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  • Visual Studio 2013 disponible pour les développeurs, avec .NET 4.5.1 et Team Foundation Server 2013

    Visual Studio 2013 disponible pour les développeurs avec .NET 4.5.1 et Team Foundation Server 2013À la suite de la publication de Windows 8.1, Microsoft a mis à la disposition des développeurs ayant un abonnement MSDN les versions finales de Visual Studio 2013, .NET 4.5.1 et Team Foundation Server 2013.Conformément au nouveau calendrier de Microsoft, Visual Studio 2013 sort pratiquement un an après Visual Studio 2012. Cette mouture représente pour S. Somasegar, vice-président de la division développeur...

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  • PHP class data implementation

    - by Bakanyaka
    I'm studying OOP PHP and have watched two tutorials that implement user login\registration system as an example. But implementation varies. Which way will be more correct one to work with data such as this? Load all data retrieved from database as array into a property called something like _data on class creation and further methods operate with this property Create separate properties for each field retrieved from database, on class creation load all data fields into respective properties and operate with that properties separately? Then let's say I want to create a method that returns a list of all users with their data. Which way is better? Method that returns just an array of userdata like this: Array([0]=>array([id] => 1, [username] => 'John', ...), [1]=>array([id] => 2, [username] => 'Jack', ...), ...) Method that creates a new instance of it's class for each user and returns an array of objects

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  • Good way to extract strings to resource

    - by Bart Friederichs
    I am using Visual Studio 2010 and we just decided to get started on localization of our code. We want to use the per-form resource file in combination with a separate resource file for static strings, called strings.resx. I was wondering if there is a good way to extra static strings (we already have quite some code we need to translate) to the strings.resx file? I have tried this plugin: Resource Refactoring 2010, but it doesn't work completely. It creates the correct new resource, but the strings aren't refactored in the code. Also, the tool seems to be abandoned by its developer. Is there a good plugin that can do this?

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  • Google Analytics data Missing for 4 days

    - by Shumaila
    I used wrong tracking id in my E-commerce tracking code for Google analytics and missed the data for few days. To add that missing data in my account I have written a short script which manually send all orders data for four days to GA account but what my concern is date : Those orders which already placed on different dates and , when if I run my script and so it will send my missing data with current date , which I do not want. ( I want to send date when that order is actually placed) do anyone help me with this ? I am really much stuck with my work here.

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  • CellC data card not recognized if I boot with it in

    - by Armien
    In 11.10 I find that I can connect to the internet via broadband connection successfully. The problem is that I cannot have the data card attached to the machine while the machine boots up. If I leave the data card in the machine during startup, the data card is not picked up and I then cannot connect to the internet. I must first boot up my machine, login, attach the data card into the usb port, wait so 30 seconds. The broadband connection name will then appear in the network dropdown at the top of the screen. An internet connect is now possible via broadband. Please let me know what must be done to fix this.

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  • TSQL Challenge 83 - Compare rows in the same table and group the data

    The challenge is to compare the data of the rows and group the input data. The data needs to be grouped based on the Product ID, Date, TotalLines, LinesOutOfService. NEW! Deployment Manager Early Access ReleaseDeploy SQL Server changes and .NET applications fast, frequently, and without fuss, using Deployment Manager, the new tool from Red Gate. Try the Early Access Release to get a 20% discount on Version 1. Download the Early Access Release.

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  • Using PDO for Data Management

    - by edorahg
    This question is more a design oriented question than a code specific question. I am new to PHP and I am planning to use PDO as a data access layer. Say for instance I have a class called CITY. Now if I need to create an instance of this class, what is the best technique. Should have a singleton DB access class which is used to write and read data from the db layer. OR should I delegate it to the individual class object. For example if I invoke city.save() (city is a class), then the city class will handle the saving of that city object's data into the database. Excuse my ignorance but i have a java background and therefore trying to understand what is the best design principle for data management when using php.

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  • Mac HDD Is Encrypted

    - by user206844
    I have the hard drive from a PowerMac G5, which was my old computer before it died and I upgraded to Ubuntu Studio. The hard drive its self still works well, but on Ubuntu I can't access most of the files. I plugged it into my MacBook Air and changed some of the perms on some of the folders as a test. This worked for a few, but for others, I was getting the same message Cannot access folder. Access denied. I would like to use this as an external HDD (I have a case and everything), but it's kind of pointless if I can't access the folders that I want. After looking around for a couple of hours, I couldn't find anything that actually gave me an answer. I would like to know if: Anybody else has come upon this problem, If so, have you found a solution? and, What is it?

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  • Can't view order in magento

    - by koko
    Hi, I've been setting up a fresh magento 1.4.0.1 install, working great so far. I did some test orders just to see. Everything works fine, but when I click on "view order" under "my orders", I get a bunch of error messages: There has been an error processing your request Notice: iconv_substr() [function.iconv-substr]: Unknown error (0) in /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php on line 98 Trace: #0 [internal function]: mageCoreErrorHandler(8, 'iconv_substr() ...', '/data/web/A1423...', 98, Array) #1 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php(98): iconv_substr('1', 0, 50, 'UTF-8') #2 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php(173): Mage_Core_Helper_String-substr('1', 0, 50) #3 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Helper/String.php(112): Mage_Core_Helper_String-str_split('1', 50) #4 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/sales/order/items/renderer/default.phtml(58): Mage_Core_Helper_String-splitInjection('1') #5 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #6 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #7 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #8 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #9 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Sales/Block/Items/Abstract.php(137): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #10 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/sales/order/items.phtml(52): Mage_Sales_Block_Items_Abstract-getItemHtml(Object(Mage_Sales_Model_Order_Item)) #11 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #12 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #13 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #14 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #15 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(516): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #16 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(467): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-_getChildHtml('order_items', true) #17 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/sales/order/view.phtml(64): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-getChildHtml('order_items') #18 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #19 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #20 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #21 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #22 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(516): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #23 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(463): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-_getChildHtml('sales.order.vie...', true) #24 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Page/Block/Html/Wrapper.php(52): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-getChildHtml('', true, true) #25 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Page_Block_Html_Wrapper-_toHtml() #26 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Text/List.php(43): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #27 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Text_List-_toHtml() #28 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(516): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #29 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(467): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-_getChildHtml('content', true) #30 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/design/frontend/base/default/template/page/2columns-left.phtml(48): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-getChildHtml('content') #31 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(189): include('/data/web/A1423...') #32 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(225): Mage_Core_Block_Template-fetchView('frontend/base/d...') #33 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Template.php(242): Mage_Core_Block_Template-renderView() #34 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Block/Abstract.php(674): Mage_Core_Block_Template-_toHtml() #35 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Layout.php(536): Mage_Core_Block_Abstract-toHtml() #36 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Action.php(389): Mage_Core_Model_Layout-getOutput() #37 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Sales/controllers/OrderController.php(100): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action-renderLayout() #38 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Sales/controllers/OrderController.php(136): Mage_Sales_OrderController-_viewAction() #39 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Action.php(418): Mage_Sales_OrderController-viewAction() #40 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Router/Standard.php(254): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action-dispatch('view') #41 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Controller/Varien/Front.php(177): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Router_Standard-match(Object(Mage_Core_Controller_Request_Http)) #42 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/App.php(304): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Front-dispatch() #43 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/app/Mage.php(596): Mage_Core_Model_App-run(Array) #44 /data/web/A14237/htdocs/magento/index.php(78): Mage::run('', 'store') #45 {main} gtx, koko

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  • New features of C# 4.0

    This article covers New features of C# 4.0. Article has been divided into below sections. Introduction. Dynamic Lookup. Named and Optional Arguments. Features for COM interop. Variance. Relationship with Visual Basic. Resources. Other interested readings… 22 New Features of Visual Studio 2008 for .NET Professionals 50 New Features of SQL Server 2008 IIS 7.0 New features Introduction It is now close to a year since Microsoft Visual C# 3.0 shipped as part of Visual Studio 2008. In the VS Managed Languages team we are hard at work on creating the next version of the language (with the unsurprising working title of C# 4.0), and this document is a first public description of the planned language features as we currently see them. Please be advised that all this is in early stages of production and is subject to change. Part of the reason for sharing our plans in public so early is precisely to get the kind of feedback that will cause us to improve the final product before it rolls out. Simultaneously with the publication of this whitepaper, a first public CTP (community technology preview) of Visual Studio 2010 is going out as a Virtual PC image for everyone to try. Please use it to play and experiment with the features, and let us know of any thoughts you have. We ask for your understanding and patience working with very early bits, where especially new or newly implemented features do not have the quality or stability of a final product. The aim of the CTP is not to give you a productive work environment but to give you the best possible impression of what we are working on for the next release. The CTP contains a number of walkthroughs, some of which highlight the new language features of C# 4.0. Those are excellent for getting a hands-on guided tour through the details of some common scenarios for the features. You may consider this whitepaper a companion document to these walkthroughs, complementing them with a focus on the overall language features and how they work, as opposed to the specifics of the concrete scenarios. C# 4.0 The major theme for C# 4.0 is dynamic programming. Increasingly, objects are “dynamic” in the sense that their structure and behavior is not captured by a static type, or at least not one that the compiler knows about when compiling your program. Some examples include a. objects from dynamic programming languages, such as Python or Ruby b. COM objects accessed through IDispatch c. ordinary .NET types accessed through reflection d. objects with changing structure, such as HTML DOM objects While C# remains a statically typed language, we aim to vastly improve the interaction with such objects. A secondary theme is co-evolution with Visual Basic. Going forward we will aim to maintain the individual character of each language, but at the same time important new features should be introduced in both languages at the same time. They should be differentiated more by style and feel than by feature set. The new features in C# 4.0 fall into four groups: Dynamic lookup Dynamic lookup allows you to write method, operator and indexer calls, property and field accesses, and even object invocations which bypass the C# static type checking and instead gets resolved at runtime. Named and optional parameters Parameters in C# can now be specified as optional by providing a default value for them in a member declaration. When the member is invoked, optional arguments can be omitted. Furthermore, any argument can be passed by parameter name instead of position. COM specific interop features Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters both help making programming against COM less painful than today. On top of that, however, we are adding a number of other small features that further improve the interop experience. Variance It used to be that an IEnumerable<string> wasn’t an IEnumerable<object>. Now it is – C# embraces type safe “co-and contravariance” and common BCL types are updated to take advantage of that. Dynamic Lookup Dynamic lookup allows you a unified approach to invoking things dynamically. With dynamic lookup, when you have an object in your hand you do not need to worry about whether it comes from COM, IronPython, the HTML DOM or reflection; you just apply operations to it and leave it to the runtime to figure out what exactly those operations mean for that particular object. This affords you enormous flexibility, and can greatly simplify your code, but it does come with a significant drawback: Static typing is not maintained for these operations. A dynamic object is assumed at compile time to support any operation, and only at runtime will you get an error if it wasn’t so. Oftentimes this will be no loss, because the object wouldn’t have a static type anyway, in other cases it is a tradeoff between brevity and safety. In order to facilitate this tradeoff, it is a design goal of C# to allow you to opt in or opt out of dynamic behavior on every single call. The dynamic type C# 4.0 introduces a new static type called dynamic. When you have an object of type dynamic you can “do things to it” that are resolved only at runtime: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); The C# compiler allows you to call a method with any name and any arguments on d because it is of type dynamic. At runtime the actual object that d refers to will be examined to determine what it means to “call M with an int” on it. The type dynamic can be thought of as a special version of the type object, which signals that the object can be used dynamically. It is easy to opt in or out of dynamic behavior: any object can be implicitly converted to dynamic, “suspending belief” until runtime. Conversely, there is an “assignment conversion” from dynamic to any other type, which allows implicit conversion in assignment-like constructs: dynamic d = 7; // implicit conversion int i = d; // assignment conversion Dynamic operations Not only method calls, but also field and property accesses, indexer and operator calls and even delegate invocations can be dispatched dynamically: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); // calling methods d.f = d.P; // getting and settings fields and properties d[“one”] = d[“two”]; // getting and setting thorugh indexers int i = d + 3; // calling operators string s = d(5,7); // invoking as a delegate The role of the C# compiler here is simply to package up the necessary information about “what is being done to d”, so that the runtime can pick it up and determine what the exact meaning of it is given an actual object d. Think of it as deferring part of the compiler’s job to runtime. The result of any dynamic operation is itself of type dynamic. Runtime lookup At runtime a dynamic operation is dispatched according to the nature of its target object d: COM objects If d is a COM object, the operation is dispatched dynamically through COM IDispatch. This allows calling to COM types that don’t have a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA), and relying on COM features that don’t have a counterpart in C#, such as indexed properties and default properties. Dynamic objects If d implements the interface IDynamicObject d itself is asked to perform the operation. Thus by implementing IDynamicObject a type can completely redefine the meaning of dynamic operations. This is used intensively by dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby to implement their own dynamic object models. It will also be used by APIs, e.g. by the HTML DOM to allow direct access to the object’s properties using property syntax. Plain objects Otherwise d is a standard .NET object, and the operation will be dispatched using reflection on its type and a C# “runtime binder” which implements C#’s lookup and overload resolution semantics at runtime. This is essentially a part of the C# compiler running as a runtime component to “finish the work” on dynamic operations that was deferred by the static compiler. Example Assume the following code: dynamic d1 = new Foo(); dynamic d2 = new Bar(); string s; d1.M(s, d2, 3, null); Because the receiver of the call to M is dynamic, the C# compiler does not try to resolve the meaning of the call. Instead it stashes away information for the runtime about the call. This information (often referred to as the “payload”) is essentially equivalent to: “Perform an instance method call of M with the following arguments: 1. a string 2. a dynamic 3. a literal int 3 4. a literal object null” At runtime, assume that the actual type Foo of d1 is not a COM type and does not implement IDynamicObject. In this case the C# runtime binder picks up to finish the overload resolution job based on runtime type information, proceeding as follows: 1. Reflection is used to obtain the actual runtime types of the two objects, d1 and d2, that did not have a static type (or rather had the static type dynamic). The result is Foo for d1 and Bar for d2. 2. Method lookup and overload resolution is performed on the type Foo with the call M(string,Bar,3,null) using ordinary C# semantics. 3. If the method is found it is invoked; otherwise a runtime exception is thrown. Overload resolution with dynamic arguments Even if the receiver of a method call is of a static type, overload resolution can still happen at runtime. This can happen if one or more of the arguments have the type dynamic: Foo foo = new Foo(); dynamic d = new Bar(); var result = foo.M(d); The C# runtime binder will choose between the statically known overloads of M on Foo, based on the runtime type of d, namely Bar. The result is again of type dynamic. The Dynamic Language Runtime An important component in the underlying implementation of dynamic lookup is the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which is a new API in .NET 4.0. The DLR provides most of the infrastructure behind not only C# dynamic lookup but also the implementation of several dynamic programming languages on .NET, such as IronPython and IronRuby. Through this common infrastructure a high degree of interoperability is ensured, but just as importantly the DLR provides excellent caching mechanisms which serve to greatly enhance the efficiency of runtime dispatch. To the user of dynamic lookup in C#, the DLR is invisible except for the improved efficiency. However, if you want to implement your own dynamically dispatched objects, the IDynamicObject interface allows you to interoperate with the DLR and plug in your own behavior. This is a rather advanced task, which requires you to understand a good deal more about the inner workings of the DLR. For API writers, however, it can definitely be worth the trouble in order to vastly improve the usability of e.g. a library representing an inherently dynamic domain. Open issues There are a few limitations and things that might work differently than you would expect. · The DLR allows objects to be created from objects that represent classes. However, the current implementation of C# doesn’t have syntax to support this. · Dynamic lookup will not be able to find extension methods. Whether extension methods apply or not depends on the static context of the call (i.e. which using clauses occur), and this context information is not currently kept as part of the payload. · Anonymous functions (i.e. lambda expressions) cannot appear as arguments to a dynamic method call. The compiler cannot bind (i.e. “understand”) an anonymous function without knowing what type it is converted to. One consequence of these limitations is that you cannot easily use LINQ queries over dynamic objects: dynamic collection = …; var result = collection.Select(e => e + 5); If the Select method is an extension method, dynamic lookup will not find it. Even if it is an instance method, the above does not compile, because a lambda expression cannot be passed as an argument to a dynamic operation. There are no plans to address these limitations in C# 4.0. Named and Optional Arguments Named and optional parameters are really two distinct features, but are often useful together. Optional parameters allow you to omit arguments to member invocations, whereas named arguments is a way to provide an argument using the name of the corresponding parameter instead of relying on its position in the parameter list. Some APIs, most notably COM interfaces such as the Office automation APIs, are written specifically with named and optional parameters in mind. Up until now it has been very painful to call into these APIs from C#, with sometimes as many as thirty arguments having to be explicitly passed, most of which have reasonable default values and could be omitted. Even in APIs for .NET however you sometimes find yourself compelled to write many overloads of a method with different combinations of parameters, in order to provide maximum usability to the callers. Optional parameters are a useful alternative for these situations. Optional parameters A parameter is declared optional simply by providing a default value for it: public void M(int x, int y = 5, int z = 7); Here y and z are optional parameters and can be omitted in calls: M(1, 2, 3); // ordinary call of M M(1, 2); // omitting z – equivalent to M(1, 2, 7) M(1); // omitting both y and z – equivalent to M(1, 5, 7) Named and optional arguments C# 4.0 does not permit you to omit arguments between commas as in M(1,,3). This could lead to highly unreadable comma-counting code. Instead any argument can be passed by name. Thus if you want to omit only y from a call of M you can write: M(1, z: 3); // passing z by name or M(x: 1, z: 3); // passing both x and z by name or even M(z: 3, x: 1); // reversing the order of arguments All forms are equivalent, except that arguments are always evaluated in the order they appear, so in the last example the 3 is evaluated before the 1. Optional and named arguments can be used not only with methods but also with indexers and constructors. Overload resolution Named and optional arguments affect overload resolution, but the changes are relatively simple: A signature is applicable if all its parameters are either optional or have exactly one corresponding argument (by name or position) in the call which is convertible to the parameter type. Betterness rules on conversions are only applied for arguments that are explicitly given – omitted optional arguments are ignored for betterness purposes. If two signatures are equally good, one that does not omit optional parameters is preferred. M(string s, int i = 1); M(object o); M(int i, string s = “Hello”); M(int i); M(5); Given these overloads, we can see the working of the rules above. M(string,int) is not applicable because 5 doesn’t convert to string. M(int,string) is applicable because its second parameter is optional, and so, obviously are M(object) and M(int). M(int,string) and M(int) are both better than M(object) because the conversion from 5 to int is better than the conversion from 5 to object. Finally M(int) is better than M(int,string) because no optional arguments are omitted. Thus the method that gets called is M(int). Features for COM interop Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters greatly improve the experience of interoperating with COM APIs such as the Office Automation APIs. In order to remove even more of the speed bumps, a couple of small COM-specific features are also added to C# 4.0. Dynamic import Many COM methods accept and return variant types, which are represented in the PIAs as object. In the vast majority of cases, a programmer calling these methods already knows the static type of a returned object from context, but explicitly has to perform a cast on the returned value to make use of that knowledge. These casts are so common that they constitute a major nuisance. In order to facilitate a smoother experience, you can now choose to import these COM APIs in such a way that variants are instead represented using the type dynamic. In other words, from your point of view, COM signatures now have occurrences of dynamic instead of object in them. This means that you can easily access members directly off a returned object, or you can assign it to a strongly typed local variable without having to cast. To illustrate, you can now say excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Hello"; instead of ((Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]).Value2 = "Hello"; and Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; instead of Excel.Range range = (Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]; Compiling without PIAs Primary Interop Assemblies are large .NET assemblies generated from COM interfaces to facilitate strongly typed interoperability. They provide great support at design time, where your experience of the interop is as good as if the types where really defined in .NET. However, at runtime these large assemblies can easily bloat your program, and also cause versioning issues because they are distributed independently of your application. The no-PIA feature allows you to continue to use PIAs at design time without having them around at runtime. Instead, the C# compiler will bake the small part of the PIA that a program actually uses directly into its assembly. At runtime the PIA does not have to be loaded. Omitting ref Because of a different programming model, many COM APIs contain a lot of reference parameters. Contrary to refs in C#, these are typically not meant to mutate a passed-in argument for the subsequent benefit of the caller, but are simply another way of passing value parameters. It therefore seems unreasonable that a C# programmer should have to create temporary variables for all such ref parameters and pass these by reference. Instead, specifically for COM methods, the C# compiler will allow you to pass arguments by value to such a method, and will automatically generate temporary variables to hold the passed-in values, subsequently discarding these when the call returns. In this way the caller sees value semantics, and will not experience any side effects, but the called method still gets a reference. Open issues A few COM interface features still are not surfaced in C#. Most notably these include indexed properties and default properties. As mentioned above these will be respected if you access COM dynamically, but statically typed C# code will still not recognize them. There are currently no plans to address these remaining speed bumps in C# 4.0. Variance An aspect of generics that often comes across as surprising is that the following is illegal: IList<string> strings = new List<string>(); IList<object> objects = strings; The second assignment is disallowed because strings does not have the same element type as objects. There is a perfectly good reason for this. If it were allowed you could write: objects[0] = 5; string s = strings[0]; Allowing an int to be inserted into a list of strings and subsequently extracted as a string. This would be a breach of type safety. However, there are certain interfaces where the above cannot occur, notably where there is no way to insert an object into the collection. Such an interface is IEnumerable<T>. If instead you say: IEnumerable<object> objects = strings; There is no way we can put the wrong kind of thing into strings through objects, because objects doesn’t have a method that takes an element in. Variance is about allowing assignments such as this in cases where it is safe. The result is that a lot of situations that were previously surprising now just work. Covariance In .NET 4.0 the IEnumerable<T> interface will be declared in the following way: public interface IEnumerable<out T> : IEnumerable { IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator(); } public interface IEnumerator<out T> : IEnumerator { bool MoveNext(); T Current { get; } } The “out” in these declarations signifies that the T can only occur in output position in the interface – the compiler will complain otherwise. In return for this restriction, the interface becomes “covariant” in T, which means that an IEnumerable<A> is considered an IEnumerable<B> if A has a reference conversion to B. As a result, any sequence of strings is also e.g. a sequence of objects. This is useful e.g. in many LINQ methods. Using the declarations above: var result = strings.Union(objects); // succeeds with an IEnumerable<object> This would previously have been disallowed, and you would have had to to some cumbersome wrapping to get the two sequences to have the same element type. Contravariance Type parameters can also have an “in” modifier, restricting them to occur only in input positions. An example is IComparer<T>: public interface IComparer<in T> { public int Compare(T left, T right); } The somewhat baffling result is that an IComparer<object> can in fact be considered an IComparer<string>! It makes sense when you think about it: If a comparer can compare any two objects, it can certainly also compare two strings. This property is referred to as contravariance. A generic type can have both in and out modifiers on its type parameters, as is the case with the Func<…> delegate types: public delegate TResult Func<in TArg, out TResult>(TArg arg); Obviously the argument only ever comes in, and the result only ever comes out. Therefore a Func<object,string> can in fact be used as a Func<string,object>. Limitations Variant type parameters can only be declared on interfaces and delegate types, due to a restriction in the CLR. Variance only applies when there is a reference conversion between the type arguments. For instance, an IEnumerable<int> is not an IEnumerable<object> because the conversion from int to object is a boxing conversion, not a reference conversion. Also please note that the CTP does not contain the new versions of the .NET types mentioned above. In order to experiment with variance you have to declare your own variant interfaces and delegate types. COM Example Here is a larger Office automation example that shows many of the new C# features in action. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq; using Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel; using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var excel = new Excel.Application(); excel.Visible = true; excel.Workbooks.Add(); // optional arguments omitted excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Process Name"; // no casts; Value dynamically excel.Cells[1, 2].Value = "Memory Usage"; // accessed var processes = Process.GetProcesses() .OrderByDescending(p =&gt; p.WorkingSet) .Take(10); int i = 2; foreach (var p in processes) { excel.Cells[i, 1].Value = p.ProcessName; // no casts excel.Cells[i, 2].Value = p.WorkingSet; // no casts i++; } Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; // no casts Excel.Chart chart = excel.ActiveWorkbook.Charts. Add(After: excel.ActiveSheet); // named and optional arguments chart.ChartWizard( Source: range.CurrentRegion, Title: "Memory Usage in " + Environment.MachineName); //named+optional chart.ChartStyle = 45; chart.CopyPicture(Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen, Excel.XlCopyPictureFormat.xlBitmap, Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen); var word = new Word.Application(); word.Visible = true; word.Documents.Add(); // optional arguments word.Selection.Paste(); } } The code is much more terse and readable than the C# 3.0 counterpart. Note especially how the Value property is accessed dynamically. This is actually an indexed property, i.e. a property that takes an argument; something which C# does not understand. However the argument is optional. Since the access is dynamic, it goes through the runtime COM binder which knows to substitute the default value and call the indexed property. Thus, dynamic COM allows you to avoid accesses to the puzzling Value2 property of Excel ranges. Relationship with Visual Basic A number of the features introduced to C# 4.0 already exist or will be introduced in some form or other in Visual Basic: · Late binding in VB is similar in many ways to dynamic lookup in C#, and can be expected to make more use of the DLR in the future, leading to further parity with C#. · Named and optional arguments have been part of Visual Basic for a long time, and the C# version of the feature is explicitly engineered with maximal VB interoperability in mind. · NoPIA and variance are both being introduced to VB and C# at the same time. VB in turn is adding a number of features that have hitherto been a mainstay of C#. As a result future versions of C# and VB will have much better feature parity, for the benefit of everyone. Resources All available resources concerning C# 4.0 can be accessed through the C# Dev Center. Specifically, this white paper and other resources can be found at the Code Gallery site. Enjoy! span.fullpost {display:none;}

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  • Why can't I see the 'dataset project' property in Visual Studio DataSet designer?

    - by Ryan
    Hi, I am trying to follow 'n tier app design' tutorials and they tell me to set the DataSet Project property from the Data Set Designer in VS, to split table adaptors and entities into seprate projects. I can't see that property! (I'm looking in the same place shown on the videos... all other properties match) Does anybody know why? The video is here http://windowsclient.net/learn/video.aspx?v=14625 (4:36 is where the property is set) I'm using VS c# 2008 Express, with SQL Server Express 2008. Thanks a lot for any help Ryan

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  • EntityManager injection works in JBoss 7.1.1 but not WebSphere 7

    - by BikerJared
    I've built an EJB that will manage my database access. I'm building a web app around it that uses Struts 2. The problem I'm having is when I deploy the ear, the EntityManager doesn't get injected into my service class (and winds up null and results in NullPointerExceptions). The weird thing is, it works on JBoss 7.1.1 but not on WebSphere 7. You'll notice that Struts doesn't inject the EJB, so I've got some intercepter code that does that. My current working theory right now is that the WS7 container can't inject the EntityManager because of Struts for some unknown reason. My next step is to try Spring next, but I'd really like to get this to work if possible. I've spent a few days searching and trying various things and haven't had any luck. I figured I'd give this a shot. Let me know if I can provide additional information. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" version="1.0" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd"> <persistence-unit name="JPATestPU" transaction-type="JTA"> <description>JPATest Persistence Unit</description> <jta-data-source>jdbc/Test-DS</jta-data-source> <class>org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities.User</class> <properties> <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="update"/> </properties> </persistence-unit> </persistence> package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities; import java.io.Serializable; import javax.persistence.*; @Entity @Table public class User implements Serializable { private static final long serialVersionUID = -2643583108587251245L; private long id; private String name; private String email; @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.TABLE) public long getId() { return id; } public void setId(long id) { this.id = id; } @Column(nullable=false) public String getName() { return this.name; } public void setName( String name ) { this.name = name; } @Column(nullable=false) public String getEmail() { return this.email; } @Column(nullable=false) public void setEmail( String email ) { this.email= email; } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.services; import java.util.List; import javax.ejb.Remote; import javax.ejb.Stateless; import javax.ejb.TransactionAttribute; import javax.ejb.TransactionAttributeType; import javax.persistence.EntityManager; import javax.persistence.PersistenceContext; import javax.persistence.PersistenceContextType; import javax.persistence.Query; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities.User; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.interfaces.IUserService; @Stateless(name="UserService",mappedName="UserService") @Remote public class UserService implements IUserService { @PersistenceContext(unitName="JPATestPU",type=PersistenceContextType.TRANSACTION) private EntityManager em; @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public User getUserById(long userId) { User retVal = null; if(userId > 0) { retVal = (User)this.getEm().find(User.class, userId); } return retVal; } @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public List<User> getUsers() { List<User> retVal = null; String sql; sql = "SELECT u FROM User u ORDER BY u.id ASC"; Query q = this.getEm().createQuery(sql); retVal = (List<User>)q.getResultList(); return retVal; } @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public void save(User user) { this.getEm().persist(user); } @TransactionAttribute(TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRED) public boolean remove(long userId) { boolean retVal = false; if(userId > 0) { User user = null; user = (User)this.getEm().find(User.class, userId); if(user != null) this.getEm().remove(user); if(this.getEm().find(User.class, userId) == null) retVal = true; } return retVal; } public EntityManager getEm() { return em; } public void setEm(EntityManager em) { this.em = em; } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user; import javax.ejb.EJB; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.entities.User; import org.jaredstevens.jpatest.db.interfaces.IUserService; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport; public class UserAction extends ActionSupport { @EJB(mappedName="UserService") private IUserService userService; private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; private String userId; private String name; private String email; private User user; public String getUserById() { String retVal = ActionSupport.SUCCESS; this.setUser(userService.getUserById(Long.parseLong(this.userId))); return retVal; } public String save() { String retVal = ActionSupport.SUCCESS; User user = new User(); if(this.getUserId() != null && Long.parseLong(this.getUserId()) > 0) user.setId(Long.parseLong(this.getUserId())); user.setName(this.getName()); user.setEmail(this.getEmail()); userService.save(user); this.setUser(user); return retVal; } public String getUserId() { return this.userId; } public void setUserId(String userId) { this.userId = userId; } public String getName() { return this.name; } public void setName( String name ) { this.name = name; } public String getEmail() { return this.email; } public void setEmail( String email ) { this.email = email; } public User getUser() { return this.user; } public void setUser(User user) { this.user = user; } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionInvocation; import com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.Interceptor; public class EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor implements Interceptor { private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; public void destroy() { } public void init() { } public String intercept(ActionInvocation ai) throws Exception { EJBAnnotationProcessor.process(ai.getAction()); return ai.invoke(); } } package org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils; import java.lang.reflect.Field; import javax.ejb.EJB; import javax.naming.Context; import javax.naming.InitialContext; import javax.naming.NamingException; public class EJBAnnotationProcessor { public static void process(Object instance)throws Exception{ Field[] fields = instance.getClass().getDeclaredFields(); if(fields != null && fields.length > 0){ EJB ejb; for(Field field : fields){ ejb = field.getAnnotation(EJB.class); if(ejb != null){ field.setAccessible(true); field.set(instance, EJBAnnotationProcessor.getEJB(ejb.mappedName())); } } } } private static Object getEJB(String mappedName) { Object retVal = null; String path = ""; Context cxt = null; String[] paths = {"cell/nodes/virgoNode01/servers/server1/","java:module/"}; for( int i=0; i < paths.length; ++i ) { try { path = paths[i]+mappedName; cxt = new InitialContext(); retVal = cxt.lookup(path); if(retVal != null) break; } catch (NamingException e) { retVal = null; } } return retVal; } } <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN" "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd"> <struts> <constant name="struts.devMode" value="true" /> <package name="basicstruts2" namespace="/diagnostics" extends="struts-default"> <interceptors> <interceptor name="ejbAnnotationProcessor" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils.EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor"/> <interceptor-stack name="baseStack"> <interceptor-ref name="defaultStack"/> <interceptor-ref name="ejbAnnotationProcessor"/> </interceptor-stack> </interceptors> <default-interceptor-ref name="baseStack"/> </package> <package name="restAPI" namespace="/conduit" extends="json-default"> <interceptors> <interceptor name="ejbAnnotationProcessor" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils.EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor" /> <interceptor-stack name="baseStack"> <interceptor-ref name="defaultStack" /> <interceptor-ref name="ejbAnnotationProcessor" /> </interceptor-stack> </interceptors> <default-interceptor-ref name="baseStack" /> <action name="UserAction.getUserById" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user.UserAction" method="getUserById"> <result type="json"> <param name="ignoreHierarchy">false</param> <param name="includeProperties"> ^user\.id, ^user\.name, ^user\.email </param> </result> <result name="error" type="json" /> </action> <action name="UserAction.save" class="org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user.UserAction" method="save"> <result type="json"> <param name="ignoreHierarchy">false</param> <param name="includeProperties"> ^user\.id, ^user\.name, ^user\.email </param> </result> <result name="error" type="json" /> </action> </package> </struts> Stack Trace java.lang.NullPointerException org.jaredstevens.jpatest.actions.user.UserAction.save(UserAction.java:38) sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:60) sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:37) java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:611) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invokeAction(DefaultActionInvocation.java:453) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invokeActionOnly(DefaultActionInvocation.java:292) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:255) org.jaredstevens.jpatest.utils.EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor.intercept(EJBAnnotationProcessorInterceptor.java:21) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.debugging.DebuggingInterceptor.intercept(DebuggingInterceptor.java:256) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.DefaultWorkflowInterceptor.doIntercept(DefaultWorkflowInterceptor.java:176) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.validator.ValidationInterceptor.doIntercept(ValidationInterceptor.java:265) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.validation.AnnotationValidationInterceptor.doIntercept(AnnotationValidationInterceptor.java:68) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ConversionErrorInterceptor.intercept(ConversionErrorInterceptor.java:138) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ParametersInterceptor.doIntercept(ParametersInterceptor.java:211) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ParametersInterceptor.doIntercept(ParametersInterceptor.java:211) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.StaticParametersInterceptor.intercept(StaticParametersInterceptor.java:190) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.MultiselectInterceptor.intercept(MultiselectInterceptor.java:75) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.CheckboxInterceptor.intercept(CheckboxInterceptor.java:90) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.FileUploadInterceptor.intercept(FileUploadInterceptor.java:243) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ModelDrivenInterceptor.intercept(ModelDrivenInterceptor.java:100) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ScopedModelDrivenInterceptor.intercept(ScopedModelDrivenInterceptor.java:141) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ChainingInterceptor.intercept(ChainingInterceptor.java:145) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.PrepareInterceptor.doIntercept(PrepareInterceptor.java:171) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.MethodFilterInterceptor.intercept(MethodFilterInterceptor.java:98) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.I18nInterceptor.intercept(I18nInterceptor.java:176) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.interceptor.ServletConfigInterceptor.intercept(ServletConfigInterceptor.java:164) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.AliasInterceptor.intercept(AliasInterceptor.java:192) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ExceptionMappingInterceptor.intercept(ExceptionMappingInterceptor.java:187) com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.invoke(DefaultActionInvocation.java:249) org.apache.struts2.impl.StrutsActionProxy.execute(StrutsActionProxy.java:54) org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher.serviceAction(Dispatcher.java:511) org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.ExecuteOperations.executeAction(ExecuteOperations.java:77) org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.filter.StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter.doFilter(StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter.java:91) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:188) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:116) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain._doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:77) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:908) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:997) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.extension.DefaultExtensionProcessor.invokeFilters(DefaultExtensionProcessor.java:1062) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.extension.DefaultExtensionProcessor.handleRequest(DefaultExtensionProcessor.java:982) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebApp.handleRequest(WebApp.java:3935) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebGroup.handleRequest(WebGroup.java:276) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WebContainer.handleRequest(WebContainer.java:931) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WSWebContainer.handleRequest(WSWebContainer.java:1583) com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.channel.WCChannelLink.ready(WCChannelLink.java:186) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleDiscrimination(HttpInboundLink.java:452) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleNewRequest(HttpInboundLink.java:511) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.processRequest(HttpInboundLink.java:305) com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.ready(HttpInboundLink.java:276) com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.sendToDiscriminators(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:214) com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.complete(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:113) com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.AioReadCompletionListener.futureCompleted(AioReadCompletionListener.java:165) com.ibm.io.async.AbstractAsyncFuture.invokeCallback(AbstractAsyncFuture.java:217) com.ibm.io.async.AsyncChannelFuture.fireCompletionActions(AsyncChannelFuture.java:161) com.ibm.io.async.AsyncFuture.completed(AsyncFuture.java:138) com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.complete(ResultHandler.java:204) com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler.runEventProcessingLoop(ResultHandler.java:775) com.ibm.io.async.ResultHandler$2.run(ResultHandler.java:905) com.ibm.ws.util.ThreadPool$Worker.run(ThreadPool.java:1604)

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  • Data recovery; nearly 1 tb of movies on a WD 3.5 tb personal cloud drive disappears with scanty traces

    - by Effector Dhanushanth
    I have a great collection of movies that I had stored in a logical mesh of folder on my 3.5 tb WD personal cloud drive. I woke up 1 morning and found that everything was fine with my data on this drive, except for my movie collection: There were two great folders, one "2sort" nd the other "segregated". out of all the segregated sub folders, only letter C D and 2 or 3 others remain. and the 2 sort folder, which has umpteen subfolders, amounting to more than 0.5 tb. is.. it's just gone!! this is a great downfall.. now this is a personal cloud drive and has no usb port etc. unfortunately to hardwire and recover files.. now I'm sure there are softwares out there that can help me recover my beloved movies from such an interestingly "hard-to-reach" (should I say?) device? what may that software be compadre, my happiness lies within your answer.. thank you.. remember, recovery software or (WD) personal cloud. :) these ovies were All, "hand-picked", over the course of ten years.. I just never catalogued my collection.. if I could just get the "list" of my lost collection, that'd be enough.. recovering em would be a bonus.. but they out to be damaged if I were to somehow recover you know? still, I'm certain they're all intact.. I guess the file index just got corrupted.. There surely is a veil of some sort that need to be thrown or pushed aside to reveal my movies.. what software can do/does that? thanks immensely!

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  • The Microsoft Ajax Library and Visual Studio Beta 2

    - by Stephen Walther
    Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was released this week and one of the first things that I hope you notice is that it no longer contains the latest version of ASP.NET AJAX. What happened? Where did AJAX go? Just like Sting and The Police, just like Phil Collins and Genesis, just like Greg Page and the Wiggles, AJAX has gone out of band! We are starting a solo career. A Name Change First things first. In previous releases, our Ajax framework was named ASP.NET AJAX. We now have changed the name of the framework to the Microsoft Ajax Library. There are two reasons behind this name change. First, the members of the Ajax team got tired of explaining to everyone that our Ajax framework is not tied to the server-side ASP.NET framework. You can use the Microsoft Ajax Library with ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, PHP, Ruby on RAILS, and even pure HTML applications. Our framework can be used as a client-only framework and having the word ASP.NET in our name was confusing people. Second, it was time to start spelling the word Ajax like everyone else. Notice that the name is the Microsoft Ajax Library and not the Microsoft AJAX library. Originally, Microsoft used upper case AJAX because AJAX originally was an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. And, according to Strunk and Wagnell, acronyms should be all uppercase. However, Ajax is one of those words that have migrated from acronym status to “just a word” status. So whenever you hear one of your co-workers talk about ASP.NET AJAX, gently correct your co-worker and say “It is now called the Microsoft Ajax Library.” Why OOB? But why move out-of-band (OOB)? The short answer is that we have had approximately 6 preview releases of the Microsoft Ajax Library over the last year. That’s a lot. We pride ourselves on being agile. Client-side technology evolves quickly. We want to be able to get a preview version of the Microsoft Ajax Library out to our customers, get feedback, and make changes to the library quickly. Shipping the Microsoft Ajax Library out-of-band keeps us agile and enables us to continue to ship new versions of the library even after ASP.NET 4 ships. Showing Love for JavaScript Developers One area in which we have received a lot of feedback is around making the Microsoft Ajax Library easier to use for developers who are comfortable with JavaScript. We also wanted to make it easy for jQuery developers to take advantage of the innovative features of the Microsoft Ajax Library. To achieve these goals, we’ve added the following features to the Microsoft Ajax Library (these features are included in the latest preview release that you can download right now): A simplified imperative syntax – We wanted to make it brain-dead simple to create client-side Ajax controls when writing JavaScript. A client script loader – We wanted the Microsoft Ajax Library to load all of the scripts required by a component or control automatically. jQuery integration – We love the jQuery selector syntax. We wanted to make it easy for jQuery developers to use the Microsoft Ajax Library without changing their programming style. If you are interested in learning about these new features of the Microsoft Ajax Library, I recommend that you read the following blog post by Scott Guthrie: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/10/15/announcing-microsoft-ajax-library-preview-6-and-the-microsoft-ajax-minifier.aspx Downloading the Latest Version of the Microsoft Ajax Library Currently, the best place to download the latest version of the Microsoft Ajax Library is directly from the ASP.NET CodePlex project: http://aspnet.codeplex.com/ As I write this, the current version is Preview 6. The next version is coming out at the PDC. Summary I’m really excited about the future of the Microsoft Ajax Library. Moving outside of the ASP.NET framework provides us the flexibility to remain agile and continue to innovate aggressively. The latest preview release of the Microsoft Ajax Library includes several major new features including a client script loader, jQuery integration, and a simplified client control creation syntax.

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  • How to create a new WCF/MVC/jQuery application from scratch

    - by pjohnson
    As a corporate developer by trade, I don't get much opportunity to create from-the-ground-up web sites; usually it's tweaks, fixes, and new functionality to existing sites. And with hobby sites, I often don't find the challenges I run into with enterprise systems; usually it's starting from Visual Studio's boilerplate project and adding whatever functionality I want to play around with, rarely deploying outside my own machine. So my experience creating a new enterprise-level site was a bit dated, and the technologies to do so have come a long way, and are much more ready to go out of the box. My intention with this post isn't so much to provide any groundbreaking insights, but to just tie together a lot of information in one place to make it easy to create a new site from scratch. Architecture One site I created earlier this year had an MVC 3 front end and a WCF 4-driven service layer. Using Visual Studio 2010, these project types are easy enough to add to a new solution. I created a third Class Library project to store common functionality the front end and services layers both needed to access, for example, the DataContract classes that the front end uses to call services in the service layer. By keeping DataContract classes in a separate project, I avoided the need for the front end to have an assembly/project reference directly to the services code, a bit cleaner and more flexible of an SOA implementation. Consuming the service Even by this point, VS has given you a lot. You have a working web site and a working service, neither of which do much but are great starting points. To wire up the front end and the services, I needed to create proxy classes and WCF client configuration information. I decided to use the SvcUtil.exe utility provided as part of the Windows SDK, which you should have installed if you installed VS. VS also provides an Add Service Reference command since the .NET 1.x ASMX days, which I've never really liked; it creates several .cs/.disco/etc. files, some of which contained hardcoded URL's, adding duplicate files (*1.cs, *2.cs, etc.) without doing a good job of cleaning up after itself. I've found SvcUtil much cleaner, as it outputs one C# file (containing several proxy classes) and a config file with settings, and it's easier to use to regenerate the proxy classes when the service changes, and to then maintain all your configuration in one place (your Web.config, instead of the Service Reference files). I provided it a reference to a copy of my common assembly so it doesn't try to recreate the data contract classes, had it use the type List<T> for collections, and modified the output files' names and .NET namespace, ending up with a command like: svcutil.exe /l:cs /o:MyService.cs /config:MyService.config /r:MySite.Common.dll /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1 /n:*,MySite.Web.ServiceProxies http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc I took the generated MyService.cs file and drop it in the web project, under a ServiceProxies folder, matching the namespace and keeping it separate from classes I coded manually. Integrating the config file took a little more work, but only needed to be done once as these settings didn't often change. A great thing Microsoft improved with WCF 4 is configuration; namely, you can use all the default settings and not have to specify them explicitly in your config file. Unfortunately, SvcUtil doesn't generate its config file this way. If you just copy & paste MyService.config's contents into your front end's Web.config, you'll copy a lot of settings you don't need, plus this will get unwieldy if you add more services in the future, each with its own custom binding. Really, as the only mandatory settings are the endpoint's ABC's (address, binding, and contract) you can get away with just this: <system.serviceModel>  <client>    <endpoint address="http://localhost:59999/MyService.svc" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="MySite.Web.ServiceProxies.IMyService" />  </client></system.serviceModel> By default, the services project uses basicHttpBinding. As you can see, I switched it to wsHttpBinding, a more modern standard. Using something like netTcpBinding would probably be faster and more efficient since the client & service are both written in .NET, but it requires additional server setup and open ports, whereas switching to wsHttpBinding is much simpler. From an MVC controller action method, I instantiated the client, and invoked the method for my operation. As with any object that implements IDisposable, I wrapped it in C#'s using() statement, a tidy construct that ensures Dispose gets called no matter what, even if an exception occurs. Unfortunately there are problems with that, as WCF's ClientBase<TChannel> class doesn't implement Dispose according to Microsoft's own usage guidelines. I took an approach similar to Technology Toolbox's fix, except using partial classes instead of a wrapper class to extend the SvcUtil-generated proxy, making the fix more seamless from the controller's perspective, and theoretically, less code I have to change if and when Microsoft fixes this behavior. User interface The MVC 3 project template includes jQuery and some other common JavaScript libraries by default. I updated the ones I used to the latest versions using NuGet, available in VS via the Tools > Library Package Manager > Manage NuGet Packages for Solution... > Updates. I also used this dialog to remove packages I wasn't using. Given that it's smart enough to know the difference between the .js and .min.js files, I was hoping it would be smart enough to know which to include during build and publish operations, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I ended up using Cassette to perform the minification and bundling of my JavaScript and CSS files; ASP.NET 4.5 includes this functionality out of the box. The web client to web server link via jQuery was easy enough. In my JavaScript function, unobtrusively wired up to a button's click event, I called $.ajax, corresponding to an action method that returns a JsonResult, accomplished by passing my model class to the Controller.Json() method, which jQuery helpfully translates from JSON to a JavaScript object.$.ajax calls weren't perfectly straightforward. I tried using the simpler $.post method instead, but ran into trouble without specifying the contentType parameter, which $.post doesn't have. The url parameter is simple enough, though for flexibility in how the site is deployed, I used MVC's Url.Action method to get the URL, then sent this to JavaScript in a JavaScript string variable. If the request needed input data, I used the JSON.stringify function to convert a JavaScript object with the parameters into a JSON string, which MVC then parses into strongly-typed C# parameters. I also specified "json" for dataType, and "application/json; charset=utf-8" for contentType. For success and error, I provided my success and error handling functions, though success is a bit hairier. "Success" in this context indicates whether the HTTP request succeeds, not whether what you wanted the AJAX call to do on the web server was successful. For example, if you make an AJAX call to retrieve a piece of data, the success handler will be invoked for any 200 OK response, and the error handler will be invoked for failed requests, e.g. a 404 Not Found (if the server rejected the URL you provided in the url parameter) or 500 Internal Server Error (e.g. if your C# code threw an exception that wasn't caught). If an exception was caught and handled, or if the data requested wasn't found, this would likely go through the success handler, which would need to do further examination to verify it did in fact get back the data for which it asked. I discuss this more in the next section. Logging and exception handling At this point, I had a working application. If I ran into any errors or unexpected behavior, debugging was easy enough, but of course that's not an option on public web servers. Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 filled this gap nicely, with its Logging and Exception Handling functionality. First I installed Enterprise Library; NuGet as outlined above is probably the best way to do so. I needed a total of three assembly references--Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.Logging, and Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging. VS links with the handy Enterprise Library 5.0 Configuration Console, accessible by right-clicking your Web.config and choosing Edit Enterprise Library V5 Configuration. In this console, under Logging Settings, I set up a Rolling Flat File Trace Listener to write to log files but not let them get too large, using a Text Formatter with a simpler template than that provided by default. Logging to a different (or additional) destination is easy enough, but a flat file suited my needs. At this point, I verified it wrote as expected by calling the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Logger.Write method from my C# code. With those settings verified, I went on to wire up Exception Handling with Logging. Back in the EntLib Configuration Console, under Exception Handling, I used a LoggingExceptionHandler, setting its Logging Category to the category I already had configured in the Logging Settings. Then, from code (e.g. a controller's OnException method, or any action method's catch block), I called the Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.ExceptionHandling.ExceptionPolicy.HandleException method, providing the exception and the exception policy name I had configured in the Exception Handling Settings. Before I got this configured correctly, when I tried it out, nothing was logged. In working with .NET, I'm used to seeing an exception if something doesn't work or isn't set up correctly, but instead working with these EntLib modules reminds me more of JavaScript (before the "use strict" v5 days)--it just does nothing and leaves you to figure out why, I presume due in part to the listener pattern Microsoft followed with the Enterprise Library. First, I verified logging worked on its own. Then, verifying/correcting where each piece wires up to the next resolved my problem. Your C# code calls into the Exception Handling module, referencing the policy you pass the HandleException method; that policy's configuration contains a LoggingExceptionHandler that references a logCategory; that logCategory should be added in the loggingConfiguration's categorySources section; that category references a listener; that listener should be added in the loggingConfiguration's listeners section, which specifies the name of the log file. One final note on error handling, as the proper way to handle WCF and MVC errors is a whole other very lengthy discussion. For AJAX calls to MVC action methods, depending on your configuration, an exception thrown here will result in ASP.NET'S Yellow Screen Of Death being sent back as a response, which is at best unnecessarily and uselessly verbose, and at worst a security risk as the internals of your application are exposed to potential hackers. I mitigated this by overriding my controller's OnException method, passing the exception off to the Exception Handling module as above. I created an ErrorModel class with as few properties as possible (e.g. an Error string), sending as little information to the client as possible, to both maximize bandwidth and mitigate risk. I then return an ErrorModel in JSON format for AJAX requests: if (filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest()){    filterContext.Result = Json(new ErrorModel(...));    filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;} My $.ajax calls from the browser get a valid 200 OK response and go into the success handler. Before assuming everything is OK, I check if it's an ErrorModel or a model containing what I requested. If it's an ErrorModel, or null, I pass it to my error handler. If the client needs to handle different errors differently, ErrorModel can contain a flag, error code, string, etc. to differentiate, but again, sending as little information back as possible is ideal. Summary As any experienced ASP.NET developer knows, this is a far cry from where ASP.NET started when I began working with it 11 years ago. WCF services are far more powerful than ASMX ones, MVC is in many ways cleaner and certainly more unit test-friendly than Web Forms (if you don't consider the code/markup commingling you're doing again), the Enterprise Library makes error handling and logging almost entirely configuration-driven, AJAX makes a responsive UI more feasible, and jQuery makes JavaScript coding much less painful. It doesn't take much work to get a functional, maintainable, flexible application, though having it actually do something useful is a whole other matter.

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  • Why you need to learn async in .NET

    - by PSteele
    I had an opportunity to teach a quick class yesterday about what’s new in .NET 4.0.  One of the topics was the TPL (Task Parallel Library) and how it can make async programming easier.  I also stressed that this is the direction Microsoft is going with for C# 5.0 and learning the TPL will greatly benefit their understanding of the new async stuff.  We had a little time left over and I was able to show some code that uses the Async CTP to accomplish some stuff, but it wasn’t a simple demo that you could jump in to and understand so I thought I’d thrown one together and put it in a blog post. The entire solution file with all of the sample projects is located here. A Simple Example Let’s start with a super-simple example (WindowsApplication01 in the solution). I’ve got a form that displays a label and a button.  When the user clicks the button, I want to start displaying the current time for 15 seconds and then stop. What I’d like to write is this: lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); Thread.Sleep(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; (Note that I also changed the label’s color while counting – not quite an ILM-level effect, but it adds something to the demo!) As I’m sure most of my readers are aware, you can’t write WinForms code this way.  WinForms apps, by default, only have one thread running and it’s main job is to process messages from the windows message pump (for a more thorough explanation, see my Visual Studio Magazine article on multithreading in WinForms).  If you put a Thread.Sleep in the middle of that code, your UI will be locked up and unresponsive for those 15 seconds.  Not a good UX and something that needs to be fixed.  Sure, I could throw an “Application.DoEvents()” in there, but that’s hacky. The Windows Timer Then I think, “I can solve that.  I’ll use the Windows Timer to handle the timing in the background and simply notify me when the time has changed”.  Let’s see how I could accomplish this with a Windows timer (WindowsApplication02 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly Timer clockTimer; private int counter;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); clockTimer = new Timer {Interval = 1000}; clockTimer.Tick += UpdateLabel; }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); counter++; if (counter == 15) { clockTimer.Enabled = false; lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; counter = 0; clockTimer.Start(); } } Holy cow – things got pretty complicated here.  I use the timer to fire off a Tick event every second.  Inside there, I can update the label.  Granted, I can’t use a simple for/loop and have to maintain a global counter for the number of iterations.  And my “end” code (when the loop is finished) is now buried inside the bottom of the Tick event (inside an “if” statement).  I do, however, get a responsive application that doesn’t hang or stop repainting while the 15 seconds are ticking away. But doesn’t .NET have something that makes background processing easier? The BackgroundWorker Next I try .NET’s BackgroundWorker component – it’s specifically designed to do processing in a background thread (leaving the UI thread free to process the windows message pump) and allows updates to be performed on the main UI thread (WindowsApplication03 in the solution): public partial class Form1 : Form { private readonly BackgroundWorker worker;   public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); worker = new BackgroundWorker {WorkerReportsProgress = true}; worker.DoWork += StartUpdating; worker.ProgressChanged += UpdateLabel; worker.RunWorkerCompleted += ResetLabelColor; }   private void StartUpdating(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) { var workerObject = (BackgroundWorker) sender; for (int x = 0; x < 15; x++) { workerObject.ReportProgress(0); Thread.Sleep(1000); } }   private void UpdateLabel(object sender, ProgressChangedEventArgs e) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); }   private void ResetLabelColor(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; }   private void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; worker.RunWorkerAsync(); } } Well, this got a little better (I think).  At least I now have my simple for/next loop back.  Unfortunately, I’m still dealing with event handlers spread throughout my code to co-ordinate all of this stuff in the right order. Time to look into the future. The async way Using the Async CTP, I can go back to much simpler code (WindowsApplication04 in the solution): private async void cmdStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblTime.ForeColor = Color.Red; for (var x = 0; x < 15; x++) { lblTime.Text = DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); await TaskEx.Delay(1000); } lblTime.ForeColor = SystemColors.ControlText; } This code will run just like the Timer or BackgroundWorker versions – fully responsive during the updates – yet is way easier to implement.  In fact, it’s almost a line-for-line copy of the original version of this code.  All of the async plumbing is handled by the compiler and the framework.  My code goes back to representing the “what” of what I want to do, not the “how”. I urge you to download the Async CTP.  All you need is .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 sp1 – no need to set up a virtual machine with the VS2011 beta (unless, of course, you want to dive right in to the C# 5.0 stuff!).  Starting playing around with this today and see how much easier it will be in the future to write async-enabled applications.

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  • SQL Management Studio is painfully slow on 32-bit Windows 7

    - by Sergei
    I've been having issues running anything in SQL Management Studio on Win 7. Basically, doing anything through the Management Studio interfaces completely freezes it up for a few minutes. Running a query is nearly impossible because it takes nearly 2 minutes just for the IDE to parse it and another minute to run it when the query itself completes instantaneously outside of the IDE. I'm not even going to go into the query designer. Anything with heavy user interaction such as editing a row in the result set where i have to click a cell freezes up the front-end. I tried reinstalling to no avail. Also tried running in compatibility mode without any difference whatsoever. Anybody had a similar experience? I'm running SQL Management Studio 2008 version 10.0.2531.0 on 32-bit Windows 7. Connecting to a remote SQL Server instance (2008 R2). Thanks.

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  • Visual Studio Development on Virtual Box, Boot Camp, or VMWare Fusion

    - by Eli
    I currently have a Mac, 2ghz and 2 gigs of ram, running OS X Leopard and Virtual Box with a Windows 7 Pro 32bit virtual machine. Performance on the virtual machine is fine for minor tasks but is very clunky while trying to multi-task or develop in Visual Studio 2008. What would be my best option for being able to use Visual Studio, keeping cost and time in mind? 1) Upgrade ram to 4 gigs ($100). Will this really improve my performance enough to use Visual Studio in a Windows 7 vm? Or am I just wasting time/money? 2) Reinstall/restore Windows 7 disk image as a Boot Camp partition. I assume this should improve my performance, yes? 3) Purchase VMWare fusion instead of VirtualBox. Does Fusion require less resources to run? I am open to any suggestions. Thanks in advance

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  • Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

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

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