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• Squid w/ SquidGuard fails w/ "Too few redirector processes are running"

  - by DKNUCKLES

  I'm trying to implement a Squid proxy in a quick and easy fashion and I'm receiving some errors I have been unable to resolve. The box is a pre-made appliance, however it seems to fail on launch.The following is the cache.log file when I attempt to launch the squid service. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Starting Squid Cache version 3.0.STABLE20-20091201 for i686 -pc-linux-gnu... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Process ID 12647 2012/11/18 22:14:29| With 1024 file descriptors available 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Performing DNS Tests... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Successful DNS name lookup tests... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| DNS Socket created at 0.0.0.0, port 40513, FD 8 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Adding nameserver 192.168.0.78 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Adding nameserver 8.8.8.8 from /etc/resolv.conf 2012/11/18 22:14:29| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'bin' processes 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| ipcCreate: /opt/squidguard/bin: (13) Permission denied 2012/11/18 22:14:29| helperOpenServers: Starting 5/5 'squid-auth.pl' processes 2012/11/18 22:14:29| User-Agent logging is disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Referer logging is disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Unlinkd pipe opened on FD 23 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Swap maxSize 10240000 + 8192 KB, estimated 788322 objects 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Target number of buckets: 39416 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Using 65536 Store buckets 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Max Mem size: 8192 KB 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Max Swap size: 10240000 KB 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Version 1 of swap file with LFS support detected... 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Rebuilding storage in /opt/squid3/var/cache (DIRTY) 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Using Least Load store dir selection 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Set Current Directory to /opt/squid3/var/cache 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Loaded Icons. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Accepting HTTP connections at 10.0.0.6, port 3128, FD 25. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Accepting ICP messages at 0.0.0.0, port 3130, FD 26. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| HTCP Disabled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Ready to serve requests. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Done reading /opt/squid3/var/cache swaplog (0 entries) 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Finished rebuilding storage from disk. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Entries scanned 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Invalid entries. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 With invalid flags. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects loaded. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects expired. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Objects cancelled. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Duplicate URLs purged. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| 0 Swapfile clashes avoided. 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Took 0.02 seconds ( 0.00 objects/sec). 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Beginning Validation Procedure 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #1 (FD 9) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #2 (FD 10) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #3 (FD 11) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| WARNING: redirector #4 (FD 12) exited 2012/11/18 22:14:29| Too few redirector processes are running FATAL: The redirector helpers are crashing too rapidly, need help! Squid Cache (Version 3.0.STABLE20-20091201): Terminated abnormally. CPU Usage: 0.112 seconds = 0.032 user + 0.080 sys Maximum Resident Size: 0 KB Page faults with physical i/o: 0 Memory usage for squid via mallinfo(): total space in arena: 2944 KB Ordinary blocks: 2857 KB 6 blks Small blocks: 0 KB 0 blks Holding blocks: 1772 KB 8 blks Free Small blocks: 0 KB Free Ordinary blocks: 86 KB Total in use: 4629 KB 157% Total free: 86 KB 3% The "permission denied" area is where I have been focusing my attention with no luck. The following is what I've tried. Chmod'ing the /opt/squidguard/bin folder to 777 Changing the user that squidguard runs under to root / nobody / www-data / squid3 Tried changing ownership of the /opt/squidguard/bin folder to all names listed above after assigning that user to run with squid. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

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• How do you handle authentication across domains?

  - by William Ratcliff

  I'm trying to save users of our services from having to have multiple accounts/passwords. I'm in a large organization and there's one group that handles part of user authentication for users who are from outside the facility (primarily for administrative functions). They store a secure cookie to establish a session and communicate only via HTTPS via the browser. Sessions expire either through: 1) explicit logout of the user 2) Inactivity 3) Browser closes My team is trying to write a web application to help users analyze data that they've taken (or are currently taking) while at our facility. We need to determine if a user is 1) authenticated 2) Some identifier for that user so we can store state for them (what analysis they are working on, etc.) So, the problem is how do you authenticate across domains (the authentication server for the other application lives in a border region between public and private--we will live in the public region). We have come up with some scenarios and I'd like advice about what is best practice, or if there is one we haven't considered. Let's start with the case where the user is authenticated with the authentication server. 1) The authentication server leaves a public cookie in the browser with their primary key for a user. If this is deemed sensitive, they encrypt it on their server and we have the key to decrypt it on our server. When the user visits our site, we check for this public cookie. We extract the user_id and use a public api for the authentication server to request if the user is logged in. If they are, they send us a response with: response={ userid :we can then map this to our own user ids. If necessary, we can request additional information such as email-address/display name once (to notify them if long running jobs are done, or to share results with other people, like with google_docs). account_is_active:Make sure that the account is still valid session_is_active: Is their session still active? If we query this for a valid user, this will have a side effect that we will reset the last_time_session_activated value and thus prolong their session with the authentication server last_time_session_activated: let us know how much time they have left ip_address_session_started_from:make sure the person at our site is coming from the same ip as they started the session at } Given this response, we either accept them as authenticated and move on with our app, or redirect them to the login page for the authentication server (question: if we give an encrypted portion of the response (signed by us) with the page to redirect them to, do we open any gaping security holes in the authentication server)? The flaw that we've found with this is that if the user visits evilsite.com and they look at the session cookie and send a query to the public api of the authentication server, they can keep the session alive and if our original user leaves the machine without logging out, then the next user will be able to access their session (this was possible before, but having the session alive eternally makes this worse). 2) The authentication server redirects all requests made to our domain to us and we send responses back through them to the user. Essentially, they act as a proxy. The advantage of this is that we can handshake with the authentication server, so it's safe to be trusted with the email address/name of the user and they don't have to reenter it So, if the user tries to go to: authentication_site/mysite_page1 they are redirected to mysite. Which would you choose, or is there a better way? The goal is to minimize the "Yet Another Password/Yet another username" problem... Thanks!!!!

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• When searching in Outlook, encountered this error "Instant Search encountered a problem while trying

  - by Imagineer

  Sometime when searching for certain keyword, I get this error "Instant Search encountered a problem while trying to display search results. Modifying your query may resolve this problem." I have enabled Outlook logging to determine what is the error as suggested by someone in other forum. but I haven't had a clue how to decipher it. 2010.05.11 09:38:10 <<<< Logging Started (level is LTF_TRACE) >>>> 2010.05.11 09:38:10 HELPER::Initialize called 2010.05.11 09:38:10 Initializing: Finding a Transport 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: XPProviderInit in EMSMDB.DLL, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: TransportLogon, hr = 0x8004011d 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: Shutdown, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: XPProviderInit in EMSMDB.DLL, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI Status: (-- -- ---/--- -- ---) 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: TransportLogon, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 Initializing: Found a transport, Error code = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: AddressTypes, hr = 0x00000000, cAddrs = 4, cUids = 1 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: RegisterOptions, hr = 0x00000000, cOptions = 2 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI Status: (IN -- ---/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 09:38:10 MAPI XP Call: TransportNotify(BEGIN_IN|BEGIN_OUT), hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 HELPER::Initialize done, Error code = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 HELPER::GetCapabilities called, Error code = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:10 Microsoft Exchange: Synch operation started (flags = 00000031) 2010.05.11 09:38:10 Microsoft Exchange: StartImport(flags = 00000000, max msg = ffffffff): full items 2010.05.11 09:38:10 Microsoft Exchange: UploadItems: 0 messages to send 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Starting the Spooling Cycle 2010.05.11 09:38:11 MAPI Status: (IN fl ---/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 09:38:11 MAPI XP Call: FlushQueues, hr = 0x00000000, ulFlushFlags = 0x0000001c 2010.05.11 09:38:11 MAPI XP Call: Poll, hr = 0x00000000, cPollCount = 855 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Progress: Receiving message (message 1 out of 856, size unknown) 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Downloading one message 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Transport tightly coupled with store, download is NOOP 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Downloading done, Error code = 0x8004010f 2010.05.11 09:38:11 MAPI Status: (IN -- ---/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 09:38:11 FINISHED MAPI TASK 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Microsoft Exchange: ReportStatus: RSF_COMPLETED, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Finishing the Spooling Cycle, Error code = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:11 EXECUTING EndSession MAPI TASK 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Starting the Simplified Transfer Cycle 2010.05.11 09:38:11 MAPI XP Call: Poll, hr = 0x00000000, iMsgsReceived = 0, cPollCount = 855 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Progress: Receiving message (message 1 out of 856, size unknown) 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Downloading one message 2010.05.11 09:38:11 MAPI Status: (IN -- act/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 09:38:11 MAPI Status: (IN -- ---/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Downloading done, Error code = 0x8004010f 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Finishing the Spooling Cycle, Error code = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:11 FINISHED MAPI TASK 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Microsoft Exchange: ReportStatus: RSF_COMPLETED, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 09:38:11 Microsoft Exchange: Synch operation completed 2010.05.11 10:08:15 Microsoft Exchange: Synch operation started (flags = 00000031) 2010.05.11 10:08:15 Microsoft Exchange: StartImport(flags = 00000000, max msg = ffffffff): full items 2010.05.11 10:08:15 Microsoft Exchange: UploadItems: 0 messages to send 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Starting the Spooling Cycle 2010.05.11 10:08:16 MAPI Status: (IN fl ---/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 10:08:16 MAPI XP Call: FlushQueues, hr = 0x00000000, ulFlushFlags = 0x0000001c 2010.05.11 10:08:16 MAPI XP Call: Poll, hr = 0x00000000, cPollCount = 858 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Progress: Receiving message (message 1 out of 859, size unknown) 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Downloading one message 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Transport tightly coupled with store, download is NOOP 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Downloading done, Error code = 0x8004010f 2010.05.11 10:08:16 MAPI Status: (IN -- ---/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 10:08:16 FINISHED MAPI TASK 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Microsoft Exchange: ReportStatus: RSF_COMPLETED, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Finishing the Spooling Cycle, Error code = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 10:08:16 EXECUTING EndSession MAPI TASK 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Starting the Simplified Transfer Cycle 2010.05.11 10:08:16 MAPI XP Call: Poll, hr = 0x00000000, iMsgsReceived = 0, cPollCount = 858 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Progress: Receiving message (message 1 out of 859, size unknown) 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Downloading one message 2010.05.11 10:08:16 MAPI Status: (IN -- act/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 10:08:16 MAPI Status: (IN -- ---/OUT -- ---) 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Downloading done, Error code = 0x8004010f 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Finishing the Spooling Cycle, Error code = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 10:08:16 FINISHED MAPI TASK 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Microsoft Exchange: ReportStatus: RSF_COMPLETED, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 10:08:16 Microsoft Exchange: Synch operation completed 2010.05.11 10:09:48 HELPER::Uninitialize called 2010.05.11 10:09:48 MAPI Status: (-- -- ---/--- -- ---) 2010.05.11 10:09:48 MAPI XP Call: TransportNotify(END_IN|END_OUT), hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 10:09:48 MAPI XP Call: TransportLogoff in EMSMDB.DLL, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 10:09:48 MAPI XP Call: Shutdown, hr = 0x00000000 2010.05.11 10:09:48 Resource manager terminated I'm running Outlook 2007 SP1 in Citrix environment and should be running in Cache Mode. In my Outlook Tools-Options-Search Option, there is nothing under indexing. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you.

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• Exchange 2003-Exchange 2010 post migration GAL/OAB problem

  - by user68726

  I am very new to Exchange so forgive my newbie-ness. I've exhausted Google trying to find a way to solve my problem so I'm hoping some of you gurus can shed some light on my next steps. Please forgive my bungling around through this. The problem I cannot download/update the Global Address List (GAL) and Offline Address Book (OAB) on my Outlook 2010 clients. I get: Task 'emailaddress' reported error (0x8004010F) : 'The operation failed. An object cannot be found.' ---- error. I'm using cached exchange mode, which if I turn off Outlook hangs completely from the moment I start it up. (Note I've replaced my actual email address with 'emailaddress') Background information I migrated mailboxes, public store, etc. from a Small Business Server 2003 with Exchange 2003 box to a Server 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010 based primarily on an experts exchange how to article. The exchange server is up and running as an internet facing exchange server with all of the roles necessary to send and receive mail and in that capacity is working fine. I "thought" I had successfully migrated everything from the SBS03 box, and due to huge amounts of errors in everything from AD to the Exchange install itself I removed the reference to the SBS03 server in adsiedit. I've still got access to the old SBS03 box, but as I said the number of errors in everything is preventing even the uninstall of Exchange (or the starting of the Exchange Information Store service), so I'm quite content to leave that box completely out of the picture while trying to solve my problem. After research I discovered this is most likely because I failed to run the “update-globaladdresslist” (or get / update) command from the Exchange shell before I removed the Exchange 2003 server from adsiedit (and the network). If I run the command now it gives me: WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/Offline Address Book - first administrative group" is invalid and couldn't be updated. WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/Schedule+ Free Busy Information – first administrative group" is invalid and couldn't be updated. WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/ContainernameArchive" is invalid and couldn't be updated. WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/ContainernameContacts" is invalid and couldn't be updated. (Note that I’ve replaced my domain with “domainname.com” and my organization name with “containername”) What I’ve tried I don’t want to use the old OAB, or GAL, I don’t care about either, our GAL and distribution lists needed to be organized anyway, so at this point I really just want to get rid of the old reference to the “first administrative group” and move on. I’ve tried to create a new GAL and tell Exchange 2010 to use that GAL instead of the old GAL, but I'm obviously missing some of the commands or something dumb I need to do to start over with a blank slate/GAL/OAB. I'm very tempted to completely delete the entire "first administrative group" tree from adsiedit and see if that gets rid of the ridiculous reference that no longer exists but I dont want to break something else. Commands run to try to create a new GAL and tell exch10 to use that GAL: New-globaladdresslist –name NAMEOFNEWGAL Set-globaladdresslist GUID –name NAMEOFNEWGAL This did nothing for me except now when I run get-globaladdresslist or with the | FL pipe I see two GALs listed, the “default global address list” and the “NAMEOFNEWGAL” that I created. After a little more research this morning it looks like you can't change/delete/remove the default address list, and the only way to do what I'm trying to do would be to maybe remove the default address list via adsiedit and recreate with a command something like new-GlobalAddressList -Name "Default Global Address List" -IncludedRecipients AllRecipients. This would be acceptable but I've searched and searched and can't find instructions or a breakdown of where exactly the default GAL lives in AD, and if I'd have to remove multiple child references/records. ** Of interest** I'm getting an event ID 9337 in my application log OALGen did not find any recipients in address list ‘\Global Address List. This offline address list will not be generated. -\NAMEOFMYOAB --------- on my Exchange 2010 box, which pretty much to me seems to confirm my suspicion that the empty GAL/OAB is what's causing the Outlook client 0x8004010F error. Help please!

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• Varnish VCL - Regular Expression Evaluation

  - by Hugues ALARY

  I have been struggling for the past few days with this problem: Basically, I want to send to a client browser a cookie of the form foo[sha1oftheurl]=[randomvalue] if and only if the cookie has not already been set. e.g. If a client browser requests "/page.html", the HTTP response will be like: resp.http.Set-Cookie = "foo4c9ae249e9e061dd6e30893e03dc10a58cc40ee6=ABCD;" then, if the same client request "/index.html", the HTTP response will contain a header: resp.http.Set-Cookie = "foo14fe4559026d4c5b5eb530ee70300c52d99e70d7=QWERTY;" In the end, the client browser will have 2 cookies: foo4c9ae249e9e061dd6e30893e03dc10a58cc40ee6=ABCD foo14fe4559026d4c5b5eb530ee70300c52d99e70d7=QWERTY Now, that, is not complicated in itself. The following code does it: import digest; import random; ##This vmod does not exist, it's just for the example. sub vcl_recv() { ## We compute the sha1 of the requested URL and store it in req.http.Url-Sha1 set req.http.Url-Sha1 = digest.hash_sha1(req.url); set req.http.random-value = random.get_rand(); } sub vcl_deliver() { ## We create a cookie on the client browser by creating a "Set-Cookie" header ## In our case the cookie we create is of the form foo[sha1]=[randomvalue] ## e.g for a URL "/page.html" the cookie will be foo4c9ae249e9e061dd6e30893e03dc10a58cc40ee6=[randomvalue] set resp.http.Set-Cookie = {""} + resp.http.Set-Cookie + "foo"+req.http.Url-Sha1+"="+req.http.random-value; } However, this code does not take into account the case where the Cookie already exists. I need to check that the Cookie does not exists before generating a random value. So I thought about this code: import digest; import random; sub vcl_recv() { ## We compute the sha1 of the requested URL and store it in req.http.Url-Sha1 set req.http.Url-Sha1 = digest.hash_sha1(req.url); set req.http.random-value = random.get_rand(); set req.http.regex = "abtest"+req.http.Url-Sha1; if(!req.http.Cookie ~ req.http.regex) { set req.http.random-value = random.get_rand(); } } The problem is that Varnish does not compute Regular expression at run time. Which leads to this error when I try to compile: Message from VCC-compiler: Expected CSTR got 'req.http.regex' (program line 940), at ('input' Line 42 Pos 31) if(req.http.Cookie !~ req.http.regex) { ------------------------------##############--- Running VCC-compiler failed, exit 1 VCL compilation failed One could propose to solve my problem by matching on the "abtest" part of the cookie or even "abtest[a-fA-F0-9]{40}": if(!req.http.Cookie ~ "abtest[a-fA-F0-9]{40}") { set req.http.random-value = random.get_rand(); } But this code matches any cookie starting by 'abtest' and containing an hexadecimal string of 40 characters. Which means that if a client requests "/page.html" first, then "/index.html", the condition will evaluate to true even if the cookie for the "/index.html" has not been set. I found in bug report phk or someone else stating that computing regular expressions was extremely expensive which is why they are evaluated during compilation. Considering this, I believe that there is no way of achieving what I want the way I've been trying to. Is there any way of solving this problem, other than writting a vmod? Thanks for your help! -Hugues

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• Exchange 2003-Exchange 2010 post migration GAL/OAB problem

  - by user68726

  I am very new to Exchange so forgive my newbie-ness. I've exhausted Google trying to find a way to solve my problem so I'm hoping some of you gurus can shed some light on my next steps. Please forgive my bungling around through this. The problem I cannot download/update the Global Address List (GAL) and Offline Address Book (OAB) on my Outlook 2010 clients. I get: Task 'emailaddress' reported error (0x8004010F) : 'The operation failed. An object cannot be found.' ---- error. I'm using cached exchange mode, which if I turn off Outlook hangs completely from the moment I start it up. (Note I've replaced my actual email address with 'emailaddress') Background information I migrated mailboxes, public store, etc. from a Small Business Server 2003 with Exchange 2003 box to a Server 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010 based primarily on an experts exchange how to article. The exchange server is up and running as an internet facing exchange server with all of the roles necessary to send and receive mail and in that capacity is working fine. I "thought" I had successfully migrated everything from the SBS03 box, and due to huge amounts of errors in everything from AD to the Exchange install itself I removed the reference to the SBS03 server in adsiedit. I've still got access to the old SBS03 box, but as I said the number of errors in everything is preventing even the uninstall of Exchange (or the starting of the Exchange Information Store service), so I'm quite content to leave that box completely out of the picture while trying to solve my problem. After research I discovered this is most likely because I failed to run the “update-globaladdresslist” (or get / update) command from the Exchange shell before I removed the Exchange 2003 server from adsiedit (and the network). If I run the command now it gives me: WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/Offline Address Book - first administrative group" is invalid and couldn't be updated. WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/Schedule+ Free Busy Information – first administrative group" is invalid and couldn't be updated. WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/ContainernameArchive" is invalid and couldn't be updated. WARNING: The recipient "domainname.com/Microsoft Exchange System Objects/ContainernameContacts" is invalid and couldn't be updated. (Note that I’ve replaced my domain with “domainname.com” and my organization name with “containername”) What I’ve tried I don’t want to use the old OAB, or GAL, I don’t care about either, our GAL and distribution lists needed to be organized anyway, so at this point I really just want to get rid of the old reference to the “first administrative group” and move on. I’ve tried to create a new GAL and tell Exchange 2010 to use that GAL instead of the old GAL, but I'm obviously missing some of the commands or something dumb I need to do to start over with a blank slate/GAL/OAB. I'm very tempted to completely delete the entire "first administrative group" tree from adsiedit and see if that gets rid of the ridiculous reference that no longer exists but I dont want to break something else. Commands run to try to create a new GAL and tell exch10 to use that GAL: New-globaladdresslist –name NAMEOFNEWGAL Set-globaladdresslist GUID –name NAMEOFNEWGAL This did nothing for me except now when I run get-globaladdresslist or with the | FL pipe I see two GALs listed, the “default global address list” and the “NAMEOFNEWGAL” that I created. After a little more research this morning it looks like you can't change/delete/remove the default address list, and the only way to do what I'm trying to do would be to maybe remove the default address list via adsiedit and recreate with a command something like new-GlobalAddressList -Name "Default Global Address List" -IncludedRecipients AllRecipients. This would be acceptable but I've searched and searched and can't find instructions or a breakdown of where exactly the default GAL lives in AD, and if I'd have to remove multiple child references/records. Of interest I'm getting an event ID 9337 in my application log OALGen did not find any recipients in address list \Global Address List. This offline address list will not be generated. -\NAMEOFMYOAB --------- on my Exchange 2010 box, which pretty much to me seems to confirm my suspicion that the empty GAL/OAB is what's causing the Outlook client 0x8004010F error. Help please!

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• Trying to connect phpMyAdmin to remote mySQL server ( 2002: can't connect )

  - by Malcolm Jones

  Trying to get phpMyAdmin to talk to a remote mySQL server. The config is below and there is already a user set up in mySQL DB to be able to log in from the specified host that PMA sits on. Hosting is provided by Rackspace (Rightscale) and both cloud servers behind the same firewall. [config.inc.php] <?php $cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ''; $i = 0; $i++; $cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'XX.XX.XX.XX'; // MySQL hostname or IP address $cfg['Servers'][$i]['port'] = ''; // MySQL port - leave blank for default port $cfg['Servers'][$i]['socket'] = ''; // Path to the socket - leave blank for default socket $cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = 'tcp'; // How to connect to MySQL server ('tcp' or 'socket') $cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysql'; // The php MySQL extension to use ('mysql' or 'mysqli') $cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress'] = FALSE; // Use compressed protocol for the MySQL connection // (requires PHP >= 4.3.0) $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] = ''; // MySQL control user settings // (this user must have read-only $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] = ''; // access to the "mysql/user" // and "mysql/db" tables). // The controluser is also // used for all relational // features (pmadb) $cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'config'; // Authentication method (config, http or cookie based)? $cfg['Servers'][$i]['user'] = 'USERNAME'; // MySQL user $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'PASSWORD'; // MySQL password (only needed // with 'config' auth_type) $cfg['Servers'][$i]['only_db'] = ''; // If set to a db-name, only // this db is displayed in left frame // It may also be an array of db-names, where sorting order is relevant. $cfg['Servers'][$i]['hide_db'] = ''; // Database name to be hidden from listings $cfg['Servers'][$i]['verbose'] = ''; // Verbose name for this host - leave blank to show the hostname $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] = ''; // Database used for Relation, Bookmark and PDF Features // (see scripts/create_tables.sql) // - leave blank for no support // DEFAULT: 'phpmyadmin' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['bookmarktable'] = ''; // Bookmark table // - leave blank for no bookmark support // DEFAULT: 'pma_bookmark' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['relation'] = ''; // table to describe the relation between links (see doc) // - leave blank for no relation-links support // DEFAULT: 'pma_relation' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_info'] = ''; // table to describe the display fields // - leave blank for no display fields support // DEFAULT: 'pma_table_info' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_coords'] = ''; // table to describe the tables position for the PDF schema // - leave blank for no PDF schema support // DEFAULT: 'pma_table_coords' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pdf_pages'] = ''; // table to describe pages of relationpdf // - leave blank if you don't want to use this // DEFAULT: 'pma_pdf_pages' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['column_info'] = ''; // table to store column information // - leave blank for no column comments/mime types // DEFAULT: 'pma_column_info' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['history'] = ''; // table to store SQL history // - leave blank for no SQL query history // DEFAULT: 'pma_history' $cfg['Servers'][$i]['verbose_check'] = TRUE; // set to FALSE if you know that your pma_* tables // are up to date. This prevents compatibility // checks and thereby increases performance. $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowRoot'] = TRUE; // whether to allow root login $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['order'] // Host authentication order, leave blank to not use = ''; $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowDeny']['rules'] // Host authentication rules, leave blank for defaults = array(); Please let me know if you need anymore info. -- Malcolm

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• how to troubleshoot using rsyslog to output to a mysql database

  - by ChrisNZ

  Using FreeBSD 8.0 32 bit. I have installed rsyslogd 5.5.5 with ommysql. (installed ports /usr/ports/sysutils/rsyslog55 and /usr/ports/sysutils/rsyslog55-mysql) My rsyslog.conf file looks like: $ModLoad imudp $ModLoad imtcp $ModLoad ommysql $ModLoad immark.so $ModLoad imuxsock.so $ModLoad imklog.so $OptimizeForUniprocessor on $AllowedSender UDP, 10.0.0.0/8 $UDPServerAddress 0.0.0.0 $UDPServerRun 514 $UDPServerTimeRequery 2 # +SG560 *.* :ommysql:127.0.0.1,Syslog,sysloguser,mypassword My command line flags for rsyslogd are: -c5 -4 Checking the code with -c5 -N1 returns no errors. I have confirmed that rsyslogd is working by changing the last line to say: *.* /var/log/snapgear.log which results in messages appearing in the snapgear.log file. So it is probably something to do with my MySQL setup If I do: mysql -u sysloguser -p Syslog Enter password: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 56 Server version: 5.0.86 FreeBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.86 mysql> select * from SystemEvents; Empty set (0.00 sec) mysql> :-( I have confirmed that sysloguser has full privileges for the Syslog database. If I run rsyslogd on the console in debug mode: /usr/local/sbin/rsyslogd -f /usr/local/etc/rsyslog.conf -c5 -n -d I can see this sequence of events each time a message is received: 9244.376687256:28359280: main Q: entry added, size now log 1, phys 1 entries 9244.376705694:28359280: main Q: EnqueueMsg advised worker start 9244.376726647:28359280: Listening on UDP syslogd socket 4 (IPv4/port 514). 9244.376728602:28359280: --------imUDP calling select, active file descriptors (max 4): 4 9244.376890075:283593c0: wti 0x28306e80: worker awoke from idle processing 9244.376892031:283593c0: we deleted 0 objects and enqueued 0 objects 9244.376893986:283593c0: delete batch from store, new sizes: log 1, phys 1 9244.376895942:283593c0: msgConsumer processes msg 0/1 9244.376897898:283593c0: msg parser: flags 70, from '~NOTRESOLVED~', msg 'Jun 29 17:32:24 SG560 kernel: (20000629T1732244' 9244.376900132:283593c0: parse using parser list 0x283080e8 (the default list). 9244.376902088:283593c0: dropped LF at very end of message (DropTrailingLF is set) 9244.376904044:283593c0: Parser 'rsyslog.rfc5424' returned -2160 9244.376905999:283593c0: Message will now be parsed by the legacy syslog parser (one size fits all... ;)). 9244.376907955:283593c0: Parser 'rsyslog.rfc3164' returned 0 9244.376909910:283593c0: testing filter, f_pmask 255 9244.376911866:283593c0: Called action, logging to ommysql 9244.376918012:283593c0: actionTryResume: action state: susp, next retry (if applicable): 1277869250 [now 1277869244] 9244.376919967:283593c0: action call returned -2123 9244.376921923:283593c0: tryDoAction: unexpected error code -2123, finalizing 9244.376926113:283593c0: actionTryResume: action state: susp, next retry (if applicable): 1277869250 [now 1277869244] 9244.376928069:283593c0: ruleset: get iRet 0 from rule.ProcessMsg() 9244.376930024:283593c0: ruleset.ProcessMsg() returns 0 9244.376931980:283593c0: regular consumer finished, iret=0, szlog 0 sz phys 1 9244.376933936:283593c0: XXX: enqueueing data element 0 of 1 9244.376935891:283593c0: we deleted 1 objects and enqueued 0 objects 9244.376938126:283593c0: delete batch from store, new sizes: log 0, phys 0 9244.376940082:283593c0: regular consumer finished, iret=4, szlog 0 sz phys 0 9244.376942037:283593c0: main Q:Reg/w0: worker IDLE, waiting for work. .... I can see the Action Call to ommysql returns unexpected error code -2123 Now I am stuck! Any ideas on what to look for next? Perhaps I there are extra ports I need to install? I will be very grateful for any assistance here!

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• Lockdown users on Windows Server 2012

  - by el.severo

  I set up a Active Directory on a server machine with Windows Server 2012 and I'd like to create some users with limitations like Windows Steady State does in Windows XP (locally). Seen already the Windows SteadyState Handbook (with Windows Server 2008), but I'd like to know if anyone has tried this before, the limitations are the following: 1. Prevent locked or roaming user profiles that cannot be found on the computer from logging on 2. Do not cache copies of locked or roaming user profiles for users who have previously logged on to this computer 3. Do not allow Windows to compute and store passwords using LAN Manager Hash values 4. Do not store usernames or passwords used to log on to the Windows Live ID or the domain 5. Prevent users from creating folders and files on drive C:\ 6. Lock profile to prevent the user from making permanent changes 7. Remove the Control Panel, Printer and Network Settings from the Classic Start menu 8. Remove the Favorites icon 9. Remove the My Network Places icon 10. Remove the Frequently Used Program list 11. Remove the Shared documents folder from My Computer 12. Remove control Panel icon 13. Remove the Set Program Access and Defaults icon 14. Remove the Network Connection(Connect To)icon 15. Remove the Printers and Faxes icon 16. Remove the Run icon 17. Prevent access to Windows Explorer features: Folder Options, Customize Toolbar, and the Notification Area 18. Prevent access to the taskbar 19. Prevent access to the command prompt 20. Prevent access to the registry editor 21. Prevent access to the Task Manager 22. Prevent access to Microsoft Management Console utilities 23. Prevent users from adding or removing printers 24. Prevent users from locking the computer 25. Prevent password changes (also requires the Control Panel icon to be removed) 26. Disable System Tools and other management programs 27. Prevent users from saving files to the desktop 28. Hide A Drive 29. Hide B Drive 30. Hide C Drive 31. Prevent changes to Internet Explorer registry settings 32. Empty the Temporary Internet Files folder when Internet Explorer is closed 33. Remove Internet Options 34. Remove General tab in Internet Options 35. Remove Security tab in Internet Options 36. Remove Privacy tab in Internet Options 37. Remove Content tab in Internet Options 38. Remove Connections tab in Internet Options 39. Remove Programs tab in Internet Options 40. Remove Advanced tab in Internet Options 41. Set a home page (Internet Explorer) 42. Restrict the possibility to change desktop image 43. Restrict the possibility to change wallpaper 44. Restrict usb flash drives Any suggestions for this? UPDATE: As @Dan suggested me I'd like to specify that would be applied to a educational scenario where students can login from a computer and want to add some restrictions to them.

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• Using Unity – Part 1

  - by nmarun

  I have been going through implementing some IoC pattern using Unity and so I decided to share my learnings (I know that’s not an English word, but you get the point). Ok, so I have an ASP.net project named ProductWeb and a class library called ProductModel. In the model library, I have a class called Product: 1: public class Product 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public string Description { get; set; } 5:  6: public Product() 7: { 8: Name = "iPad"; 9: Description = "Not just a reader!"; 10: } 11:  12: public string WriteProductDetails() 13: { 14: return string.Format("Name: {0} Description: {1}", Name, Description); 15: } 16: } In the Page_Load event of the default.aspx, I’ll need something like: 1: Product product = new Product(); 2: productDetailsLabel.Text = product.WriteProductDetails(); Now, let’s go ‘Unity’fy this application. I assume you have all the bits for the pattern. If not, get it from here. I found this schematic representation of Unity pattern from the above link. This image might not make much sense to you now, but as we proceed, things will get better. The first step to implement the Inversion of Control pattern is to create interfaces that your types will implement. An IProduct interface is added to the ProductModel project. 1: public interface IProduct 2: { 3: string WriteProductDetails(); 4: } Let’s make our Product class to implement the IProduct interface. The application will compile and run as before despite the changes made. Add the following references to your web project: Microsoft.Practices.Unity Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration Microsoft.Practices.Unity.StaticFactory Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder2 We need to add a few lines to the web.config file. The line below tells what version of Unity pattern we’ll be using. 1: <configSections> 2: <section name="unity" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration.UnityConfigurationSection, Microsoft.Practices.Unity.Configuration, Version=1.2.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/> 3: </configSections> Add another block with the same name as the section name declared above – ‘unity’. 1: <unity> 2: <typeAliases> 3: <!--Custom object types--> 4: <typeAlias alias="IProduct" type="ProductModel.IProduct, ProductModel"/> 5: <typeAlias alias="Product" type="ProductModel.Product, ProductModel"/> 6: </typeAliases> 7: <containers> 8: <container name="unityContainer"> 9: <types> 10: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product"/> 11: </types> 12: </container> 13: </containers> 14: </unity> From the Unity Configuration schematic shown above, you see that the ‘unity’ block has a ‘typeAliases’ and a ‘containers’ segment. The typeAlias element gives a ‘short-name’ for a type. This ‘short-name’ can be used to point to this type any where in the configuration file (web.config in our case, but all this information could be coming from an external xml file as well). The container element holds all the mapping information. This container is referenced through its name attribute in the code and you can have multiple of these container elements in the containers segment. The ‘type’ element in line 10 basically says: ‘When Unity requests to resolve the alias IProduct, return an instance of whatever the short-name of Product points to’. This is the most basic piece of Unity pattern and all of this is accomplished purely through configuration. So, in future you have a change in your model, all you need to do is - implement IProduct on the new model class and - either add a typeAlias for the new type and point the mapTo attribute to the new alias declared - or modify the mapTo attribute of the type element to point to the new alias (as the case may be). Now for the calling code. It’s a good idea to store your unity container details in the Application cache, as this is rarely bound to change and also adds for better performance. The Global.asax.cs file comes for our rescue: 1: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // create and populate a new Unity container from configuration 4: IUnityContainer unityContainer = new UnityContainer(); 5: UnityConfigurationSection section = (UnityConfigurationSection)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("unity"); 6: section.Containers["unityContainer"].Configure(unityContainer); 7: Application["UnityContainer"] = unityContainer; 8: } 9:  10: protected void Application_End(object sender, EventArgs e) 11: { 12: Application["UnityContainer"] = null; 13: } All this says is: create an instance of UnityContainer() and read the ‘unity’ section from the configSections segment of the web.config file. Then get the container named ‘unityContainer’ and store it in the Application cache. In my code-behind file, I’ll make use of this UnityContainer to create an instance of the Product type. 1: public partial class _Default : Page 2: { 3: private IUnityContainer unityContainer; 4: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 5: { 6: unityContainer = Application["UnityContainer"] as IUnityContainer; 7: if (unityContainer == null) 8: { 9: productDetailsLabel.Text = "ERROR: Unity Container not populated in Global.asax.<p />"; 10: } 11: else 12: { 13: IProduct productInstance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 14: productDetailsLabel.Text = productInstance.WriteProductDetails(); 15: } 16: } 17: } Looking the ‘else’ block, I’m asking the unityContainer object to resolve the IProduct type. All this does, is to look at the matching type in the container, read its mapTo attribute value, get the full name from the alias and create an instance of the Product class. Fabulous!! I’ll go more in detail in the next blog. The code for this blog can be found here.

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• SQLAuthority News – Pluralsight Course Review – Practices for Software Startups – Part 1 of 2

  - by pinaldave

  This is first part of the two part series of Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. The course is written by Stephen Forte (Blog | Twitter). Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of the venture backed company, Telerik, a leading vendor of developer and team productivity tools. Stephen is also a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Professional, PMP, and also speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development.  Stephen is also a board member of the Scrum Alliance. Startups – Everybodies Dream Start-up companies are an important topic right now – everyone wants to start their own business.  It is also important to remember that all companies were a start up at one point – from your corner store to the giants like Microsoft and Apple.  Research proves that not every start-up succeeds, in fact, most will fail before their first year.  There are many reasons for this, and this could be due to the fact that there are many stages to a start-up company, and stumbling at any of these stages can lead to failure.  It is important to understand what makes a start-up company succeed at all its hurdles to become successful.  It is even important to define success.  For most start-ups this would mean becoming their own independently functioning company or to be bought out for a hefty profit by a larger company.  The idea of making a hefty profit by living your dream is extremely important, and you can even think of start-ups as the new craze.  That’s why studying them is so important – they are very popular, but things have changed a lot since their inception. Starting the Startups Beginning a start-up company used to be difficult, but now facilities and information is widely available, and it is much easier.  But that means it is much easier to fail, also.  Previously to start your own company, everything was planned and organized, resources were ensured and backed up before beginning; even the idea of starting your own business was a big thing.  Now anybody can do it, and the steps are simple and outlines everywhere – you can get online software and easily outsource , cloud source, or crowdsource a lot of your material.  But without the type of planning previously required, things can often go badly. New Products – New Ideas – New World There are so many fantastic new products, but they don’t reach success all the time.  I find start-up companies very interesting, and whenever I meet someone who is interested in the subject or already starting their own company, I always ask what they are doing, their plans, goals, market, etc.  I am sorry to say that in most cases, they cannot answer my questions.  It is true that many fantastic ideas fail because of bad decisions.  These bad decisions were not made intentionally, but people were simply unaware of what they should be doing.  This will always lead to failure.  But I am happy to say that all these issues can be gone because Pluralsight is now offering a course all about start-ups by Stephen Forte.  Stephen is a start up leader.  He has successfully started many companies and most are still going strong, or have gone on to even bigger and better things. Beginning Course on Startup I have always thought start-ups are a fascinating subject, and decided to take his course, but it is three hours long.  This would be hard to fit into my busy work day all at once, so I decided to do half of his course before my daughter wakes up, and the other half after she goes to sleep.  The course is divided into six modules, so this would be easy to do.  I began the first chapter early in the morning, at 5 am.  Stephen jumped right into the middle of the subject in the very first module – designing your business plan.  The first question you will have to answer to yourself, to others, and to investors is: What is your product and when will we be able to see it?  So a very important concept is a “minimal viable product.”  This means setting goals for yourself and your product.  We all have large dreams, but your minimal viable product doesn’t have to be your final vision at the very first.  For example: Apple is a giant company, but it is still evolving.  Steve Jobs didn’t envision the iPhone 6 at the very beginning.  He had to start at the first iPhone and do his market research, and the idea evolved into the technology you see now.  So for yourself, you should decide a beginning and stop point.  Do your market research.  Determine who you want to reach, what audience you want for your product.  You can have a great idea that simply will not work in the market, do need, bottlenecks, lack of resources, or competition.  There is a lot of research that needs to be done before you even write a business plan, and Stephen covers it in the very first chapter. The Team – Unique Key to Success After jumping right into the subject in the very first module, I wondered what Stephen could have in store for me for the rest of the course.  Chapter number two is building a team.  Having a team is important regardless of what your startup is.  You can be a true visionary with endless ideas and energy, but one person can still not do everything.  It is important to decide from the very beginning if you will have cofounders, team leaders, and how many employees you’ll need.  Even more important, you’ll need to decide what kind of team you want – what personalities, skills, and type of energy you want each of your employees to bring.  Do you want to have an A+ team with a B- idea, or do you have a B- idea that needs an A+ team to sell it?  Stephen asks all the hard questions!  I was especially impressed by his insight on developing.  You have to decide if you need developers, how many, and what their skills should be. I found this insight extremely useful for everyday usage, not just for start-up companies.  I would apply this kind of information in management at any position.  An amazing team will build an amazing product – and that doesn’t matter if you’re a start-up company or a small team working for a much larger business. Customer Development – The Ultimate Obective Chapter three was about customer development. According to Stephen, there are four different steps to develop a customer base.  The first question to ask yourself is if you are envisioning a large customer base buying a few products each, or a small, dedicated base that buys a lot of your product – quantity vs. Quality.  He also discusses how to earn, retain, and get more customers.  He also says that each customer should be placed in a different role – some will be like investors, who regularly spend with you and invest their money in your business.  It is then your job to take that investment and turn it into a better product in the future.  You need to deal with their money properly – think of it is as theirs as investors, not yours as profit.  At the end of this module I felt that only Stephen could provide this kind of insight, and then he listed all the resources he took his information from.  I have never seen a group of people so passionate about their customers. It was indeed a long day for me. In tomorrow’s part 2 we will discuss rest of the three module and also will see a quick video of the Practices for Software Startup Pluralsight Course. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Best Practices, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Michael Crump&rsquo;s notes for 70-563 PRO &ndash; Designing and Developing Windows Applications usi

  - by mbcrump

  TIME TO GO PRO! This is my notes for 70-563 PRO – Designing and Developing Windows Applications using .NET Framework 3.5 I created it using several resources (various certification web sites, msdn, official ms 70-548 book). The reason that I created this review is because a) I am taking the exam. b) MS did not create a book for this exam. Use the(MS 70-548)book. c) To make sure I am familiar with each before the exam. I hope that it provides a good start for your own notes. I hope that someone finds this useful. At least, it will give you a starting point of what to expect to know on the PRO exam. Also, for those wondering, the PRO exam does contains very little code. It is basically all theory. 1. Validation Controls – How to prevent users from entering invalid data on forms. (MaskedTextBox control and RegEx) 2. ServiceController – used to start and control the behavior of existing services. 3. User Feedback (know winforms Status Bar, Tool Tips, Color, Error Provider, Context-Sensitive and Accessibility) 4. Specific (derived) exceptions must be handled before general (base class) exceptions. By moving the exception handling for the base type Exception to after exception handling of ArgumentNullException, all ArgumentNullException thrown by the Helper method will be caught and logged correctly. 5. A heartbeat method is a method exposed by a Web service that allows external applications to check on the status of the service. 6. New users must master key tasks quickly. Giving these tasks context and appropriate detail will help. However, advanced users will demand quicker paths. Shortcuts, accelerators, or toolbar buttons will speed things along for the advanced user. 7. MSBuild uses project files to instruct the build engine what to build and how to build it. MSBuild project files are XML files that adhere to the MSBuild XML schema. The MSBuild project files contain complete file, build action, and dependency information for each individual projects. 8. Evaluating whether or not to fix a bug involves a triage process. You must identify the bug's impact, set the priority, categorize it, and assign a developer. Many times the person doing the triage work will assign the bug to a developer for further investigation. In fact, the workflow for the bug work item inside of Team System supports this step. Developers are often asked to assess the impact of a given bug. This assessment helps the person doing the triage make a decision on how to proceed. When assessing the impact of a bug, you should consider time and resources to fix it, bug risk, and impacts of the bug. 9. In large projects it is generally impossible and unfeasible to fix all bugs because of the impact on schedule and budget. 10. Code reviews should be conducted by a technical lead or a technical peer. 11. Testing Applications 12. WCF Services – application state 13. SQL Server 2005 / 2008 Express Edition – reliable storage of data / Microsoft SQL Server 3.5 Compact Database– used for client computers to retrieve and save data from a shared location. 14. SQL Server 2008 Compact Edition – used for minimum possible memory and can synchronize data with a corporate SQL Server 2008 Database. Supports offline user and minimum dependency on external components. 15. MDI and SDI Forms (specifically IsMDIContainer) 16. GUID – in the case of data warehousing, it is important to define unique keys. 17. Encrypting / Security Data 18. Understanding of Isolated Storage/Proper location to store items 19. LINQ to SQL 20. Multithreaded access 21. ADO.NET Entity Framework model 22. Marshal.ReleaseComObject 23. Common User Interface Layout (ComboBox, ListBox, Listview, MaskedTextBox, TextBox, RichTextBox, SplitContainer, TableLayoutPanel, TabControl) 24. DataSets Class - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.dataset%28VS.71%29.aspx 25. SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) 26. SystemIcons.Shield (Vista UAC) 27. Leverging stored procedures to perform data manipulation for a database schema that can change. 28. DataContext 29. Microsoft Windows Installer Packages, ClickOnce(bootstrapping features), XCopy. 30. Client Application Services – will authenticate users by using the same data source as a ASP.NET web application. 31. SQL Server 2008 Caching 32. StringBuilder 33. Accessibility Guidelines for Windows Applications http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228004.aspx 34. Logging erros 35. Testing performance related issues. 36. Role Based Security, GenericIdentity and GenericPrincipal 37. System.Net.CookieContainer will store session data for webapps (see isolated storage for winforms) 38. .NET CLR Profiler tool will identify objects that cause performance issues. 39. ADO.NET Synchronization (SyncGroup) 40. Globalization - CultureInfo 41. IDisposable Interface- reports on several questions relating to this. 42. Adding timestamps to determine whether data has changed or not. 43. Converting applications to .NET Framework 3.5 44. MicrosoftReportViewer 45. Composite Controls 46. Windows Vista KNOWN folders. 47. Microsoft Sync Framework 48. TypeConverter -Provides a unified way of converting types of values to other types, as well as for accessing standard values and sub properties. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.typeconverter.aspx 49. Concurrency control mechanisms The main categories of concurrency control mechanisms are: Optimistic - Delay the checking of whether a transaction meets the isolation rules (e.g., serializability and recoverability) until its end, without blocking any of its (read, write) operations, and then abort a transaction, if the desired rules are violated. Pessimistic - Block operations of a transaction, if they may cause violation of the rules. Semi-optimistic - Block operations in some situations, and do not block in other situations, while delaying rules checking to transaction's end, as done with optimistic. 50. AutoResetEvent 51. Microsoft Messaging Queue (MSMQ) 4.0 52. Bulk imports 53. KeyDown event of controls 54. WPF UI components 55. UI process layer 56. GAC (installing, removing and queuing) 57. Use a local database cache to reduce the network bandwidth used by applications. 58. Sound can easily be annoying and distracting to users, so use it judiciously. Always give users the option to turn sound off. Because a user might have sound off, never convey important information through sound alone.

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• How Mary Meeker’s Latest Findings May Make You Re-Imagine Commerce

  - by Brenna Johnson-Oracle

  0 0 1 954 5439 Endeca Technologies 45 12 6381 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Today, Mary Meeker released her highly anticipated annual “Internet Trends” presentation for 2014. All 164 slides are jam-packed with pretty much everything you need to know about the state of the Internet. And as luck would have it, Oracle is staying ahead of these trends (but we’ll talk about that later). There were a few surprises, some stats to solidify what you likely already know, and Meeker’s novel observations about where we are all going. What interested me the most is not only how people are engaging in their personal lives, but how they engage with brands. As you could probably predict, Internet usage growth is slowing while tablet user and mobile data traffic growth continue their meteoric rise around the globe, with tremendous growth in underpenetrated markets like China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Now hold those the “Internet is dead” comments. Keep in mind there’s still plenty of room to grow, and a multiscreen model is Meeker’s vision for our future. Despite 1.5x YOY growth for mobile traffic, mobile still only makes up about 23% of all traffic today. With tablet shipments easily outpacing figures for PCs even at their height (in 2007), mobile will only continue on it’s path, but won’t be everything to everyone. Mobile won’t replace every touchpoint, it’s just created our shorter attention spans and demand for simpler, more personal experiences. As Meeker points out TVs, tablets, PCs, and smartphones are used for different activities at present, but lines will blur (for example, 84% of smartphones owners use their device while watching TV). Day-to-day activities are being re-imagining through simple, beautiful user experiences. It seems like every day I discover a new way a brand/site/app made the most mundane or mounting task enjoyable and frictionless – and I’m not alone. Meeker points out the evolution of how we do everything from how we communicate, get information, use money, meet someone, get places, order a meal, and consume media is all done through new user interfaces that make day-to-day tasks simpler. This movement has caused just about everyone’s patience for a poor UX to take a nosedive. And it’s not just the digital user experience, technology is making a lot of people’s offline lives easier, and less expensive. Today 47% of online shopping utilizes free shipping— nearly half. And Meeker predicts same day local delivery will be the “next big thing” (and you can take a guess on who will own that). Content, Community and Commerce creates the “Internet Trifecta.” Meeker pointed out that when content, communities and commerce occur in a single experience it’s embraced by consumers, which translates to big dollars for brands. The magic happens when consumers can get inspired, research, and buy in a single experience. As the buying cycle has changed and touchpoints (Web, mobile, social, store) are no longer tied to “roles” or steps in the customer journey, brands must make all experiences (content and commerce) available in a single, adaptable experience. (We at Oracle Commerce have a lot to say on this topic – stay tuned!) And in what Meeker calls the “biggest re-imagination of all:” consumers enabled with smartphones and sensors are creating troves of findable and sharable data, which she says is in the early stages, by growing rapidly. She notes that transparency and patterns of consumers with this hardware (FYI - there are up to 10 sensors embedded in smartphones now) has created a Big Data treasure chest to be mined to improve business and the life of the consumer. The opportunities are endless. So what does it all mean for a company doing business online? Start thinking about how you can: Re-imagine your experience. Not your online experience and your mobile experience and your social experience – your overall experience. When consumers can research, buy, and advocate from anywhere (and their attention spans are at an all-time low) channels don’t exist. Enable simple and beautiful interactions informed by all of the online and offline data you leverage across your enterprise. Ethically leverage the endless supply of data (user generated content, clicks, purchases, in-store behavior, social activity) to make experiences more beautiful, more accurate, and more personalized (not to mention, more lucrative for you). Re-imagine content and commerce. Content and commerce must co-exist in a single destination where shoppers can get inspired, explore, research, share, and purchase in a collective experience. Think of how you can deliver an experience where all types of experiences (brand stories and commerce) adapt to every customer need. (Look for more on this topic coming soon). Re-imagine your reach. Look to Meeker’s findings to see how the global appetite for digital experiences is growing, but under-served in many places (i.e.: India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Philippines, etc.). Growing your online business to a new geography doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch or having an entirely new team manage the new endeavor. Expand using what you’ve already built in a multisite framework, with global language support. And of course, make sure it’s optimized for mobile! Re-imagine the possible. After every Meeker report, I’m always left with the thought “we are just at the beginning.” Everyday there is more data, more possibilities, more online consumers, and more opportunities to use new latest technology to get closer to your customers and be more successful. There’s a lot going on in our Product Development and Product Innovations groups to automate innovation for our customers, so that they can continue to stay ahead of these trends, without disrupting their business. Check out a recent interview with our Innovations Team on some of these new possibilities. Staying on track despite the seemingly endless possibilities out there is the hard part. Prioritizing where you will focus based on your unique brand promise, customer and goals is what you do best. To learn how Oracle Commerce can help your business achieve your goals check out oracle.com/commerce. Check out Meeker’s entire report here.

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• SQL SERVER – Introduction to SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP

  - by Pinal Dave

  In SQL Server 2014 Microsoft has introduced a new database engine component called In-Memory OLTP aka project “Hekaton” which is fully integrated into the SQL Server Database Engine. It is optimized for OLTP workloads accessing memory resident data. In-memory OLTP helps us create memory optimized tables which in turn offer significant performance improvement for our typical OLTP workload. The main objective of memory optimized table is to ensure that highly transactional tables could live in memory and remain in memory forever without even losing out a single record. The most significant part is that it still supports majority of our Transact-SQL statement. Transact-SQL stored procedures can be compiled to machine code for further performance improvements on memory-optimized tables. This engine is designed to ensure higher concurrency and minimal blocking. In-Memory OLTP alleviates the issue of locking, using a new type of multi-version optimistic concurrency control. It also substantially reduces waiting for log writes by generating far less log data and needing fewer log writes. Points to remember Memory-optimized tables refer to tables using the new data structures and key words added as part of In-Memory OLTP. Disk-based tables refer to your normal tables which we used to create in SQL Server since its inception. These tables use a fixed size 8 KB pages that need to be read from and written to disk as a unit. Natively compiled stored procedures refer to an object Type which is new and is supported by in-memory OLTP engine which convert it into machine code, which can further improve the data access performance for memory –optimized tables. Natively compiled stored procedures can only reference memory-optimized tables, they can’t be used to reference any disk –based table. Interpreted Transact-SQL stored procedures, which is what SQL Server has always used. Cross-container transactions refer to transactions that reference both memory-optimized tables and disk-based tables. Interop refers to interpreted Transact-SQL that references memory-optimized tables. Using In-Memory OLTP In-Memory OLTP engine has been available as part of SQL Server 2014 since June 2013 CTPs. Installation of In-Memory OLTP is part of the SQL Server setup application. The In-Memory OLTP components can only be installed with a 64-bit edition of SQL Server 2014 hence they are not available with 32-bit editions. Creating Databases Any database that will store memory-optimized tables must have a MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA filegroup. This filegroup is specifically designed to store the checkpoint files needed by SQL Server to recover the memory-optimized tables, and although the syntax for creating the filegroup is almost the same as for creating a regular filestream filegroup, it must also specify the option CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA. Here is an example of a CREATE DATABASE statement for a database that can support memory-optimized tables: CREATE DATABASE InMemoryDB ON PRIMARY(NAME = [InMemoryDB_data], FILENAME = 'D:\data\InMemoryDB_data.mdf', size=500MB), FILEGROUP [SampleDB_mod_fg] CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA (NAME = [InMemoryDB_mod_dir], FILENAME = 'S:\data\InMemoryDB_mod_dir'), (NAME = [InMemoryDB_mod_dir], FILENAME = 'R:\data\InMemoryDB_mod_dir') LOG ON (name = [SampleDB_log], Filename='L:\log\InMemoryDB_log.ldf', size=500MB) COLLATE Latin1_General_100_BIN2; Above example code creates files on three different drives (D:  S: and R:) for the data files and in memory storage so if you would like to run this code kindly change the drive and folder locations as per your convenience. Also notice that binary collation was specified as Windows (non-SQL). BIN2 collation is the only collation support at this point for any indexes on memory optimized tables. It is also possible to add a MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA file group to an existing database, use the below command to achieve the same. ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2012 ADD FILEGROUP hekaton_mod CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA; GO ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2012 ADD FILE (NAME='hekaton_mod', FILENAME='S:\data\hekaton_mod') TO FILEGROUP hekaton_mod; GO Creating Tables There is no major syntactical difference between creating a disk based table or a memory –optimized table but yes there are a few restrictions and a few new essential extensions. Essentially any memory-optimized table should use the MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON clause as shown in the Create Table query example. DURABILITY clause (SCHEMA_AND_DATA or SCHEMA_ONLY) Memory-optimized table should always be defined with a DURABILITY value which can be either SCHEMA_AND_DATA or  SCHEMA_ONLY the former being the default. A memory-optimized table defined with DURABILITY=SCHEMA_ONLY will not persist the data to disk which means the data durability is compromised whereas DURABILITY= SCHEMA_AND_DATA ensures that data is also persisted along with the schema. Indexing Memory Optimized Table A memory-optimized table must always have an index for all tables created with DURABILITY= SCHEMA_AND_DATA and this can be achieved by declaring a PRIMARY KEY Constraint at the time of creating a table. The following example shows a PRIMARY KEY index created as a HASH index, for which a bucket count must also be specified. CREATE TABLE Mem_Table ( [Name] VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED HASH WITH (BUCKET_COUNT = 100000), [City] VARCHAR(32) NULL, [State_Province] VARCHAR(32) NULL, [LastModified] DATETIME NOT NULL, ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA); Now as you can see in the above query example we have used the clause MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON to make sure that it is considered as a memory optimized table and not just a normal table and also used the DURABILITY Clause= SCHEMA_AND_DATA which means it will persist data along with metadata and also you can notice this table has a PRIMARY KEY mentioned upfront which is also a mandatory clause for memory-optimized tables. We will talk more about HASH Indexes and BUCKET_COUNT in later articles on this topic which will be focusing more on Row and Index storage on Memory-Optimized tables. So stay tuned for that as well. Now as we covered the basics of Memory Optimized tables and understood the key things to remember while using memory optimized tables, let’s explore more using examples to understand the Performance gains using memory-optimized tables. I will be using the database which i created earlier in this article i.e. InMemoryDB in the below Demo Exercise. USE InMemoryDB GO -- Creating a disk based table CREATE TABLE dbo.Disktable ( Id INT IDENTITY, Name CHAR(40) ) GO CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_ID ON dbo.Disktable (Id) GO -- Creating a memory optimized table with similar structure and DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA CREATE TABLE dbo.Memorytable_durable ( Id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED Hash WITH (bucket_count =1000000), Name CHAR(40) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA) GO -- Creating an another memory optimized table with similar structure but DURABILITY = SCHEMA_Only CREATE TABLE dbo.Memorytable_nondurable ( Id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED Hash WITH (bucket_count =1000000), Name CHAR(40) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_only) GO -- Now insert 100000 records in dbo.Disktable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Disktable(Name) VALUES('sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END -- Do the same inserts for Memory table dbo.Memorytable_durable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Memorytable_durable VALUES(@i_t, 'sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END -- Now finally do the same inserts for Memory table dbo.Memorytable_nondurable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Memorytable_nondurable VALUES(@i_t, 'sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END The above 3 Inserts took 1.20 minutes, 54 secs, and 2 secs respectively to insert 100000 records on my machine with 8 Gb RAM. This proves the point that memory-optimized tables can definitely help businesses achieve better performance for their highly transactional business table and memory- optimized tables with Durability SCHEMA_ONLY is even faster as it does not bother persisting its data to disk which makes it supremely fast. Koenig Solutions is one of the few organizations which offer IT training on SQL Server 2014 and all its updates. Now, I leave the decision on using memory_Optimized tables on you, I hope you like this article and it helped you understand  the fundamentals of IN-Memory OLTP . Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Koenig

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 11, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Wiki Control: This ASP.NET user control allows you to embed a very useful wiki directly into your already existing ASP.NET website taking advantage of the popula...BabyLog: Log baby daily activity.buddyHome: buddyHome is a project that can make your home smarter. as good as your buddy. Cloud Community: Cloud Community makes it easier for organizations to have a simple to use community platform. Our mission is to create an easy to use community pl...Community Connectors for Microsoft CRM 4.0: Community Connectors for Microsoft CRM 4.0 allows Microsoft CRM 4.0 customers and partners to monitor and analyze customers’ interaction from their...Console Highlighter: Hightlights Microsoft Windows Command prompt (cmd.exe) by outputting ANSI VT100 Control sequences to color the output. These sequences are not hand...Cornell Store: This is IN NO WAY officially affiliated or related to the Cornell University store. Instead, this is a project that I am doing for a class. Ther...DevUtilities: This project is for creating some utility tools, and they will be useful during the development.DotNetNuke® Skin Maple: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by DyNNamite.co.uk. The package includes 4 color variations and sev...HRNet: HRNetIIS Web Site Monitoring: A software for monitor a particular web site on IIS, even if its IP is sharing between different web site.Iowa Code Camp: The source code for the Iowa Code Camp website.Leonidas: Leonidas is a virtual tutorLunch 'n Learn: The Lunch 'n Learn web application is an open source ASP.NET MVC application that allows you to setup lunch 'n learn presentations for your team, c...MNT Cryptography: A very simple cryptography classMooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: mvc2linq2sql is a databinder for ASP.NET MVC that make able developer to clean bind object from HTML FORMS to Linq entities. Even 1 to N relations ...MoqBot: MoqBot is an auto mocking library for Moq and Ninject.mtExperience1: hoiMvcPager: MvcPager is a free paging component for ASP.NET MVC web application, it exposes a series of extension methods for using in ASP.NET MVC applications...OCal: OCal is based on object calisthenics to identify code smellsPex Custom Arithmetic Solver: Pex Custom Arithmetic Solver contains a collection of meta-heuristic search algorithms. The goal is to improve Pex's code coverage for code involvi...SetControls: Расширеные контролы для ASP.NET приложений. Полная информация ближе к релизу...shadowrage1597: CTC 195 Game Design classSharePoint Team-Mailer: A SharePoint 2007 solution that defines a generic CustomList for sending e-mails to SharePoint Groups.Sql Share: SQL Share is a collaboration tool used within the science to allow database engineers to work tightly with domain scientists.TechCalendar: Tech Events Calendar ASP.NET project.ZLYScript: A very simple script language compiler.New ReleasesALGLIB: ALGLIB 2.4.0: New ALGLIB release contains: improved versions of several linear algebra algorithms: QR decomposition, matrix inversion, condition number estimatio...AmiBroker Plug-Ins with C#: AmiBroker Plug-Ins v0.0.2: Source codes and a binaryAppFabric Caching UI Admin Tool: AppFabric Caching Beta 2 UI Admin Tool: System Requirements:.NET 4.0 RC AppFabric Caching Beta2 Test On:Win 7 (64x)Autodocs - WCF REST Automatic API Documentation Generator: Autodocs.ServiceModel.Web: This archive contains the reference DLL, instructions and license.Compact Plugs & Compact Injection: Compact Injection and Compact Plugs 1.1 Beta: First release of Compact Plugs (CP). The solution includes a simple example project of CP, called "TestCompactPlugs1". Also some fixes where made ...Console Highlighter: Console Highlighter 0.9 (preview release): Preliminary release.Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.3: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes (1.3). It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My Documents. The last one was ...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.0.2: Family Tree Analyzer Version 1.0.2 This early beta version implements loading a gedcom file and displaying some basic reports. These reports inclu...FRC1103 - FRC Dashboard viewer: 2010 Documentation v0.1: This is my current version of the control system documentation for 2010. It isn't complete, but it has the information required for a custom dashbo...jQuery.cssLess: jQuery.cssLess 0.5 (Even less release): NEW - support for nested special CSS classes (like :hover) MAIN RELEASE This release, code "Even less", is the one that will interpret cssLess wit...MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL Web Databinder: MooiNooi MVC2LINQ2SQL DataBinder: I didn't try this... I just took it off from my project. Please, tell me any problem implementing in your own development and I'll be pleased to h...MvcPager: MvcPager 1.2 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0: MvcPager 1.2 for ASP.NET MVC 1.0Mytrip.Mvc: Mytrip 1.0 preview 1: Article Manager Blog Manager L2S Membership(.NET Framework 3.5) EF Membership(.NET Framework 4) User Manager File Manager Localization Captcha ...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel 2007 Template, version 1.0.1.117: The NodeXL Excel 2007 template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 workbook. What's NewThis version adds ...Pex Custom Arithmetic Solver: PexCustomArithmeticSolver: This is the alpha release containing the Alternating Variable Method and Evolution Strategies to try and solve constraints over floating point vari...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.44877: What is new in this release? Major performance increase in animations (up to 50 fps from 2 fps) by replacing DropShadow effect with png bitmaps; ...sELedit: sELedit v1.0b: + Added support for empty strings / wstrings + Fixed: critical bug in configuration files (list 53)sPWadmin: pwAdmin v0.9_nightly: + Fixed: XML editor can now open and save character templates + Added: PWI item name database + Added: Plugin SupportTechCalendar: Events Calendar v.1.0: Initial release.The Silverlight Hyper Video Player [http://slhvp.com]: Beta 2: Beta 2.0 Some fixes from Beta 1, and a couple small enhancements. Intensive testing continues, and I will continue to update the code at least ever...ThreadSafe.Caching: 2010.03.10.1: Updates to the scavanging behaviour since last release. Scavenging will now occur every 30 seconds by default and all objects in the cache will be ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30310.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Email Sender (C++): The same Email Sender program that I but made in visual c plus plus 2008 instead of visual basic 2008.Web Forms MVP: Web Forms MVP CTP7: The release can be considered stable, and is in use behind several high traffic, public websites. It has been marked as a CTP release as it is not ...White Tiger: 0.0.3.1: Now you can load or create files with whatever root element you want *check f or sets file permisionsMost Popular ProjectsMetaSharpWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NET Ajax LibraryMost Active ProjectsUmbraco CMSRawrSDS: Scientific DataSet library and toolsN2 CMSFasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection APIjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight

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• SQL SERVER – Extending SQL Azure with Azure worker role – Guest Post by Paras Doshi

  - by pinaldave

  This is guest post by Paras Doshi. Paras Doshi is a research Intern at SolidQ.com and a Microsoft student partner. He is currently working in the domain of SQL Azure. SQL Azure is nothing but a SQL server in the cloud. SQL Azure provides benefits such as on demand rapid provisioning, cost-effective scalability, high availability and reduced management overhead. To see an introduction on SQL Azure, check out the post by Pinal here In this article, we are going to discuss how to extend SQL Azure with the Azure worker role. In other words, we will attempt to write a custom code and host it in the Azure worker role; the aim is to add some features that are not available with SQL Azure currently or features that need to be customized for flexibility. This way we extend the SQL Azure capability by building some solutions that run on Azure as worker roles. To understand Azure worker role, think of it as a windows service in cloud. Azure worker role can perform background processes, and to handle processes such as synchronization and backup, it becomes our ideal tool. First, we will focus on writing a worker role code that synchronizes SQL Azure databases. Before we do so, let’s see some scenarios in which synchronization between SQL Azure databases is beneficial: scaling out access over multiple databases enables us to handle workload efficiently As of now, SQL Azure database can be hosted in one of any six datacenters. By synchronizing databases located in different data centers, one can extend the data by enabling access to geographically distributed data Let us see some scenarios in which SQL server to SQL Azure database synchronization is beneficial To backup SQL Azure database on local infrastructure Rather than investing in local infrastructure for increased workloads, such workloads could be handled by cloud Ability to extend data to different datacenters located across the world to enable efficient data access from remote locations Now, let us develop cloud-based app that synchronizes SQL Azure databases. For an Introduction to developing cloud based apps, click here Now, in this article, I aim to provide a bird’s eye view of how a code that synchronizes SQL Azure databases look like and then list resources that can help you develop the solution from scratch. Now, if you newly add a worker role to the cloud-based project, this is how the code will look like. (Note: I have added comments to the skeleton code to point out the modifications that will be required in the code to carry out the SQL Azure synchronization. Note the placement of Setup() and Sync() function.) Click here (http://parasdoshi1989.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/code-snippet-1-for-extending-sql-azure-with-azure-worker-role1.pdf ) Enabling SQL Azure databases synchronization through sync framework is a two-step process. In the first step, the database is provisioned and sync framework creates tracking tables, stored procedures, triggers, and tables to store metadata to enable synchronization. This is one time step. The code for the same is put in the setup() function which is called once when the worker role starts. Now, the second step is continuous (or on demand) synchronization of SQL Azure databases by propagating changes between databases. This is done on a continuous basis by calling the sync() function in the while loop. The code logic to synchronize changes between SQL Azure databases should be put in the sync() function. Discussing the coding part step by step is out of the scope of this article. Therefore, let me suggest you a resource, which is given here. Also, note that before you start developing the code, you will need to install SYNC framework 2.1 SDK (download here). Further, you will reference some libraries before you start coding. Details regarding the same are available in the article that I just pointed to. You will be charged for data transfers if the databases are not in the same datacenter. For pricing information, go here Currently, a tool named DATA SYNC, which is built on top of sync framework, is available in CTP that allows SQL Azure <-> SQL server and SQL Azure <-> SQL Azure synchronization (without writing single line of code); however, in some cases, the custom code shown in this blogpost provides flexibility that is not available with Data SYNC. For instance, filtering is not supported in the SQL Azure DATA SYNC CTP2; if you wish to have such a functionality now, then you have the option of developing a custom code using SYNC Framework. Now, this code can be easily extended to synchronize at some schedule. Let us say we want the databases to get synchronized every day at 10:00 pm. This is what the code will look like now: (http://parasdoshi1989.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/code-snippet-2-for-extending-sql-azure-with-azure-worker-role.pdf) Don’t you think that by writing such a code, we are imitating the functionality provided by the SQL server agent for a SQL server? Think about it. We are scheduling our administrative task by writing custom code – in other words, we have developed a “Light weight SQL server agent for SQL Azure!” Since the SQL server agent is not currently available in cloud, we have developed a solution that enables us to schedule tasks, and thus we have extended SQL Azure with the Azure worker role! Now if you wish to track jobs, you can do so by storing this data in SQL Azure (or Azure tables). The reason is that Windows Azure is a stateless platform, and we will need to store the state of the job ourselves and the choice that you have is SQL Azure or Azure tables. Note that this solution requires custom code and also it is not UI driven; however, for now, it can act as a temporary solution until SQL server agent is made available in the cloud. Moreover, this solution does not encompass functionalities that a SQL server agent provides, but it does open up an interesting avenue to schedule some of the tasks such as backup and synchronization of SQL Azure databases by writing some custom code in the Azure worker role. Now, let us see one more possibility – i.e., running BCP through a worker role in Azure-hosted services and then uploading the backup files either locally or on blobs. If you upload it locally, then consider the data transfer cost. If you upload it to blobs residing in the same datacenter, then no transfer cost applies but the cost on blob size applies. So, before choosing the option, you need to evaluate your preferences keeping the cost associated with each option in mind. In this article, I have shown that Azure worker role solution could be developed to synchronize SQL Azure databases. Moreover, a light-weight SQL server agent for SQL Azure can be developed. Also we discussed the possibility of running BCP through a worker role in Azure-hosted services for backing up our precious SQL Azure data. Thus, we can extend SQL Azure with the Azure worker role. But remember: you will be charged for running Azure worker roles. So at the end of the day, you need to ask – am I willing to build a custom code and pay money to achieve this functionality? I hope you found this blog post interesting. If you have any questions/feedback, you can comment below or you can mail me at Paras[at]student-partners[dot]com Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Azure, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Why won't fetchmail work all of a sudden?

  - by SirCharlo

  I ran a chmod 777 * on my home folder. (I know, I know. I'll never do it again.) Ever since then, fetchmail seems to be broken. I use it to fetch mail from an Exchange 2003 mailbox through DAVMail and OWA. The problem is that fetchmail complains about an "expunge mismatch" whenever I get a new message. It deletes the message from the Exchange mailbox, yet it never forwards it. There seems to be a problem somwhere along the mail processing, but I haven't been able to pinpoint where. Any help would be appreciated. Here are the relevant config files. ~/fetchmailrc: set no bouncemail defaults: antispam -1 batchlimit 100 poll localhost with protocol imap and port 1143 user domain\\user password Password is root no rewrite mda "/usr/bin/procmail -f %F -d %T"; ~/procmailrc: :0 * ^Subject.*ack | expand | sed -e 's/[ ]*$//g' | sed -e 's/^/ /' > /usr/local/nagios/libexec/mail_acknowledgement ~/.forward: | "/usr/bin/procmail" And here is the output when I run fetchmail -f /root/.fetchmailrc -vv: fetchmail: WARNING: Running as root is discouraged. Old UID list from localhost: <empty> Scratch list of UIDs: <empty> fetchmail: 6.3.19 querying localhost (protocol IMAP) at Tue 03 Jul 2012 09:46:36 AM EDT: poll started Trying to connect to 127.0.0.1/1143...connected. fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4REV1 AUTH=LOGIN] IMAP4rev1 DavMail 3.9.7-1870 server ready fetchmail: IMAP> A0001 CAPABILITY fetchmail: IMAP< * CAPABILITY IMAP4REV1 AUTH=LOGIN fetchmail: IMAP< A0001 OK CAPABILITY completed fetchmail: Protocol identified as IMAP4 rev 1 fetchmail: GSSAPI error gss_inquire_cred: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information fetchmail: GSSAPI error gss_inquire_cred: fetchmail: No suitable GSSAPI credentials found. Skipping GSSAPI authentication. fetchmail: If you want to use GSSAPI, you need credentials first, possibly from kinit. fetchmail: IMAP> A0002 LOGIN "domain\\user" * fetchmail: IMAP< A0002 OK Authenticated fetchmail: selecting or re-polling default folder fetchmail: IMAP> A0003 SELECT "INBOX" fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 EXISTS fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 RECENT fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [UIDVALIDITY 1] fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [UIDNEXT 344] fetchmail: IMAP< * FLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded Junk) fetchmail: IMAP< * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded Junk)] fetchmail: IMAP< A0003 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed fetchmail: 1 message waiting after first poll fetchmail: IMAP> A0004 EXPUNGE fetchmail: IMAP< A0004 OK EXPUNGE completed fetchmail: 1 message waiting after expunge fetchmail: IMAP> A0005 SEARCH UNSEEN fetchmail: IMAP< * SEARCH 1 fetchmail: 1 is unseen fetchmail: IMAP< A0005 OK SEARCH completed fetchmail: 1 is first unseen 1 message for domain\user at localhost. fetchmail: IMAP> A0006 FETCH 1 RFC822.SIZE fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 FETCH (UID 343 RFC822.SIZE 1350) fetchmail: IMAP< A0006 OK FETCH completed fetchmail: IMAP> A0007 FETCH 1 RFC822.HEADER fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 FETCH (UID 343 RFC822.HEADER {1350} reading message domain\user@localhost:1 of 1 (1350 header octets) fetchmail: about to deliver with: /usr/bin/procmail -f '[email protected]' -d 'root' # fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< Bonne journ=E9e.. fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< Company Name fetchmail: IMAP< My Name fetchmail: IMAP< IT fetchmail: IMAP< Tel: (XXX) XXX-XXXX xXXX fetchmail: IMAP< www.domain.com=20 fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< -----Message d'origine----- fetchmail: IMAP< De=A0: User [mailto:[email protected]]=20 fetchmail: IMAP< Envoy=E9=A0: 2 juillet 2012 15:50 fetchmail: IMAP< =C0=A0: Informatique fetchmail: IMAP< Objet=A0: PROBLEM: photo fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< Notification Type: PROBLEM fetchmail: IMAP< Author:=20 fetchmail: IMAP< Comment:=20 fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< Host: Photos fetchmail: IMAP< Hostname: photo fetchmail: IMAP< State: DOWN fetchmail: IMAP< Address: XXX.XX.X.XX fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< Date/Time: Mon Jul 2 15:49:38 EDT 2012 fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< Info: CRITICAL - XXX.XX.X.XX: rta nan, lost 100% fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< fetchmail: IMAP< ) fetchmail: IMAP< A0007 OK FETCH completed fetchmail: IMAP> A0008 FETCH 1 BODY.PEEK[TEXT] fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 FETCH (UID 343 BODY[TEXT] {539} (539 body octets) ******************************* fetchmail: IMAP< ) fetchmail: IMAP< A0008 OK FETCH completed flushed fetchmail: IMAP> A0009 STORE 1 +FLAGS (\Seen \Deleted) fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 FETCH (UID 343 FLAGS (\Seen \Deleted)) fetchmail: IMAP< * 1 EXPUNGE fetchmail: IMAP< A0009 OK STORE completed fetchmail: IMAP> A0010 EXPUNGE fetchmail: IMAP< A0010 OK EXPUNGE completed fetchmail: mail expunge mismatch (0 actual != 1 expected) fetchmail: IMAP> A0011 LOGOUT fetchmail: IMAP< * BYE Closing connection fetchmail: IMAP< A0011 OK LOGOUT completed fetchmail: client/server synchronization error while fetching from domain\user@localhost fetchmail: 6.3.19 querying localhost (protocol IMAP) at Tue 03 Jul 2012 09:46:36 AM EDT: poll completed Merged UID list from localhost: <empty> fetchmail: Query status=7 (ERROR) fetchmail: normal termination, status 7

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• A Look Back at 2010 Predictions

  - by David Dorf

  Now is the time of year people make their predictions for next year, but before I start thinking about 2011 it's worth a look back to see how my predictions for 2010 fared. 1. Borders and Blockbuster bite the dust. I would have never predicted a strong brand such as Circuit City could die, but now I know it can happen to anyone. Borders has lost the battle with Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster has lost to Netflix. And just to be sure, Amazon put an extra nail in each coffin. Borders received additional investment from Bennett LeBow to keep it afloat, but the stock is down around $1.25 with no profits in sight. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy back in September. 2. Every retailer finally has a page on Facebook... but very few figure out how to keep fans engaged. Retailer postings become noise, and fans start to unsubscribe. Twitter goes in the same direction. A few standout retailers will figure out how to use social media, and the rest will remain dumbfounded. Most retailers are on the Facebook bandwagon, and their fan bases seem to be increasing thanks to promotions like The Gap's logo redesign, Lowes' black Friday sneak peak, and Walmart's Crowd Savers. There are several examples of f-commerce advancements, including some interesting integrations from Amazon.3. Smartphones consolidate and grow. More and more people will step-up to smartphones, most of which will choose iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones. Other smartphones will vanish, and networks will start to strain. But retailers will finally embrace mobile as the next big channel. Retail marketing departments will build mobile apps without the help of their IT department, and eventually they will get into a bind. Android has been on a tear lately stealing market share from Blackberry. Palm and Microsoft are trending down, and Apple is holding steady. Smartphone sales are up 15% and expected to continue. Retailers understand the importance of mobile, and some innovative applications have been produced this year. 4. Google helps the little guys. Google will push its Favorite Places project to help give exposure to small retailers and restaurants. They will enable small retailers to act like big ones by providing storefronts, detailed product information, and coupons for consumers. Google will find a way to bring augmented reality to the masses. I can't say I've seen much new from Google regarding Favorite Places, but they've continued to push local product search. From the PC or smartphone, consumers can search for products and see which nearby stores have it stock. Oracle Retail even productized an integration to Google to support this effort. I suppose if Google ever buys Groupon then it will bring them even closer to local shopping. Google talked about augmented humanity, but that has nothing to do with augmented reality. 5. Steve Jobs Is Bugs Bunny and Steve Ballmer is Elmer Fudd. (OK, I stole that headline from an InformationWeek article. I couldn't resist.) Both Apple and Microsoft will continue to open new stores, but only Apple will show real growth. POSReady 2009 (formerly WEPOS) will continue to share the POS market with Linux. The iPhone and iPod will continue to capture market share, but there won't be an Apple tablet. There won't be an Apple tablet? What was I thinking? While Apple has well over 300 stores, there are less than 10 Microsoft stores. Initial impressions show that even though Microsoft is locating its store near Apple Stores, they are not converting customers, with shoppers citing a lack of assortment and high prices. 6. Consolidation of e-commerce software providers. Software vendors in the areas of search, reviews, online call-centers, payments, and e-commerce will consolidate, partly driven by the success of m-commerce and SaaS. Amazon will find someone else to buy, and eBay will continue to lose momentum. Consolidation of e-commerce providers continued with IBM acquiring Sterling Commerce and CoreMetrics, and Oracle recently announcing the acquisition of ATG. Amazon grabbed Zappos, Woot, and Diapers.com to continue its dominance of online selling. While eBay's Marketplace growth may have slowed, its PayPal division is doing quite well, fueled in part by demand for mobile payments. 7. Book publishers mirror music labels. Just as the iPod brought digital downloads to the masses, the Kindle and Nook will power the e-book revolution. Books will continue to use DRM for a few more years before following the path of music. Publishers will try to preserve the margins of hardbacks by associating e-book releases with paperbacks. Amazon has done a good job providing e-reader clients for smartphones, PCs, and tablets. Competition from Barnes & Noble has forced Amazon to support book loaning, and both companies are making it easier for people to publish ebooks (with or without DRM). Progress is slow but steady. 8. NFC makes inroads, RFID treads water. Near Field Communications start to appear in mobile phones, and retailers beta test its use for payments and loyalty programs. RFID tag costs come down a bit, but not enough to spur accelerated adoption.Nokia announced plans to offer NFC-enabled phones in 2011, and rumors are swirling about NFC in the upcoming iPhone.  I think NFC is heading in the right direction, and I've heard more interest from retailers about specialized uses for RFID.9. Digital Signage goes the way of augmented reality. People use their camera phones to leave geo-tagged notes all over cities, rating stores and restaurants, and "painting" graffiti. But people get tired of holding their phones in front of their faces, so AR glasses are offered in much the same way bluetooth headsets emerged. Retailers experiement with in-store advertising using AR. Several retailers like Pizza Hut, Benetton, and Target have experimented with AR but its still somewhat of a gimmick used by marketing.  I think this prediction is a year or two too early. 10. JDA flip-flops again. After announcing their embracing of the .Net architecture, then switching to J2EE after the Manugistics acquisition, JDA will finally decide to standardize on Apple's Objective C. Everything will be ported to the iPhone and be available on the AppStore. After all, there's not much left to try. This was, of course, a joke but the sentiment is still valid.  JDA seems more supply-chain focused than retail focused, which is a an outcrop if their i2 acquisition.  Of the 10 predictions, I'm going to say I got 6 somewhat correct.  (Don't you just love grading your own paper?)  Soon I'll post my predictions for 2011 so be on the lookout.  Until then here's one more prediction:  Va Tech beats Stanford in the Orange Bowl -- count on it!

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• Week in Geek: IPv6 Capable Smartphones Compromise User Privacy Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “clone a disk, resize static windows, and create system function shortcuts”, use 45 different services, sites, and apps to help read favorite sites, add MP3 support to Audacity (for saving in MP3 format), install a Wii game loader for easy backups and fast load times, create a Blue Screen of Death in any color, and more. Photo by legofenris. Weekly News Links Photo by The H Security. IPv6: Smartphones compromise users’ privacy Since version 4 of the iOS operating system, Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods have been capable of handling IPv6, and most Android devices have been capable since version 2.1. However, the operating systems transfer an ID that discloses information about their users. Dumb phones can be attacked too Much of the discussion of security threats to mobile phones revolves around smartphones, but researchers have found that less advanced “feature phones,” still used by the majority of people around the world, also are vulnerable to attack. SCADA exploit – the dragon awakes The recent publication of an exploit for KingView, a software package for visualising industrial process control systems, appears to be having an effect. Threatpost reports that both the Chinese vendor Wellintech and Chinese CERT (CN-CERT) have now reacted. Sophos: Spam to get more malicious Spam is becoming more malicious in nature as trickery tactics change in line with current user interests, according to a new report released Tuesday by Sophos. Global spam traffic rebounds as Rustock wakes Spam is on the rise after the Rustock botnet awoke from its Christmas slumber, according to Symantec. Cracking WPA keys in the cloud At the forthcoming Black Hat conference, blogger Thomas Roth plans to demonstrate how weak WPA PSKs can be cracked quickly and easily using Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. Microsoft Security Advisory: Vulnerability in Internet Explorer could allow remote code execution Provides a link to more details about the vulnerability and shows a work-around/fix for the problem. Adobe plans to make it easier to delete Flash cookies in web browsers The new API, NPAPI:ClearSiteData, will allow Flash cookies – also known as Local Shared Objects (LSO) – to be deleted directly in the browser’s settings. Firefox beta getting new database standard The ninth beta version of Firefox is set to get support for a standard called IndexedDB that provides a database interface useful for offline data storage and other tasks needing information on a browser’s computer. MetroPCS accused of blocking certain Net content MetroPCS is violating the FCC’s recently approved Net neutrality rules by blocking certain Internet content, say several public interest groups. Server and Tools chief Muglia to leave Microsoft in summer 2011 Microsoft veteran and Server & Tools Business (STB) President Bob Muglia is leaving Microsoft, according to an email that CEO Steve Ballmer sent to employees on January 10. Report: DOJ nearing decision on Google-ITA The U.S. Department of Justice is gearing up for a possible formal antitrust investigation into whether or not Google should be allowed to purchase travel software company ITA Software, according to a report. South Korea says Google Street View broke law Police in South Korea reportedly say Google broke the country’s law when its Street View service captured personal data from unsecure Wi-Fi networks. The backlash over Google’s HTML5 video bet Choosing strategies based on what you believe to be long-term benefits is generally a good idea when running a business, but if you manage to alienate the world in the process, the long term may become irrelevant. Google answers critics on HTML5 Web video move Google responded to critics of its decision to drop support for a popular HTML5 video codec by declaring that a royalty-supported standard for Web video will hold the Web hostage. Random TinyHacker Links A Special GiveAway: a Great Book & Great Security Software The team from 7 Tutorials has a special giveaway running during the month of January. Signed copies of their latest book, full 1-year licenses of BitDefender Internet Security 2011 and free 3-month trials for everyone willing to participate. One Click Rooting For Android Phones Here’s a nice tool that helps you root your Android phone effortlessly. New Angry Birds Free version 1.0 Available in the App Store. Google Code University Learn programming at Google Code University. Capture and Share Your Favorite Part Of a YouTube Video SnipSnip.it lets you share only the part of the video that you like. Super User Questions More great questions and answers from this past week’s popular topics at Super User. What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? Does OS X support linux-like features? What is the easiest way to make a backup of an entire hard disk? Will shifting from Wireless to Wired network result in better performance? Is it legal to install Windows 7 Home Premium Retail inside VMware virtual machine? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Enjoy reading through our hottest articles from this past week. The 50 Best Ways to Disable Built-in Windows Features You Don’t Want The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal One Year Ago on How-To Geek More great articles from one year ago filled with helpful geeky goodness for you to enjoy. Share Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.it Start Portable Firefox in Safe Mode Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate Available, Here’s How to Fix Your Incompatible Extensions Protect Your Computer from “Little Hands” with KidSafe Lock Prying Eyes Out of Your Minimized Windows Custom Crocheted Cylon-Cthulhu Hybrid What happens when you let your Cylon Centurion figure and your crocheted Cthulhu spend too many lonely nights together? A Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid, of course! You can get your own from the Cthulhu Chick store over on Etsy. Note: This is not an ad…Ruth is a friend of ours, and this Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid makes the perfect guard for the new MVP trophy in our office. The Geek Note Whether it is a geeky indoor project or just getting outside, we hope that you and your families have a terrific fun-filled weekend! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by qwrrty. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 Available for Download – Get Your Copy Now The Frustrations of a Computer Literate Watching a Newbie Use a Computer [Humorous Video] Season0nPass Jailbreaks Current Gen Apple TVs IBM’s Jeopardy Playing Computer Watson Shows The Pros How It’s Done [Video] Tranquil Juice Drop Abstract Wallpaper Pulse Is a Sleek Newsreader for iOS and Android Devices

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• How to Easily Put a Windows PC into Kiosk Mode With Assigned Access

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Windows 8.1′s Assigned Access feature allows you to easily lock a Windows PC to a single application, such as a web browser. This feature makes it easy for anyone to configure Windows 8.1 devices as point-of-sale or other kiosk systems. In the past, setting up a Windows PC in kiosk mode involved much more work, requiring the use of third-party software, group policy, or Linux distributions designed around kiosk mode. Assigned Access is available on Windows 8.1 RT, Windows 8.1 Professional, and Windows 8.1 Enterprise. The standard edition of Windows 8.1 doesn’t support Assigned Access. Create a User Account for Assigned Access Rather than turn your entire computer into a locked-down kiosk system, Assigned Access allows you to create a separate user account that can only launch a single app — such as a web browser. To set this up, you must be logged into Windows as a user with administrator permissions. First, open the PC settings app — swipe in from the right or press Windows Key + C to open the charms bar, tap Settings, and tap Change PC settings. In the PC settings app, select Accounts and select Other accounts. Use the Add an account button to create a new Windows account. Select  the “Sign in without a Microsoft account” option and select Local account to create a local user account. You could also create a Microsoft account, but you may not want to do this if you just want a locked-down account with only browser access. If you need to install apps from the Windows Store to use in Assigned Access mode, you’ll have to set up a Microsoft account instead of a local account. A local account will still allow you access to the preinstalled apps, such as Internet Explorer. You may want to create a user account with a blank password. This would make it simple for anyone to access kiosk mode, even if the system becomes locked or needs to be rebooted. The account will be created as a standard user account with limited permissions. Leave it as a standard user account — don’t make it an administrator account. Set Up Assigned Access Once you’ve created an account, you’ll first need to sign into it. If you don’t, you’ll see a “This account has no apps” message when trying to enable Assigned Access. Go back to the welcome screen, log in to the new account you created, and allow Windows to go through the first-time account setup process. If you want to use a non-default app in kiosk mode, install it while logged in as that user account. Once you’re done, log out of the other account, log back in as your administrator account, and go back to the Other accounts screen. Click the Set up an account for assigned access option to continue. Select the user account you created and select the app you want to limit the account to. For a web-based kiosk, this can be a web browser such as the Modern version of Internet Explorer. Businesses can also create their own Modern apps and set them to run in kiosk mode in this way. Note that Microsoft’s documentation says “web browsers are not good choices for assigned access” because they require more permissions than average Modern (or “Windows Store”) apps. However, if you want to provide a kiosk for web-browsing, using Assigned Access is a much better option than using Guest Mode and offering up a full Windows desktop. When you’re done, restart your PC and log in as the Assigned Access account. Windows will automatically open the app you chose and won’t allow a user to leave that app. Standard Windows 8 features like the charms bar, app switcher, and Start screen won’t appear. Pressing the Windows key once will do nothing. To sign out of Assigned Access mode, press the Windows key five times — quickly — while signed in. You’ll be sent back to the standard login screen. The account will actually still be logged in and the app will remain running — this method just “locks” the screen and allows another user to log in. Automatically Log Into Assigned Access Whenever your Windows device boots, you can log into the Assigned Access account and turn it into a kiosk system. While this isn’t ideal for all kiosk systems, you may want the device to automatically launch the specific app when it boots without requiring any login process. To do so, you’ll just need to have Windows automatically log into the Assigned Access account when it boots. This option is hidden and not available in the standard Control Panel. You’ll need to use the hidden netplwiz Control Panel tool to set up automatic login on boot. If you didn’t create a password for the user account, leave the Password field empty while configuring this. Security Considerations If you’re using this feature to turn a Windows 8.1 system into a kiosk and leaving it open to the public, remember to consider security. Anyone could come up to the system, press the Windows key five times, and try to log into your standard administrator user account. Ensure the administrator user account has a strong password so people won’t be able to get past the kiosk system’s limitations and tamper with the system. Even Windows 8′s detractors have to admit that it’s an ideal system for a touch-screen kiosk device, running either a browser or another specific application. Assigned Access finally makes this easy to set up on Windows systems in the real world — no IT experience, third-party software, or Linux distributions necessary.     

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• Use BGInfo to Build a Database of System Information of Your Network Computers

  - by Sysadmin Geek

  One of the more popular tools of the Sysinternals suite among system administrators is BGInfo which tacks real-time system information to your desktop wallpaper when you first login. For obvious reasons, having information such as system memory, available hard drive space and system up time (among others) right in front of you is very convenient when you are managing several systems. A little known feature about this handy utility is the ability to have system information automatically saved to a SQL database or some other data file. With a few minutes of setup work you can easily configure BGInfo to record system information of all your network computers in a centralized storage location. You can then use this data to monitor or report on these systems however you see fit. BGInfo Setup If you are familiar with BGInfo, you can skip this section. However, if you have never used this tool, it takes just a few minutes to setup in order to capture the data you are looking for. When you first open BGInfo, a timer will be counting down in the upper right corner. Click the countdown button to keep the interface up so we can edit the settings. Now edit the information you want to capture from the available fields on the right. Since all the output will be redirected to a central location, don’t worry about configuring the layout or formatting. Configuring the Storage Database BGInfo supports the ability to store information in several database formats: SQL Server Database, Access Database, Excel and Text File. To configure this option, open File > Database. Using a Text File The simplest, and perhaps most practical, option is to store the BGInfo data in a comma separated text file. This format allows for the file to be opened in Excel or imported into a database. To use a text file or any other file system type (Excel or MS Access), simply provide the UNC to the respective file. The account running the task to write to this file will need read/write access to both the share and NTFS file permissions. When using a text file, the only option is to have BGInfo create a new entry each time the capture process is run which will add a new line to the respective CSV text file. Using a SQL Database If you prefer to have the data dropped straight into a SQL Server database, BGInfo support this as well. This requires a bit of additional configuration, but overall it is very easy. The first step is to create a database where the information will be stored. Additionally, you will want to create a user account to fill data into this table (and this table only). For your convenience, this script creates a new database and user account (run this as Administrator on your SQL Server machine): @SET Server=%ComputerName%.@SET Database=BGInfo@SET UserName=BGInfo@SET Password=passwordSQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Database [%Database%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -Q “Create Login [%UserName%] With Password=N’%Password%’, DEFAULT_DATABASE=[%Database%], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF”SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “Create User [%UserName%] For Login [%UserName%]“SQLCMD -S “%Server%” -E -d “%Database%” -Q “EXEC sp_addrolemember N’db_owner’, N’%UserName%’” Note the SQL user account must have ‘db_owner’ permissions on the database in order for BGInfo to work correctly. This is why you should have a SQL user account specifically for this database. Next, configure BGInfo to connect to this database by clicking on the SQL button. Fill out the connection properties according to your database settings. Select the option of whether or not to only have one entry per computer or keep a history of each system. The data will then be dropped directly into a table named “BGInfoTable” in the respective database.   Configure User Desktop Options While the primary function of BGInfo is to alter the user’s desktop by adding system info as part of the wallpaper, for our use here we want to leave the user’s wallpaper alone so this process runs without altering any of the user’s settings. Click the Desktops button. Configure the Wallpaper modifications to not alter anything.   Preparing the Deployment Now we are all set for deploying the configuration to the individual machines so we can start capturing the system data. If you have not done so already, click the Apply button to create the first entry in your data repository. If all is configured correctly, you should be able to open your data file or database and see the entry for the respective machine. Now click the File > Save As menu option and save the configuration as “BGInfoCapture.bgi”.   Deploying to Client Machines Deployment to the respective client machines is pretty straightforward. No installation is required as you just need to copy the BGInfo.exe and the BGInfoCapture.bgi to each machine and place them in the same directory. Once in place, just run the command: BGInfo.exe BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt Of course, you probably want to schedule the capture process to run on a schedule. This command creates a Scheduled Task to run the capture process at 8 AM every morning and assumes you copied the required files to the root of your C drive: SCHTASKS /Create /SC DAILY /ST 08:00 /TN “System Info” /TR “C:\BGInfo.exe C:\BGInfoCapture.bgi /Timer:0 /Silent /NoLicPrompt” Adjust as needed, but the end result is the scheduled task command should look something like this:   Download BGInfo from Sysinternals Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? 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• Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - Custom attribute encoding

  - by Simon Cooper

  In my previous post, I covered how field, method, and other types of signatures are encoded in a .NET assembly. Custom attribute signatures differ quite a bit from these, which consequently affects attribute specifications in C#. Custom attribute specifications In C#, you can apply a custom attribute to a type or type member, specifying a constructor as well as the values of fields or properties on the attribute type: public class ExampleAttribute : Attribute { public ExampleAttribute(int ctorArg1, string ctorArg2) { ... } public Type ExampleType { get; set; } } [Example(5, "6", ExampleType = typeof(string))] public class C { ... } How does this specification actually get encoded and stored in an assembly? Specification blob values Custom attribute specification signatures use the same building blocks as other types of signatures; the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. However, they significantly differ from other types of signatures, in that the actual parameter values need to be stored along with type information. There are two types of specification arguments in a signature blob; fixed args and named args. Fixed args are the arguments to the attribute type constructor, named arguments are specified after the constructor arguments to provide a value to a field or property on the constructed attribute type (PropertyName = propValue) Values in an attribute blob are limited to one of the basic types (one of the number types, character, or boolean), a reference to a type, an enum (which, in .NET, has to use one of the integer types as a base representation), or arrays of any of those. Enums and the basic types are easy to store in a blob - you simply store the binary representation. Strings are stored starting with a compressed integer indicating the length of the string, followed by the UTF8 characters. Array values start with an integer indicating the number of elements in the array, then the item values concatentated together. Rather than using a coded token, Type values are stored using a string representing the type name and fully qualified assembly name (for example, MyNs.MyType, MyAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0123456789abcdef). If the type is in the current assembly or mscorlib then just the type name can be used. This is probably done to prevent direct references between assemblies solely because of attribute specification arguments; assemblies can be loaded in the reflection-only context and attribute arguments still processed, without loading the entire assembly. Fixed and named arguments Each entry in the CustomAttribute metadata table contains a reference to the object the attribute is applied to, the attribute constructor, and the specification blob. The number and type of arguments to the constructor (the fixed args) can be worked out by the method signature referenced by the attribute constructor, and so the fixed args can simply be concatenated together in the blob without any extra type information. Named args are different. These specify the value to assign to a field or property once the attribute type has been constructed. In the CLR, fields and properties can be overloaded just on their type; different fields and properties can have the same name. Therefore, to uniquely identify a field or property you need: Whether it's a field or property (indicated using byte values 0x53 and 0x54, respectively) The field or property type The field or property name After the fixed arg values is a 2-byte number specifying the number of named args in the blob. Each named argument has the above information concatenated together, mostly using the basic ELEMENT_TYPE values, in the same way as a method or field signature. A Type argument is represented using the byte 0x50, and an enum argument is represented using the byte 0x55 followed by a string specifying the name and assembly of the enum type. The named argument property information is followed by the argument value, using the same encoding as fixed args. Boxed objects This would be all very well, were it not for object and object[]. Arguments and properties of type object allow a value of any allowed argument type to be specified. As a result, more information needs to be specified in the blob to interpret the argument bytes as the correct type. So, the argument value is simple prepended with the type of the value by specifying the ELEMENT_TYPE or name of the enum the value represents. For named arguments, a field or property of type object is represented using the byte 0x51, with the actual type specified in the argument value. Some examples... All property signatures start with the 2-byte value 0x0001. Similar to my previous post in the series, names in capitals correspond to a particular byte value in the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. For strings, I'll simply give the string value, rather than the length and UTF8 encoding in the actual blob. I'll be using the following enum and attribute types to demonstrate specification encodings: class AttrAttribute : Attribute { public AttrAttribute() {} public AttrAttribute(Type[] tArray) {} public AttrAttribute(object o) {} public AttrAttribute(MyEnum e) {} public AttrAttribute(ushort x, int y) {} public AttrAttribute(string str, Type type1, Type type2) {} public int Prop1 { get; set; } public object Prop2 { get; set; } public object[] ObjectArray; } enum MyEnum : int { Val1 = 1, Val2 = 2 } Now, some examples: Here, the the specification binds to the (ushort, int) attribute constructor, with fixed args only. The specification blob starts off with a prolog, followed by the two constructor arguments, then the number of named arguments (zero): [Attr(42, 84)] 0x0001 0x002a 0x00000054 0x0000 An example of string and type encoding: [Attr("MyString", typeof(Array), typeof(System.Windows.Forms.Form))] 0x0001 "MyString" "System.Array" "System.Windows.Forms.Form, System.Windows.Forms, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" 0x0000 As you can see, the full assembly specification of a type is only needed if the type isn't in the current assembly or mscorlib. Note, however, that the C# compiler currently chooses to fully-qualify mscorlib types anyway. An object argument (this binds to the object attribute constructor), and two named arguments (a null string is represented by 0xff and the empty string by 0x00) [Attr((ushort)40, Prop1 = 12, Prop2 = "")] 0x0001 U2 0x0028 0x0002 0x54 I4 "Prop1" 0x0000000c 0x54 0x51 "Prop2" STRING 0x00 Right, more complicated now. A type array as a fixed argument: [Attr(new[] { typeof(string), typeof(object) })] 0x0001 0x00000002 // the number of elements "System.String" "System.Object" 0x0000 An enum value, which is simply represented using the underlying value. The CLR works out that it's an enum using information in the attribute constructor signature: [Attr(MyEnum.Val1)] 0x0001 0x00000001 0x0000 And finally, a null array, and an object array as a named argument: [Attr((Type[])null, ObjectArray = new object[] { (byte)2, typeof(decimal), null, MyEnum.Val2 })] 0x0001 0xffffffff 0x0001 0x53 SZARRAY 0x51 "ObjectArray" 0x00000004 U1 0x02 0x50 "System.Decimal" STRING 0xff 0x55 "MyEnum" 0x00000002 As you'll notice, a null object is encoded as a null string value, and a null array is represented using a length of -1 (0xffffffff). How does this affect C#? So, we can now explain why the limits on attribute arguments are so strict in C#. Attribute specification blobs are limited to basic numbers, enums, types, and arrays. As you can see, this is because the raw CLR encoding can only accommodate those types. Special byte patterns have to be used to indicate object, string, Type, or enum values in named arguments; you can't specify an arbitary object type, as there isn't a generalised way of encoding the resulting value in the specification blob. In particular, decimal values can't be encoded, as it isn't a 'built-in' CLR type that has a native representation (you'll notice that decimal constants in C# programs are compiled as several integer arguments to DecimalConstantAttribute). Jagged arrays also aren't natively supported, although you can get around it by using an array as a value to an object argument: [Attr(new object[] { new object[] { new Type[] { typeof(string) } }, 42 })] Finally... Phew! That was a bit longer than I thought it would be. Custom attribute encodings are complicated! Hopefully this series has been an informative look at what exactly goes on inside a .NET assembly. In the next blog posts, I'll be carrying on with the 'Inside Red Gate' series.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 19, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 19, 2010New Projects3FD - Framework For Fast Development: This is a C++ framework that provides a solid error handling structure, garbage collection, multi-threading and portability between compilers. The ...ali test project: test projectAttribute Builder: The Attribute Builder builds an attribute from a lambda expression because it can.BDK0008: it is a food lovers websitecgdigest: cg digest template for non-profit orgCokmez: Bilmuh cokmez duyuru sistemiDot Game: It is a dot game that our Bangladeshi people used to play at their childhood time and their last time when they are poor for working.ESRI Javascript .NET Integration: Visual Studio project that shows how to integrate the Esri Javascript API with .NET Exchange 2010 RBAC Editor (RBAC GUI): Exchange 2010 RBAC Editor (RBAC GUI) Developed in C# and using Powershell behind the scenes RBAC tool to simplfy RBAC administrationFile Validator (Validador de Archivos): Componente que permite realizar la validación de archivos (txt, imagenes, PDF, etc) actualmente solo tiene implementado la parte de los txt, permit...Grip 09 Lab4: GripjPageFlipper: This is a wonderful implementation of page flipper entirely based on HTML 5 <canvas> tag. It means that it can work in any browser that supports HT...Main project: Index bird families and associated species. Malware Analysis and Can Handler: MACH is a tool to organize and catalog your malware analysis canned responses, and to track the topic response lifecycle for forum experts.Perf Web: Performance team web sitePiPiBugNet: PiPiBugNet是一套全新的开源Bug管理系统。 PiPiBugNet代码基于ASP.NET 2.0平台开发，编程语言为C#。 PiPiBugNet界面基于Ext JS设计，提供了极佳的用户体验。RemoteDesktop: integrated remote console, desktop and chat utilityRuneScape emulation done right.: RuneScape emulator.Sandkasten: SandkastenSilverlight Metro Theme: Metro Theme for Silverlight.Silverlight Stereoscopy: Stereoscopy with Silverlight.Twitivia: Twitivia is an online trivia service that runs through twitter and is being used as an example set of projects. C#, MVC, Windows Services, Linq ...XPool: A simple school project.New ReleasesDot Game: 'Dot Game' first release: Dot Game first release This is the 'Dot Game' first release.DotNetNuke® Store: 02.01.35: What's New in this release? Bugs corrected: - Fixed a resource for the header in the Category list of the Store Admin module. - Added several test...ESRI Javascript .NET Integration: Map search results in a DataView: Visual Studio 2010 example showing how to pass Map results back to ASP.NET for use in a DataView.Exchange 2010 RBAC Editor (RBAC GUI): RBAC Editor: This binary is still beta (0.0.9.1) but in most case it's very stableExtending C# editor - Outlining, classification: first revision: a couple of bug has been eliminated, performance improvementFloe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R6: Corrected bug where text would be unexpectedly copied to the clipboard.Floe IRC Client: Floe IRC Client 2010-05 R7: - Fixed bug where text would show up in a query window with someone if they said something on a channel that you are both present on.Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.0.9 GA released: Hi, Today we have released the final version of Visifire v3.0.9 which contains the following enhancements: * Two new properties ActualAxisMin...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.2 GA Released: Hi, Today we have released the final version of Visifire v3.5.2 which contains the following enhancements: Two new properties ActualAxisMinimum a...HB Batch Encoder Mk 2: HB Batch Encoder Mk2 v1.02: Added .mov support.jPageFlipper: jPageFlipper 0.9: This is an initial community preview of jPageFlipper. It's not ready for production usage but has almost all functionality implemented.linq.js - LINQ for JavaScript: ver 2.1.0.0: Add Class Dictionary Lookup Grouping OrderedEnumerable Add Method ToDictionary MemoizeAll Share Let Add Overload ...Microsoft Research Biology Extension for Excel: MSR Biology Extension for Excel - M9: M9 Release includes the following updates to the previous release: > Import / Export support from Excel for multiple file formats > Bug fixes and ...Nifty CSharp Tools: Event Watcher: Event Watcher!Paint.NET Bulk Image Processor: Paint.NET Bulk Image Processor v1.0: This is the initial release of the Paint.NET Bulk Image processor plugin. All feedback is welcome.PiPiBugNet: PiPiBugNet架构设计: PiPiBugNet架构设计，未包含功能实现RuneScape emulation done right.: rc0: Release cantidate 0.Rx Contrib: V1.6: Adding CCR queue as adapter for the ReactiveQueue credits goes to Yuval Mazor http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/yuvmaz/Silverlight Metro Theme: Silverlight Metro Theme Alpha 1: Silverlight Metro Theme Alpha 1Silverlight Stereoscopy: Silverlight Stereoscopy Alpha 1: Silverlight Stereoscopy Alpha 20100518Stratosphere: Stratosphere 1.0.6.0: Introduced support for batch put Introduced Support for conditional updates and consistent read Added support for select conditions Brought t...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30518.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVideo Downloader: Example Program - 1.1: Example Program showing the features of the DLL and what can be achieved using it. For DLL Version 1.1.Video Downloader: Version 1.1: Version 1.1 See Home Page for usage and more information regarding new features. Please remember changes at You-Tube can prevent this software from...WatchersNET.TagCloud: WatchersNET.TagCloud 01.06.00: Whats New New Tag Mode: Show Tags from Ventrian.com NewsArticles Module New Tag Mode: Show Tags from Ventrian.com SimpleGallery Module Hyperlin...Windows Double Explorer: WDE v0.4: -optimization -switch to new vst2010 -viewer close now by pressing escape -reorder tabs -send selected fullname or shortnames via email (eye button...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrPHPExcelGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMBlogEngine.NETWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersCassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers EditionSQL Server PowerShell ExtensionsFluent Ribbon Control Suite

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• Movement prediction for non-shooters

  - by ShadowChaser

  I'm working on an isometric 2D game with moderate-scale multiplayer, approximately 20-30 players connected at once to a persistent server. I've had some difficulty getting a good movement prediction implementation in place. Physics/Movement The game doesn't have a true physics implementation, but uses the basic principles to implement movement. Rather than continually polling input, state changes (ie/ mouse down/up/move events) are used to change the state of the character entity the player is controlling. The player's direction (ie/ north-east) is combined with a constant speed and turned into a true 3D vector - the entity's velocity. In the main game loop, "Update" is called before "Draw". The update logic triggers a "physics update task" that tracks all entities with a non-zero velocity uses very basic integration to change the entities position. For example: entity.Position += entity.Velocity.Scale(ElapsedTime.Seconds) (where "Seconds" is a floating point value, but the same approach would work for millisecond integer values). The key point is that no interpolation is used for movement - the rudimentary physics engine has no concept of a "previous state" or "current state", only a position and velocity. State Change and Update Packets When the velocity of the character entity the player is controlling changes, a "move avatar" packet is sent to the server containing the entity's action type (stand, walk, run), direction (north-east), and current position. This is different from how 3D first person games work. In a 3D game the velocity (direction) can change frame to frame as the player moves around. Sending every state change would effectively transmit a packet per frame, which would be too expensive. Instead, 3D games seem to ignore state changes and send "state update" packets on a fixed interval - say, every 80-150ms. Since speed and direction updates occur much less frequently in my game, I can get away with sending every state change. Although all of the physics simulations occur at the same speed and are deterministic, latency is still an issue. For that reason, I send out routine position update packets (similar to a 3D game) but much less frequently - right now every 250ms, but I suspect with good prediction I can easily boost it towards 500ms. The biggest problem is that I've now deviated from the norm - all other documentation, guides, and samples online send routine updates and interpolate between the two states. It seems incompatible with my architecture, and I need to come up with a better movement prediction algorithm that is closer to a (very basic) "networked physics" architecture. The server then receives the packet and determines the players speed from it's movement type based on a script (Is the player able to run? Get the player's running speed). Once it has the speed, it combines it with the direction to get a vector - the entity's velocity. Some cheat detection and basic validation occurs, and the entity on the server side is updated with the current velocity, direction, and position. Basic throttling is also performed to prevent players from flooding the server with movement requests. After updating its own entity, the server broadcasts an "avatar position update" packet to all other players within range. The position update packet is used to update the client side physics simulations (world state) of the remote clients and perform prediction and lag compensation. Prediction and Lag Compensation As mentioned above, clients are authoritative for their own position. Except in cases of cheating or anomalies, the client's avatar will never be repositioned by the server. No extrapolation ("move now and correct later") is required for the client's avatar - what the player sees is correct. However, some sort of extrapolation or interpolation is required for all remote entities that are moving. Some sort of prediction and/or lag-compensation is clearly required within the client's local simulation / physics engine. Problems I've been struggling with various algorithms, and have a number of questions and problems: Should I be extrapolating, interpolating, or both? My "gut feeling" is that I should be using pure extrapolation based on velocity. State change is received by the client, client computes a "predicted" velocity that compensates for lag, and the regular physics system does the rest. However, it feels at odds to all other sample code and articles - they all seem to store a number of states and perform interpolation without a physics engine. When a packet arrives, I've tried interpolating the packet's position with the packet's velocity over a fixed time period (say, 200ms). I then take the difference between the interpolated position and the current "error" position to compute a new vector and place that on the entity instead of the velocity that was sent. However, the assumption is that another packet will arrive in that time interval, and it's incredibly difficult to "guess" when the next packet will arrive - especially since they don't all arrive on fixed intervals (ie/ state changes as well). Is the concept fundamentally flawed, or is it correct but needs some fixes / adjustments? What happens when a remote player stops? I can immediately stop the entity, but it will be positioned in the "wrong" spot until it moves again. If I estimate a vector or try to interpolate, I have an issue because I don't store the previous state - the physics engine has no way to say "you need to stop after you reach position X". It simply understands a velocity, nothing more complex. I'm reluctant to add the "packet movement state" information to the entities or physics engine, since it violates basic design principles and bleeds network code across the rest of the game engine. What should happen when entities collide? There are three scenarios - the controlling player collides locally, two entities collide on the server during a position update, or a remote entity update collides on the local client. In all cases I'm uncertain how to handle the collision - aside from cheating, both states are "correct" but at different time periods. In the case of a remote entity it doesn't make sense to draw it walking through a wall, so I perform collision detection on the local client and cause it to "stop". Based on point #2 above, I might compute a "corrected vector" that continually tries to move the entity "through the wall" which will never succeed - the remote avatar is stuck there until the error gets too high and it "snaps" into position. How do games work around this?

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• SQL SERVER – SSIS Look Up Component – Cache Mode – Notes from the Field #028

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Notes from Pinal]: Lots of people think that SSIS is all about arranging various operations together in one logical flow. Well, the understanding is absolutely correct, but the implementation of the same is not as easy as it seems. Similarly most of the people think lookup component is just component which does look up for additional information and does not pay much attention to it. Due to the same reason they do not pay attention to the same and eventually get very bad performance. Linchpin People are database coaches and wellness experts for a data driven world. In this 28th episode of the Notes from the Fields series database expert Tim Mitchell (partner at Linchpin People) shares very interesting conversation related to how to write a good lookup component with Cache Mode. In SQL Server Integration Services, the lookup component is one of the most frequently used tools for data validation and completion.  The lookup component is provided as a means to virtually join one set of data to another to validate and/or retrieve missing values.  Properly configured, it is reliable and reasonably fast. Among the many settings available on the lookup component, one of the most critical is the cache mode.  This selection will determine whether and how the distinct lookup values are cached during package execution.  It is critical to know how cache modes affect the result of the lookup and the performance of the package, as choosing the wrong setting can lead to poorly performing packages, and in some cases, incorrect results. Full Cache The full cache mode setting is the default cache mode selection in the SSIS lookup transformation.  Like the name implies, full cache mode will cause the lookup transformation to retrieve and store in SSIS cache the entire set of data from the specified lookup location.  As a result, the data flow in which the lookup transformation resides will not start processing any data buffers until all of the rows from the lookup query have been cached in SSIS. The most commonly used cache mode is the full cache setting, and for good reason.  The full cache setting has the most practical applications, and should be considered the go-to cache setting when dealing with an untested set of data. With a moderately sized set of reference data, a lookup transformation using full cache mode usually performs well.  Full cache mode does not require multiple round trips to the database, since the entire reference result set is cached prior to data flow execution. There are a few potential gotchas to be aware of when using full cache mode.  First, you can see some performance issues – memory pressure in particular – when using full cache mode against large sets of reference data.  If the table you use for the lookup is very large (either deep or wide, or perhaps both), there’s going to be a performance cost associated with retrieving and caching all of that data.  Also, keep in mind that when doing a lookup on character data, full cache mode will always do a case-sensitive (and in some cases, space-sensitive) string comparison even if your database is set to a case-insensitive collation.  This is because the in-memory lookup uses a .NET string comparison (which is case- and space-sensitive) as opposed to a database string comparison (which may be case sensitive, depending on collation).  There’s a relatively easy workaround in which you can use the UPPER() or LOWER() function in the pipeline data and the reference data to ensure that case differences do not impact the success of your lookup operation.  Again, neither of these present a reason to avoid full cache mode, but should be used to determine whether full cache mode should be used in a given situation. Full cache mode is ideally useful when one or all of the following conditions exist: The size of the reference data set is small to moderately sized The size of the pipeline data set (the data you are comparing to the lookup table) is large, is unknown at design time, or is unpredictable Each distinct key value(s) in the pipeline data set is expected to be found multiple times in that set of data Partial Cache When using the partial cache setting, lookup values will still be cached, but only as each distinct value is encountered in the data flow.  Initially, each distinct value will be retrieved individually from the specified source, and then cached.  To be clear, this is a row-by-row lookup for each distinct key value(s). This is a less frequently used cache setting because it addresses a narrower set of scenarios.  Because each distinct key value(s) combination requires a relational round trip to the lookup source, performance can be an issue, especially with a large pipeline data set to be compared to the lookup data set.  If you have, for example, a million records from your pipeline data source, you have the potential for doing a million lookup queries against your lookup data source (depending on the number of distinct values in the key column(s)).  Therefore, one has to be keenly aware of the expected row count and value distribution of the pipeline data to safely use partial cache mode. Using partial cache mode is ideally suited for the conditions below: The size of the data in the pipeline (more specifically, the number of distinct key column) is relatively small The size of the lookup data is too large to effectively store in cache The lookup source is well indexed to allow for fast retrieval of row-by-row values No Cache As you might guess, selecting no cache mode will not add any values to the lookup cache in SSIS.  As a result, every single row in the pipeline data set will require a query against the lookup source.  Since no data is cached, it is possible to save a small amount of overhead in SSIS memory in cases where key values are not reused.  In the real world, I don’t see a lot of use of the no cache setting, but I can imagine some edge cases where it might be useful. As such, it’s critical to know your data before choosing this option.  Obviously, performance will be an issue with anything other than small sets of data, as the no cache setting requires row-by-row processing of all of the data in the pipeline. I would recommend considering the no cache mode only when all of the below conditions are true: The reference data set is too large to reasonably be loaded into SSIS memory The pipeline data set is small and is not expected to grow There are expected to be very few or no duplicates of the key values(s) in the pipeline data set (i.e., there would be no benefit from caching these values) Conclusion The cache mode, an often-overlooked setting on the SSIS lookup component, represents an important design decision in your SSIS data flow.  Choosing the right lookup cache mode directly impacts the fidelity of your results and the performance of package execution.  Know how this selection impacts your ETL loads, and you’ll end up with more reliable, faster packages. If you want me to take a look at your server and its settings, or if your server is facing any issue we can Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSIS

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