forms recognition - Page 243

Timer not beginning from 00:00

- by studentProgrammer

I have a Game in which there is a timer involved. For each two minutes that passes a new round between different players begins. So, I have a text box starting from 00:00 and changes each second until it is equal to 02:00. Now, I want to save the state of the game in the middle of a round if the user closes the form. What I need to do is that upon loading, the textbox starts at the time that the user left the game the last time and continue up till 02:00 normally. How can I do this? This is what I have until now where Tournament is the Form public Tournament() { _timer = new System.Windows.Forms.Timer(); _timer.Interval = 1000; _timer.Tick += Timer_Tick; _myDateTime = DateTime.Now; newDate = new DateTime(); newDate = newDate.AddMinutes(2.00); _timer.Start(); InitializeComponent(); } void Timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) { var diff = DateTime.Now.Subtract(_myDateTime); this.textBox1.Text = diff.ToString(@"mm\:ss"); DateTime dt = Convert.ToDateTime(diff.ToString()); if (newDate.Minute == dt.Minute) { _timer.Stop(); _myDateTime = DateTime.Now; displayPointsOrResults(); this.textBox1.Text = diff.ToString(@"mm\:ss"); } } In my LoadGame method: where timePassed is what I have written in the text box string[] splitted6 = timePassed.Split(':'); if (splitted6[0] == "00") { int remainingTime = 120 - Convert.ToInt32(splitted6[1]); DateTime time = DateTime.Now.Date; time = time.AddMinutes(remainingTime); _myDateTime = time; } else { int leftTime = Convert.ToInt32(splitted[0].Trim('0') + splitted[1]); int remainingTime = 120 - leftTime; DateTime time = DateTime.Now.Date; time = time.AddMinutes(remainingTime); _myDateTime = time; }

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MVC and Checkboxes...leaves a bit to be desired

- by Josh

Here is my problem. I have a list of models that are displayed to the user. On the left is a checkbox for each model to indicate that the user wants to choose this model (in this case, we're building products a user can add to their shopping cart). The model has no concept of being chosen...it strictly has information about the product in question. I've talked with a few other developers after having gone through and the best I could come up with is getting the formcollection and string parsing the key values to determine whether the checkbox is checked or not. This doesn't seem ideal. I was thinking there would be something more strongly bound, but I can't figure out a way to do it. I tried creating another model that had a boolean property to represent being checked and a property of the model and passing a list of that model type to the view and creating a ActionResult on the controller that accepts a list of the new model / checked property, but it comes back null. Am I just thinking too much like web forms and should just continue on with parsing checkbox values?

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Detect some conflictive characters in a string with javascript

- by FranQ

Hello. I have a file input in a form that uploads a mp3 file, but I´d like to detect conflictive characters to my system in the filename, like ! @ or any other. All codes I´ve found replace these characters, but I just want to detect them to alert the user. I think it will be easy with regular expressions, but I dont know about them. I´m using jquery/javascript. Thanks in advance for your help Edit to improve my problem description: I´m working in a CodeIgniter application that allows user to upload mp3 files to the server. I use jQuery to manage client side forms. The CI upload class converts spaces in the file name to underscores and everything works. But testing the application I uploaded a mp3 file with a (!) in the name, and I got troubles with it. I just want to insert a javascript conditional before the file is uploaded to evaluate if the user´s filename contains a (!) (or any other I´d like to add later) to ask for the file to be renamed if it does.

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Installing WindowsAuthentication breaks authentication / web.config?

- by Ian Quigley

I have a clean Windows 2008 R2 box (on a VM) and have installed IIS 7.5 with default options. I then copied a website to it (from Windows 7, IIS 7) and after a little tweaking the website is working fine. The website is currently using and working with Anonymous Authentication. I have gone back to the Windows Components/Sever Manager, Roles - Security and ticked and installed Windows Authentication. When I check my server in IIS (top level above sites) - Authentication, I see Anonymous Authentication (enabled) ASP.NET Impersonation (disabled) Forms Authentication (disbaled) Windows Authentication (enabled) When I check my default website - Authentication, I see as above but "Retrieving status" and an error dialog saying There was an error while performing this operation. Details: Filename c:\inetpub\wwwroot\screwturnwiki\web.config Line number: 96 Error: This configuration section cannot be used in this path. This happens when the section is being locked at the parent level. Locking is either by default (overriderModeDefault="Deny"), or set explicity by a location tag with overrideMode="Deny" or the legacy allowOverride="False". I have tried hand editing the web.config with no success. (How to use locking in IIS7 Configuration) UN-installing Windows Authentication happily returns my site to working with Anonymous Authentication, and allows me to enable/disable these three options. FYI. I am using ScrewTurnWiki with the Active Directory plug in. It all works fine under Windows 7 IIS 7 locally (has been for months) Web.Config <system.webServer> (edit) <handlers> ( deleted removes/adds ) </handlers> <security> <authentication> 96: <windowsAuthentication enabled="true" useKernelMode="true"> <extendedProtection tokenChecking="Allow" /> <providers> <clear /> <add value="NTLM" /> <add value="Negotiate" /> </providers> </windowsAuthentication> </authentication> </security>

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uploading via http post (multipart/form-data) silently fails with big files

- by matteo

When uploading multipart/form-data forms via a http post request to my apache web server, very big files (i.e. 30MB) are silently discarded. On the server side all looks as if the attached file was received with 0 bytes size. On the client side all looks like it had been uploaded succesfully (it takes the expected long time to upload and the browser gives no error message). On the server, nothing is logged into the error log. An entry is logged into the access log as if everything was ok (a post request and a 200 ok response). These uploads are being posted to a php script. In the php script, If I print_r $_FILES, I see the following information for the relevant file: [file5] => Array ( [name] => MOV023.3gp [type] => video/3gpp [tmp_name] => /tmp/phpgOdvYQ [error] => 0 [size] => 0 ) Note both [error] = 0 (which should mean no error) and [size] = 0 (as if the file was empty). My php script runs fine and receives all the rest of the data except these files. move_uploaded_file succeeds on these files and actually copies them as 0byte files. I've already changed the php directives max_upload_size to 50M and post_max_size to 200M, so neither the single file nor the request exceed any size limit. max_execution_time is not relevant, because the time to transfer the data does not count; and I've increased max_input_time to 1000 seconds, though this shouldn't be necessary since this is the time taken to parse the input data, not the time taken to upload it. Is there any apache configuration, prior to php, that could be causing these files to be discarded even prior to php execution? Some limit in size or in upload time? I've read about a default 300 seconds timeout limit, but this should apply to the time the connection is idle, not the time it takes while actually transferring data, right? Needless to say, uploads with all exactly identical conditions (including file format, client and everything) except smaller file size, work seamlessly, so the issue is clearly related to the file or request size, or to the time it takes to send it.

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Django rewrites URL as IP address in browser - why?

- by Mitch

I am using django, nginx and apache. When I access my site with a URL (e.g., http://www.foo.com/) what appears in my browser address is the IP address with admin appended (e.g., http://123.45.67.890/admin/). When I access the site by IP, it is redirected as expected by django's urls.py (e.g., http://123.45.67.890/ - http://123.45.67.890/accounts/login/?next=/) I would like to have the name URL act the same way as the IP. That is, if the URL goes to a new view, the host in the browser address should remain the same and not change to the IP address. Where should I be looking to fix this? My files: ; cpa.com (apache) NameVirtualHost *:8080 <VirtualHost *:8080> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/htm DocumentRoot /path/to/root ServerName www.foo.com <IfModule mod_rpaf.c> RPAFenable On RPAFsethostname On RPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1 </IfModule> <Directory /public/static> AllowOverride None AddHandler mod_python .py PythonHandler mod_python.publisher </Directory> Alias / /dj <Location /> SetHandler python-program PythonPath "['/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django', '/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/forms'] + sys.path" PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE dj.settings PythonDebug On </Location> </VirtualHost> ; ; ports.conf (apache) Listen 127.0.0.1:8080 ; ; cpa.conf (nginx) server { listen 80; server_name www.foo.com; location /static { root /var/public; index index.html; } location /cpa/js { root /var/public/js; } location /cpa/css { root /var/public/css; } location /djmedia { alias "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/django/contrib/admin/media/"; } location / { include /etc/nginx/proxy.conf; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080; } } ; ; proxy.conf (nginx) proxy_redirect off; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; client_max_body_size 10m; client_body_buffer_size 128k; proxy_connect_timeout 90; proxy_send_timeout 90; proxy_read_timeout 500; proxy_buffers 32 4k;

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Resolving CloudFlare DNS related mail delivery problems

- by Andy Castles

I recently started using CloudFlare and am having a few teething problems. Our domain is netlanguages.com and while we have a lot of sub-domains listen, we are currently only trialling a few of the servers through the CloudFlare CDN (for example, www.netlanguages.com is enabled for CDN, netlanguages.com is not). The actual CDN service seems to be reliable, but the problem that we are having is with DNS, and specifically with mail delivery. The background is that we have contact forms on our web site which use PHP mail() to send the details to end-users' email addresses, with the "from" address of the messages being [email protected] which is a valid address on our mail server. Most of the mails are arriving correctly, but a few specific people are not receiving them. The webserver uses qmail to deliver the messages, and the qmail log files show us some of the errors that the receiving mail servers return when they reject the mail delivery attempt. Two examples: Connected to 94.100.176.20 but sender was rejected./Remote host said: 421 DNS problem (interdominios.netlanguages.com). Try again later Connected to 213.186.33.29 but sender was rejected./Remote host said: 451 DNS temporary failure (#4.3.0) From what I can tell, the receiving SMTP server is doing a DNS lookup of some description on either the host of the "from" email address (netlanguages.com) or the server name given in the EHLO command of the SMTP conversation (in the first example above, interdominios.netlanguages.com), both of which should resolve to non-CloudFlare IP addresses. I've read that the CloudFlare DNS service is very reliable and fast but both of the problems above seem to point to a problem with remote servers unable to do DNS lookups. I should also point out that we changed our DNS to CloudFlare on 6th Feb, and since then started experiencing these mail delivery problems. On 22nd Feb we moved our DNS away from CloudFlare to see if the issues were related to CloudFlare and after a few hours delivery began to work. Then on 26th Feb I moved the DNS back to CloudFlare again and delivery problems started again. The issues definitely seems to be related to DNS, but I don't know if it's a configuration issue, or something else. Finally, I should say that our two DNS MX records point to non-CDN A record IP addresses, interdominios.netlanguages.com (the web and qmail server) also points to a non-CDN A record IP address. Does anyone know what the problem could be here? Any light you can shed on this will be most appreciated. Many thanks, Andy

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ruby on rails gitorious setup on ubuntu

- by dogmatic69

Ive been trying to install gitorious for a while now which required ruby and rails etc. Ive finally got rails pages serving but cant finish the installation of gitorious because the gem version is too new. the error logs say please run 'rake ultrasphinx:configure' and that gives rake ultrasphinx:configure (in /var/www/apps/gitorious) rake aborted! uninitialized constant ActiveSupport::Dependencies::Mutex /var/www/apps/gitorious/Rakefile:10:in `require' (See full trace by running task with --trace) From searching google this is beacuse of the wrong gem verison. Cant find a way to down grade it. apparently sudo gem update --system 1.4.2 should do the trick but ubuntu 10.10 does not like this. ERROR: While executing gem ... (RuntimeError) gem update --system is disabled on Debian, because it will overwrite the content of the rubygems Debian package, and might break your Debian system in subtle ways. The Debian-supported way to update rubygems is through apt-get, using Debian official repositories. If you really know what you are doing, you can still update rubygems by setting the REALLY_GEM_UPDATE_SYSTEM environment variable, but please remember that this is completely unsupported by Debian. So i added export REALLY_GEM_UPDATE_SYSTEM=1 to .bashrc and reloaded it with . ~/.bashrc and still the same. ive tried various forms of setting this environmental variable with no luck. Ive also been told on #gitorious irc channel to add the file config/initializers/rubygems.rb with the line require "thread" to it. This has done nothing. EDIT: Just found another way which was rvm install rubygems 1.4.2 and it gave: Removing old Rubygems files... Installing rubygems dedicated to ruby-1.8.7-p334... Retrieving rubygems-1.4.2 % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 288k 100 288k 0 0 282k 0 0:00:01 0:00:01 --:--:-- 414k Extracting rubygems-1.4.2 ... Installing rubygems for /home/ubuntu/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p334/bin/ruby ERROR: Error running 'GEM_PATH="/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p334:/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p334@global:/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p334@global" GEM_HOME="/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p334" "/home/ubuntu/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p334/bin/ruby" "/home/ubuntu/.rvm/src/rubygems-1.4.2/setup.rb"', please read /home/ubuntu/.rvm/log/ruby-1.8.7-p334/rubygems.install.log WARN: Installation of rubygems did not complete successfully. TL;DR please tell me how to downgrade rubygems on ubuntu 10.10 or upgrade gitorious to work with 1.6.2 gems

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Drupal on an NFS share has terrible performance

- by Marcus

We have a setup where a Drupal 7 site with the following setup - a VMware ESXi 4.1 host server running a web vm and an NFS VM. The web VM is using Apache and mod_php. The site is still in development thus we have to turn off all forms of caching due to the frequently-updated files. Each page request takes around 15-20 seconds to complete. Profiling the PHP code shows that the vast majority of time (normally over 90%) is taking by all the is_dir(), is_file() function calls that load up the modules. I've increased PHP's realpath cache size to several megs and an strace shows that the lstat calls then drop from over 200 to around 6 and stat() decreases a bit (around 600 calls). However, while this has shaved off quite a bit of time, I am simply unable to break past the 10 second per request barrier. Is there a way to get better performance out of this setup that doesn't involve caching? Configs and stats: VMs: web - Centos 6 64bt, 2.5GB RAM, normal CPU/HD prioritisation nfs - Centos 6 64bt, 2GB RAM, normal CPU priority, high HD priority PHP: 32M realpath cache size (it's this high for testing purposes) NFS: ~]# egrep -v '#|^$' /etc/nfsmount.conf [ NFSMount_Global_Options ] Defaultvers=4 Ac=False Rsize=32k Wsize=32k Bsize=32k Reading speeds via NFS are not an issue a dd of a 100M test file using 32k blocks returns: 3200+0 records in 3200+0 records out 104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 1.84984 s, 56.7 MB/s real 0m1.857s user 0m0.007s sys 0m0.330s Strace on Apache process with empty realpath cache: % time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- 50.78 1.157452 337 3434 28 stat 32.58 0.742656 628 1182 425 open 9.29 0.211788 762 278 1 lstat 3.17 0.072322 0 237865 write 2.45 0.055839 490 114 13 access 0.45 0.010262 43 237 brk 0.34 0.007725 10 811 74 read 0.28 0.006340 9 679 fstat 0.22 0.005069 18 281 poll 0.20 0.004533 6 698 getdents 0.09 0.001960 10 190 mmap 0.05 0.001065 14 74 accept4 0.04 0.001000 333 3 chdir 0.03 0.000750 4 190 munmap 0.01 0.000339 0 836 close 0.01 0.000247 3 75 writev 0.00 0.000068 0 611 fcntl 0.00 0.000063 1 77 shutdown 0.00 0.000000 0 1 lseek 0.00 0.000000 0 5 rt_sigaction 0.00 0.000000 0 1 rt_sigprocmask 0.00 0.000000 0 3 setitimer 0.00 0.000000 0 5 socket 0.00 0.000000 0 5 5 connect 0.00 0.000000 0 74 getsockname 0.00 0.000000 0 15 setsockopt 0.00 0.000000 0 5 getcwd 0.00 0.000000 0 1 futex ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- Strace after realpaths are cached % time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- 60.14 1.371006 484 2831 28 stat 31.79 0.724705 627 1155 425 open 3.53 0.080354 0 237865 write 2.65 0.060433 530 114 13 access 0.43 0.009913 99 100 brk 0.38 0.008730 11 804 74 read 0.35 0.007910 12 675 fstat 0.30 0.006775 10 654 getdents 0.13 0.003065 11 281 poll 0.09 0.002000 333 6 1 lstat 0.07 0.001545 2 807 close 0.05 0.001063 14 74 accept4 0.04 0.001000 6 179 mmap 0.02 0.000404 2 179 munmap 0.01 0.000271 4 75 writev 0.01 0.000212 0 611 fcntl 0.01 0.000129 2 77 shutdown 0.00 0.000022 0 74 getsockname 0.00 0.000000 0 1 lseek 0.00 0.000000 0 5 rt_sigaction 0.00 0.000000 0 1 rt_sigprocmask 0.00 0.000000 0 3 setitimer 0.00 0.000000 0 3 socket 0.00 0.000000 0 3 3 connect 0.00 0.000000 0 15 setsockopt 0.00 0.000000 0 5 getcwd 0.00 0.000000 0 3 chdir ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- Mount: nfs.xxx.xxx.xxx:/path/to/website/files on /path/to/website/files type nfs (rw,hard,intr,noac,vers=4,addr=xx.xx.xx.xx,clientaddr=xx.xx.xx.xx) Any help is, naturally, appreciated.

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Why won't IE let users login to a website unless in In Private mode?

- by Richard Fawcett

I'm not entirely sure this belongs on SuperUser.com. I also considered ServerFault.com and StackOverflow.com, but on balance, I think it should belong here? We host a website which has the same code responding to multiple domain names. On 28th December (without any changes deployed to the website) a percentage of users suddenly could not login, and the blank login page was just rendered again even when the correct credentials were entered. The issue is still ongoing. After remote controlling an affected user's PC, we've found the following: The issue affects Internet Explorer 9. The user can login from the same machine on Chrome. The user can login from an In Private browser session using IE9. The user can login if the website is added to the Trusted Sites security zone. The user can NOT login from an IE session in safe mode (started with iexplore -extoff). Only one hostname that the website responds to prevents login, the same user account on the other hostname works fine (note that this is identical code and database running server side), even though that site is not in trusted sites zone. Series of HTTP requests in the failure case: GET request to protected page, returns a 302 FOUND response to login page. GET request to login page. POST to login page, containing credentials, returns redirect to protected page. GET request to protected page... for some reason auth fails and browser is redirected to login page, as in step 1. Other information: Operating system is Windows 7 Ultimate Edition. AV system is AVG Internet Security 2012. I can think of lots of things that could be going wrong, but in every case, one of the findings above is incompatible with the theory. Any ideas what is causing login to fail? Update 06-Jan-2012 Enhanced logging has shown that the .ASPXAUTH cookie is being set in step 3. Its expiry date is 28 days in the future, its path is /, the domain is mysite.com, and its value is an encrypted forms ticket, as expected. However, the cookie is not being received by the web server during step 4. Other cookies are being presented to the server during step 4, it's just this one that is missing. I've seen that cookies are usually set with a domain starting with a period, but mine isn't. Should it be .mysite.com instead of mysite.com? However, if this was wrong, it would presumably affect all users?

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TFS 2010 SDK: Connecting to TFS 2010 Programmatically–Part 1

- by Tarun Arora

Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS 2010 SDK,TFS API,TFS Programming,TFS ALM Download Working Demo Great! You have reached that point where you would like to extend TFS 2010. The first step is to connect to TFS programmatically. 1. Download TFS 2010 SDK => http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/25622469-19d8-4959-8e5c-4025d1c9183d?SRC=VSIDE 2. Alternatively you can also download this from the visual studio extension manager 3. Create a new Windows Forms Application project and add reference to TFS Common and client dlls Note - If Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client and Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common do not appear on the .NET tab of the References dialog box, use the Browse tab to add the assemblies. You can find them at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0. using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Client; using Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Framework.Common; 4. There are several ways to connect to TFS, the two classes of interest are, Option 1 – Class – TfsTeamProjectCollectionClass namespace Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client { public class TfsTeamProjectCollection : TfsConnection { public TfsTeamProjectCollection(RegisteredProjectCollection projectCollection); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(Uri uri); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(RegisteredProjectCollection projectCollection, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(Uri uri, ICredentials credentials); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(Uri uri, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(Uri uri, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(RegisteredProjectCollection projectCollection, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(Uri uri, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(RegisteredProjectCollection projectCollection, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public TfsTeamProjectCollection(Uri uri, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public override CatalogNode CatalogNode { get; } public TfsConfigurationServer ConfigurationServer { get; internal set; } public override string Name { get; } public static Uri GetFullyQualifiedUriForName(string name); protected override object GetServiceInstance(Type serviceType, object serviceInstance); protected override object InitializeTeamFoundationObject(string fullName, object instance); } } Option 2 – Class – TfsConfigurationServer namespace Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client { public class TfsConfigurationServer : TfsConnection { public TfsConfigurationServer(RegisteredConfigurationServer application); public TfsConfigurationServer(Uri uri); public TfsConfigurationServer(RegisteredConfigurationServer application, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public TfsConfigurationServer(Uri uri, ICredentials credentials); public TfsConfigurationServer(Uri uri, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider); public TfsConfigurationServer(Uri uri, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public TfsConfigurationServer(RegisteredConfigurationServer application, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider); public TfsConfigurationServer(Uri uri, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider); public TfsConfigurationServer(RegisteredConfigurationServer application, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public TfsConfigurationServer(Uri uri, ICredentials credentials, ICredentialsProvider credentialsProvider, IdentityDescriptor identityToImpersonate); public override CatalogNode CatalogNode { get; } public override string Name { get; } protected override object GetServiceInstance(Type serviceType, object serviceInstance); public TfsTeamProjectCollection GetTeamProjectCollection(Guid collectionId); protected override object InitializeTeamFoundationObject(string fullName, object instance); } } Note – The TeamFoundationServer class is obsolete. Use the TfsTeamProjectCollection or TfsConfigurationServer classes to talk to a 2010 Team Foundation Server. In order to talk to a 2005 or 2008 Team Foundation Server use the TfsTeamProjectCollection class. 5. Sample code for programmatically connecting to TFS 2010 using the TFS 2010 API How do i know what the URI of my TFS server is, Note – You need to be have Team Project Collection view details permission in order to connect, expect to receive an authorization failure message if you do not have sufficient permissions. Case 1: Connect by Uri string _myUri = @"https://tfs.codeplex.com:443/tfs/tfs30"; TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri)); Case 2: Connect by Uri, prompt for credentials string _myUri = @"https://tfs.codeplex.com:443/tfs/tfs30"; TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri), new UICredentialsProvider()); configurationServer.EnsureAuthenticated(); Case 3: Connect by Uri, custom credentials In order to use this method of connectivity you need to implement the interface ICredentailsProvider public class ConnectByImplementingCredentialsProvider : ICredentialsProvider { public ICredentials GetCredentials(Uri uri, ICredentials iCredentials) { return new NetworkCredential("UserName", "Password", "Domain"); } public void NotifyCredentialsAuthenticated(Uri uri) { throw new ApplicationException("Unable to authenticate"); } } And now consume the implementation of the interface, string _myUri = @"https://tfs.codeplex.com:443/tfs/tfs30"; ConnectByImplementingCredentialsProvider connect = new ConnectByImplementingCredentialsProvider(); ICredentials iCred = new NetworkCredential("UserName", "Password", "Domain"); connect.GetCredentials(new Uri(_myUri), iCred); TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri), connect); configurationServer.EnsureAuthenticated(); 6. Programmatically query TFS 2010 using the TFS SDK for all Team Project Collections and retrieve all Team Projects and output the display name and description of each team project. CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> tpcNodes = catalogNode.QueryChildren( new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); // tpc = Team Project Collection foreach (CatalogNode tpcNode in tpcNodes) { Guid tpcId = new Guid(tpcNode.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"]); TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = configurationServer.GetTeamProjectCollection(tpcId); // Get catalog of tp = 'Team Projects' for the tpc = 'Team Project Collection' var tpNodes = tpcNode.QueryChildren( new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); foreach (var p in tpNodes) { Debug.Write(Environment.NewLine + " Team Project : " + p.Resource.DisplayName + " - " + p.Resource.Description + Environment.NewLine); } } Output You can download a working demo that uses TFS SDK 2010 to programmatically connect to TFS 2010. Screen Shots of the attached demo application, Share this post :

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Guarding against CSRF Attacks in ASP.NET MVC2

- by srkirkland

Alongside XSS (Cross Site Scripting) and SQL Injection, Cross-site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks represent the three most common and dangerous vulnerabilities to common web applications today. CSRF attacks are probably the least well known but they are relatively easy to exploit and extremely and increasingly dangerous. For more information on CSRF attacks, see these posts by Phil Haack and Steve Sanderson. The recognized solution for preventing CSRF attacks is to put a user-specific token as a hidden field inside your forms, then check that the right value was submitted. It's best to use a random value which you’ve stored in the visitor’s Session collection or into a Cookie (so an attacker can't guess the value). ASP.NET MVC to the rescue ASP.NET MVC provides an HTMLHelper called AntiForgeryToken(). When you call <%= Html.AntiForgeryToken() %> in a form on your page you will get a hidden input and a Cookie with a random string assigned. Next, on your target Action you need to include [ValidateAntiForgeryToken], which handles the verification that the correct token was supplied. Good, but we can do better Using the AntiForgeryToken is actually quite an elegant solution, but adding [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] on all of your POST methods is not very DRY, and worse can be easily forgotten. Let's see if we can make this easier on the program but moving from an "Opt-In" model of protection to an "Opt-Out" model. Using AntiForgeryToken by default In order to mandate the use of the AntiForgeryToken, we're going to create an ActionFilterAttribute which will do the anti-forgery validation on every POST request. First, we need to create a way to Opt-Out of this behavior, so let's create a quick action filter called BypassAntiForgeryToken: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple=false)] public class BypassAntiForgeryTokenAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute { } Now we are ready to implement the main action filter which will force anti forgery validation on all post actions within any class it is defined on: [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class, AllowMultiple = false)] public class UseAntiForgeryTokenOnPostByDefault : ActionFilterAttribute { public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { if (ShouldValidateAntiForgeryTokenManually(filterContext)) { var authorizationContext = new AuthorizationContext(filterContext.Controller.ControllerContext); //Use the authorization of the anti forgery token, //which can't be inhereted from because it is sealed new ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute().OnAuthorization(authorizationContext); } base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext); } /// <summary> /// We should validate the anti forgery token manually if the following criteria are met: /// 1. The http method must be POST /// 2. There is not an existing [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attribute on the action /// 3. There is no [BypassAntiForgeryToken] attribute on the action /// </summary> private static bool ShouldValidateAntiForgeryTokenManually(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { var httpMethod = filterContext.HttpContext.Request.HttpMethod; //1. The http method must be POST if (httpMethod != "POST") return false; // 2. There is not an existing anti forgery token attribute on the action var antiForgeryAttributes = filterContext.ActionDescriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute), false); if (antiForgeryAttributes.Length > 0) return false; // 3. There is no [BypassAntiForgeryToken] attribute on the action var ignoreAntiForgeryAttributes = filterContext.ActionDescriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(BypassAntiForgeryTokenAttribute), false); if (ignoreAntiForgeryAttributes.Length > 0) return false; return true; } } The code above is pretty straight forward -- first we check to make sure this is a POST request, then we make sure there aren't any overriding *AntiForgeryTokenAttributes on the action being executed. If we have a candidate then we call the ValidateAntiForgeryTokenAttribute class directly and execute OnAuthorization() on the current authorization context. Now on our base controller, you could use this new attribute to start protecting your site from CSRF vulnerabilities. [UseAntiForgeryTokenOnPostByDefault] public class ApplicationController : System.Web.Mvc.Controller { } //Then for all of your controllers public class HomeController : ApplicationController {} What we accomplished If your base controller has the new default anti-forgery token attribute on it, when you don't use <%= Html.AntiForgeryToken() %> in a form (or of course when an attacker doesn't supply one), the POST action will throw the descriptive error message "A required anti-forgery token was not supplied or was invalid". Attack foiled! In summary, I think having an anti-CSRF policy by default is an effective way to protect your websites, and it turns out it is pretty easy to accomplish as well. Enjoy!

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March 21st Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, AJAX, Visual Studio, Silverlight

- by ScottGu

Here is the latest in my link-listing series. If you haven’t already, check out this month’s "Find a Hoster” page on the www.asp.net website to learn about great (and very inexpensive) ASP.NET hosting offers. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] ASP.NET URL Routing in ASP.NET 4: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that talks about the new URL routing features coming to Web Forms applications with ASP.NET 4. Also check out my previous blog post on this topic. Control of Web Control ClientID Values in ASP.NET 4: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how it is now easy to control the client “id” value emitted by server controls with ASP.NET 4. Web Deployment Made Awesome: Very nice MIX10 talk by Scott Hanselman on the new web deployment features coming with VS 2010, MSDeploy, and .NET 4. Makes deploying web applications much, much easier. ASP.NET 4’s Browser Capabilities Support: Nice blog post by Stephen Walther that talks about the new browser definition capabilities support coming with ASP.NET 4. Integrating Twitter into an ASP.NET Website: Nice article by Scott Mitchell that demonstrates how to call and integrate Twitter from within your ASP.NET applications. Improving CSS with .LESS: Nice article by Scott Mitchell that describes how to optimize CSS using .LESS – a free, open source library. ASP.NET MVC Upgrading ASP.NET MVC 1 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2: Eilon Lipton from the ASP.NET team has a nice post that describes how to easily upgrade your ASP.NET MVC 1 applications to ASP.NET MVC 2. He has an automated tool that makes this easy. Note that automated MVC upgrade support is also built-into VS 2010. Use the tool in this blog post for updating existing MVC projects using VS 2008. Advanced ASP.NET MVC 2: Nice video talk by Brad Wilson of the ASP.NET MVC team. In it he describes some of the more advanced features in ASP.NET MVC 2 and how to maximize your productivity with them. Dynamic Select Lists with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery: Michael Ceranski has a nice blog post that describes how to dynamically populate dropdownlists on the client using AJAX. AJAX Microsoft AJAX Minifier: We recently shipped an updated minifier utility that allows you to shrink/minify both JavaScript and CSS files – which can improve the performance of your web applications. You can run this either manually as a command-line tool or now automatically integrate it using a Visual Studio build task. You can download it for free here. Visual Studio VS 2010 Tip: Quickly Closing Documents: Nice blog post that describes some techniques for optimizing how windows are closed with the new VS 2010 IDE. Collpase to Definitions with Outlining: Nice tip from Zain on how to collapse your code editor to outline mode using Ctrl + M, Ctrl + O. Also check out his post on copy/paste with outlining here. $299 VS 2010 Upgrade Offer for VS 2005/2008 Standard Users: Soma blogs about a nice VS 2010 upgrade offer you can take advantage of if you have VS 2005 or VS 2008 Standard editions. For $299 you can upgrade to VS 2010 Professional edition. Dependency Graphics: Jason Zander (who runs the VS team) has a nice blog post that covers the new dependency graph support within VS 2010. This makes it easier to visualize the dependencies within your application. Also check out this video here. Layer Validation: Jason Zander has a nice blog post that talks about the new layer validation features in VS 2010. This enables you to enforce cleaner layering within your projects and solutions. VS 2010 Profiler Blog: The VS 2010 Profiler Team has their own blog and on it you can find a bunch of nice posts from the last few months that talk about a lot of the new features coming with VS 2010’s Profiler support. Some really nice features coming. Silverlight Silverlight 4 Training Course: Nice free set of training courses from Microsoft that can help bring you up to speed on all of the new Silverlight 4 features and how to build applications with them. Updated and current with the recently released Silverlight 4 RC build and tools. Getting Started with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Development: Nice blog post by Tim Heuer that summarizes how to get started building Windows Phone 7 applications using Silverlight. Also check out my blog post from last week on how to build a Windows Phone 7 Twitter application using Silverlight. A Guide to What Has Changed with the Silverlight 4 RC: Nice summary post by Tim Heuer that describes all of the things that have changed between the Silverlight 4 Beta and the Silverlight 4 RC. Path Based Layout - Part 1 and Part 2: Christian Schormann has a nice blog post about a really cool new feature in Expression Blend 4 and Silverlight 4 called Path Layout. Also check out Andy Beaulieu’s blog post on this. Hope this helps, Scott

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Struts 1 ActionForm - retrieving a collection from pure HTML

- by Yaneeve

Hi all I have (just like the rest) inherited some struts 1 code. I have had need to add a few more pages to this project. What I cannot figure out is how to map several distinct but similarly natured input elements to the my ActionForm. Let me elaborate. I create a new <Input> element dynamically as the user inputs more and more items (I use the YUI autocomplete form element and for each entered input I add it as an input element to my form and draw a new YUI autocomplete - complex sounding, I know) So... My form looks a bit like (... after some prettifying and some such...): <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>My Cool App - Test Case Builder</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../script/yui/fonts/fonts-min.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../skins/myCoolApp/button/button.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../script/yui/autocomplete/assets/skins/sam/autocomplete.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="../skins/myCoolApp/testcase.css" />  <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/element/element-min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/button/button-min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/datasource/datasource-min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/autocomplete/autocomplete-min.js"></script>  <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/myCoolApp.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/stack.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/testcase.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/default-data.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/data-structs.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/ui-elements.js" ></script> </head> <body class="cf010"> <div id="wrap"> <div id="header"> <div id="main-header"> COOL APP </div> </div> <div id="main-body"> <div id="content"> <div class="col main"> <div id="main"> <form method="post" id="testcaseForm" class="typea" action=""> <fieldset> <legend>Test Case Builder</legend> <div id="tk1" class="tabcontrol"> <ul class="tabs"> <li class="first active"> <a href="#"> <span>General</span> </a> </li> <li class="last"> <a href="#"> <span>Parameters</span> </a> </li> </ul> <div id="tab0" class="tc-panel"> <dl class="cls9"> <dt> <label for="scenario">Choose Scenario:</label> </dt> <dd> <input type="text" id="scenario" name="scenario" class="text" /> <span id="scenarioToggle"></span> <div class="auto-complete" id="scenarioContainer"></div> </dd> <dt> <label for="ruleID">Choose Rule ID:</label> </dt> <dd> <input type="text" id="ruleID" name="ruleID" class="text" /> <span id="ruleIDToggle"></span> <div class="auto-complete" id="ruleIDContainer"></div> </dd> <dt> <label for="Test Case Name" accesskey="t"><span class="accesskey">T</span>est Case Name:</label> </dt> <dd> <input type="text" id="testCaseName" name="testCaseName" class="text" /> </dd> </dl> </div> <div id="tab1" class="tc-panel hidden"> <div class="toolbar" id="action-bar"> <ul> <li class="first"> <a title="select all" href="#" id="btmSelectAll" class="button"> <span>select all</span> </a> </li> <li> <a title="remove row" href="#" id="btmRemove" class="button"> <span>remove row</span> </a> </li> <li> <a title="undo last" href="#" id="btmRollBack" class="button disabled"> <span>undo last</span> </a> </li> <li class="last"> <a title="accept row" href="#" id="btmAccept" class="button disabled"> <span>accept row</span> </a> </li> </ul> </div> <div id="param.list" class="gridclip"> <table id='param.list.tbl' class='grid modela' > <caption>Test Case Summary</caption> <col/><col/><col/> <thead> <tr> <th class='hl center first'> <input class='grid-select-all' type='checkbox' /> <th> <th scope='col'>Row</th> <th scope='col'>Parameter</th> <th scope='col' class='last'>Value</th> </tr> </thead> <tfoot> <tr> <th scope='row'>Total</th> <td colspan='3'>2 parameters as Test Case input</td> </tr> </tfoot> <tbody id='param.list.tbl.body'> <tr class='odd'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param1###value1' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>1</td> <td>param1</td> <td class='last'>value1</td> </tr> <tr class='even'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param2###value2' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>2</td> <td>param2</td> <td class='last'>value2</td> </tr> <tr class='odd'> <td class='rowcheck center first' /> <td class='id'><em>new</em></td> <td> <dl class='clsTable'> <dt> <input type='text' id='param' name='param' class='text paramInput' /> </dt> <dd> <span id='paramToggle' /> </dd> <div class='auto-complete' id='paramContainer' /> </dl> </td> <td class='last'> <dl class='clsTable'> <dt> <input type='text' id='value' name='value' class='text valueInput' /> </dt> </dl> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </div> </div>  </fieldset> <div class="submit-box"> <input type="submit" name="formRun" id="formRun" class="form-save" value="Execute" accesskey="x" title="Run: Press Alt + [Shift] + x" /> <input type="submit" name="formSave" id="formSave" value="Save" accesskey="s" title="Save: Press Alt + [Shift] + s" /> <input type="submit" name="formLoad" id="formLoad" value="Load" accesskey="l" title="Load: Press Alt + [Shift] + l" /> <input type="submit" name="formCancel" id="formCancel" class="form-cancel" value="Cancel" accesskey="c" title="Cancel: Press Alt + [Shift] + c" /> </div> </form> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html> As you can see the following is pretty much a duplicate: <tr class='odd'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param1###value1' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>1</td> <td>param1</td> <td class='last'>value1</td> </tr> <tr class='even'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param2###value2' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>2</td> <td>param2</td> <td class='last'>value2</td> </tr> The relevant part of my stuts-config.xml file is: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE struts-config PUBLIC "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.2//EN" "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-config_1_2.dtd"> <struts-config> <data-sources /> <form-beans> <form-bean name="TestCaseForm" type="com.blahblah.mycoolapp.forms.TestCaseForm" /> </form-beans> <action-mappings> <action path="/pages/SaveTestCase" name="TestCaseForm" type="org.springframework.web.struts.DelegatingActionProxy" scope="request"> </action> </action-mappings> <message-resources parameter="MessageResources" /> </struts-config> I also use spring 2.56 (The relevant part being): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd"> <bean name="/pages/SaveTestCase" class="com.blahblah.mycoolapp.actions.TestCaseBuilderSaveAction" /> </beans> My Java ActionForm class (from what I had learned off the net) is: package com.blahblah.mycoolapp.forms; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm; public class TestCaseForm extends ActionForm { private static final long serialVersionUID = 2352146257739099766L; private String scenario; private String ruleID; private String testCaseName; private List<String> SelectedRows = new ArrayList<String>() ; public String getScenario() { return scenario; } public void setScenario(String scenario) { this.scenario = scenario; } public String getRuleID() { return ruleID; } public void setRuleID(String ruleID) { this.ruleID = ruleID; } public String getTestCaseName() { return testCaseName; } public void setTestCaseName(String testCaseName) { this.testCaseName = testCaseName; } public List<String> getSelectedRows() { return SelectedRows; } public void setSelectedRows(int index, String value) { this.SelectedRows.add(value); } } The question is why do I get an empty SelectedRows in my TestCaseBuilderSave Action? Thanks all who have the patience to read such a long question... and (hopefully) thanks to all you potential saviors :)

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The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

- by Jon Galloway

One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 12 – Networking Security

- by MarkPearl

After reading this section you should be able to Identify security risks in LANs and WANs and design security policies that minimize risks Explain how physical security contributes to network security Discuss hardware and design based security techniques Understand methods of encryption such as SSL and IPSec, that can secure data in storage and in transit Describe how popular authentication protocols such as RADIUS< TACACS,Kerberos, PAP, CHAP, and MS-CHAP function Use network operating system techniques to provide basic security Understand wireless security protocols such as WEP, WPA and 802.11i Security Audits Before spending time and money on network security, examine your networks security risks – rate and prioritize risks. Different organizations have different levels of network security requirements. Security Risks Not all security breaches result from a manipulation of network technology – there are human factors that can play a role as well. The following categories are areas of considerations… Risks associated with People Risks associated with Transmission and Hardware Risks associated with Protocols and Software Risks associated with Internet Access An effective security policy A security policy identifies your security goals, risks, levels of authority, designated security coordinator and team members, responsibilities for each team member, and responsibilities for each employee. In addition it specifies how to address security breaches. It should not state exactly which hardware, software, architecture, or protocols will be used to ensure security, nor how hardware or software will be installed and configured. A security policy must address an organizations specific risks. to understand your risks, you should conduct a security audit that identifies vulnerabilities and rates both the severity of each threat and its likelihood of occurring. Security Policy Content Security policy content should… Policies for each category of security Explain to users what they can and cannot do and how these measures protect the networks security Should define what confidential means to the organization Response Policy A security policy should provide for a planned response in the event of a security breach. The response policy should identify the members of a response team, all of whom should clearly understand the the security policy, risks, and measures in place. Some of the roles concerned could include… Dispatcher – the person on call who first notices the breach Manager – the person who coordinates the resources necessary to solve the problem Technical Support Specialist – the person who focuses on solving the problem Public relations specialist – the person who acts as the official spokesperson for the organization Physical Security An important element in network security is restricting physical access to its components. There are various techniques for this including locking doors, security people at access points etc. You should identify the following… Which rooms contain critical systems or data and must be secured Through what means might intruders gain access to these rooms How and to what extent are authorized personnel granted access to these rooms Are authentication methods such as ID cards easy to forge etc. Security in Network Design The optimal way to prevent external security breaches from affecting you LAN is not to connect your LAN to the outside world at all. The next best protection is to restrict access at every point where your LAN connects to the rest of the world. Router Access List – can be used to filter or decline access to a portion of a network for certain devices. Intrusion Detection and Prevention While denying someone access to a section of the network is good, it is better to be able to detect when an attempt has been made and notify security personnel. This can be done using IDS (intrusion detection system) software. One drawback of IDS software is it can detect false positives – i.e. an authorized person who has forgotten his password attempts to logon. Firewalls A firewall is a specialized device, or a computer installed with specialized software, that selectively filters or blocks traffic between networks. A firewall typically involves a combination of hardware and software and may reside between two interconnected private networks. The simplest form of a firewall is a packet filtering firewall, which is a router that examines the header of every packet of data it receives to determine whether that type of packet is authorized to continue to its destination or not. Firewalls can block traffic in and out of a LAN. NOS (Network Operating System) Security Regardless of the operating system, generally every network administrator can implement basic security by restricting what users are authorized to do on a network. Some of the restrictions include things related to Logons – place, time of day, total time logged in, etc Passwords – length, characters used, etc Encryption Encryption is the use of an algorithm to scramble data into a format that can be read only by reversing the algorithm. The purpose of encryption is to keep information private. Many forms of encryption exist and new ways of cracking encryption are continually being invented. The following are some categories of encryption… Key Encryption PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) SSH (Secure Shell) SCP (Secure CoPy) SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) IPSec (Internet Protocol Security) For a detailed explanation on each section refer to pages 596 to 604 of textbook Authentication Protocols Authentication protocols are the rules that computers follow to accomplish authentication. Several types exist and the following are some of the common authentication protocols… RADIUS and TACACS PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) CHAP and MS-CHAP EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) 802.1x (EAPoL) Kerberos Wireless Network Security Wireless transmissions are particularly susceptible to eavesdropping. The following are two wireless network security protocols WEP WPA

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The Interaction between Three-Tier Client/Server Model and Three-Tier Application Architecture Model

The three-tier client/server model is a network architectural approach currently used in modern networking. This approach divides a network in to three distinct components. Three-Tier Client/Server Model Components Client Component Server Component Database Component The Client Component of the network typically represents any device on the network. A basic example of this would be computer or another network/web enabled devices that are connected to a network. Network clients request resources on the network, and are usually equipped with a user interface for the presentation of the data returned from the Server Component. This process is done through the use of various software clients, and example of this can be seen through the use of a web browser client. The web browser request information from the Server Component located on the network and then renders the results for the user to process. The Server Components of the network return data based on specific client request back to the requesting client. Server Components also inherit the attributes of a Client Component in that they are a device on the network and that they can also request information from other Server Components. However what differentiates a Client Component from a Server Component is that a Server Component response to requests from devices on the network. An example of a Server Component can be seen in a web server. A web server listens for new requests and then interprets the request, processes the web pages, and then returns the processed data back to the web browser client so that it may render the data for the user to interpret. The Database Component of the network returns unprocessed data from databases or other resources. This component also inherits attributes from the Server Component in that it is a device on a network, it can request information from other server components and database components, and it also listens for new requests so that it can return data when needed. The three-tier client/server model is very similar to the three-tier application architecture model, and in fact the layers can be mapped to one another. Three-Tier Application Architecture Model Presentation Layer/Logic Business Layer/Logic Data Layer/Logic The Presentation Layer including its underlying logic is very similar to the Client Component of the three-tiered model. The Presentation Layer focuses on interpreting the data returned by the Business Layer as well as presents the data back to the user. Both the Presentation Layer and the Client Component focus primarily on the user and their experience. This allows for segments of the Business Layer to be distributable and interchangeable because the Presentation Layer is not directly integrated in with Business Layer. The Presentation Layer does not care where the data comes from as long as it is in the proper format. This allows for the Presentation Layer and Business Layer to be stored on one or more different servers so that it can provide a higher availability to clients requesting data. A good example of this is a web site that uses load balancing. When a web site decides to take on the task of load balancing they must obtain a network device that sits in front of a one or machines in order to distribute the request across multiple servers. When a user comes in through the load balanced device they are redirected to a specific server based on a few factors. Common Load Balancing Factors Current Server Availability Current Server Response Time Current Server Priority The Business Layer and corresponding logic are business rules applied to data prior to it being sent to the Presentation Layer. These rules are used to manipulate the data coming from the Data Access Layer, in addition to validating any data prior to being stored in the Data Access Layer. A good example of this would be when a user is trying to create multiple accounts under one email address. The Business Layer logic can prevent duplicate accounts by enforcing a unique email for every new account before the data is even stored in the Data Access Layer. The Server Component can be directly tied to this layer in that the server typically stores and process the Business Layer before it is returned to the end-user via the Presentation Layer. In addition the Server Component can also run automated process through the Business Layer on the data in the Data Access Layer so that additional business analysis can be derived from the data that has been already collected. The Data Layer and its logic are responsible for storing information so that it can be easily retrieved. Typical in most modern applications data is stored in a database management system however data can also be in the form of files stored on a file server. In addition a database can take on one of several forms. Common Database Formats XML File Pipe Delimited File Tab Delimited File Comma Delimited File (CSV) Plain Text File Microsoft Access Microsoft SQL Server MySql Oracle Sybase The Database component of the Networking model can be directly tied to the Data Layer because this is where the Data Layer obtains the data to return back the Business Layer. The Database Component basically allows for a place on the network to store data for future use. This enables applications to save data when they can and then quickly recall the saved data as needed so that the application does not have to worry about storing the data in memory. This prevents overhead that could be created when an application must retain all data in memory. As you can see the Three-Tier Client/Server Networking Model and the Three-Tiered Application Architecture Model rely very heavily on one another to function especially if different aspects of an application are distributed across an entire network. The use of various servers and database servers are wonderful when an application has a need to distribute work across the network. Network Components and Application Layers Interaction Database components will store all data needed for the Data Access Layer to manipulate and return to the Business Layer Server Component executes the Business Layer that manipulates data so that it can be returned to the Presentation Layer Client Component hosts the Presentation Layer that interprets the data and present it to the user

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SQL SERVER – Beginning of SQL Server Architecture – Terminology – Guest Post

- by pinaldave

SQL Server Architecture is a very deep subject. Covering it in a single post is an almost impossible task. However, this subject is very popular topic among beginners and advanced users. I have requested my friend Anil Kumar who is expert in SQL Domain to help me write a simple post about Beginning SQL Server Architecture. As stated earlier this subject is very deep subject and in this first article series he has covered basic terminologies. In future article he will explore the subject further down. Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. In this Article we will discuss about MS SQL Server architecture. The major components of SQL Server are: Relational Engine Storage Engine SQL OS Now we will discuss and understand each one of them. 1) Relational Engine: Also called as the query processor, Relational Engine includes the components of SQL Server that determine what your query exactly needs to do and the best way to do it. It manages the execution of queries as it requests data from the storage engine and processes the results returned. Different Tasks of Relational Engine: Query Processing Memory Management Thread and Task Management Buffer Management Distributed Query Processing 2) Storage Engine: Storage Engine is responsible for storage and retrieval of the data on to the storage system (Disk, SAN etc.). to understand more, let’s focus on the following diagram. When we talk about any database in SQL server, there are 2 types of files that are created at the disk level – Data file and Log file. Data file physically stores the data in data pages. Log files that are also known as write ahead logs, are used for storing transactions performed on the database. Let’s understand data file and log file in more details: Data File: Data File stores data in the form of Data Page (8KB) and these data pages are logically organized in extents. Extents: Extents are logical units in the database. They are a combination of 8 data pages i.e. 64 KB forms an extent. Extents can be of two types, Mixed and Uniform. Mixed extents hold different types of pages like index, System, Object data etc. On the other hand, Uniform extents are dedicated to only one type. Pages: As we should know what type of data pages can be stored in SQL Server, below mentioned are some of them: Data Page: It holds the data entered by the user but not the data which is of type text, ntext, nvarchar(max), varchar(max), varbinary(max), image and xml data. Index: It stores the index entries. Text/Image: It stores LOB ( Large Object data) like text, ntext, varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary(max), image and xml data. GAM & SGAM (Global Allocation Map & Shared Global Allocation Map): They are used for saving information related to the allocation of extents. PFS (Page Free Space): Information related to page allocation and unused space available on pages. IAM (Index Allocation Map): Information pertaining to extents that are used by a table or index per allocation unit. BCM (Bulk Changed Map): Keeps information about the extents changed in a Bulk Operation. DCM (Differential Change Map): This is the information of extents that have modified since the last BACKUP DATABASE statement as per allocation unit. Log File: It also known as write ahead log. It stores modification to the database (DML and DDL). Sufficient information is logged to be able to: Roll back transactions if requested Recover the database in case of failure Write Ahead Logging is used to create log entries Transaction logs are written in chronological order in a circular way Truncation policy for logs is based on the recovery model SQL OS: This lies between the host machine (Windows OS) and SQL Server. All the activities performed on database engine are taken care of by SQL OS. It is a highly configurable operating system with powerful API (application programming interface), enabling automatic locality and advanced parallelism. SQL OS provides various operating system services, such as memory management deals with buffer pool, log buffer and deadlock detection using the blocking and locking structure. Other services include exception handling, hosting for external components like Common Language Runtime, CLR etc. I guess this brief article gives you an idea about the various terminologies used related to SQL Server Architecture. In future articles we will explore them further. Guest Author The author of the article is Anil Kumar Yadav is Trainer, SQL Domain, Koenig Solutions. Koenig is a premier IT training firm that provides several IT certifications, such as Oracle 11g, Server+, RHCA, SQL Server Training, Prince2 Foundation etc. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Security, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 01, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, December 01, 2010Popular ReleasesUltimateJB: UltimateJB 2.02 PL3 KAKAROTO + CE-X-3.41 EvilSperm: Voici une version attendu avec impatience pour beaucoup : - La Version CEX341 pour pouvoir jouer avec des jeux demandant le firmware 3.50 ( certain ne fonctionne tous simplement pas ). - Pour l'instant le CEX341 n'est disponible qu'avec les PS3 en firmwares 3.41 !!! - La version PL3 KAKAROTO intégre ses dernières modification et intégre maintenant le firmware 3.30 !!! Conclusion : - UltimateJB CEX341 => Spoof le Firmware 3.41 en 3.50 ( facilite l'utilisation de certain jeux avec openManage...Menu and Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0: Silverlight Menu and Context Menu v2.2 Beta2: - Added keyboard navigation support with access keys - Shortcuts like Ctrl-Alt-A are now supported(where the browser permits it) - The PopupMenuSeparator is now completely based on the PopupMenuItem class - Moved item manipulation code to a partial class in PopupMenuItemsControl.cs - Simplified the layout by removing the RootGrid element(all content is now placed in OverlayCanvas and is accessed by the new ContentRoot property) - Added properties AccessKey, AccessKeyModifier, AccessKeyElemen...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.1.1: 2.1.1This release adds in the changes for 4.03a. To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Switched Searing Flames bac...AI: Initial 0.0.1: It’s simply just one code file; it simulates AI and machine in a simulated world. The AI has a little understanding of its body machine and parts, and able to use its feet to do actions just start and stop walking. The world is all of white with nothing but just the machine on a white planet. Colors, odors and position information make no sense. I’m previous C# programmer and I’m learning F# during this project, although I’m still not a good F# programmer, in this project I learning to prog...Microsoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample (Microsoft Spain): V1.0 - N-Layer DDD Sample App .NET 4.0: Required Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power Tools http://re...Sense/Net Enterprise Portal & ECMS: SenseNet 6.0.1 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.1 Community Edition This half year we have been working quite fiercely to bring you the long-awaited release of Sense/Net 6.0. Download this Community Edition to see what we have been up to. These months we have worked on getting the WebCMS capabilities of Sense/Net 6.0 up to par. New features include: New, powerful page and portlet editing experience. HTML and CSS cleanup, new, powerful site skinning system. Upgraded, lightning-fast indexing and query via Lucene. Limita...Minecraft GPS: Minecraft GPS 1.1.1: New Features Compass! New style. Set opacity on main window to allow overlay of Minecraft. Open World in any folder. Fixes Fixed style so listbox won't grow the window size. Fixed open file dialog issue on non-vista kernel machines.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 11-28-2001: This release introduces some exciting improvements. Support for big raster, both in display and changing the scheme. Faster raster scheme creation for all rasters. Caching of the "sample" values so once obtained the raster symbolizer dialog loads faster. Reprojection supported for raster and image classes. Affine transform fully supported for images and rasters, so skewed images are now possible. Projection uses better checks when loading unprojected layers. GDAL raster support f...SuperWebSocket: SuperWebSocket(60438): It is the first release of SuperWebSocket. Because it is base on SuperSocket, most features of SuperSocket are supported in SuperWebSocket. The source code include a LiveChat demo.MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.25.7002: Fixed updater Fixed FileServe Fixed LetItBitCropper: 1.9.4: Mostly fixes for issues with a few feature requests. Fixed Issues 2730 & 3638 & 14467 11044 11447 11448 11449 14665 Implemented Features 6123 11581PFC: PFC for PB 11.5: This is just a migration from the 11.0 code. No changes have been made yet (and they are needed) for it to work properly with 11.5.PDF Rider: PDF Rider 0.5: This release does not add any new feature for pdf manipulation, but enables automatic updates checking, so it is reccomended to install it in order to stay updated with next releases. Prerequisites * Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (XP - Vista - 7) * Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 runtime * A PDF rendering software (i.e. Adobe Reader) that can be opened inside Internet Explorer. Installation instructionsChoose one of the following methods: 1. Download and run the "pdfRider0...BCLExtensions: BCL Extensions v1.0: The files associated with v1.0 of the BCL Extensions library.XamlQuery/WPF - The Write Less, Do More, WPF Library: XamlQuery-WPF v1.2 (Runtime, Source): This is the first release of popular XamlQuery library for WPF. XamlQuery has already gained recognition among Silverlight developers.Math.NET Numerics: Beta 1: First beta of Math.NET Numerics. Only contains the managed linear algebra provider. Beta 2 will include the native linear algebra providers along with better documentation and examples.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-25: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 0.8.5 Beta: - WBFS repair (default) options fixed - Transfer to image fixed - Settings ui widget names fixed - Some little bug fixes You need to reset the settings! Delete WiiBaFu's config file or registry entries on windows: Linux: ~/.config/WiiBaFu/wiibafu.conf Windows: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WiiBaFu\wiibafu Mac OS X: ~/Library/Preferences/com.wiibafu.wiibafu.plist Caution: This is a BETA version! Errors, crashes and data loss not impossible! Use in test environments only, not on productive syste...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.3: Added process count and world size calculation progress to the status bar. Added View->'Status Bar' menu item to show/hide the status bar. Status bar is automatically shown when loading a world. Added a prompt, when loading a world, to use or clear cached images.Sexy Select: sexy select v0.4: Changes in v0.4 Added method : elements. This returns all the option elements that are currently added to the select list Added method : selectOption. This method accepts two values, the element to be modified and the selected state. (true/false)New ProjectsAbstract SQL: ADO.NET Sql classes wrapper; provides a clean fluent interface library that allows you to write very concise code and avoid the repetitiveness of ADO.NET. It can be used in all types of applications, even supports CLR stored procedures. It is written in C# 2.0.AI: The Artificial Intelligence program built on F#.Another .NET wrapper for the MailChimp API: A .NET wrapper for the MailChimp API 1.3 written in F# by DK.App-V Tool Suite: A collection of tools for Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V). These tools were developed at Sinclair Community College in the process of setting up and then supporting its App-V implementation.b2b: Project-01tBham.CmuCam: A library and GUI front-end for the CMUcam series of cameras for use by .NET-based applications, the GUI can also run standalone.BizTalk Deployment Tool: Yet another BizTalk Deployment Tool to make it easier for BizTalk deployment that needs to support orchestration versioning, multiple environments. Features includes but not limited to: GAC Verification, Receive Locations and Send Ports management, Orchestration States managementCertificate Request (PKCS#10) Generator: A .NET application that can create PKCS#10 Certificate Requests, either by generating a new key or reusing a preexisting one. Minimum requirement : Windows Vista and above. .NET 2.0.Cloud Billing: Cloud billing proposal.Currency Converter: Coding4Fun Windows Phone 7 Currency ConverterDiffLib: A diff implementation class library for .NET 3.5 written in C#.expression Blend 4.0 Comment Uncomment Xaml Code Extension: BlendShortCuts Extension makes it easier for blend users to comment and uncomment xaml code. you'll no longer have to insert tag  just press ALt+C and ALT+U it's developed in c# (.Net framework 4.0, microsoft expression library)Game Studio: Game Studio is an Integrated Development Environment “IDE” that helps game developers in designing their games. The software generates code for the mesh, models, pictures and sounds. It has a form designer, code editor and a special framework for the “Game Studio”.Gridify for ASP.NET MVC: Easy solution for grids on top of ASP.NET MVC Make grids from your data tables in a really lightweight manner! How lightweight? Well, exactly TWO line changes. You don't have to add new action parameters or anything. Really simple!In-House Inventory System: a normal inventory management system, normal use case and normal function.In-House Money Saver: just for school project, it may not be useful, however, it is my first project using Microsoft technology.ITICup2009: Programs used in ITICup 2009.libobs++: Implementation of a signal/slot system, created exclusively for developers that uses Visual Studio's 2010 IDE/Compiler. The classes are templated, and really easy to learn. The callbacks are fast, and type-safe.Longan ERP: Open Source Business Solutions.Lucienne - WebScripting Assignment: Lucienne - WebScripting AssignmentMercurial.Net: .NET wrapper class library for the Mercurial Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) - (http://mercurial.selenic.com/), written in C# 3.0 for the .NET 3.5 Client Profile runtime.Mini C++ UI Framework: Mini C++ UI Framework for my work.MinuRaamu: MeieRaamuMobile Device Browser File: The Mobile Browser Definition File contains definitions for individual mobile devices and browsers. At run time, ASP.NET uses the information in the request header to determine what type of device/browser has made the request.NKinect: .NET 4.0 (C++/CLI) based open source implementation of Microsoft Kinect. Currently supports CodeLaboratories NUI SDK, but will be brought to OpenKinect/libfreenect when a Windows version is stable.Oblivion Cell - Oblivion mmo project: We are working on creating a mmorpg mod/Addon for Oblivion using C# and hooking to the accual game with obse and a few other mods. We also use Cell Framework for our base server system.Optional: Optional is a library to create options and commands from command-line arguments. It uses Convention over Configuration to get out of your way. Attributes can be used to set properties which differ from the convention.Paypal adaptive payments using .NET (C#): This is a C# project to help you interface with the PayPal adaptive payments API. https://www.x.com/community/ppx/adaptive_payments. POS bd: Dynamic POS. this project is being devoloped on focused to local market only. the initial project is projected for a single company whose main business is selling lighting-bulb instruments.PowerEvents for Windows PowerShell: A Microsoft Windows PowerShell module to assist with managing permanent WMI event consumer registrations. You can use this module to register for, and respond to, system-level events available to WMI.PPL Daily Report Helper: Daily Reporting Helper Tool for Phoenix Propulsion LabsRandom Passwd Generator: This is a simple program developed in C# that generates random passwords of the specified length with the specified characters to be used. It's in beta version.SharePoint MUI Manager: The SharePoint MUI Manager allows you to translate user-specified text, such as the Title and Description of the site, throught the web interface. There is no need to download, edit and upload a RESX file. Sqlite Client for Windows Phone: Sqlite client for Windows Phone 7 . Supports transactionsTouchToolkit: A toolkit to simplify the multi-touch application development and testing complexities. It currently supports WPF and Silverlight.TSI4: Proyecto para facultad de ingenieríaVS2010 Debugger Visualizers Contrib: This project is for hosting user-contributed debugger visualizers for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.Windows Shell Framework: Windows Shell Framework is a managed wrappers for a subset of the windows shell. This Project is for of .NET Shell Namespace Extension FrameworkWork in Progress: Work in progressWPFtest: A simpel test project for experimenting with WPF.YingYangXonix: YingYangXonixZeroUnit.net: The zero dependency, zero friction, sugar free Unit Testing framework for .Net.ZXing barcode for Windows Phone: Barcode support for Windows Phone 7 using ZXing

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Taking advantage of Windows Azure CDN and Dynamic Pages in ASP.NET - Caching content from hosted services

- by Shawn Cicoria

With the updates to Windows Azure CDN announced this week [1] I wanted to help illustrate the capability with a working sample that will serve up dynamic content from an ASP.NET site hosted in a WebRole. First, to get a good overview of the capability you can read the Overview of the Windows Azure CDN [2] content on MSDN. When you setup the ability to cache content from a hosted service, the requirement is to provide a path to your role’s DNS endpoint that ends in the path “/cdn”. Additionally, you then map CDN to that service. What WAZ CDN does, is allow you to then map that through the CDN to your host. The CDN will then make a request to your host on your client’s behalf. The requirement is still that your client, and any Url’s that are to be serviced through the CDN and this capability have to use the CDN DNS name and not your host – no different than what CDN does for Blog storage. The following 2 URL’s are samples of how the client needs to issue the requests. Windows Azure hosted service URL: http: //myHostedService.cloudapp.net/cdn/music.aspx - for regular “dynamic” content Windows Azure CDN URL: http: //<identifier>.vo.msecnd.net/music.aspx - for CDN “cachable” content. The first URL path’s the request direct to your host into the Azure datacenter. The 2nd URL paths the request through the CDN infrastructure, where CDN will make the determination to request the content on behalf of the client to the Azure datacenter and your host on the /cdn path. The big advantage here is you can apply logic to your content creation. What’s important is emitting the CDN friendly headers that allow CDN to request and re-request only when you designate based upon it’s rules of “staleness” as described in the overview page. With IIS7.5 there is an underlying issue when the Managed Module “OutputCache” is enabled that in order to emit a good header for your content, you’ll need to remove, and in my sample, helps provide CDN friendly headers. You get IIS 7.5 when running under OS Family “2” in your service configuration. By default, and when the OutputCache managed module is loaded, if you use the HttpResponse.CachePolicy to set the Http Headers for “max-age” when the HttpCacheability is “Public”, you will NOT get the “max-age” emitted as part of the “Cache-control:” header. Instead, the OutputCache module will remove “max-age” and just emit “public”. It works ok when Cacheability is set to “private”. To work around the issue and ensure your code as follows emits the full max-age along with the public option, you need to remove as follows: <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"> <remove name="OutputCache"/> </modules> </system.webServer> Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.Public); Response.Cache.SetMaxAge(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(rv)); In the attached solution, the way I approached it was to have a VirtualApplication under the root site that has it’s own web.config - this VirtualApplication is the /cdn of the site and when deployed to Azure as a Web Role will surface as a distinct IIS Application – along with a separate AppDomain. The CDN Sample is a simple Web Forms site that the /default landing page contains 3 IFrames to host: 1. Content direct from the host @ http://xxxx.cloudapp.net/cdn 2. Content via the CDN @ http://azxxx.vo.msecnd.net 3. Simple list of recent requests – showing where the request came from. When you run the sample the first time you hit the page, both the Host and the CDN will cause 2 initial requests to hit the host. You won’t see the first requests in the list because of timing – but if you refresh, you’ll see that the list will show that you have 2 requests initially. 1. sourced direct from the Browser to the HOST 2. sourced via the CDN The picture above shows the call-outs of each of those requests – green rows showing requests coming direct to the HOST, yellow showing the CDN request. The IP addresses of the green items are direct from the client, where the CDN is from the CDN data center. As you refresh the page (hit Ctrl+F5 to force a full refresh and avoid “304 – not changed”) you’ll see that the request to the HOST get’s processed direct; but the request to the CDN endpoint is serviced direct from the CDN and doesn’t incur any additional request back to the HOST. The following is the Headers from the CDN response (Status-Line) HTTP/1.1 200 OK Age 13 Cache-Control public, max-age=300 Connection keep-alive Content-Length 6212 Content-Type image/jpeg; charset=utf-8 Date Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:14 GMT Expires Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:52:01 GMT Last-Modified Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:02 GMT Server Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By ASP.NET The following are the Headers from the HOST response (Status-Line) HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control public, max-age=300 Content-Length 6189 Content-Type image/jpeg; charset=utf-8 Date Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:15 GMT Last-Modified Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:47:02 GMT Server Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By ASP.NET You can see that with the CDN request, the countdown (age) starts for aging the content. The full sample is located here: CDNSampleSite.zip [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/03/09/now-available-updated-windows-azure-sdk-and-windows-azure-management-portal.aspx [2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff919703.aspx

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 24, 2011

CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 24, 2011Popular ReleasesInstant Feature Builder for Visual Studio 2010: Instant Feature Builder 1.2: This is the binary version of the Instant Feature Builder. Once downloaded, double click to install into Visual Studio. Version 1.2 fixes: Rename FX to IFB to shorten path lengths Fix issue in ExecuteCommand Fix issue to workaround problem with VS Template writer The Instant Feature Builder is a tool which enables you, via drag-and-drop, to build a specific type of Visual Studio extension (VSIX) known as a Feature Extension. A Feature Extension packages project and/or item templates,...DirectQ: Release 1.8.7 (Beta): Beta release of 1.8.7 to get feedback on what works well, what doesn't work well, and what doesn't work at all. D3D9 hardware with ps2.0 a must. Faster, more streamlined and more integrated rendering capabilities with additional MP features and support.Smartkernel: Smartkernel: ????，??????Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9.1: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Change Log from 0.9 Beta to 0.9.1: ======================= >Added option for system shutdown, sleep, hibernate after operation completed. >Minor Changes to the UI. >Numerous Bug fixes. Feedbacks are Welcome!....DotNetNuke® Store: 03.00.00: What's New in this release? IMPORTANT: this version requires DotNetNuke 04.06.02 or higher! DO NOT REPORT BUGS HERE IN THE ISSUE TRACKER, INSTEAD USE THE DotNetNuke Store Forum! This version is the same code base as the version 02.01.51 RC, just some cleaning and source code release before submition to the release tracker for "official" release.ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.45.2: New on this release: 1) Added data validation. See Data Validation 2) Deleting or clearing cells deletes the hyperlinks too. New on v0.45.1 1) Fixed issues 6237, 6240 New on v0.45.2 1) Fixed issues 6257, 6266 New Examples Data ValidationOMEGA CMS: OMEGA CMA - Alpha 0.2: A few fixes for OMEGA Framework (DLL) A few tweeks for OMEGA CMSCoding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2: New control, Toast Prompt! Removed progress bar since Silverlight Toolkit Feb 2010 has it.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Xen: Graphics API for XNA: Xen 2.0: This is the final release of Xen; Xen 2.0. Xen 2.0 supports PC and Xbox 360 running XNA 4. The documentation download is coming soon Due to restrictions in XNA 4, Building Xen requires a DirectX 10 capable video card (Xen applications can still run on Windows Xp and DirectX 9 video cards)Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????，?????，????????silverlight??????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Caliburn: A Client Framework for WPF and Silverlight: Caliburn 2.0 RC: This is the official Release Candidate for Caliburn 2.0. It contains all binaries, samples and generated code docs.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...MiniTwitter: 1.66: MiniTwitter 1.66 ???? ?? ?????????? 2 ??????????????????? User Streams ?????????Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...New ProjectsCompetition Management Platform: Paragliding Competition Management PlatformCS424 B2 Group - Car Management: CS424 B2 Group - Car ManagementEMS: The main aim of the system to perform environment inventorization.EVVA: EVVA ist ein Softwareprojekt zur Unterstützung privater Arbeitsvermittler FileSocialVB: A library to work with the filesocial.com web site and API through VB.NET. This is actually an offshoot of the http://twittervb.codeplex.com project. Though smaller, this will lead to a more compact library.Hash Crack - IGProgram: Hash Crack is a software program for hashes and passwords cracking. Hash Crack use dictionary or set of symbols for hashes cracking, and also support pwdump file format for Windows passwords cracking NTHash MD4. MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512Imail Spammer Killer: Bots seem to love picking off the weak passwords of IpSwitch IMail v10 users and using SMTP auth to spam the world with their new found account access. This project is a windows service to isolate and stop this activity by disabling the violated user account as it occurs.JVS2USB: Montage permettant de relier une IO ( capcom / Sega ) sur un PC via l'USB !!Library Reminder: Library ReminderMAVI: mobile application for the visually impaired: bill recognition & tag and recognize objects based on a specific stickerMessage splliting without envelope in Biztalk 2009: Message splitting without envelope in Biztalk 2009. The project contains: - Source Code - Examples Article describing how to make it:Microsoft translator: Language translator designed to test Microsoft Translator web service API In Windows Phone 7 developed using Visual Studio 2010 in C#mrmuffin: Mr Muffin WP7 game for childrenNetwork Monitor: Simple application with a vu-meter style display of recent incoming network traffic. - Requires .NET 4, - Requires WinPCap (http://www.winpcap.org/) - Only tested to run under Windows 7NPhysics: NPhysics - Physical Data Types for .NETOpen SimRacing Results: Open SimRacing Results aims to provide an open standard for race results of PC SimRacing games (like iRacing, rFactor, NR2003, ...), allowing developers of league management systems to use a unique interface to get the results from, regardless of the simulation used.Orchard Image Gallery: Orchard Image Gallery project is intented to provide a Image Gallery content part and/or widget for the Orchard Project.Planning Poker for Windows Phone 7: Play planning poker on your Windows Phone 7.Publishing and consuming WCF in Biztalk 2009 and Visual Studio 2008: The file contains: Biztalk 2009 Project, C# Console Project, Example. Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 in php: WindowsPhonePushNotification enables you to use Microsoft Push Notification Service in phpQuksace Agjke: For more information, please visit <http://students.cs.tamu.edu/abe/IS_and_R/HW3/quksace%20agjke.html>. http://students.cs.tamu.edu/abe/IS_and_R/HW3/quksace%20agjke.html Read: a "GNU Make"-like utility for viewing Readme files: Read is a simple program to easily load and read README files on a UNIX-compliant system. It works in a similar way to GNU Make by searching a directory for a compatible file, in this case a Readme file, and loading it for reading using a text editor or viewer.SQL CE 3.5 persistence mapper for ECO IV: May need some adjustments for ECO V/VI, definitely needs some rewrite to support SQL CE 4.0 fullySQL Server Job Failure Notification System: A simple means of ensuring you know when SQLAgent jobs fail.SuperQuery: SuperQuery makes it easy to run the same batch of SQL across several databases on different SQL servers. SuperQuery supports all editions and versions of SQL Server from 2000 onwards. It is developed in C# using .NET 4 Client Profile.System.Net.Mail Extended: An Extension to the System.Net.Mail Namespace, adding a POP3 Client, Enhanced SMTP Client, IMAP Client, POP3 Server, SMTP Server, and IMAP Serve, all written in Visual C#.wow-combatlogs: A PowerShell module for working with combat logs generated by World of Warcraft.WPF UndoManager: WPF UndoManager provides a simple Undomanager on the base of WPF's CommandPattern. It use an implementation of the ICommand-interface to manage a history of actions.XO / TicTacToe game: Dynamic sized XO / TicTacToe game for Windows Phone 7 Build using Visual Studio 2010 and C#

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SQL Server service accounts and SPNs

- by simonsabin

Service Principal Names (SPNs) are a must for kerberos authentication which is a must when using sharepoint, reporting services and sql server where you access one server that then needs to access another resource, this is called the double hop. The reason this is a complex problem is that the second hop has to be done with impersonation/delegation. For this to work there needs to be a way for the security system to make sure that the service in the middle is allowed to impersonate you, after all you are not giving the service your password. To do this you need to be using kerberos. The following is my simple interpretation of how kerberos works. I find the Kerberos documentation rediculously complex so the following might be sligthly wrong but I think its close enough. Keberos works on a ticketing system, the prinicipal is that you get a security token from AD and then you can pass that to the service in the middle which can then use that token to impersonate you. For that to work AD has to be able to identify who is allowed to use the token, in this case the service account.But how do you as a client know what service account the service in the middle is configured with. The answer is SPNs. The SPN is the mapping between your logical connection to the service account. One type of SPN is for the DNS name for the server and the port. i.e. MySQL.mydomain.com and 1433. You can see how this maps to SQL Server on that server, but how does it map to the account. Well it can be done in two ways, either you can have a mapping defined in AD or AD can use a default mapping (this is something I didn't know about). To map the SPN in AD then you have to add the SPN to the user account, this is documented in the first link below either directly or using a tool called SetSPN. You might say that is complex, well it is and thats why SQL Server tries to do it for you, at start up it tries to connect to AD and set the SPN on the account it is running as, clearly that can only happen IF SQL is running as a domain account AND importantly it has permission to do so. By default a normal domain user account doesn't have the correct permission, and is why so many people have this problem. If the account is a domain admin then it will have permission, but non of us run SQL using domain admin accounts do we. You might also note that the SPN contains the port number (this isn't a requirement now in sql 2008 but I won't go into that), so if you set it manually and you are using dynamic ports (the default for a named instance) what do you do, well every time the port changes you need to change the SPN allocated to the account. Thats why its advised to let SQL Server register the SPN itself. You may also have thought, well what happens if I change my service account, won't that lead to two accounts with the same SPN. Possibly. Having two accounts with the same SPN is definitely a problem. Why? Well because if there are two accounts Kerberos can't identify the exact account that the service is running as, it could be either account, and so your security falls back to NTLM. SETSPN is useful for finding duplicate SPNs Reading this you will probably be thinking Oh my goodness this is really difficult. It is however I've found today in investigating something else that there is an easy option. Use Network Service as your service account. Network Service is a special account and is tied to the computer. It appears that Network Service has the update rights to AD to set an SPN mapping for the computer account. This then allows the SPN mapping to work. I believe this also works for the local system account. To get all the SPNs in your AD run the following, it could be a large file, so you might want to restrict it to a specific OU, or CN ldifde -d "DC=<domain>" -l servicePrincipalName -F spn.txt You will read in the links below that you need SQL to register the SPN this is done how to use Kerberos authenticaiton in SQL Server - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319723 Using Kerberos with SQL Server - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2005/10/12/479871.aspx Understanding Kerberos and NTLM authentication in SQL Server Connections - http://blogs.msdn.com/sql_protocols/archive/2006/12/02/understanding-kerberos-and-ntlm-authentication-in-sql-server-connections.aspx Summary The only reason I personally know to use a domain account is when you can't get kerberos to work and you want to do BULK INSERT or other network service that requires access to a a remote server. In this case you have to resort to using SQL authentication and the SQL Server uses its service account to access the remote service, and thus you need a domain account. You migth need this if using some forms of replication. I've always found Kerberos awkward to setup and so fallen back to this domain account approach. So in summary to get Kerberos to work try using the network service or local system accounts. For a great post from the Adam Saxton of the SQL Server support team go to http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2010/03/09/what-spn-do-i-use-and-how-does-it-get-there.aspx

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Windows Phone 7 development: first impressions

- by DigiMortal

After hard week in work I got some free time to play with Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools. Although my first test application is still unfinished I think it is good moment to share my first experiences to you. In this posting I will give you quick overview of Windows Phone 7 developer tools from developer perspective. If you are familiar with Visual Studio 2010 then you will feel comfortable because Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools base on Visual Studio 2010 Express. Project templates There are five project templates available. Three of them are based on Silverlight and two on XNA Game Studio: Windows Phone Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone List Application (Silverlight) Windows Phone Class Library (Silverlight) Windows Phone Game (XNA Game Studio) Windows Phone Game Library (XNA Game Studio) Currently I am writing to test applications. One of them is based on Windows Phone Application and the other on Windows Phone List Application project template. After creating these projects you see the following views in Visual Studio. Windows Phone Application. Click on image to enlarge. Windows Phone List Application. Click on image to enlarge. I suggest you to use some of these templates to get started more easily. Windows Phone 7 emulator You can run your Windows Phone 7 applications on Windows Phone 7 emulator that comes with developer tools CTP. If you run your application then emulator is started automatically and you can try out how your application works in phone-like emulator. You can see screenshot of emulator on right. Currently there is opened Windows Phone List Application as it is created by default. Click on image to enlarge it. Emulator is a little bit slow and uncomfortable but it works pretty well. This far I have caused only couple of crashes during my experiments. In these cases emulator works but Visual Studio gets stuck because it cannot communicate with emulator. One important note. Emulator is based on virtual machine although you can see only phone screen and options toolbar. If you want to run emulator you must close all virtual machines running on your machine and run Visual Studio 2010 as administrator. Once you run emulator you can keep it open because you can stop your application in Visual Studio, modify, compile and re-deploy it without restarting emulator. Designing user interfaces You can design user interface of your application in Visual Studio. When you open XAML-files it is displayed in window with two panels. Left panel shows you device screen and works as visual design environment while right panel shows you XAML mark-up and let’s you modify XML if you need it. As it is one of my very first Silverlight applications I felt more comfortable with XAML editor because property names in property boxes of visual designer confused me a little bit. Designer panel is not very good because it is visually hard to follow. It has black background that makes dark borders of controls very hard to see. If you have monitor with very high contrast then it is may be not a real problem. I have usual monitor and I have problem. :) Putting controls on design surface, dragging and resizing them is also pretty painful. Some controls are drawn correctly but for some controls you have to set width and height in XML so they can be resized. After some practicing it is not so annoying anymore. On the right you can see toolbox with some controllers. This is all you get out of the box. But it is sufficient to get started. After getting some experiences you can create your own controls or use existing ones from other vendors or developers. If it is your first time to do stuff with Silverlight then keep Google open – you need it hard. After getting over the first shock you get the point very quickly and start developing at normal speed. :) Writing source code Writing source code is the most familiar part of this action. Good old Visual Studio code editor with all nice features it has. But here you get also some surprises: The anatomy of Silverlight controls is a little bit different than the one of user controls in web and forms projects. Windows Phone 7 doesn’t run on full version of Windows (I bet it is some version of Windows CE or something like this) then there is less system classes you can use. Some familiar classes have less methods that in full version of .NET Framework and in these cases you have to write all the code by yourself or find libraries or source code from somewhere. These problems are really not so much problems than limitations and you get easily over them. Conclusion Windows Phone 7 CTP developer tools help you do a lot of things on Windows Phone 7. Although I expected better performance from tools I think that current performance is not a problem. This far my first test project is going very well and Google has answer for almost every question. Windows Phone 7 is mobile device and therefore it has less hardware resources than desktop computers. This is why toolset is so limited. The more you need memory the more slower is device and as you may guess it needs the more battery. If you are writing apps for mobile devices then make your best to get your application use as few resources as possible and act as fast as possible.

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Building a Distributed Commerce Infrastructure in the Cloud using Azure and Commerce Server

- by Lewis Benge

One of the biggest questions I routinely get asked is how scalable Commerce Server is. Of course the text book answer is the product has been around for 10 years, powers some of the largest e-Commerce websites in the world, so it scales horizontally extremely well. One argument however though is what if you can't predict the growth of demand required of your Commerce Platform, or need the ability to scale up during busy seasons such as Christmas for a retail environment but are hesitant on maintaining the infrastructure on a year-round basis? The obvious answer is to utilise the many elasticated cloud infrastructure providers that are establishing themselves in the ever-growing market, the problem however is Commerce Server is still product which has a legacy tightly coupled dependency on Windows and IIS components. Commerce Server 2009 codename "R2" however introduced to the concept of an n-tier deployment of Microsoft Commerce Server, meaning you are no longer tied to core objects API but instead have serializable Commerce Entity objects, and business logic allowing for Commerce Server to now be built into a WCF-based SOA architecture. Presentation layers no-longer now need to remain on the same physical machine as the application server, meaning you can now build the user experience into multiple-technologies and host them in multiple places – leveraging the transport benefits that a WCF service may bring, such as message queuing, security, and multiple end-points. All of this logic will still need to remain in your internal infrastructure, for two reasons. Firstly cloud based computing infrastructure does not support PCI security requirements, and secondly even though many of the legacy Commerce Server dependencies have been abstracted away within this version of the application, it is still not a fully supported to be deployed exclusively into the cloud. If you do wish to benefit from the scalability of the cloud however, you can still achieve a great Commerce Server and Azure setup by utilising both the Azure App Fabric in terms of the service bus, and authentication services and Windows Azure to host any online presence you may require. The architecture would be something similar to this: This setup would allow you to construct your Commerce Services as part of your on-site infrastructure. These services would contain all of the channels custom business logic, and provide the overall interface back into the underlying Commerce Server components. It would be recommended that services are constructed around the specific business domain of the application, which based on your business model would usually consist of separate services around Catalogue, Orders, Search, Profiles, and Marketing. The App Fabric service bus is then used to abstract and aggregate further the services, making them available to the cloud and subsequently secured by App Fabrics authentication services. These services are now available for consumption by any client, using any supported technology – not just .NET. Thus meaning you are now able to construct apps for IPhone, integrate with Java based POS Devices, and any many other potential uses. This aggregation is useful, and forms the basis of the further strategy around diversifying and enhancing the e-Commerce experience, but also provides the foundation for the scalability we want to gain from utilising a cloud-based application platform. The Windows Azure application platform is Microsoft solution to benefiting from the true economies of scale in terms of the elasticity of the cloud. Just before the launch of the Azure Platform – Domino's pizza actually managed to run their whole SuperBowl operation from the scalability of Windows Azure, and simply switching back to their traditional operation the next day with no residual infrastructure costs. The platform also natively can subscribe to services and messages exposed within the AppFabric service bus, making it an ideal solution to build and deploy a presentation layer which will need to support of scalable infrastructure – such as a high demand public facing e-Commerce portal, or a promotion element of a brand. Windows Azure has excellent support for ASP.NET, including its own caching providers meaning expensive operations such as catalogue queries can persist in memory on the application server, reducing the demand on internal infrastructure and prioritising it for more business critical operations such as receiving orders and processing payments. Windows Azure also supports other languages too, meaning utilising this approach you can technically build a Commerce Server presentation layer in Java, PHP, or Ruby – or equally in ASP.NET or Silverlight without having to change any of the underlying business or Commerce Server implementation. This SOA-style architecture is one of the primary differentiators for Commerce Server as a product in the e-Commerce market, and now with the introduction of a WCF capability in Commerce Server 2009/2009 R2 the opportunities for extensibility of the both the user experience, and integration into third parties, are drastically increased, all with no effect to the underlying channel logic. So if you are looking at deployment options for your e-Commerce application to help support demand in a cost effective way. I would highly recommend you consider looking at Windows Azure, and if you have any questions in-particular about this style of deployment, please feel free to get in touch!

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Open Source but not Free Software (or vice versa)

- by TRiG

The definition of "Free Software" from the Free Software Foundation: “Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so. The definition of "Open Source Software" from the Open Source Initiative: Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Integrity of The Author's Source Code The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface. These definitions, although they derive from very different ideologies, are broadly compatible, and most Free Software is also Open Source Software and vice versa. I believe, however, that it is possible for this not to be the case: It is possible for software to be Open Source without being Free, or to be Free without being Open Source. Questions Is my belief correct? Is it possible for software to fall into one camp and not the other? Does any such software actually exist? Please give examples. Clarification I've already accepted an answer now, but I seem to have confused a lot of people, so perhaps a clarification is in order. I was not asking about the difference between copyleft (or "viral", though I don't like that term) and non-copyleft ("permissive") licenses. Nor was I asking about your personal idiosyncratic definitions of "Free" and "Open". I was asking about "Free Software as defined by the FSF" and "Open Source Software as defined by the OSI". Are the two always the same? Is it possible to be one without being the other? And the answer, it seems, is that it's impossible to be Free without being Open, but possible to be Open without being Free. Thank you everyone who actually answered the question.

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