.

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  • Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix

    - by Rick Strahl
    originally published in CoDe Magazine Editorial Microsoft recently released the first CTP of a new development environment called WebMatrix, which along with some of its supporting technologies are squarely aimed at making the Microsoft Web Platform more approachable for first-time developers and hobbyists. But in the process, it also provides some updated technologies that can make life easier for existing .NET developers. Let’s face it: ASP.NET development isn’t exactly trivial unless you already have a fair bit of familiarity with sophisticated development practices. Stick a non-developer in front of Visual Studio .NET or even the Visual Web Developer Express edition and it’s not likely that the person in front of the screen will be very productive or feel inspired. Yet other technologies like PHP and even classic ASP did provide the ability for non-developers and hobbyists to become reasonably proficient in creating basic web content quickly and efficiently. WebMatrix appears to be Microsoft’s attempt to bring back some of that simplicity with a number of technologies and tools. The key is to provide a friendly and fully self-contained development environment that provides all the tools needed to build an application in one place, as well as tools that allow publishing of content and databases easily to the web server. WebMatrix is made up of several components and technologies: IIS Developer Express IIS Developer Express is a new, self-contained development web server that is fully compatible with IIS 7.5 and based on the same codebase that IIS 7.5 uses. This new development server replaces the much less compatible Cassini web server that’s been used in Visual Studio and the Express editions. IIS Express addresses a few shortcomings of the Cassini server such as the inability to serve custom ISAPI extensions (i.e., things like PHP or ASP classic for example), as well as not supporting advanced authentication. IIS Developer Express provides most of the IIS 7.5 feature set providing much better compatibility between development and live deployment scenarios. SQL Server Compact 4.0 Database access is a key component for most web-driven applications, but on the Microsoft stack this has mostly meant you have to use SQL Server or SQL Server Express. SQL Server Compact is not new-it’s been around for a few years, but it’s been severely hobbled in the past by terrible tool support and the inability to support more than a single connection in Microsoft’s attempt to avoid losing SQL Server licensing. The new release of SQL Server Compact 4.0 supports multiple connections and you can run it in ASP.NET web applications simply by installing an assembly into the bin folder of the web application. In effect, you don’t have to install a special system configuration to run SQL Compact as it is a drop-in database engine: Copy the small assembly into your BIN folder (or from the GAC if installed fully), create a connection string against a local file-based database file, and then start firing SQL requests. Additionally WebMatrix includes nice tools to edit the database tables and files, along with tools to easily upsize (and hopefully downsize in the future) to full SQL Server. This is a big win, pending compatibility and performance limits. In my simple testing the data engine performed well enough for small data sets. This is not only useful for web applications, but also for desktop applications for which a fully installed SQL engine like SQL Server would be overkill. Having a local data store in those applications that can potentially be accessed by multiple users is a welcome feature. ASP.NET Razor View Engine What? Yet another native ASP.NET view engine? We already have Web Forms and various different flavors of using that view engine with Web Forms and MVC. Do we really need another? Microsoft thinks so, and Razor is an implementation of a lightweight, script-only view engine. Unlike the Web Forms view engine, Razor works only with inline code, snippets, and markup; therefore, it is more in line with current thinking of what a view engine should represent. There’s no support for a “page model” or any of the other Web Forms features of the full-page framework, but just a lightweight scripting engine that works with plain markup plus embedded expressions and code. The markup syntax for Razor is geared for minimal typing, plus some progressive detection of where a script block/expression starts and ends. This results in a much leaner syntax than the typical ASP.NET Web Forms alligator (<% %>) tags. Razor uses the @ sign plus standard C# (or Visual Basic) block syntax to delineate code snippets and expressions. Here’s a very simple example of what Razor markup looks like along with some comment annotations: <!DOCTYPE html> <html>     <head>         <title></title>     </head>     <body>     <h1>Razor Test</h1>          <!-- simple expressions -->     @DateTime.Now     <hr />     <!-- method expressions -->     @DateTime.Now.ToString("T")          <!-- code blocks -->     @{         List<string> names = new List<string>();         names.Add("Rick");         names.Add("Markus");         names.Add("Claudio");         names.Add("Kevin");     }          <!-- structured block statements -->     <ul>     @foreach(string name in names){             <li>@name</li>     }     </ul>           <!-- Conditional code -->        @if(true) {                        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->        <text>         true        </text>;    }    else    {        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->       <text>       false       </text>;    }    </body> </html> Like the Web Forms view engine, Razor parses pages into code, and then executes that run-time compiled code. Effectively a “page” becomes a code file with markup becoming literal text written into the Response stream, code snippets becoming raw code, and expressions being written out with Response.Write(). The code generated from Razor doesn’t look much different from similar Web Forms code that only uses script tags; so although the syntax may look different, the operational model is fairly similar to the Web Forms engine minus the overhead of the large Page object model. However, there are differences: -Razor pages are based on a new base class, Microsoft.WebPages.WebPage, which is hosted in the Microsoft.WebPages assembly that houses all the Razor engine parsing and processing logic. Browsing through the assembly (in the generated ASP.NET Temporary Files folder or GAC) will give you a good idea of the functionality that Razor provides. If you look closely, a lot of the feature set matches ASP.NET MVC’s view implementation as well as many of the helper classes found in MVC. It’s not hard to guess the motivation for this sort of view engine: For beginning developers the simple markup syntax is easier to work with, although you obviously still need to have some understanding of the .NET Framework in order to create dynamic content. The syntax is easier to read and grok and much shorter to type than ASP.NET alligator tags (<% %>) and also easier to understand aesthetically what’s happening in the markup code. Razor also is a better fit for Microsoft’s vision of ASP.NET MVC: It’s a new view engine without the baggage of Web Forms attached to it. The engine is more lightweight since it doesn’t carry all the features and object model of Web Forms with it and it can be instantiated directly outside of the HTTP environment, which has been rather tricky to do for the Web Forms view engine. Having a standalone script parser is a huge win for other applications as well – it makes it much easier to create script or meta driven output generators for many types of applications from code/screen generators, to simple form letters to data merging applications with user customizability. For me personally this is very useful side effect and who knows maybe Microsoft will actually standardize they’re scripting engines (die T4 die!) on this engine. Razor also better fits the “view-based” approach where the view is supposed to be mostly a visual representation that doesn’t hold much, if any, code. While you can still use code, the code you do write has to be self-contained. Overall I wouldn’t be surprised if Razor will become the new standard view engine for MVC in the future – and in fact there have been announcements recently that Razor will become the default script engine in ASP.NET MVC 3.0. Razor can also be used in existing Web Forms and MVC applications, although that’s not working currently unless you manually configure the script mappings and add the appropriate assemblies. It’s possible to do it, but it’s probably better to wait until Microsoft releases official support for Razor scripts in Visual Studio. Once that happens, you can simply drop .cshtml and .vbhtml pages into an existing ASP.NET project and they will work side by side with classic ASP.NET pages. WebMatrix Development Environment To tie all of these three technologies together, Microsoft is shipping WebMatrix with an integrated development environment. An integrated gallery manager makes it easy to download and load existing projects, and then extend them with custom functionality. It seems to be a prominent goal to provide community-oriented content that can act as a starting point, be it via a custom templates or a complete standard application. The IDE includes a project manager that works with a single project and provides an integrated IDE/editor for editing the .cshtml and .vbhtml pages. A run button allows you to quickly run pages in the project manager in a variety of browsers. There’s no debugging support for code at this time. Note that Razor pages don’t require explicit compilation, so making a change, saving, and then refreshing your page in the browser is all that’s needed to see changes while testing an application locally. It’s essentially using the auto-compiling Web Project that was introduced with .NET 2.0. All code is compiled during run time into dynamically created assemblies in the ASP.NET temp folder. WebMatrix also has PHP Editing support with syntax highlighting. You can load various PHP-based applications from the WebMatrix Web Gallery directly into the IDE. Most of the Web Gallery applications are ready to install and run without further configuration, with Wizards taking you through installation of tools, dependencies, and configuration of the database as needed. WebMatrix leverages the Web Platform installer to pull the pieces down from websites in a tight integration of tools that worked nicely for the four or five applications I tried this out on. Click a couple of check boxes and fill in a few simple configuration options and you end up with a running application that’s ready to be customized. Nice! You can easily deploy completed applications via WebDeploy (to an IIS server) or FTP directly from within the development environment. The deploy tool also can handle automatically uploading and installing the database and all related assemblies required, making deployment a simple one-click install step. Simplified Database Access The IDE contains a database editor that can edit SQL Compact and SQL Server databases. There is also a Database helper class that facilitates database access by providing easy-to-use, high-level query execution and iteration methods: @{       var db = Database.OpenFile("FirstApp.sdf");     string sql = "select * from customers where Id > @0"; } <ul> @foreach(var row in db.Query(sql,1)){         <li>@row.FirstName @row.LastName</li> } </ul> The query function takes a SQL statement plus any number of positional (@0,@1 etc.) SQL parameters by simple values. The result is returned as a collection of rows which in turn have a row object with dynamic properties for each of the columns giving easy (though untyped) access to each of the fields. Likewise Execute and ExecuteNonQuery allow execution of more complex queries using similar parameter passing schemes. Note these queries use string-based queries rather than LINQ or Entity Framework’s strongly typed LINQ queries. While this may seem like a step back, it’s also in line with the expectations of non .NET script developers who are quite used to writing and using SQL strings in code rather than using OR/M frameworks. The only question is why was something not included from the beginning in .NET and Microsoft made developers build custom implementations of these basic building blocks. The implementation looks a lot like a DataTable-style data access mechanism, but to be fair, this is a common approach in scripting languages. This type of syntax that uses simple, static, data object methods to perform simple data tasks with one line of code are common in scripting languages and are a good match for folks working in PHP/Python, etc. Seems like Microsoft has taken great advantage of .NET 4.0’s dynamic typing to provide this sort of interface for row iteration where each row has properties for each field. FWIW, all the examples demonstrate using local SQL Compact files - I was unable to get a SQL Server connection string to work with the Database class (the connection string wasn’t accepted). However, since the code in the page is still plain old .NET, you can easily use standard ADO.NET code or even LINQ or Entity Framework models that are created outside of WebMatrix in separate assemblies as required. The good the bad the obnoxious - It’s still .NET The beauty (or curse depending on how you look at it :)) of Razor and the compilation model is that, behind it all, it’s still .NET. Although the syntax may look foreign, it’s still all .NET behind the scenes. You can easily access existing tools, helpers, and utilities simply by adding them to the project as references or to the bin folder. Razor automatically recognizes any assembly reference from assemblies in the bin folder. In the default configuration, Microsoft provides a host of helper functions in a Microsoft.WebPages assembly (check it out in the ASP.NET temp folder for your application), which includes a host of HTML Helpers. If you’ve used ASP.NET MVC before, a lot of the helpers should look familiar. Documentation at the moment is sketchy-there’s a very rough API reference you can check out here: http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/tutorials/asp-net-web-pages-api-reference Who needs WebMatrix? Uhm… good Question Clearly Microsoft is trying hard to create an environment with WebMatrix that is easy to use for newbie developers. The goal seems to be simplicity in providing a minimal development environment and an easy-to-use script engine/language that makes it easy to get started with. There’s also some focus on community features that can be used as starting points, such as Web Gallery applications and templates. The community features in particular are very nice and something that would be nice to eventually see in Visual Studio as well. The question is whether this is too little too late. Developers who have been clamoring for a simpler development environment on the .NET stack have mostly left for other simpler platforms like PHP or Python which are catering to the down and dirty developer. Microsoft will be hard pressed to win those folks-and other hardcore PHP developers-back. Regardless of how much you dress up a script engine fronted by the .NET Framework, it’s still the .NET Framework and all the complexity that drives it. While .NET is a fine solution in its breadth and features once you get a basic handle on the core features, the bar of entry to being productive with the .NET Framework is still pretty high. The MVC style helpers Microsoft provides are a good step in the right direction, but I suspect it’s not enough to shield new developers from having to delve much deeper into the Framework to get even basic applications built. Razor and its helpers is trying to make .NET more accessible but the reality is that in order to do useful stuff that goes beyond the handful of simple helpers you still are going to have to write some C# or VB or other .NET code. If the target is a hobby/amateur/non-programmer the learning curve isn’t made any easier by WebMatrix it’s just been shifted a tad bit further along in your development endeavor when you run out of canned components that are supplied either by Microsoft or the community. The database helpers are interesting and actually I’ve heard a lot of discussion from various developers who’ve been resisting .NET for a really long time perking up at the prospect of easier data access in .NET than the ridiculous amount of code it takes to do even simple data access with raw ADO.NET. It seems sad that such a simple concept and implementation should trigger this sort of response (especially since it’s practically trivial to create helpers like these or pick them up from countless libraries available), but there it is. It also shows that there are plenty of developers out there who are more interested in ‘getting stuff done’ easily than necessarily following the latest and greatest practices which are overkill for many development scenarios. Sometimes it seems that all of .NET is focused on the big life changing issues of development, rather than the bread and butter scenarios that many developers are interested in to get their work accomplished. And that in the end may be WebMatrix’s main raison d'être: To bring some focus back at Microsoft that simpler and more high level solutions are actually needed to appeal to the non-high end developers as well as providing the necessary tools for the high end developers who want to follow the latest and greatest trends. The current version of WebMatrix hits many sweet spots, but it also feels like it has a long way to go before it really can be a tool that a beginning developer or an accomplished developer can feel comfortable with. Although there are some really good ideas in the environment (like the gallery for downloading apps and components) which would be a great addition for Visual Studio as well, the rest of the development environment just feels like crippleware with required functionality missing especially debugging and Intellisense, but also general editor support. It’s not clear whether these are because the product is still in an early alpha release or whether it’s simply designed that way to be a really limited development environment. While simple can be good, nobody wants to feel left out when it comes to necessary tool support and WebMatrix just has that left out feeling to it. If anything WebMatrix’s technology pieces (which are really independent of the WebMatrix product) are what are interesting to developers in general. The compact IIS implementation is a nice improvement for development scenarios and SQL Compact 4.0 seems to address a lot of concerns that people have had and have complained about for some time with previous SQL Compact implementations. By far the most interesting and useful technology though seems to be the Razor view engine for its light weight implementation and it’s decoupling from the ASP.NET/HTTP pipeline to provide a standalone scripting/view engine that is pluggable. The first winner of this is going to be ASP.NET MVC which can now have a cleaner view model that isn’t inconsistent due to the baggage of non-implemented WebForms features that don’t work in MVC. But I expect that Razor will end up in many other applications as a scripting and code generation engine eventually. Visual Studio integration for Razor is currently missing, but is promised for a later release. The ASP.NET MVC team has already mentioned that Razor will eventually become the default MVC view engine, which will guarantee continued growth and development of this tool along those lines. And the Razor engine and support tools actually inherit many of the features that MVC pioneered, so there’s some synergy flowing both ways between Razor and MVC. As an existing ASP.NET developer who’s already familiar with Visual Studio and ASP.NET development, the WebMatrix IDE doesn’t give you anything that you want. The tools provided are minimal and provide nothing that you can’t get in Visual Studio today, except the minimal Razor syntax highlighting, so there’s little need to take a step back. With Visual Studio integration coming later there’s little reason to look at WebMatrix for tooling. It’s good to see that Microsoft is giving some thought about the ease of use of .NET as a platform For so many years, we’ve been piling on more and more new features without trying to take a step back and see how complicated the development/configuration/deployment process has become. Sometimes it’s good to take a step - or several steps - back and take another look and realize just how far we’ve come. WebMatrix is one of those reminders and one that likely will result in some positive changes on the platform as a whole. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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  • SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER JULY 2012

    - by mseika
    SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER JULY 2012 Dear SOA partner community member To provide our community members the best of our knowledge, we want your feedback on our SOA Partner community. Thus we are organizing SOA Partner Community Survey 2012. We request you to participate in the survey and give your valuable feedback on various areas of marketing, sales and education. To continue our successful BPM Suite, Oracle is launching together with you Process Accelerators initiative. It’s your opportunity to co-develop and market predefined processes. Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns are a great tool to develop your SOA or BPM solution or process accelerators. To promote your SOA & BPM Specialization we continue to offer several benefits. This month we would like to highlight our Specialization Plaques - make sure you request one for your office! Our Fusion Middleware Summer Camps are booked out, if could not get a seat you can attend the SOA & BPM track @ Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development Oracle demo systems offer´s two new demos: Business Driven Development based on BPM Suite & SOA Lifecycle Management. Jürgen KressOracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA NEW CONTENT Community SurveyProcess Accelerators KitPlaques SOA & BPM SpecializedSOA & BPM at Virtual Developer Day News from our Partners & CommunityOverview of SOA Diagnostics in 11.1.1.6 Business driven development(BDD) demo now available! SOA Lifecycle Management Oracle Fusion applications design patterns Updated material by Oracle Connect and Network SOA Blogs SOA on Facebook SOA on LinkedIn SOA on Twitter Mix SOA Forum COMMUNITY SURVEY Like every year we would like to get your feedback in our SOA Partner Community Survey 2012. Make sure that You attend to further develop our community and support our planning! It is key for us to get your feedback to prepare for the next fiscal year. Back to top PROCESS ACCELERATORS KIT Oracle is very interested to co-develop and market with you, our partners, pre-defined processes for BPM Suite.I am very happy to announce a new program called “Oracle BPM Partner Solution Catalog”. This program will provide a one-stop shop for our customers looking for Oracle BPM partner solutions available in the market today.The Oracle BPM Solution Catalog will be hosted on our very popular Oracle Technology Network (OTN). To give you an idea of the scale of customer visibility, OTN today receives over 1Million hits per day from our business and developer community. We would like to invite you to list your Oracle BPM 11g solutions available today.In order to participate in this program, you need to do the following: Fill in the attached slide templates - #3 and #4 for each Oracle BPM 11g solution you would like to list on OTN.Please add links to whitepapers , videos, references to the specific solution in the template slide. We recommend that you create a landing page on your website for these linked artifacts and just point to the same from within the PowerPoint template. This will give you the flexibility to update the information as frequently as needed. If you have the particular solution in production or a reference available, please list them as well. Send the PowerPoint template slides (1 set of slides for each Oracle BPM solution) to [email protected]. In addition to having the opportunity to list your solutions on OTN for Oracle customers, you will have the chance to advertise your new wins/implementations/solutions in an Oracle Sponsored PM Webinar held every quarter. This program is targeted to go live by the end of summer 2012. At this point, we are targeting a soft launch in July end 2012 so send on your BPM solutions information as soon as possible. We would love to have your solution(s) listed in the “Oracle BPM Partner Solution Catalog” at the time of the launch. This will be a live repository so you can keep adding more solutions as they become available. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us [email protected], Product Strategy Director, Oracle BPM , Phone +1 650.506.5486.Thank you and look forward to hearing from you. Oracle BPM team Process Accelerators Overview.pdf ProcessAcceleratorsDataSheet.pdf Demos draUPK.zip & trmUPK.zip BPM Solution repository slides.ppt Additional BPM material BPM Process Development Lifecycle Document that describes recommended approach to collaborative process modeling across business and IT tools ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization) by Andrejus Baranovskis BPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6 by Mark Nelson BPM – Disable DBMS job to refresh B2B Materialized View by Mark Nelson For the complete kit please visit the BPM folder at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). For the complete presentation please visit our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). Information is Oracle and Partner confidential! Back to top PLAQUES SOA & BPM SPECIALIZED We continue to offer you a nice SOA & BPM Specialization plaque with your logo to proof your success. If you are a SOA or BPM Specialized partner and would like to request the plaque please send Brigitte an e-mail with the following information: Partner Name Partner logo (preferred eps file) Partner Status gold or platinum Your shipping address Your Specialization: SOA or BPM We recommend to mount the plaque at your office reception in addition you can use the SOA Specialization logos at your website download Logo: Gold & Platinum or the BPM logos Gold & Platinum Back to top SOA & BPM AT VIRTUAL DEVELOPER DAY Register now for this FREE hands-on online workshop Get up to date and learn everything you wanted to know about Oracle ADF & Fusion Development plus live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staffOracle Application Development Framework (ADF) is the standards based, strategic framework for Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle ADF’s integration with the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BI creates a complete productive development platform for your custom applications.Join us at this FREE virtual event and learn the latest in Fusion Development including: Is Oracle ADF development faster and simpler than Forms, Apex or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle ADF development with Eclipse Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development Application Lifecycle Management with ADF Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration Live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staff Developer lead, manager or architect - this event has something for everyone. Don’t miss this opportunity.Tuesday, July 10, 2012. 9:00 a.m. PT -1:00 p.m. PT 11:00 a.m. CT - 3:00 p.m. CT 12:00 p.m. ET - 4:00 p.m. ET 1:00 p.m. BRT - 5:00 p.m. BRT Register online now! for this FREE event. Agenda: 09:00 am Opening 09:30 am Keynote: Oracle Fusion Development Track1Introduction to Fusion Development Track2What's New in Fusion Development Track3Fusion Development in the Enterprise 10:00 am Is Oracle ADF Development Faster and Simpler than Oracle Forms, APEX or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development 11:00 am Rich Web UI made simple - an ADF Faces Overview Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse - ADF Development Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM 12:00 noon Next Generation Controller for JSF Application Lifecycle Management for ADF Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration *Hands On Lab – WebCenter and ADF Lab w/ JDeveloper - Lab materials will be provided ahead of the event to give you ample time to work through the lab and increase the productivity of the live chat sessions the day of the event. Sessions abstractsRegister online now! for this FREE event Read more on Community Events and post your comment here. Back to top NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS AND COMMUNITY Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity JDeveloper & ADF?Troubleshooting BPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6http://dlvr.it/1p0FfS SOA Community?SOA & BPM @ Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development - July 10th 2012https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/soa-bpm-virtual-developer-day- oracle-fusion-developmentjuly-10th-2012/#soacommunity #soa #bom #education orclateamsoa ?A-Team Blog #ateam: BAM design pointers - In working recently with a large Oracle customer on SOA and BAM, I discove.http://ow.ly/1kYqES SOA CommunitySOA Community Newsletter June 2012http://wp.me/p10C8u-qw SOA CommunityBPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6 by Mark Nelsonhttp://redstack.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ bpmn-process-editor-problems-in-11-1-1-6 #soacommunity #bpm OTNArchBeat ?SOA Learning Library: free short, topic-focused training on Oracle SOA & BPM products | @SOACommunity http://pub.vitrue.com/NE1G Andrejus Baranovskis ?ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization)http://fb.me/1coX4r1X1 SOA CommunitySOA Learning Library provides a comprehensive curriculum for the SOA and BPM product suites https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/soa-learning-library #soacommunity #soa #bpm OTNArchBeat ?A Universal JMX Client for Weblogic - Part 1: Monitoring BPEL Thread Pools in SOA 11g | Stefan Koserhttp://pub.vitrue.com/mQVZ OTNArchBeat ?BPM - Disable DBMS job to refresh B2B Materialized View | Mark Nelson http://pub.vitrue.com/3PR0Oracle SOA ?Learn how Choice Hotels Implements Innovative Google Maps Solution with #OracleSOA http://bit.ly/MTwIJ3 SOA Communitytop Tweets SOA Partner Community - June 2012 Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/top-tweets-soa-partner-community-june-2012 Torsten Winterberg#OPITZ is pushing Oracle commitment to the next level: New Specializations done: ADF, BPM, WLS, Exadatahttp://bit.ly/KX1WVS ServiceTechSymposium ?Only 8 more days left until Super Early Bird Registration Discount expires! http://www.servicetechsymposium.com OracleBlogsSOA Management in 3 minutes - Video explainerhttp://ow.ly/1kN5pn SOA Community ?SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012 London - Enter Promo Code: Djmxz370https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/soa-cloud-service-technology-symposium-2012-london #soasymposium #soacommunity #soa Heidi BuelowGreat course! w David Read RT @soacommunity: product management ADF for BPM training 5 seats left https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/fusion-middleware-summer-campsadvanced-partner-trainings/ #bpm #soacommunity SOA Community ?product management ADF for BPM training 5 seats lefthttps://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/fusion-middleware-summer-campsadvanced-partner-trainings/ #bpm #soacommunity OTNArchBeat ?Oacle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers | Ultan O'Broinhttp://pub.vitrue.com/UEiF OTNArchBeat ?SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012London - Special Oracle Discounthttp://pub.vitrue.com/8E0J SOA CommunityBecome a facebook fan of soacommunity http://www.facebook.com/soacommunity #soacommunity SOA Community ?SOA Suite HealthCare Integration Architecture https://blogs.oracle.com/SOAForHealthcare/entry/soa_suite_healthcare_integration_architecture #soacommunity #soa Andrejus Baranovskis ?Running Pre-built Virtual Machine for SOA Suite and BPM Suite 11g PS5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6http://fb.me/vB8nO0Vg OracleBlogsPrinciples of Service-Oriented Architecture by Douwe P. van den Bos http://ow.ly/1kIcOP OTNArchBeatOracle Public Cloud Architecture | @TylerJewell http://ow.ly/bHAcL The SOA Network ?Business Process Management, Service-Oriented Architecture, and Web 2.0: Business Transformation or.http://bit.ly/LBgREL #ITNews #SOA OracleBlogs ?Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Certificationhttp://ow.ly/1kGYYg Frank Nimphius ?Learn Advanced ADF. ORACLE Fusion Middleware Summer Camps in Lisbon - July 9th - 13thhttp://bit.ly/KGCl3i SOA CommunityTransform Your Application Integration with Best Practices from Oracle Customershttps://blogs.oracle.com/SOA/entry/transform_your_application_integration_with #soacommunity #soa #bpm Simone GeibWhat you always wanted to know about #oraclesoa diagnostics: Shawn Bailey, Overview of SOA Diagnostics in 11.1.1.6,http://ow.ly/bxK0M Oracle SOA ?Save the date: Jun 21 10AM, SOA & BPM Customer Insight Series. Hear how Choice Hotels went from legacy to #oraclesoa http://bit.ly/LsNDGl OTNArchBeat ?New VirtualBox images for Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0http://ow.ly/bwDAl OracleBlogs ?Process development lifecycle in Oracle BPM 11g http://ow.ly/1ktesY Daniel AmadeiNew post: Oracle BPEL 11g Message Delivery & Recovery.http://amadei.com.br/blog/index.php /oracle-bpel-11g-message-delivery SOA Community ?Sending out the June edition of the #soacommunity newsletter - read it or become a member http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa!#soa #bpm Arun Pareek ?For the past six months Ahmed Aboulnaga and me have been working on Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator's Handbook.http://lnkd.in/CAvpUQ SOA CommunitySun shine all day no clouds - solar eclipse is over... #sunshine #cloud http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Swarm-Computing Michel SchildmeijerWatch my blog Oracle Service Bus 11g: listing projects and services with WLST - part 1 http://lnkd.in/B7f3GQ @TITAN_GS @wlscommunity OTNArchBeatBook Review: Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack 11gR1: Essentials | Rajesh Rahejahttp://ow.ly/bn2cc OTNArchBeat ?Driving from Business Architecture to Business Process Services | @vghariharan http://ow.ly/bn5UB OTNArchBeat ?SOA Analysis within the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) 2.0 - Part II | Dawit Lessanu http://ow.ly/bn6sX Simone Geib ?Contact me directly for ideas how to improvehttp://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite and additional posts, presentations, white papers, ... #soasuite Simone Geib ?#soasuite advanced OTN page has become too cluttered. Broke it into separate pages to start with. http://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite OracleBlogs ?June Webcast: SOA Gateway Implementation and Troubleshooting (2 sessions) http://ow.ly/1kbRFA ServiceTechSymposium ?New session just posted to calendar: "NoSQL for Data Services, Data Virtualization & Big Data" by Guido Schmutz, Trivadis AG ://ow.ly/bjjOeDebra Lilley ?looks good - real proof people are using the apps ! RT @fteter: Very cool Fusion Applications Help site: http://bit.ly/L3nvOR #FusionApps demed ?rapid proliferation of cloud computing will drive convergence of SOA and cloud paradigms" http://ovum.com/2012/05/18/soa-paves-the-way-for-cloud/ SOA CommunityMiddleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012-HAPPY NEW YEAR! https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/middleware-oracle-excellence-awards-2012happy-new-year/ #soacommunity #opn #opnaward #specialization #oracle SOA CommunityHappy New Year #soacommunity thanks for the business! Time for a drink http://pic.twitter.com/zkK08KWB OTNArchBeat ?Who should ‘own’ the Enterprise Architecture? | Michael Glas http://bit.ly/K0ge0Q SOA Communitytop Tweets SOA Partner Community &ndash; May 2012 http://wp.me/p10C8u-pP ServiceTechSymposiumNew session just posted to Symposium calendar: "Elastic SOA in the Cloud" by Steve Millidge, C2B2 Consulting http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/agenda2012.php #elastic_soa_in_the_cloud orclateamsoa ?A-Team Blog #ateam: How to Set JVM Parameters in Oracle SOA 11Ghttp://ow.ly/1k2cnl ServiceTechSymposium ?New session just posted to Symposium calendar: "SOA Governance at EDP: A Global Energy Company" by Manuel Rosa, Linkhttp://www.servicetechsymposium.com/agenda2012.php#soa_governance_at_edp SOA Community ?VirtualBox image SOA Suite & BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0&ndash;Your feedback?http://wp.me/p10C8u-qh Oracle MiddlewareSave the date: Jun 21 10AM, SOA & BPM Customer Insight Series. Hear how Choice Hotels went from legacy to#oraclesoa http://bit.ly/LU1y5N OTNArchBeat ?Goodbye, Silos. Hello SOA. | @stephanieoverbyhttp://pub.vitrue.com/NJJO SOA CommunityBPM Standard Edition - to start your BPM project http://wp.me/p10C8u-qj Please feel free to send us your news! And add your blog to our SOA blog wiki. Back to top OVERVIEW OF SOA DIAGNOSTICS IN 11.1.1.6 What tools are available for diagnosing SOA Suite issues? There are a variety of tools available to help you and Support diagnose SOA Suite issues in 11g but it can be confusing as to which tool is appropriate for a particular situation and what their relationships are. This blog post will introduce the various tools and attempt to clarify what each is for and how they are related. Let's first list the tools we'll be addressing: RDA: Remote Diagnostic Agent DFW: Diagnostic Framework Selective Tracing DMS: Dynamic Monitoring Service ODL: Oracle Diagnostic Logging ADR: Automatic Diagnostics Repository ADRCI: Automatic Diagnostics Repository Command Interpreter WLDF: WebLogic Diagnostic Framework This overview is not mean to be a comprehensive guide on using all of these tools, however, extensive reference materials are included that will provide many more details on their execution. Another point to note is that all of these tools are applicable for Fusion Middleware as a whole but specific products may or may not have implemented features to leverage them. A couple of the tools have a WebLogic Scripting Tool or 'WLST' interface. WLST is a command interface for executing pre-built functions and custom scripts against a domain. A detailed WLST tutorial is beyond the scope of this post but you can find general information here. There are more specific resources in the below sections.In this post when we refer to 'Enterprise Manager' or 'EM' we are referring to Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. read the full blog post here. Read more on Oracle and post your comment here. Back to top BUSINESS DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (BDD) DEMO NOW AVAILABLE! For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert DSS is pleased to announce the availability of the demo “Business Driven Development“. This innovative demonstration uses a case-study approach to show business users how they can easily streamline their Business Processes - delivering greater efficiency, agility, visibility and collaboration with Oracle BPM and WebCenter. The BDD demonstration uses a case study-based approach to highlight a business problem at a fictional company, Avitek Corporation, and uses Oracle BPM and Oracle WebCenter to solve the business problem. This holistic approach has specifically been used to appeal to a non-technical business analyst user. This demo is NOT focused on product features, but aims to guide users through a complete BPM lifecycle. The scenario is based on improving a simple order process (scenario details are in the demo script). Avitek Corporation is sufferinng from a manual email-driven ordering process. Sales reps don’t know where the customer orders are stuck (no visibility) and finance users are unable to manually approve every order (no automation). There are several areas where this process can be improved with Business Process Management technology. This demo shows how improving following areas will ignificantly help resolve the business problems Avitek Corporation is facing. Areas for improvement include: Utilizing BPM for process management, rather than an unregulated, email-based process. Utilizing automated services, rather than requiring a human to key into a system. For example, Finance checking the customer’s credit rating is something that could be automated. Centralizing business rules that can be integrated into a business process, rather than requiring a human to process them. For example, Finance must determine when orders can be automatically approved. Provide insight and visibility into the process. For example, Sales Rep needs to know the status of their customer’s orders. The BDD Demo uses the following products. Oracle BPM Suite 11g PS4FP Oracle WebCenter 11g PS4FP (for Process Spaces) Oracle Business Activity Monitoring 11g Oracle Database 11g Back to top SOA LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert We are pleased to announce the availability of the SOA Management demo that showcases some of the key provisioning and lifecycle management capabilities of SOA Management Pack Enterprise Edition (EE). This demo specifically focuses on some of the lifecycle management solutions for Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus (OSB). Demo Highlights The demo showcases the following capabilities. Provisioning of SOA Composites Provisioning of OSB Projects Provision SOA and OSB artifacts in a future maintenance window Back to top ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS DESIGN PATTERNS The Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns are published! These new, reusable usability solutions and best-practices, which will join the Oracle dashboard patterns and guidelines that are already available online, are used by Oracle to artfully bring to life a new standard in the user experience, or UX, of enterprise applications. Now, the Oracle applications development community can benefit from the science behind the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience, too. These Oracle Fusion Applications UX Design Patterns, or blueprints, enable Oracle applications developers and system implementers everywhere to leverage professional usability insight when: tailoring an Oracle Fusion application, creating coexistence solutions that existing users will be delighted with, thus enabling graceful user transitions to Oracle Fusion Applications down the road, or designing exciting, new, highly usable applications in the cloud or on-premise. Based on the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) components, the Oracle Fusion Applications patterns and guidelines are proven with real users and in the Applications UX usability labs, so you can get right to work coding productivity-enhancing designs that provide an advantage for your entire business. What’s the best way to get started? We’ve made that easy, too. The Design Filter Tool (DeFT) selects the best pattern for your user type and task. Simply adapt your selection for your own task flow and content, and you’re on your way to a really great applications user experience. More Oracle applications design patterns and training are coming your way in the future. To provide feedback on the sets that are currently available, let me know in the comments! Read more on Fusionapps and post your comment here. Back to top UPDATED ORACLE MATERIAL Integrated SOA Gateway Documentation - Implementation Guide | Developer’s Guide Webcast Series: Oracle’s SOA and Oracle Business Process Management Solutions (Choice Hotels, Eaton, Farmers Insurance) BAM design pointers By Kavitha Srinivasan Seeking Oracle Fusion Middleware Go Live StoriesOracle Fusion Middleware product management is looking for recent go live stories to share with the Oracle sales team, sales consulting, product management and other internal groups. Customer contact details may remain anonymous. Your successful implementation will be featured in a quarterly report. The chance to present on an internal webcast is also available. Contact Maria Forney ([email protected]) if you have a noteworthy implementation success story. This is a good opportunity for partners interested in showcasing Oracle Fusion Middleware implementations, and gaining more exposure within Oracle. Performance tuning resources. All in one: docs, blogs, WPs, ppts: http://bit.ly/soa_resources Back to top HAVE YOU MISSED OUR LAST SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY WEBCASTS? UPK Webcast Business Driven Application Management & BPM11g & Application Grid & GoldenGate & Fusion Middleware Pricing & OC4J to WebLogic & Next Generation SOA & Fusion Middleware in Utility & Fusion Middleware in Communications & Fusion Middleware in Public Services & Fusion Middleware in Financial Services Please check your local OPN trainings calendar for additional training dates and locations. Back to top SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY CALENDAR On-Demand Trainings Event Name Language Type SOA Virtual Developers Day English Tech In-Class Trainings Date Event name Location / Country Contact person Type 09-13.07.2012 BPM Suite 11g advanced training by David Read Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 09-13.07.2012 ADF 11g advanced training by Grant Ronald and Frank Nimphius Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 09-13.07.2012 WebCenter Portal advanced training by Stefan Krantz and Angelo Santagata Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 10.07.2012 Fusion Middleware Virtual Developer Day Online OTN Tech 10- 12.07.2012 WebLogic 12c training by Cosmin Tudor Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 SOA Suite 11g advanced training by Niall Commiskey Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 ADF for BPM Suite 11g advanced training by David Read Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 WebCenter Sites 11g advanced training by Product Management Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 17-20.07.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 23-26.07.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 29-31.08.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 02-05.10.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 15-18.10.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 28-30.11.2012 Oracle AIA 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 11-14.12.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 20-22.2.2013 Oracle AIA 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 14-17.1.2013 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 15-18.3.2013 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech Please check your local OPN Training Calendar for additional training and locations here. Back to top SOASCHOOL.COM - SOA CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL(SOACP) PROGRAM The SOASchool.com - SOA Certified Professional (SOACP) program is dedicated to excellence in the field of SOA and service-oriented computing. Through a series of seasoned course modules and exams, IT professionals have the opportunity to obtain a number of different certifications to recognize their accomplishment of gaining "project ready" SOA proficiency. This comprehensive and strictly vendor-neutral program was developed in cooperation with best-selling SOA author Thomas Erl and several major SOA organizations and academic institutions. Through the involvement of the SOA Education Committee, course contents and certification requirements are constantly reviewed and revised to stay current with developments in the service-oriented computing industry. The program is currently comprised of 12 course modules and 5 certifications and is expanding to 18 course modules and 8 certifications throughout 2009. For more information, visit www.soaschool.com and www.soacp.com. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Back to top YOUR CONTENT ON THE NEWSLETTER AND ON THE SOA COMMUNITY PORTAL Publishing Your StoriesWe would like to invite our partners to publish information in the newsletter or on our SOA Community portal. Especially we are looking for your real life experience with our SOA technology. Please send your documents to Jürgen Kress. We look forward to getting your suggestions! Back to top SOA DISCUSSION FORUM BECOMES INTERACTIVE AT THE SOA COMMUNITY! Do you want to chat to experts, including partners and Oracle SOA Product Development? Do you want to get the latest information about our SOA solutions and events?Attend our private online SOA Discussion Forum at OTN. Please send your OTN forums user name to Brigitte Felisaz. You must be a registered user to access the SOA Discussion Forum. Back to top INVITE YOUR COLLEAGUES TO JOIN THE SOA COMMUNITY Please feel free to invite your colleagues to join the SOA Community and to participate in the SOA Assessment tests. For registration please login the Oracle PartnerNetwork and go to: www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa For any questions on the above or concerning SOA and Oracle in general please contact the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels SOA Team. Best regardsOracle EMEA SOA TeamJürgen Kress Jürgen KressSOA Partner Adoption EMEATel. +49 89 1430 1479E-Mail: [email protected]

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  • Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

    - by ScottGu
    Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure.  Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account.  This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it).  The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service.  You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it.  This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog.  You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects.  We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them).  You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data.  We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs.  You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud.  You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog.  For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery.  You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog.  For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level.  So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites.  This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier).  Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications.  Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy.  Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer.  Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure.  The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio.  For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template.  When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property.  When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser.  This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio.  You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance.  To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end.  Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting.  You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!).  Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center.  Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions.  They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services.  Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support.  It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services.  This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services.  I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it.  Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks).  Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings.  This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass).  Enabling this is now really easy.  To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal.  This will create a dialog like below.  I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository.  We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account.  Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to.  Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories.  This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services.  Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure.  You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services.  We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy.  Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI.  If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase.  For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever:  Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site.  We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app.  We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager.  You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent.  Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go.  We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it.  We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it.  The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this.  Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code.  The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages.  You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more).  The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these.  This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications.  Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic.  The  multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure.  This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total.  To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview.  Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit.  For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS.  Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • My App crashes when launched on my Iphone

    - by Miky Mike
    hi guys, I have a problem here : my app crashed on my Iphone (JB) though Xcode doesn't complain about anything. The app works fine on the simulator though. However, there is this in the device logs : Thread 0 Crashed: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00078ac8 kill + 8 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00078ab8 kill + 4 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00078aaa raise + 10 3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0008d03a abort + 50 4 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00044a20 __gnu_cxx::__verbose_terminate_handler() + 376 5 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00005958 _objc_terminate + 104 6 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042df2 _cxxabiv1::_terminate(void (*)()) + 46 7 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042e46 std::terminate() + 10 8 libstdc++.6.dylib 0x00042f16 __cxa_throw + 78 9 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00004838 objc_exception_throw + 64 10 CoreFoundation 0x0009fd0e +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 62 11 CoreFoundation 0x0009fd48 +[NSException raise:format:] + 28 12 Foundation 0x000125d8 -[NSURL(NSURL) initFileURLWithPath:] + 64 13 Foundation 0x000371e0 +[NSURL(NSURL) fileURLWithPath:] + 24 14 TheLearningMachine 0x00002d08 0x1000 + 7432 15 TheLearningMachine 0x00002e8c 0x1000 + 7820 16 TheLearningMachine 0x00002be4 0x1000 + 7140 17 TheLearningMachine 0x000029b6 0x1000 + 6582 18 UIKit 0x0000e47a -[UIApplication _callInitializationDelegatesForURL:payload:suspended:] + 766 19 UIKit 0x000049e0 -[UIApplication _runWithURL:payload:launchOrientation:statusBarStyle:statusBarHidden:] + 200 20 UIKit 0x0005dfd6 -[UIApplication handleEvent:withNewEvent:] + 1390 21 UIKit 0x0005d8fa -[UIApplication sendEvent:] + 38 22 UIKit 0x0005d330 _UIApplicationHandleEvent + 5104 23 GraphicsServices 0x00005044 PurpleEventCallback + 660 24 CoreFoundation 0x00034cdc __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_SOURCE1_PERFORM_FUNCTION + 20 25 CoreFoundation 0x00034ca0 __CFRunLoopDoSource1 + 160 26 CoreFoundation 0x00027566 __CFRunLoopRun + 514 27 CoreFoundation 0x00027270 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 224 28 CoreFoundation 0x00027178 CFRunLoopRunInMode + 52 29 UIKit 0x000040fc -[UIApplication _run] + 364 30 UIKit 0x00002128 UIApplicationMain + 664 31 TheLearningMachine 0x00002948 0x1000 + 6472 32 TheLearningMachine 0x000028fc 0x1000 + 6396 Thread 1: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0002d330 kevent + 24 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x000d6b6c _dispatch_mgr_invoke + 88 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x000d65bc _dispatch_queue_invoke + 96 3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x000d675c _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 120 4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007a67a _pthread_wqthread + 258 5 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00073190 start_wqthread + 0 Thread 2: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007b19c __workq_kernreturn + 8 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007a790 _pthread_wqthread + 536 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00073190 start_wqthread + 0 Thread 3: 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00000c98 mach_msg_trap + 20 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00002d64 mach_msg + 44 2 CoreFoundation 0x00027c38 __CFRunLoopServiceMachPort + 88 3 CoreFoundation 0x000274c2 __CFRunLoopRun + 350 4 CoreFoundation 0x00027270 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 224 5 CoreFoundation 0x00027178 CFRunLoopRunInMode + 52 6 WebCore 0x000024e2 RunWebThread(void*) + 362 7 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0007a27e _pthread_start + 242 8 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0006f2a8 thread_start + 0 Thread 0 crashed with ARM Thread State: r0: 0x00000000 r1: 0x00000000 r2: 0x00000001 r3: 0x3e0862b4 r4: 0x00000006 r5: 0x0015a2ec r6: 0x2fffe090 r7: 0x2fffe0a0 r8: 0x3e1a378c r9: 0x00000065 r10: 0x33028e5a r11: 0x3e1ab89c ip: 0x00000025 sp: 0x2fffe0a0 lr: 0x30277abf pc: 0x30277ac8 cpsr: 0x000f0010 Any idea what the problem can be ? I've already spent my whole day on that, but... I'm stuck. Thanks in advance... Miky Mike Ok, Here is more then from the console, I get this : This GDB was configured as "--host=i386-apple-darwin --target=arm-apple-darwin".tty /dev/ttys002 Loading program into debugger… Program loaded. target remote-mobile /tmp/.XcodeGDBRemote-17280-65 Switching to remote-macosx protocol mem 0x1000 0x3fffffff cache mem 0x40000000 0xffffffff none mem 0x00000000 0x0fff none run Running… Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 456. Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 456. The program being debugged is not being run. The program being debugged is not being run. [Session started at 2010-12-23 20:33:33 +0100.] GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1472) (Thu Aug 5 05:54:10 UTC 2010) Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "--host=i386-apple-darwin --target=arm-apple-darwin".tty /dev/ttys004 Loading program into debugger… Program loaded. target remote-mobile /tmp/.XcodeGDBRemote-17280-72 Switching to remote-macosx protocol mem 0x1000 0x3fffffff cache mem 0x40000000 0xffffffff none mem 0x00000000 0x0fff none run Running… Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 508. Error launching remote program: failed to get the task for process 508. The program being debugged is not being run. The program being debugged is not being run. And here is the code page that calls the URL import "TheLearningMachineAppDelegate.h" import "RootViewController.h" @implementation TheLearningMachineAppDelegate @synthesize window; @synthesize navigationController; pragma mark - pragma mark Application lifecycle (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions { RootViewController *rootViewController = (RootViewController *)[navigationController topViewController]; rootViewController.managedObjectContext = self.managedObjectContext; [window addSubview:[navigationController view]]; [window makeKeyAndVisible]; return YES; } (void)applicationWillResignActive:(UIApplication )application { / Sent when the application is about to move from active to inactive state. This can occur for certain types of temporary interruptions (such as an incoming phone call or SMS message) or when the user quits the application and it begins the transition to the background state. Use this method to pause ongoing tasks, disable timers, and throttle down OpenGL ES frame rates. Games should use this method to pause the game. */ } (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application { [self saveContext]; } (void)applicationWillEnterForeground:(UIApplication )application { / Called as part of the transition from the background to the inactive state: here you can undo many of the changes made on entering the background. */ } (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication )application { / Restart any tasks that were paused (or not yet started) while the application was inactive. If the application was previously in the background, optionally refresh the user interface. */ } // Method that saves the managed object context before the application terminates. (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application { [self saveContext]; } (void)saveContext { NSError *error = nil; if (managedObjectContext != nil) { if ([managedObjectContext hasChanges] && ![managedObjectContext save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); //Replace this implementation with code to handle the error appropriately. //abort() causes the application to generate a crash log and terminate. You should not use this function in a shipping application, although it may be useful during development. If it is not possible to recover from the error, display an alert panel that instructs the user to quit the application by pressing the Home button. } } } pragma mark - pragma mark Core Data stack // Returns the managed object context for the application. (NSManagedObjectContext *)managedObjectContext { if (managedObjectContext != nil) { return managedObjectContext; } NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *coordinator = [self persistentStoreCoordinator]; if (coordinator != nil) { managedObjectContext = [[NSManagedObjectContext alloc] init]; [managedObjectContext setPersistentStoreCoordinator:coordinator]; } return managedObjectContext; } // Returns the managed object model for the application. (NSManagedObjectModel *)managedObjectModel { if (managedObjectModel != nil) { return managedObjectModel; } NSString *modelPath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"TheLearningMachine" ofType:@"momd"]; NSURL *modelURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:modelPath]; managedObjectModel = [[NSManagedObjectModel alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:modelURL]; return managedObjectModel; } pragma mark - pragma mark Application's Documents directory // Returns the path to the application's Documents directory. - (NSString *)applicationDocumentsDirectory { return [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) lastObject]; } // Returns the persistent store coordinator for the application. - (NSPersistentStoreCoordinator *)persistentStoreCoordinator { if (persistentStoreCoordinator != nil) { return persistentStoreCoordinator; } NSURL *storeURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: [[self applicationDocumentsDirectory] stringByAppendingPathComponent: @"TheLearningMachine.sqlite"]]; NSError *error = nil; persistentStoreCoordinator = [[NSPersistentStoreCoordinator alloc] initWithManagedObjectModel:[self managedObjectModel]]; if (![persistentStoreCoordinator addPersistentStoreWithType:NSSQLiteStoreType configuration:nil URL:storeURL options:nil error:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } return persistentStoreCoordinator; } pragma mark - pragma mark Memory management (void)applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning:(UIApplication )application { / Free up as much memory as possible by purging cached data objects that can be recreated (or reloaded from disk) later. */ } (void)dealloc { [managedObjectContext release]; [managedObjectModel release]; [persistentStoreCoordinator release]; [window release]; [super dealloc]; } @end

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  • Data Modeling: Logical Modeling Exercise

    - by swisscheese
    In trying to learn the art of data storage I have been trying to take in as much solid information as possible. PerformanceDBA posted some really helpful tutorials/examples in the following posts among others: is my data normalized? and Relational table naming convention. I already asked a subset question of this model here. So to make sure I understood the concepts he presented and I have seen elsewhere I wanted to take things a step or two further and see if I am grasping the concepts. Hence the purpose of this post, which hopefully others can also learn from. Everything I present is conceptual to me and for learning rather than applying it in some production system. It would be cool to get some input from PerformanceDBA also since I used his models to get started, but I appreciate all input given from anyone. As I am new to databases and especially modeling I will be the first to admit that I may not always ask the right questions, explain my thoughts clearly, or use the right verbage due to lack of expertise on the subject. So please keep that in mind and feel free to steer me in the right direction if I head off track. If there is enough interest in this I would like to take this from the logical to physical phases to show the evolution of the process and share it here on Stack. I will keep this thread for the Logical Diagram though and start new one for the additional steps. For my understanding I will be building a MySQL DB in the end to run some tests and see if what I came up with actually works. Here is the list of things that I want to capture in this conceptual model. Edit for V1.2 The purpose of this is to list Bands, their members, and the Events that they will be appearing at, as well as offer music and other merchandise for sale Members will be able to match up with friends Members can write reviews on the Bands, their music, and their events. There can only be one review per member on a given item, although they can edit their reviews and history will be maintained. BandMembers will have the chance to write a single Comment on Reviews about the Band they are associated with. Collectively as a Band only one Comment is allowed per Review. Members can then rate all Reviews and Comments but only once per given instance Members can select their favorite Bands, music, Merchandise, and Events Bands, Songs, and Events will be categorized into the type of Genre that they are and then further subcategorized into a SubGenre if necessary. It is ok for a Band or Event to fall into more then one Genre/SubGenre combination. Event date, time, and location will be posted for a given band and members can show that they will be attending the Event. An Event can be comprised of more than one Band, and multiple Events can take place at a single location on the same day Every party will be tied to at least one address and address history shall be maintained. Each party could also be tied to more then one address at a time (i.e. billing, shipping, physical) There will be stored profiles for Bands, BandMembers, and general members. So there it is, maybe a bit involved but could be a great learning tool for many hopefully as the process evolves and input is given by the community. Any input? EDIT v1.1 In response to PerformanceDBA U.3) That means no merchandise other than Band merchandise in the database. Correct ? That was my original thought but you got me thinking. Maybe the site would want to sell its own merchandise or even other merchandise from the bands. Not sure a mod to make for that. Would it require an entire rework of the Catalog section or just the identifying relationship that exists with the Band? Attempted a mod to sell both complete albums or song. Either way they would both be in electronic format only available for download. That is why I listed an Album as being comprised of Songs rather then 2 separate entities. U.5) I understand what you bring up about the circular relation with Favorite. I would like to get to this “It is either one Entity with some form of differentiation (FavoriteType) which identifies its treatment” but how to is not clear to me. What am I missing here? u.6) “Business Rules This is probably the only area you are weak in.” Thanks for the honest response. I will readdress these but I hope to clear up some confusion in my head first with the responses I have posted back to you. Q.1) Yes I would like to have Accepted, Rejected, and Blocked. I am not sure what you are referring to as to how this would change the logical model? Q.2) A person does not have to be a User. They can exist only as a BandMember. Is that what you are asking? Minor Issue Zero, One, or More…Oops I admit I forgot to give this attention when building the model. I am submitting this version as is and will address in a future version. I need to read up more on Constraint Checking to make sure I am understanding things. M.4) Depends if you envision OrderPurchase in the future. Can you expand as to what you mean here? EDIT V1.2 In response to PerformanceDBA input... Lessons learned. I was mixing the concept of Identifying / Non-Identifying and Cardinality (i.e. Genre / SubGenre), and doing so inconsistently to make things worse. Associative Tables are not required in Logical Diagrams as their many-to-many relationships can be depicted and then expanded in the Physical Model. I was overlooking the Cardinality in a lot of the relationships The importance of reading through relationships using effective Verb Phrases to reassure I am modeling what I want to accomplish. U.2) In the concept of this model it is only required to track a Venue as a location for an Event. No further data needs to be collected. With that being said Events will take place on a given EventDate and will be hosted at a Venue. Venues will host multiple events and possibly multiple events on a given date. In my new model my thinking was that EventDate is already tied to Event . Therefore, Venue will not need a relationship with EventDate. The 5th and 6th bullets you have listed under U.2) leave me questioning my thinking though. Am I missing something here? U.3) Is it time to move the link between Item and Band up to Item and Party instead? With the current design I don't see a possibility to sell merchandise not tied to the band as you have brought up. U.5) I left as per your input rather than making it a discrete Supertype/Subtype Relationship as I don’t see a benefit of having that type of roll up. Additional Revisions AR.1) After going through the exercise for FavoriteItem, I feel that Item to Review requires a many-to-many relationship so that is indicated. Necessary? Ok here we go for v1.3 I took a few days on this version, going back and forth with my design. Once the logical process is complete, as I want to see if I am on the right track, I will go through in depth what I had learned and the troubles I faced as a beginner going through this process. The big point for this version was it took throwing in some Keys to help see what I was missing in the past. Going through the process of doing a matrix proved to be of great help also. Regardless of anything, if it wasn't for the input given by PerformanceDBA I would still be a lost soul wondering in the dark. Who knows my current design might reaffirm that I still am, but I have learned a lot so I am know I at least have a flashlight in my hand. At this point in time I admit that I am still confused about identifying and non-identifying relationships. In my model I had to use non-identifying relationships with non nulls just to join the relationships I wanted to model. In reading a lot on the subject there seems to be a lot of disagreement and indecisiveness on the subject so I did what I thought represented the right things in my model. When to force (identifying) and when to be free (non-identifying)? Anyone have inputs? EDIT V1.4 Ok took the V1.3 inputs and cleaned things up for this V1.4 Currently working on a V1.5 to include attributes.

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  • Need AngularJS grid resizing directive to resize "thumbnail" that contains no image

    - by thebravedave
    UPDATE Plunker to project: http://plnkr.co/edit/oKB96szQhqwpKQbOGUDw?p=preview I have an AngularJS project that uses AngularJS Bootstrap grids. I need all of the grid elements to have the same size so they stack properly. I created an angularJs directive that auto resizes the grid element when placed in said grid element. I have 2 directives that do this for me Directive 1: onload Directive 2: imageonload Directive 2 works. If the grid element uses an image, after the image loads then the directive triggers an event that sends the grid elements height to all other grid elements. If that height sent out via the event is greater than that of the grid element which is listening to the event then that listening grid element changes it's height to be the greater height. This way the largest height becomes the height for all the grid elements. Directive 1 does not work. This one is placed on the outer most grid elements html element, and is triggered when the element loads. The problem is that when the element loads and the onload directive is called AngularJS has not yet filled out the data in said grid element. The outcome is that the real height after AngularJS data binds is not broadcast as an event. My only solution I have thought of (but haven't tried) is to add an image url to an image that exists but doesn't have any data in it, and place that in the grid element (the one that didn't have any images before placing the blank one in). I could then call imageonload instead of onload and I pretty sure the angularjs data binding will have taken place by then. the problem is that that is pretty hacky. I would rather be able to have not an image in the grid element, and be able to call my custom onload directive and have the onload directive calculate the height AFTER angularJS data binds to all of the data binding variables in the grid element. Here is my imageonload directive .directive('imageonload', function($rootScope) { return { restrict: 'A', link: function(scope, element, attrs) { scope.heightArray = []; scope.largestHeight = 50; element.bind('load', function() { broadcastThumbnailHeight(); }); scope.$on('imageOnLoadEvent', function(caller, value){ var el = angular.element(element); var id = el.prop('id'); var pageName = el.prop('title'); if(pageName == value[0]){ if(scope.largestHeight < value[1]){ scope.largestHeight = value[1]; var nestedString = el.prop('alt'); if(nestedString == "") nestedString = "1"; var nested = parseInt(nestedString); nested = nested - 1; var inte = 0; var thumbnail = el["0"]; var finalThumbnailContainer = thumbnail.parentElement; while(inte != nested){ finalThumbnailContainer = finalThumbnailContainer.parentElement; inte++; } var innerEl = angular.element(finalThumbnailContainer); var height = value[1]; innerEl.height(height); } } }); scope.$on('findHeightAndBroadcast', function(){ broadcastThumbnailHeight(); }); scope.$on('resetThumbnailHeight', function(){ scope.largestHeight = 50; }); function broadcastThumbnailHeight(){ var el = angular.element(element); var id = el.prop('id'); var alt = el.prop('alt'); if(alt == "") alt = "1"; var nested = parseInt(alt); nested = nested - 1; var pageName = el.prop('title'); var inte = 1; var thumbnail = el["0"]; var finalThumbnail = thumbnail.parentElement; while(inte != nested){ finalThumbnail = finalThumbnail.parentElement; inte++; } var elZero = el["0"]; var clientHeight = finalThumbnail.clientHeight; var arr = []; arr[0] = pageName; arr[1] = clientHeight; $rootScope.$broadcast('imageOnLoadEvent', arr); } } }; }) And here is my onload directive .directive('onload', function($rootScope) { return { restrict: 'A', link: function(scope, element, attrs) { scope.largestHeight=100; getHeightAndBroadcast(); scope.$on('onLoadEvent', function(caller, value){ var el = angular.element(element); var id = el.prop('id'); var pageName = el.prop('title'); if(pageName == value[0]){ if(scope.largestHeight < value[1]){ scope.largestHeight = value[1]; var height = value[1]; el.height(height); } } }); function getHeightAndBroadcast(){ var el = angular.element(element); var h = el["0"].children; var thumbnailHeightElement = angular.element(h); var pageName = el.prop("title"); var clientHeight = thumbnailHeightElement["0"].clientHeight; var arr = []; arr[0] = pageName; arr[1] = clientHeight; if(clientHeight != undefined) $rootScope.$broadcast('onLoadEvent', arr); } } }; }) Here is an example of one of my grid elements that uses imageonload. Note the imageonload directive in the image html element. This works. There is also an onload directive on the outer most html of the grid element. That does not work. I have stepped through this carefully in Firebug and saw that the onload was calculating the height before AngularJS data binding was complete. <div class="thumbnail col-md-3" id="{{product.id}}" title="thumbnailAdminProductsGrid" onload> <div class="row"> <div class="containerz"> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-2"></div> <div class="col-md-7"> <div class="textcenterinline"> <!--tag--><img class="img-responsive" id="{{product.id}}" title="imageAdminProductsGrid" alt=6 ng-src="{{product.baseImage}}" imageonload/><!--end tag--> </div> </div> </div> <div class="caption"> <div class="testing"> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <h3 class=""> <!--tag--><a href="javascript:void(0);" ng-click="loadProductView('{{product.id}}')">{{product.name}}</a><!--end tag--> </h3> </div> </div> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <p class="lead"><!--tag--> {{product.price}}</p><!--end tag--> </div> </div> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <p><!--tag-->{{product.inStock}} units available<!--end tag--></p> </div> </div> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <p class=""><!--tag-->{{product.generalDescription}}<!--end tag--></p> </div> </div> <!--tag--> <div data-ng-if="product.specialized=='true'"> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12" ng-repeat="varCat in product.varietyCategoriesAndOptions"> <b><h4>{{varCat.varietyCategoryName}}</h4></b> <select ng-model="varCat.varietyCategoryOption" ng-options="value.varietyCategoryOptionId as value.varietyCategoryOptionValue for (key,value) in varCat.varietyCategoryOptions"> </select> </div> </div> </div> <!--end tag--> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <!--tag--><div ng-if="product.weight==0"><b>Free Shipping</b></div><!--end tag--> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Here is an example of one of the html for one of my grid elements that only uses the "onload" directive and not "imageonload" <div class="thumbnail col-md-3" title="thumbnailCouponGrid" onload> <div class="innnerContainer"> <div class="text-center"> {{coupon.name}} <br /> <br /> <b>Description</b> <br /> {{coupon.description}} <br /> <br /> <button class="btn btn-large btn-primary" ng-click="goToCoupon()">View Coupon Details</button> </div> </div> The imageonload function might look a little confusing because I use the img html attribute "alt" to signal to the directive how many levels the imageonload is placed below the outermost html for the grid element. We have to have this so the directive knows which html element to set the new height on. also I use the "title" attribute to set which grid this grid resizing is for (that way you can use the directive multiple times on the same page for different grids and not have the events for the wrong grid triggered). Does anyone know how I can get the "onload" directive to get called AFTER angularJS binds to the grid element? Just for completeness here are 2 images (almost looks like just 1), the second is a grid that contains grid elements that have images and use the "imageonload" directive and the first is a grid that contains grid elements that do not use images and only uses the "onload" directive.

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  • How to display data stored in core data in a table view?

    - by Dipanjan Dutta
    Hello All, I have developed a core data model for my application. I need to display the saved data into a table view. For my app I have selected split view controller. I am writing down my codes below. Please help me in this regard and write me the code that needs to be added. This is very important as my continuation in my company depends on this. #import "RootViewController.h" #import "DetailViewController.h" #import "AddViewController.h" #import "EmployeeDetailsAppDelegate.h" /* This template does not ensure user interface consistency during editing operations in the table view. You must implement appropriate methods to provide the user experience you require. */ @interface RootViewController () - (void)configureCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell atIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath; @end @implementation RootViewController @synthesize detailViewController, fetchedResultsController, managedObjectContext, results, empName; #pragma mark - #pragma mark View lifecycle - (void)viewDidLoad { results = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc]init]; [results setObject:empName.text forKey:@"EmployeeName"]; [self.tableView reloadData]; [super viewDidLoad]; } /* - (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewWillAppear:animated]; } */ /* - (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewDidAppear:animated]; } */ /* - (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewWillDisappear:animated]; } */ /* - (void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewDidDisappear:animated]; } */ - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { // Ensure that the view controller supports rotation and that the split view can therefore show in both portrait and landscape. return YES; } - (void)configureCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell atIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { NSManagedObject *managedObject = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; cell.textLabel.text = [[managedObject valueForKey:@"EmployeeName"] description]; } #pragma mark - #pragma mark Add a new object - (void)insertNewObject:(id)sender { AddViewController *add = [[AddViewController alloc]initWithNibName:@"AddViewController" bundle:nil]; self.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFormSheet; add.wantsFullScreenLayout = NO; [self presentModalViewController:add animated:YES]; [add release]; } #pragma mark - #pragma mark Table view data source - (NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView { return 1; } - (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { return 1; } - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell"; UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; if (cell == nil) { cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease]; } // Configure the cell. NSManagedObject *managedObject = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; cell.textLabel.text = [[managedObject valueForKey:@"EmployeeName"] description]; return cell; } - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView commitEditingStyle:(UITableViewCellEditingStyle)editingStyle forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { if (editingStyle == UITableViewCellEditingStyleDelete) { // Delete the managed object. NSManagedObject *objectToDelete = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; if (self.detailViewController.detailItem == objectToDelete) { self.detailViewController.detailItem = nil; } NSManagedObjectContext *context = [self.fetchedResultsController managedObjectContext]; [context deleteObject:objectToDelete]; NSError *error; if (![context save:&error]) { /* Replace this implementation with code to handle the error appropriately. abort() causes the application to generate a crash log and terminate. You should not use this function in a shipping application, although it may be useful during development. If it is not possible to recover from the error, display an alert panel that instructs the user to quit the application by pressing the Home button. */ NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } } } - (BOOL)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView canMoveRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // The table view should not be re-orderable. return NO; } #pragma mark - #pragma mark Table view delegate - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)aTableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { // Set the detail item in the detail view controller. NSManagedObject *selectedObject = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; self.detailViewController.detailItem = selectedObject; } #pragma mark - #pragma mark Fetched results controller - (NSFetchedResultsController *)fetchedResultsController { if (fetchedResultsController != nil) { return fetchedResultsController; } /* Set up the fetched results controller. */ // Create the fetch request for the entity. NSFetchRequest *fetchRequest = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; // Edit the entity name as appropriate. NSEntityDescription *entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Details" inManagedObjectContext:managedObjectContext]; [fetchRequest setEntity:entity]; // Set the batch size to a suitable number. [fetchRequest setFetchBatchSize:20]; // Edit the sort key as appropriate. NSSortDescriptor *sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"EmployeeName" ascending:NO]; NSArray *sortDescriptors = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:sortDescriptor, nil]; [fetchRequest setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors]; // Edit the section name key path and cache name if appropriate. // nil for section name key path means "no sections". NSFetchedResultsController *aFetchedResultsController = [[NSFetchedResultsController alloc] initWithFetchRequest:fetchRequest managedObjectContext:managedObjectContext sectionNameKeyPath:nil cacheName:@"Root"]; aFetchedResultsController.delegate = self; self.fetchedResultsController = aFetchedResultsController; [aFetchedResultsController release]; [fetchRequest release]; [sortDescriptor release]; [sortDescriptors release]; return fetchedResultsController; } #pragma mark - #pragma mark Fetched results controller delegate - (void)controllerWillChangeContent:(NSFetchedResultsController *)controller { [self.tableView beginUpdates]; } - (void)controller:(NSFetchedResultsController *)controller didChangeSection:(id <NSFetchedResultsSectionInfo>)sectionInfo atIndex:(NSUInteger)sectionIndex forChangeType:(NSFetchedResultsChangeType)type { switch(type) { case NSFetchedResultsChangeInsert: [self.tableView insertSections:[NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndex:sectionIndex] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; break; case NSFetchedResultsChangeDelete: [self.tableView deleteSections:[NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndex:sectionIndex] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; break; } } - (void)controller:(NSFetchedResultsController *)controller didChangeObject:(id)anObject atIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath forChangeType:(NSFetchedResultsChangeType)type newIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)newIndexPath { UITableView *tableView = self.tableView; switch(type) { case NSFetchedResultsChangeInsert: [tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:newIndexPath] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; break; case NSFetchedResultsChangeDelete: [tableView deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:indexPath] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; break; case NSFetchedResultsChangeUpdate: [self configureCell:[tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath] atIndexPath:indexPath]; break; case NSFetchedResultsChangeMove: [tableView deleteRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:indexPath] withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; [tableView insertRowsAtIndexPaths:[NSArray arrayWithObject:newIndexPath]withRowAnimation:UITableViewRowAnimationFade]; break; } } - (void)controllerDidChangeContent:(NSFetchedResultsController *)controller { [self.tableView endUpdates]; } #pragma mark - #pragma mark Memory management - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Relinquish ownership any cached data, images, etc. that aren't in use. } - (void)viewDidUnload { // Relinquish ownership of anything that can be recreated in viewDidLoad or on demand. // For example: self.myOutlet = nil; } - (void)dealloc { [detailViewController release]; [fetchedResultsController release]; [managedObjectContext release]; [super dealloc]; } @end // // AddViewController.m // EmployeeDetails // // Created by Dipanjan on 15/02/11. // Copyright 2011 __MyCompanyName__. All rights reserved. // #import "AddViewController.h" #import "EmployeeDetailsAppDelegate.h" #import "RootViewController.h" @implementation AddViewController @synthesize empName; @synthesize empID; @synthesize empDepartment; @synthesize backButton; // The designated initializer. Override if you create the controller programmatically and want to perform customization that is not appropriate for viewDidLoad. /* - (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil { self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil]; if (self) { // Custom initialization. } return self; } */ /* // Implement viewDidLoad to do additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib. - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; } */ -(void)saveDetails{ EmployeeDetailsAppDelegate *appDelegate = [[UIApplication sharedApplication]delegate]; NSManagedObjectContext *context = [appDelegate managedObjectContext]; NSManagedObject *newDetails; newDetails = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Details" inManagedObjectContext:context]; [newDetails setValue:empID.text forKey:@"EmployeeID"]; [newDetails setValue:empName.text forKey:@"EmployeeName"]; [newDetails setValue:empDepartment.text forKey:@"EmployeeDepartment"]; empID.text = @""; empName.text = @""; empDepartment.text = @""; NSLog(@"%@........----->>>...", newDetails); NSError *error; [context save:&error]; [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES]; } -(void)findDetails { EmployeeDetailsAppDelegate *appDelegate = [[UIApplication sharedApplication]delegate]; NSManagedObjectContext *context = [appDelegate managedObjectContext]; NSEntityDescription *entityDesc = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Details" inManagedObjectContext:context]; NSFetchRequest *request = [[NSFetchRequest alloc]init]; [request setEntity:entityDesc]; NSPredicate *pred = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"(EmployeeName = %@)", empName.text]; [request setPredicate:pred]; NSManagedObject *matches = nil; NSError *error; NSArray *objects = [context executeFetchRequest:request error:&error]; if ([objects count] == 0) { } else { matches = [objects objectAtIndex:0]; empID.text = [matches valueForKey:@"EmployeeID"]; empDepartment.text = [matches valueForKey:@"EmployeeDepartment"]; } [request release]; [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES]; } - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { // Overriden to allow any orientation. return YES; } - (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning { // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview. [super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Release any cached data, images, etc. that aren't in use. } - (void)viewDidUnload { self.empName = nil; self.empID = nil; self.empDepartment = nil; [super viewDidUnload]; // Release any retained subviews of the main view. // e.g. self.myOutlet = nil; } - (void)dealloc { [empID release]; [empName release]; [empDepartment release]; [super dealloc]; } @end Please let me know the answer as soon as possible. Thank you. Regards, Dipanjan

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  • Extending Oracle CEP with Predictive Analytics

    - by vikram.shukla(at)oracle.com
    Introduction: OCEP is often used as a business rules engine to execute a set of business logic rules via CQL statements, and take decisions based on the outcome of those rules. There are times where configuring rules manually is sufficient because an application needs to deal with only a small and well-defined set of static rules. However, in many situations customers don't want to pre-define such rules for two reasons. First, they are dealing with events with lots of columns and manually crafting such rules for each column or a set of columns and combinations thereof is almost impossible. Second, they are content with probabilistic outcomes and do not care about 100% precision. The former is the case when a user is dealing with data with high dimensionality, the latter when an application can live with "false" positives as they can be discarded after further inspection, say by a Human Task component in a Business Process Management software. The primary goal of this blog post is to show how this can be achieved by combining OCEP with Oracle Data Mining® and leveraging the latter's rich set of algorithms and functionality to do predictive analytics in real time on streaming events. The secondary goal of this post is also to show how OCEP can be extended to invoke any arbitrary external computation in an RDBMS from within CEP. The extensible facility is known as the JDBC cartridge. The rest of the post describes the steps required to achieve this: We use the dataset available at http://blogs.oracle.com/datamining/2010/01/fraud_and_anomaly_detection_made_simple.html to showcase the capabilities. We use it to show how transaction anomalies or fraud can be detected. Building the model: Follow the self-explanatory steps described at the above URL to build the model.  It is very simple - it uses built-in Oracle Data Mining PL/SQL packages to cleanse, normalize and build the model out of the dataset.  You can also use graphical Oracle Data Miner®  to build the models. To summarize, it involves: Specifying which algorithms to use. In this case we use Support Vector Machines as we're trying to find anomalies in highly dimensional dataset.Build model on the data in the table for the algorithms specified. For this example, the table was populated in the scott/tiger schema with appropriate privileges. Configuring the Data Source: This is the first step in building CEP application using such an integration.  Our datasource looks as follows in the server config file.  It is advisable that you use the Visualizer to add it to the running server dynamically, rather than manually edit the file.    <data-source>         <name>DataMining</name>         <data-source-params>             <jndi-names>                 <element>DataMining</element>             </jndi-names>             <global-transactions-protocol>OnePhaseCommit</global-transactions-protocol>         </data-source-params>         <connection-pool-params>             <credential-mapping-enabled></credential-mapping-enabled>             <test-table-name>SQL SELECT 1 from DUAL</test-table-name>             <initial-capacity>1</initial-capacity>             <max-capacity>15</max-capacity>             <capacity-increment>1</capacity-increment>         </connection-pool-params>         <driver-params>             <use-xa-data-source-interface>true</use-xa-data-source-interface>             <driver-name>oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver</driver-name>             <url>jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1522:orcl</url>             <properties>                 <element>                     <value>scott</value>                     <name>user</name>                 </element>                 <element>                     <value>{Salted-3DES}AzFE5dDbO2g=</value>                     <name>password</name>                 </element>                                 <element>                     <name>com.bea.core.datasource.serviceName</name>                     <value>oracle11.2g</value>                 </element>                 <element>                     <name>com.bea.core.datasource.serviceVersion</name>                     <value>11.2.0</value>                 </element>                 <element>                     <name>com.bea.core.datasource.serviceObjectClass</name>                     <value>java.sql.Driver</value>                 </element>             </properties>         </driver-params>     </data-source>   Designing the EPN: The EPN is very simple in this example. We briefly describe each of the components. The adapter ("DataMiningAdapter") reads data from a .csv file and sends it to the CQL processor downstream. The event payload here is same as that of the table in the database (refer to the attached project or do a "desc table-name" from a SQL*PLUS prompt). While this is for convenience in this example, it need not be the case. One can still omit fields in the streaming events, and need not match all columns in the table on which the model was built. Better yet, it does not even need to have the same name as columns in the table, as long as you alias them in the USING clause of the mining function. (Caveat: they still need to draw values from a similar universe or domain, otherwise it constitutes incorrect usage of the model). There are two things in the CQL processor ("DataMiningProc") that make scoring possible on streaming events. 1.      User defined cartridge function Please refer to the OCEP CQL reference manual to find more details about how to define such functions. We include the function below in its entirety for illustration. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <jdbcctxconfig:config     xmlns:jdbcctxconfig="http://www.bea.com/ns/wlevs/config/application"     xmlns:jc="http://www.oracle.com/ns/ocep/config/jdbc">        <jc:jdbc-ctx>         <name>Oracle11gR2</name>         <data-source>DataMining</data-source>               <function name="prediction2">                                 <param name="CQLMONTH" type="char"/>                      <param name="WEEKOFMONTH" type="int"/>                      <param name="DAYOFWEEK" type="char" />                      <param name="MAKE" type="char" />                      <param name="ACCIDENTAREA"   type="char" />                      <param name="DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED"  type="char" />                      <param name="MONTHCLAIMED" type="char" />                      <param name="WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED" type="int" />                      <param name="SEX" type="char" />                      <param name="MARITALSTATUS"   type="char" />                      <param name="AGE" type="int" />                      <param name="FAULT" type="char" />                      <param name="POLICYTYPE"   type="char" />                      <param name="VEHICLECATEGORY"  type="char" />                      <param name="VEHICLEPRICE" type="char" />                      <param name="FRAUDFOUND" type="int" />                      <param name="POLICYNUMBER" type="int" />                      <param name="REPNUMBER" type="int" />                      <param name="DEDUCTIBLE"   type="int" />                      <param name="DRIVERRATING"  type="int" />                      <param name="DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT"   type="char" />                      <param name="DAYSPOLICYCLAIM" type="char" />                      <param name="PASTNUMOFCLAIMS" type="char" />                      <param name="AGEOFVEHICLES" type="char" />                      <param name="AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER" type="char" />                      <param name="POLICEREPORTFILED" type="char" />                      <param name="WITNESSPRESNT" type="char" />                      <param name="AGENTTYPE" type="char" />                      <param name="NUMOFSUPP" type="char" />                      <param name="ADDRCHGCLAIM"   type="char" />                      <param name="NUMOFCARS" type="char" />                      <param name="CQLYEAR" type="int" />                      <param name="BASEPOLICY" type="char" />                                     <return-component-type>char</return-component-type>                                                      <sql><![CDATA[             SELECT to_char(PREDICTION_PROBABILITY(CLAIMSMODEL, '0' USING *))               AS probability             FROM (SELECT  :CQLMONTH AS MONTH,                                            :WEEKOFMONTH AS WEEKOFMONTH,                          :DAYOFWEEK AS DAYOFWEEK,                           :MAKE AS MAKE,                           :ACCIDENTAREA AS ACCIDENTAREA,                           :DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED AS DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED,                           :MONTHCLAIMED AS MONTHCLAIMED,                           :WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED,                             :SEX AS SEX,                           :MARITALSTATUS AS MARITALSTATUS,                            :AGE AS AGE,                           :FAULT AS FAULT,                           :POLICYTYPE AS POLICYTYPE,                            :VEHICLECATEGORY AS VEHICLECATEGORY,                           :VEHICLEPRICE AS VEHICLEPRICE,                           :FRAUDFOUND AS FRAUDFOUND,                           :POLICYNUMBER AS POLICYNUMBER,                           :REPNUMBER AS REPNUMBER,                           :DEDUCTIBLE AS DEDUCTIBLE,                            :DRIVERRATING AS DRIVERRATING,                           :DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT AS DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT,                            :DAYSPOLICYCLAIM AS DAYSPOLICYCLAIM,                           :PASTNUMOFCLAIMS AS PASTNUMOFCLAIMS,                           :AGEOFVEHICLES AS AGEOFVEHICLES,                           :AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER AS AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER,                           :POLICEREPORTFILED AS POLICEREPORTFILED,                           :WITNESSPRESNT AS WITNESSPRESENT,                           :AGENTTYPE AS AGENTTYPE,                           :NUMOFSUPP AS NUMOFSUPP,                           :ADDRCHGCLAIM AS ADDRCHGCLAIM,                            :NUMOFCARS AS NUMOFCARS,                           :CQLYEAR AS YEAR,                           :BASEPOLICY AS BASEPOLICY                 FROM dual)                 ]]>         </sql>        </function>     </jc:jdbc-ctx> </jdbcctxconfig:config> 2.      Invoking the function for each event. Once this function is defined, you can invoke it from CQL as follows: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <wlevs:config xmlns:wlevs="http://www.bea.com/ns/wlevs/config/application">   <processor>     <name>DataMiningProc</name>     <rules>        <query id="q1"><![CDATA[                     ISTREAM(SELECT S.CQLMONTH,                                   S.WEEKOFMONTH,                                   S.DAYOFWEEK, S.MAKE,                                   :                                         S.BASEPOLICY,                                    C.F AS probability                                                 FROM                                 StreamDataChannel [NOW] AS S,                                 TABLE(prediction2@Oracle11gR2(S.CQLMONTH,                                      S.WEEKOFMONTH,                                      S.DAYOFWEEK,                                       S.MAKE, ...,                                      S.BASEPOLICY) AS F of char) AS C)                       ]]></query>                 </rules>               </processor>           </wlevs:config>   Finally, the last stage in the EPN prints out the probability of the event being an anomaly. One can also define a threshold in CQL to filter out events that are normal, i.e., below a certain mark as defined by the analyst or designer. Sample Runs: Now let's see how this behaves when events are streamed through CEP. We use only two events for brevity, one normal and other one not. This is one of the "normal" looking events and the probability of it being anomalous is less than 60%. Event is: eventType=DataMiningOutEvent object=q1  time=2904821976256 S.CQLMONTH=Dec, S.WEEKOFMONTH=5, S.DAYOFWEEK=Wednesday, S.MAKE=Honda, S.ACCIDENTAREA=Urban, S.DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED=Tuesday, S.MONTHCLAIMED=Jan, S.WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED=1, S.SEX=Female, S.MARITALSTATUS=Single, S.AGE=21, S.FAULT=Policy Holder, S.POLICYTYPE=Sport - Liability, S.VEHICLECATEGORY=Sport, S.VEHICLEPRICE=more than 69000, S.FRAUDFOUND=0, S.POLICYNUMBER=1, S.REPNUMBER=12, S.DEDUCTIBLE=300, S.DRIVERRATING=1, S.DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT=more than 30, S.DAYSPOLICYCLAIM=more than 30, S.PASTNUMOFCLAIMS=none, S.AGEOFVEHICLES=3 years, S.AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER=26 to 30, S.POLICEREPORTFILED=No, S.WITNESSPRESENT=No, S.AGENTTYPE=External, S.NUMOFSUPP=none, S.ADDRCHGCLAIM=1 year, S.NUMOFCARS=3 to 4, S.CQLYEAR=1994, S.BASEPOLICY=Liability, probability=.58931702982118561 isTotalOrderGuarantee=true\nAnamoly probability: .58931702982118561 However, the following event is scored as an anomaly with a very high probability of  89%. So there is likely to be something wrong with it. A close look reveals that the value of "deductible" field (10000) is not "normal". What exactly constitutes normal here?. If you run the query on the database to find ALL distinct values for the "deductible" field, it returns the following set: {300, 400, 500, 700} Event is: eventType=DataMiningOutEvent object=q1  time=2598483773496 S.CQLMONTH=Dec, S.WEEKOFMONTH=5, S.DAYOFWEEK=Wednesday, S.MAKE=Honda, S.ACCIDENTAREA=Urban, S.DAYOFWEEKCLAIMED=Tuesday, S.MONTHCLAIMED=Jan, S.WEEKOFMONTHCLAIMED=1, S.SEX=Female, S.MARITALSTATUS=Single, S.AGE=21, S.FAULT=Policy Holder, S.POLICYTYPE=Sport - Liability, S.VEHICLECATEGORY=Sport, S.VEHICLEPRICE=more than 69000, S.FRAUDFOUND=0, S.POLICYNUMBER=1, S.REPNUMBER=12, S.DEDUCTIBLE=10000, S.DRIVERRATING=1, S.DAYSPOLICYACCIDENT=more than 30, S.DAYSPOLICYCLAIM=more than 30, S.PASTNUMOFCLAIMS=none, S.AGEOFVEHICLES=3 years, S.AGEOFPOLICYHOLDER=26 to 30, S.POLICEREPORTFILED=No, S.WITNESSPRESENT=No, S.AGENTTYPE=External, S.NUMOFSUPP=none, S.ADDRCHGCLAIM=1 year, S.NUMOFCARS=3 to 4, S.CQLYEAR=1994, S.BASEPOLICY=Liability, probability=.89171554529576691 isTotalOrderGuarantee=true\nAnamoly probability: .89171554529576691 Conclusion: By way of this example, we show: real-time scoring of events as they flow through CEP leveraging Oracle Data Mining.how CEP applications can invoke complex arbitrary external computations (function shipping) in an RDBMS.

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  • Hosting the Razor Engine for Templating in Non-Web Applications

    - by Rick Strahl
    Microsoft’s new Razor HTML Rendering Engine that is currently shipping with ASP.NET MVC previews can be used outside of ASP.NET. Razor is an alternative view engine that can be used instead of the ASP.NET Page engine that currently works with ASP.NET WebForms and MVC. It provides a simpler and more readable markup syntax and is much more light weight in terms of functionality than the full blown WebForms Page engine, focusing only on features that are more along the lines of a pure view engine (or classic ASP!) with focus on expression and code rendering rather than a complex control/object model. Like the Page engine though, the parser understands .NET code syntax which can be embedded into templates, and behind the scenes the engine compiles markup and script code into an executing piece of .NET code in an assembly. Although it ships as part of the ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix the Razor Engine itself is not directly dependent on ASP.NET or IIS or HTTP in any way. And although there are some markup and rendering features that are optimized for HTML based output generation, Razor is essentially a free standing template engine. And what’s really nice is that unlike the ASP.NET Runtime, Razor is fairly easy to host inside of your own non-Web applications to provide templating functionality. Templating in non-Web Applications? Yes please! So why might you host a template engine in your non-Web application? Template rendering is useful in many places and I have a number of applications that make heavy use of it. One of my applications – West Wind Html Help Builder - exclusively uses template based rendering to merge user supplied help text content into customizable and executable HTML markup templates that provide HTML output for CHM style HTML Help. This is an older product and it’s not actually using .NET at the moment – and this is one reason I’m looking at Razor for script hosting at the moment. For a few .NET applications though I’ve actually used the ASP.NET Runtime hosting to provide templating and mail merge style functionality and while that works reasonably well it’s a very heavy handed approach. It’s very resource intensive and has potential issues with versioning in various different versions of .NET. The generic implementation I created in the article above requires a lot of fix up to mimic an HTTP request in a non-HTTP environment and there are a lot of little things that have to happen to ensure that the ASP.NET runtime works properly most of it having nothing to do with the templating aspect but just satisfying ASP.NET’s requirements. The Razor Engine on the other hand is fairly light weight and completely decoupled from the ASP.NET runtime and the HTTP processing. Rather it’s a pure template engine whose sole purpose is to render text templates. Hosting this engine in your own applications can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of code (actually just a few lines with the tools I’m about to describe) and without having to fake HTTP requests. It’s also much lighter on resource usage and you can easily attach custom properties to your base template implementation to easily pass context from the parent application into templates all of which was rather complicated with ASP.NET runtime hosting. Installing the Razor Template Engine You can get Razor as part of the MVC 3 (RC and later) or Web Matrix. Both are available as downloadable components from the Web Platform Installer Version 3.0 (!important – V2 doesn’t show these components). If you already have that version of the WPI installed just fire it up. You can get the latest version of the Web Platform Installer from here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx Once the platform Installer 3.0 is installed install either MVC 3 or ASP.NET Web Pages. Once installed you’ll find a System.Web.Razor assembly in C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\Assemblies\System.Web.Razor.dll which you can add as a reference to your project. Creating a Wrapper The basic Razor Hosting API is pretty simple and you can host Razor with a (large-ish) handful of lines of code. I’ll show the basics of it later in this article. However, if you want to customize the rendering and handle assembly and namespace includes for the markup as well as deal with text and file inputs as well as forcing Razor to run in a separate AppDomain so you can unload the code-generated assemblies and deal with assembly caching for re-used templates little more work is required to create something that is more easily reusable. For this reason I created a Razor Hosting wrapper project that combines a bunch of this functionality into an easy to use hosting class, a hosting factory that can load the engine in a separate AppDomain and a couple of hosting containers that provided folder based and string based caching for templates for an easily embeddable and reusable engine with easy to use syntax. If you just want the code and play with the samples and source go grab the latest code from the Subversion Repository at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/articles/trunk/RazorHosting/ or a snapshot from: http://www.west-wind.com/files/tools/RazorHosting.zip Getting Started Before I get into how hosting with Razor works, let’s take a look at how you can get up and running quickly with the wrapper classes provided. It only takes a few lines of code. The easiest way to use these Razor Hosting Wrappers is to use one of the two HostContainers provided. One is for hosting Razor scripts in a directory and rendering them as relative paths from these script files on disk. The other HostContainer serves razor scripts from string templates… Let’s start with a very simple template that displays some simple expressions, some code blocks and demonstrates rendering some data from contextual data that you pass to the template in the form of a ‘context’. Here’s a simple Razor template: @using System.Reflection Hello @Context.FirstName! Your entry was entered on: @Context.Entered @{ // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } AppDomain Id: @AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName Assembly: @Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName Code based output: @{ // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } Response.Write(output); } Pretty easy to see what’s going on here. The only unusual thing in this code is the Context object which is an arbitrary object I’m passing from the host to the template by way of the template base class. I’m also displaying the current AppDomain and the executing Assembly name so you can see how compiling and running a template actually loads up new assemblies. Also note that as part of my context I’m passing a reference to the current Windows Form down to the template and changing the title from within the script. It’s a silly example, but it demonstrates two-way communication between host and template and back which can be very powerful. The easiest way to quickly render this template is to use the RazorEngine<TTemplateBase> class. The generic parameter specifies a template base class type that is used by Razor internally to generate the class it generates from a template. The default implementation provided in my RazorHosting wrapper is RazorTemplateBase. Here’s a simple one that renders from a string and outputs a string: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; string output = engine.RenderTemplate(this.txtSource.Text new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; Simple enough. This code renders a template from a string input and returns a result back as a string. It  creates a custom context and passes that to the template which can then access the Context’s properties. Note that anything passed as ‘context’ must be serializable (or MarshalByRefObject) – otherwise you get an exception when passing the reference over AppDomain boundaries (discussed later). Passing a context is optional, but is a key feature in being able to share data between the host application and the template. Note that we use the Context object to access FirstName, Entered and even the host Windows Form object which is used in the template to change the Window caption from within the script! In the code above all the work happens in the RenderTemplate method which provide a variety of overloads to read and write to and from strings, files and TextReaders/Writers. Here’s another example that renders from a file input using a TextReader: using (reader = new StreamReader("templates\\simple.csHtml", true)) { result = host.RenderTemplate(reader, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, this.CustomContext); } RenderTemplate() is fairly high level and it handles loading of the runtime, compiling into an assembly and rendering of the template. If you want more control you can use the lower level methods to control each step of the way which is important for the HostContainers I’ll discuss later. Basically for those scenarios you want to separate out loading of the engine, compiling into an assembly and then rendering the template from the assembly. Why? So we can keep assemblies cached. In the code above a new assembly is created for each template rendered which is inefficient and uses up resources. Depending on the size of your templates and how often you fire them you can chew through memory very quickly. This slighter lower level approach is only a couple of extra steps: // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); string assId = null; using (StringReader reader = new StringReader(this.txtSource.Text)) { assId = engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, reader); } string output = engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(assId, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; The difference here is that you can capture the assembly – or rather an Id to it – and potentially hold on to it to render again later assuming the template hasn’t changed. The HostContainers take advantage of this feature to cache the assemblies based on certain criteria like a filename and file time step or a string hash that if not change indicate that an assembly can be reused. Note that ParseAndCompileTemplate returns an assembly Id rather than the assembly itself. This is done so that that the assembly always stays in the host’s AppDomain and is not passed across AppDomain boundaries which would cause load failures. We’ll talk more about this in a minute but for now just realize that assemblies references are stored in a list and are accessible by this ID to allow locating and re-executing of the assembly based on that id. Reuse of the assembly avoids recompilation overhead and creation of yet another assembly that loads into the current AppDomain. You can play around with several different versions of the above code in the main sample form:   Using Hosting Containers for more Control and Caching The above examples simply render templates into assemblies each and every time they are executed. While this works and is even reasonably fast, it’s not terribly efficient. If you render templates more than once it would be nice if you could cache the generated assemblies for example to avoid re-compiling and creating of a new assembly each time. Additionally it would be nice to load template assemblies into a separate AppDomain optionally to be able to be able to unload assembli es and also to protect your host application from scripting attacks with malicious template code. Hosting containers provide also provide a wrapper around the RazorEngine<T> instance, a factory (which allows creation in separate AppDomains) and an easy way to start and stop the container ‘runtime’. The Razor Hosting samples provide two hosting containers: RazorFolderHostContainer and StringHostContainer. The folder host provides a simple runtime environment for a folder structure similar in the way that the ASP.NET runtime handles a virtual directory as it’s ‘application' root. Templates are loaded from disk in relative paths and the resulting assemblies are cached unless the template on disk is changed. The string host also caches templates based on string hashes – if the same string is passed a second time a cached version of the assembly is used. Here’s how HostContainers work. I’ll use the FolderHostContainer because it’s likely the most common way you’d use templates – from disk based templates that can be easily edited and maintained on disk. The first step is to create an instance of it and keep it around somewhere (in the example it’s attached as a property to the Form): RazorFolderHostContainer Host = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); public RazorFolderHostForm() { InitializeComponent(); // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. Host.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates Host.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container Host.Start(); } Next anytime you want to render a template you can use simple code like this: private void RenderTemplate(string fileName) { // Pass the template path via the Context var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, Host.TemplatePath); if (!Host.RenderTemplate(relativePath, this.Context, Host.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + Host.ErrorMessage); return; } this.webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + Host.RenderingOutputFile); } You can also render the output to a string instead of to a file: string result = Host.RenderTemplateToString(relativePath,context); Finally if you want to release the engine and shut down the hosting AppDomain you can simply do: Host.Stop(); Stopping the AppDomain and restarting it (ie. calling Stop(); followed by Start()) is also a nice way to release all resources in the AppDomain. The FolderBased domain also supports partial Rendering based on root path based relative paths with the same caching characteristics as the main templates. From within a template you can call out to a partial like this: @RenderPartial(@"partials\PartialRendering.cshtml", Context) where partials\PartialRendering.cshtml is a relative to the template root folder. The folder host example lets you load up templates from disk and display the result in a Web Browser control which demonstrates using Razor HTML output from templates that contain HTML syntax which happens to me my target scenario for Html Help Builder.   The Razor Engine Wrapper Project The project I created to wrap Razor hosting has a fair bit of code and a number of classes associated with it. Most of the components are internally used and as you can see using the final RazorEngine<T> and HostContainer classes is pretty easy. The classes are extensible and I suspect developers will want to build more customized host containers for their applications. Host containers are the key to wrapping up all functionality – Engine, BaseTemplate, AppDomain Hosting, Caching etc in a logical piece that is ready to be plugged into an application. When looking at the code there are a couple of core features provided: Core Razor Engine Hosting This is the core Razor hosting which provides the basics of loading a template, compiling it into an assembly and executing it. This is fairly straightforward, but without a host container that can cache assemblies based on some criteria templates are recompiled and re-created each time which is inefficient (although pretty fast). The base engine wrapper implementation also supports hosting the Razor runtime in a separate AppDomain for security and the ability to unload it on demand. Host Containers The engine hosting itself doesn’t provide any sort of ‘runtime’ service like picking up files from disk, caching assemblies and so forth. So my implementation provides two HostContainers: RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer. The FolderHost works off a base directory and loads templates based on relative paths (sort of like the ASP.NET runtime does off a virtual). The HostContainers also deal with caching of template assemblies – for the folder host the file date is tracked and checked for updates and unless the template is changed a cached assembly is reused. The StringHostContainer similiarily checks string hashes to figure out whether a particular string template was previously compiled and executed. The HostContainers also act as a simple startup environment and a single reference to easily store and reuse in an application. TemplateBase Classes The template base classes are the base classes that from which the Razor engine generates .NET code. A template is parsed into a class with an Execute() method and the class is based on this template type you can specify. RazorEngine<TBaseTemplate> can receive this type and the HostContainers default to specific templates in their base implementations. Template classes are customizable to allow you to create templates that provide application specific features and interaction from the template to your host application. How does the RazorEngine wrapper work? You can browse the source code in the links above or in the repository or download the source, but I’ll highlight some key features here. Here’s part of the RazorEngine implementation that can be used to host the runtime and that demonstrates the key code required to host the Razor runtime. The RazorEngine class is implemented as a generic class to reflect the Template base class type: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase The generic type is used to internally provide easier access to the template type and assignments on it as part of the template processing. The class also inherits MarshalByRefObject to allow execution over AppDomain boundaries – something that all the classes discussed here need to do since there is much interaction between the host and the template. The first two key methods deal with creating a template assembly: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost with various options applied. /// Applies basic namespace imports and the name of the class to generate /// </summary> /// <param name="generatedNamespace"></param> /// <param name="generatedClass"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected RazorTemplateEngine CreateHost(string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass) { Type baseClassType = typeof(TBaseTemplateType); RazorEngineHost host = new RazorEngineHost(new CSharpRazorCodeLanguage()); host.DefaultBaseClass = baseClassType.FullName; host.DefaultClassName = generatedClass; host.DefaultNamespace = generatedNamespace; host.NamespaceImports.Add("System"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Text"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Collections.Generic"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Linq"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.IO"); return new RazorTemplateEngine(host); } /// <summary> /// Parses and compiles a markup template into an assembly and returns /// an assembly name. The name is an ID that can be passed to /// ExecuteTemplateByAssembly which picks up a cached instance of the /// loaded assembly. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="namespaceOfGeneratedClass">The namespace of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="generatedClassName">The name of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="ReferencedAssemblies">Any referenced assemblies by dll name only. Assemblies must be in execution path of host or in GAC.</param> /// <param name="templateSourceReader">Textreader that loads the template</param> /// <remarks> /// The actual assembly isn't returned here to allow for cross-AppDomain /// operation. If the assembly was returned it would fail for cross-AppDomain /// calls. /// </remarks> /// <returns>An assembly Id. The Assembly is cached in memory and can be used with RenderFromAssembly.</returns> public string ParseAndCompileTemplate( string namespaceOfGeneratedClass, string generatedClassName, string[] ReferencedAssemblies, TextReader templateSourceReader) { RazorTemplateEngine engine = CreateHost(namespaceOfGeneratedClass, generatedClassName); // Generate the template class as CodeDom GeneratorResults razorResults = engine.GenerateCode(templateSourceReader); // Create code from the codeDom and compile CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider(); CodeGeneratorOptions options = new CodeGeneratorOptions(); // Capture Code Generated as a string for error info // and debugging LastGeneratedCode = null; using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { codeProvider.GenerateCodeFromCompileUnit(razorResults.GeneratedCode, writer, options); LastGeneratedCode = writer.ToString(); } CompilerParameters compilerParameters = new CompilerParameters(ReferencedAssemblies); // Standard Assembly References compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Core.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("Microsoft.CSharp.dll"); // dynamic support! // Also add the current assembly so RazorTemplateBase is available compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase.Substring(8)); compilerParameters.GenerateInMemory = Configuration.CompileToMemory; if (!Configuration.CompileToMemory) compilerParameters.OutputAssembly = Path.Combine(Configuration.TempAssemblyPath, "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n") + ".dll"); CompilerResults compilerResults = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromDom(compilerParameters, razorResults.GeneratedCode); if (compilerResults.Errors.Count > 0) { var compileErrors = new StringBuilder(); foreach (System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerError compileError in compilerResults.Errors) compileErrors.Append(String.Format(Resources.LineX0TColX1TErrorX2RN, compileError.Line, compileError.Column, compileError.ErrorText)); this.SetError(compileErrors.ToString() + "\r\n" + LastGeneratedCode); return null; } AssemblyCache.Add(compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName, compilerResults.CompiledAssembly); return compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName; } Think of the internal CreateHost() method as setting up the assembly generated from each template. Each template compiles into a separate assembly. It sets up namespaces, and assembly references, the base class used and the name and namespace for the generated class. ParseAndCompileTemplate() then calls the CreateHost() method to receive the template engine generator which effectively generates a CodeDom from the template – the template is turned into .NET code. The code generated from our earlier example looks something like this: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated by a tool. // Runtime Version:4.0.30319.1 // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace RazorTest { using System; using System.Text; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; public class RazorTemplate : RazorHosting.RazorTemplateBase { #line hidden public RazorTemplate() { } public override void Execute() { WriteLiteral("Hello "); Write(Context.FirstName); WriteLiteral("! Your entry was entered on: "); Write(Context.Entered); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\n"); // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); WriteLiteral("\r\nAppDomain Id:\r\n "); Write(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName); WriteLiteral("\r\n \r\nAssembly:\r\n "); Write(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\nCode based output: \r\n"); // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } } } } Basically the template’s body is turned into code in an Execute method that is called. Internally the template’s Write method is fired to actually generate the output. Note that the class inherits from RazorTemplateBase which is the generic parameter I used to specify the base class when creating an instance in my RazorEngine host: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); This template class must be provided and it must implement an Execute() and Write() method. Beyond that you can create any class you chose and attach your own properties. My RazorTemplateBase class implementation is very simple: public class RazorTemplateBase : MarshalByRefObject, IDisposable { /// <summary> /// You can pass in a generic context object /// to use in your template code /// </summary> public dynamic Context { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Class that generates output. Currently ultra simple /// with only Response.Write() implementation. /// </summary> public RazorResponse Response { get; set; } public object HostContainer {get; set; } public object Engine { get; set; } public RazorTemplateBase() { Response = new RazorResponse(); } public virtual void Write(object value) { Response.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLiteral(object value) { Response.Write(value); } /// <summary> /// Razor Parser implements this method /// </summary> public virtual void Execute() {} public virtual void Dispose() { if (Response != null) { Response.Dispose(); Response = null; } } } Razor fills in the Execute method when it generates its subclass and uses the Write() method to output content. As you can see I use a RazorResponse() class here to generate output. This isn’t necessary really, as you could use a StringBuilder or StringWriter() directly, but I prefer using Response object so I can extend the Response behavior as needed. The RazorResponse class is also very simple and merely acts as a wrapper around a TextWriter: public class RazorResponse : IDisposable { /// <summary> /// Internal text writer - default to StringWriter() /// </summary> public TextWriter Writer = new StringWriter(); public virtual void Write(object value) { Writer.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLine(object value) { Write(value); Write("\r\n"); } public virtual void WriteFormat(string format, params object[] args) { Write(string.Format(format, args)); } public override string ToString() { return Writer.ToString(); } public virtual void Dispose() { Writer.Close(); } public virtual void SetTextWriter(TextWriter writer) { // Close original writer if (Writer != null) Writer.Close(); Writer = writer; } } The Rendering Methods of RazorEngine At this point I’ve talked about the assembly generation logic and the template implementation itself. What’s left is that once you’ve generated the assembly is to execute it. The code to do this is handled in the various RenderXXX methods of the RazorEngine class. Let’s look at the lowest level one of these which is RenderTemplateFromAssembly() and a couple of internal support methods that handle instantiating and invoking of the generated template method: public string RenderTemplateFromAssembly( string assemblyId, string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass, object context, TextWriter outputWriter) { this.SetError(); Assembly generatedAssembly = AssemblyCache[assemblyId]; if (generatedAssembly == null) { this.SetError(Resources.PreviouslyCompiledAssemblyNotFound); return null; } string className = generatedNamespace + "." + generatedClass; Type type; try { type = generatedAssembly.GetType(className); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.UnableToCreateType + className + ": " + ex.Message); return null; } // Start with empty non-error response (if we use a writer) string result = string.Empty; using(TBaseTemplateType instance = InstantiateTemplateClass(type)) { if (instance == null) return null; if (outputWriter != null) instance.Response.SetTextWriter(outputWriter); if (!InvokeTemplateInstance(instance, context)) return null; // Capture string output if implemented and return // otherwise null is returned if (outputWriter == null) result = instance.Response.ToString(); } return result; } protected virtual TBaseTemplateType InstantiateTemplateClass(Type type) { TBaseTemplateType instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type) as TBaseTemplateType; if (instance == null) { SetError(Resources.CouldnTActivateTypeInstance + type.FullName); return null; } instance.Engine = this; // If a HostContainer was set pass that to the template too instance.HostContainer = this.HostContainer; return instance; } /// <summary> /// Internally executes an instance of the template, /// captures errors on execution and returns true or false /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">An instance of the generated template</param> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage for errors</returns> protected virtual bool InvokeTemplateInstance(TBaseTemplateType instance, object context) { try { instance.Context = context; instance.Execute(); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateExecutionError + ex.Message); return false; } finally { // Must make sure Response is closed instance.Response.Dispose(); } return true; } The RenderTemplateFromAssembly method basically requires the namespace and class to instantate and creates an instance of the class using InstantiateTemplateClass(). It then invokes the method with InvokeTemplateInstance(). These two methods are broken out because they are re-used by various other rendering methods and also to allow subclassing and providing additional configuration tasks to set properties and pass values to templates at execution time. In the default mode instantiation sets the Engine and HostContainer (discussed later) so the template can call back into the template engine, and the context is set when the template method is invoked. The various RenderXXX methods use similar code although they create the assemblies first. If you’re after potentially cashing assemblies the method is the one to call and that’s exactly what the two HostContainer classes do. More on that in a minute, but before we get into HostContainers let’s talk about AppDomain hosting and the like. Running Templates in their own AppDomain With the RazorEngine class above, when a template is parsed into an assembly and executed the assembly is created (in memory or on disk – you can configure that) and cached in the current AppDomain. In .NET once an assembly has been loaded it can never be unloaded so if you’re loading lots of templates and at some time you want to release them there’s no way to do so. If however you load the assemblies in a separate AppDomain that new AppDomain can be unloaded and the assemblies loaded in it with it. In order to host the templates in a separate AppDomain the easiest thing to do is to run the entire RazorEngine in a separate AppDomain. Then all interaction occurs in the other AppDomain and no further changes have to be made. To facilitate this there is a RazorEngineFactory which has methods that can instantiate the RazorHost in a separate AppDomain as well as in the local AppDomain. The host creates the remote instance and then hangs on to it to keep it alive as well as providing methods to shut down the AppDomain and reload the engine. Sounds complicated but cross-AppDomain invocation is actually fairly easy to implement. Here’s some of the relevant code from the RazorEngineFactory class. Like the RazorEngine this class is generic and requires a template base type in the generic class name: public class RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase Here are the key methods of interest: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost in a new AppDomain. This /// version creates a static singleton that that is cached and you /// can call UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current == null) Current = new RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>(); return Current.GetRazorHostInAppDomain(); } public static void UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current != null) Current.UnloadHost(); Current = null; } /// <summary> /// Instance method that creates a RazorHost in a new AppDomain. /// This method requires that you keep the Factory around in /// order to keep the AppDomain alive and be able to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> GetRazorHostInAppDomain() { LocalAppDomain = CreateAppDomain(null); if (LocalAppDomain == null) return null; /// Create the instance inside of the new AppDomain /// Note: remote domain uses local EXE's AppBasePath!!! RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> host = null; try { Assembly ass = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); string AssemblyPath = ass.Location; host = (RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>) LocalAppDomain.CreateInstanceFrom(AssemblyPath, typeof(RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>).FullName).Unwrap(); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.Message; return null; } return host; } /// <summary> /// Internally creates a new AppDomain in which Razor templates can /// be run. /// </summary> /// <param name="appDomainName"></param> /// <returns></returns> private AppDomain CreateAppDomain(string appDomainName) { if (appDomainName == null) appDomainName = "RazorHost_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n"); AppDomainSetup setup = new AppDomainSetup(); // *** Point at current directory setup.ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; AppDomain localDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(appDomainName, null, setup); return localDomain; } /// <summary> /// Allow unloading of the created AppDomain to release resources /// All internal resources in the AppDomain are released including /// in memory compiled Razor assemblies. /// </summary> public void UnloadHost() { if (this.LocalAppDomain != null) { AppDomain.Unload(this.LocalAppDomain); this.LocalAppDomain = null; } } The static CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() is the key method that startup code usually calls. It uses a Current singleton instance to an instance of itself that is created cross AppDomain and is kept alive because it’s static. GetRazorHostInAppDomain actually creates a cross-AppDomain instance which first creates a new AppDomain and then loads the RazorEngine into it. The remote Proxy instance is returned as a result to the method and can be used the same as a local instance. The code to run with a remote AppDomain is simple: private RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> CreateHost() { if (this.Host != null) return this.Host; // Use Static Methods - no error message if host doesn't load this.Host = RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); if (this.Host == null) { MessageBox.Show("Unable to load Razor Template Host", "Razor Hosting", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); } return this.Host; } This code relies on a local reference of the Host which is kept around for the duration of the app (in this case a form reference). To use this you’d simply do: this.Host = CreateHost(); if (host == null) return; string result = host.RenderTemplate( this.txtSource.Text, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll", "Westwind.Utilities.dll" }, this.CustomContext); if (result == null) { MessageBox.Show(host.ErrorMessage, "Template Execution Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); return; } this.txtResult.Text = result; Now all templates run in a remote AppDomain and can be unloaded with simple code like this: RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Host = null; One Step further – Providing a caching ‘Runtime’ Once we can load templates in a remote AppDomain we can add some additional functionality like assembly caching based on application specific features. One of my typical scenarios is to render templates out of a scripts folder. So all templates live in a folder and they change infrequently. So a Folder based host that can compile these templates once and then only recompile them if something changes would be ideal. Enter host containers which are basically wrappers around the RazorEngine<t> and RazorEngineFactory<t>. They provide additional logic for things like file caching based on changes on disk or string hashes for string based template inputs. The folder host also provides for partial rendering logic through a custom template base implementation. There’s a base implementation in RazorBaseHostContainer, which provides the basics for hosting a RazorEngine, which includes the ability to start and stop the engine, cache assemblies and add references: public abstract class RazorBaseHostContainer<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() { public RazorBaseHostContainer() { UseAppDomain = true; GeneratedNamespace = "__RazorHost"; } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the Container hosts Razor /// in a separate AppDomain. Seperate AppDomain /// hosting allows unloading and releasing of /// resources. /// </summary> public bool UseAppDomain { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Base folder location where the AppDomain /// is hosted. By default uses the same folder /// as the host application. /// /// Determines where binary dependencies are /// found for assembly references. /// </summary> public string BaseBinaryFolder { get; set; } /// <summary> /// List of referenced assemblies as string values. /// Must be in GAC or in the current folder of the host app/ /// base BinaryFolder /// </summary> public List<string> ReferencedAssemblies = new List<string>(); /// <summary> /// Name of the generated namespace for template classes /// </summary> public string GeneratedNamespace {get; set; } /// <summary> /// Any error messages /// </summary> public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host. Required to keep the /// reference to the host alive for multiple uses. /// </summary> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> Engine; /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host Factory - so we can unload /// the host and its associated AppDomain. /// </summary> protected RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> EngineFactory; /// <summary> /// Keep track of each compiled assembly /// and when it was compiled. /// /// Use a hash of the string to identify string /// changes. /// </summary> protected Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem> LoadedAssemblies = new Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem>(); /// <summary> /// Call to start the Host running. Follow by a calls to RenderTemplate to /// render individual templates. Call Stop when done. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage on false </returns> public virtual bool Start() { if (Engine == null) { if (UseAppDomain) Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); else Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHost(); Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = true; Engine.HostContainer = this; if (Engine == null) { this.ErrorMessage = EngineFactory.ErrorMessage; return false; } } return true; } /// <summary> /// Stops the Host and releases the host AppDomain and cached /// assemblies. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool Stop() { this.LoadedAssemblies.Clear(); RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Engine = null; return true; } … } This base class provides most of the mechanics to host the runtime, but no application specific implementation for rendering. There are rendering functions but they just call the engine directly and provide no caching – there’s no context to decide how to cache and reuse templates. The key methods are Start and Stop and their main purpose is to start a new AppDomain (optionally) and shut it down when requested. The RazorFolderHostContainer – Folder Based Runtime Hosting Let’s look at the more application specific RazorFolderHostContainer implementation which is defined like this: public class RazorFolderHostContainer : RazorBaseHostContainer<RazorTemplateFolderHost> Note that a customized RazorTemplateFolderHost class template is used for this implementation that supports partial rendering in form of a RenderPartial() method that’s available to templates. The folder host’s features are: Render templates based on a Template Base Path (a ‘virtual’ if you will) Cache compiled assemblies based on the relative path and file time stamp File changes on templates cause templates to be recompiled into new assemblies Support for partial rendering using base folder relative pathing As shown in the startup examples earlier host containers require some startup code with a HostContainer tied to a persistent property (like a Form property): // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. HostContainer.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Default output rendering disk location HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile = Path.Combine(HostContainer.TemplatePath, "__Preview.htm"); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates HostContainer.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container HostContainer.Start(); Once that’s done, you can render templates with the host container: // Pass the template path for full filename seleted with OpenFile Dialog // relativepath is: subdir\file.cshtml or file.cshtml or ..\file.cshtml var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, HostContainer.TemplatePath); if (!HostContainer.RenderTemplate(relativePath, Context, HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + HostContainer.ErrorMessage); return; } webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile); The most critical task of the RazorFolderHostContainer implementation is to retrieve a template from disk, compile and cache it and then deal with deciding whether subsequent requests need to re-compile the template or simply use a cached version. Internally the GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache() handles this task: /// <summary> /// Internally checks if a cached assembly exists and if it does uses it /// else creates and compiles one. Returns an assembly Id to be /// used with the LoadedAssembly list. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected virtual CompiledAssemblyItem GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(string relativePath) { string fileName = Path.Combine(TemplatePath, relativePath).ToLower(); int fileNameHash = fileName.GetHashCode(); if (!File.Exists(fileName)) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateFileDoesnTExist + fileName); return null; } CompiledAssemblyItem item = null; this.LoadedAssemblies.TryGetValue(fileNameHash, out item); string assemblyId = null; // Check for cached instance if (item != null) { var fileTime = File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc(fileName); if (fileTime <= item.CompileTimeUtc) assemblyId = item.AssemblyId; } else item = new CompiledAssemblyItem(); // No cached instance - create assembly and cache if (assemblyId == null) { string safeClassName = GetSafeClassName(fileName); StreamReader reader = null; try { reader = new StreamReader(fileName, true); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.ErrorReadingTemplateFile + fileName); return null; } assemblyId = Engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(this.ReferencedAssemblies.ToArray(), reader); // need to ensure reader is closed if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (assemblyId == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } item.AssemblyId = assemblyId; item.CompileTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow; item.FileName = fileName; item.SafeClassName = safeClassName; this.LoadedAssemblies[fileNameHash] = item; } return item; } This code uses a LoadedAssembly dictionary which is comprised of a structure that holds a reference to a compiled assembly, a full filename and file timestamp and an assembly id. LoadedAssemblies (defined on the base class shown earlier) is essentially a cache for compiled assemblies and they are identified by a hash id. In the case of files the hash is a GetHashCode() from the full filename of the template. The template is checked for in the cache and if not found the file stamp is checked. If that’s newer than the cache’s compilation date the template is recompiled otherwise the version in the cache is used. All the core work defers to a RazorEngine<T> instance to ParseAndCompileTemplate(). The three rendering specific methods then are rather simple implementations with just a few lines of code dealing with parameter and return value parsing: /// <summary> /// Renders a template to a TextWriter. Useful to write output into a stream or /// the Response object. Used for partial rendering. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path to the file in the folder structure</param> /// <param name="context">Optional context object or null</param> /// <param name="writer">The textwriter to write output into</param> /// <returns></returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, TextWriter writer) { // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; CompiledAssemblyItem item = GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(relativePath); if (item == null) { writer.Close(); return false; } try { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error string result = Engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(item.AssemblyId, context, writer); if (result == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return false; } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } finally { writer.Close(); } return true; } /// <summary> /// Render a template from a source file on disk to a specified outputfile. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path off the template root folder. Format: path/filename.cshtml</param> /// <param name="context">Any object that will be available in the template as a dynamic of this.Context</param> /// <param name="outputFile">Optional - output file where output is written to. If not specified the /// RenderingOutputFile property is used instead /// </param> /// <returns>true if rendering succeeds, false on failure - check ErrorMessage</returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, string outputFile) { if (outputFile == null) outputFile = RenderingOutputFile; try { using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(outputFile, false, Engine.Configuration.OutputEncoding, Engine.Configuration.StreamBufferSize)) { return RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Renders a template to string. Useful for RenderTemplate /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string RenderTemplateToString(string relativePath, object context) { string result = string.Empty; try { using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error if (!RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer)) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } result = writer.ToString(); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return null; } return result; } The idea is that you can create custom host container implementations that do exactly what you want fairly easily. Take a look at both the RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer classes for the basic concepts you can use to create custom implementations. Notice also that you can set the engine’s PerRequestConfigurationData() from the host container: // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; which when set to a non-null value is passed to the Template’s InitializeTemplate() method. This method receives an object parameter which you can cast as needed: public override void InitializeTemplate(object configurationData) { // Pick up configuration data and stuff into Request object RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration config = configurationData as RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration; this.Request.TemplatePath = config.TemplatePath; this.Request.TemplateRelativePath = config.TemplateRelativePath; } With this data you can then configure any custom properties or objects on your main template class. It’s an easy way to pass data from the HostContainer all the way down into the template. The type you use is of type object so you have to cast it yourself, and it must be serializable since it will likely run in a separate AppDomain. This might seem like an ugly way to pass data around – normally I’d use an event delegate to call back from the engine to the host, but since this is running over AppDomain boundaries events get really tricky and passing a template instance back up into the host over AppDomain boundaries doesn’t work due to serialization issues. So it’s easier to pass the data from the host down into the template using this rather clumsy approach of set and forward. It’s ugly, but it’s something that can be hidden in the host container implementation as I’ve done here. It’s also not something you have to do in every implementation so this is kind of an edge case, but I know I’ll need to pass a bunch of data in some of my applications and this will be the easiest way to do so. Summing Up Hosting the Razor runtime is something I got jazzed up about quite a bit because I have an immediate need for this type of templating/merging/scripting capability in an application I’m working on. I’ve also been using templating in many apps and it’s always been a pain to deal with. The Razor engine makes this whole experience a lot cleaner and more light weight and with these wrappers I can now plug .NET based templating into my code literally with a few lines of code. That’s something to cheer about… I hope some of you will find this useful as well… Resources The examples and code require that you download the Razor runtimes. Projects are for Visual Studio 2010 running on .NET 4.0 Platform Installer 3.0 (install WebMatrix or MVC 3 for Razor Runtimes) Latest Code in Subversion Repository Download Snapshot of the Code Documentation (CHM Help File) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  .NET  

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