nested lists - Page 254

Five Reasons to Attend PLM Summit 2013: The Conference Formerly Known as AGILITY

- by Terri Hiskey

As we approach the end of 2012, we are also closing in on the last couple of weeks that Agile customers and prospects can register for the upcoming PLM Summit 2013 for the bargain early bird rate of $195. Register now to secure your spot! The Conference Formerly Known as AGILITY... Long-time Agile customers may remember AGILITY, which was Agile's PLM customer conference that was held on an annual basis prior to Oracle's acquisiton of Agile in 2007. In February 2012, due to feedback we received from our Agile PLM community, we successfully resurrected the AGILITY conference and renamed it the PLM Summit. The PLM Summit was so well received and well-attended, that we are doing it again in 2013. This upcoming PLM Summit is being co-located in San Francisco under the overarching banner of the Oracle Value Chain Summit, and will be held alongside several other Oracle customer conferences that cover a range of value chain solutions, including Value Chain Planning, Value Chain Execution, Procurement, Maintenance and Manufacturing. This setup offers PLM attendees the best of all worlds--the opportunity to participate and learn about PLM in smaller, focused sessions by product and by industry, while also giving attendees the chance to see how PLM works together with other critical enterprise applications that address other important aspects of the value chain. Top Five Reasons to Attend the PLM Summit 2013 In the spirit of all of the end-of-the-year lists that are currently popping up, here is a list of the top five reasons to attend the PLM Summit for anyone out there needs a little extra encouragement to register: 1. The Best Opportunities for Customer Networking The PLM Summit offers attendees numerous opportunities to learn and network with fellow Agile users. Customer stories are featured in keynote and breakout presentations and the schedule allows for plenty of networking time during breakfasts, lunches, breaks and dinners. Customer networking is the number one reason that Agile users attend the PLM Summit. Read what attendees thought of the most recent PLM Summit: "Hearing about the implementation of Agile products from a customers’ perspective is invaluable." - Director of Quality Assurance & Regulatory Affairs, leading medical device manufacturer "Understanding the scope of other companies’ projects and the lessons learned made attending this event well worth my time." - Director of Test Engineering, global industrial manufacturer "The most beneficial thing about attending this event is the opportunity to network with other customers with similar experiences." - Director of Business Process Improvement, leading high technology company Come to the PLM Summit and play an active role within the PLM community: swap war stories and business cards, connect on LinkedIn and Facebook, share your stories and discuss the sessions from each day. Register now! 2. It's Educational! The PLM Summit is the premier educational event for anyone in the Agile PLM community. There are nearly 40 PLM-focused in-depth educational sessions led by Agile PLM experts, customers and partners that will cover a range of specific product and industry-focused topics. Keynotes will give attendees a broad overview of the entire Agile PLM footprint, while sessions will delve deeply into specific product functionality and customer case studies. There is truly something for everyone. Check out the latest agenda for view of all the sessions. 3. Visit with the PLM Partner Community Our partners play a significant and important role within the Agile PLM community. At the PLM Summit, attendees will be able to meet and mingle with several of the top Oracle Agile PLM partners including: Deloitte, Domain, GoEngineer, Hitachi Consulting, IBM, Kalypso, KPIT Cummins (CPG Solutions), Perception Software, Verdant, Xavor and ZeroWaitState. Go here for a complete list of all the Value Chain Summit sponsors. 4. See Agile PLM in Action at our Dedicated PLM Demo Pods At the PLM Summit, attendees will have the chance to see Agile PLM in action at dedicated PLM demo pods, manned by expert members of our Agile PLM team. If you would like to see up close specific Agile PLM functionality, or if you have a question on how to extend the scope of your current implemention or if you want a better understanding of how to leverage Agile PLM to address specific use-cases, stop by one of the Agile PLM demo pods and engage the Agile PLM experts on hand at the PLM Summit. 5. Spend Some Time in Lovely San Francisco Still on the fence about the upcoming PLM Summit? Remember that it is being held in San Francisco, which is a fantastic city for a getaway. After spending time learning and networking about PLM, take an extra day or two to escape the dreary winter and enjoy the beautiful scenery and the unique actitivies offered only by the City by the Bay. You will walk away from the conference not only with renewed excitement about Agile PLM, but feeling rejuvenated in general.

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RTS Voxel Engine using LWJGL - Textures glitching

- by Dieter Hubau

I'm currently working on an RTS game engine using voxels. I have implemented a basic chunk manager using an Octree of Octrees which contains my voxels (simple square blocks, as in Minecraft). I'm using a Voronoi-based terrain generation to get a simplistic yet relatively realistic heightmap. I have no problem showing a 256*256*256 grid of voxels with a decent framerate (250), because of frustum culling, face culling and only rendering visible blocks. For example, in a random voxel grid of 256*256*256 I generally only render 100k-120k faces, not counting frustum culling. Frustum culling is only called every 100ms, since calling it every frame seemed a bit overkill. Now I have reached the stage of texturing and I'm experiencing some problems: Some experienced people might already see the problem, but if we zoom in, you can see the glitches more clearly: All the seams between my blocks are glitching and kind of 'overlapping' or something. It's much more visible when you're moving around. I'm using a single, simple texture map to draw on my cubes, where each texture is 16*16 pixels big: I have added black edges around the textures to get a kind of cellshaded look, I think it's cool. The texture map has 256 textures of each 16*16 pixels, meaning the total size of my texture map is 256*256 pixels. The code to update the ChunkManager: public void update(ChunkManager chunkManager) { for (Octree<Cube> chunk : chunks) { if (chunk.getId() < 0) { // generate an id for the chunk to be able to call it later chunk.setId(glGenLists(1)); } glNewList(chunk.getId(), GL_COMPILE); glBegin(GL_QUADS); faces += renderChunk(chunk); glEnd(); glEndList(); } } Where my renderChunk method is: private int renderChunk(Octree<Cube> node) { // keep track of the number of visible faces in this chunk int faces = 0; if (!node.isEmpty()) { if (node.isLeaf()) { faces += renderItem(node); } List<Octree<Cube>> children = node.getChildren(); if (children != null && !children.isEmpty()) { for (Octree<Cube> child : children) { faces += renderChunk(child); } } return faces; } Where my renderItem method is the following: private int renderItem(Octree<Cube> node) { Cube cube = node.getItem(-1, -1, -1); int faces = 0; float x = node.getPosition().x; float y = node.getPosition().y; float z = node.getPosition().z; float size = cube.getSize(); Vector3f point1 = new Vector3f(-size + x, -size + y, size + z); Vector3f point2 = new Vector3f(-size + x, size + y, size + z); Vector3f point3 = new Vector3f(size + x, size + y, size + z); Vector3f point4 = new Vector3f(size + x, -size + y, size + z); Vector3f point5 = new Vector3f(-size + x, -size + y, -size + z); Vector3f point6 = new Vector3f(-size + x, size + y, -size + z); Vector3f point7 = new Vector3f(size + x, size + y, -size + z); Vector3f point8 = new Vector3f(size + x, -size + y, -size + z); TextureCoordinates tc = textureManager.getTextureCoordinates(cube.getCubeType()); // front face if (cube.isVisible(CubeSide.FRONT)) { faces++; glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point1.x, point1.y, point1.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point4.x, point4.y, point4.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point3.x, point3.y, point3.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point2.x, point2.y, point2.z); } // back face if (cube.isVisible(CubeSide.BACK)) { faces++; glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point5.x, point5.y, point5.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point6.x, point6.y, point6.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point7.x, point7.y, point7.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point8.x, point8.y, point8.z); } // left face if (cube.isVisible(CubeSide.SIDE_LEFT)) { faces++; glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point5.x, point5.y, point5.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point1.x, point1.y, point1.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point2.x, point2.y, point2.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point6.x, point6.y, point6.z); } // ETC ETC return faces; } When all this is done, I simply render my lists every frame, like this: public void render(ChunkManager chunkManager) { glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureManager.getCubeTextureId()); // load all chunks from the tree List<Octree<Cube>> chunks = chunkManager.getTree().getAllItems(); for (Octree<Cube> chunk : chunks) { if (frustum.cubeInFrustum(chunk.getPosition(), chunk.getSize() / 2)) { glCallList(chunk.getId()); } } } I don't know if anyone is willing to go through all of this code or maybe you can spot the problem right away, but that is basically the problem, and I can't find a solution :-) Thanks for reading and any help is appreciated!

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Ranking - an Introduction

- by PointsToShare

© 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Ranking Ranking is quite common in the internet. Readers are asked to rank their latest reading by clicking on one of 5 (sometimes 10) stars. The number of stars is then converted to a number and the average number of stars as selected by all the readers is proudly (or shamefully) displayed for future readers. SharePoint 2007 lacked this feature altogether. SharePoint 2010 allows the users to rank items in a list or documents in a library (the two are actually the same because a library is actually a list). But in SP2010 the computation of the average is done later on a timer rather than on-the-spot as it should be. I suspect that the reason for this shortcoming is that they did not involve a mathematician! Let me explain. Ranking is kept in a related list. When a user rates a document the rank-list is added an item with the item id, the user name, and his number of stars. The fact that a user already ranked an item prevents him from ranking it again. This prevents the creator of the item from asking his mother to rank it a 5 and do it 753 times, thus stacking the ballot. Some systems will allow a user to change his rating and this will be done by updating the rank-list item. Now, when the timer kicks off, the list is spanned and for each item the rank-list items containing this id are summed up and divided by the number of votes thus yielding the new average. This is obviously very time consuming and very server intensive. In the 18th century an early actuary named James Dodson used what the great Augustus De Morgan (of De Morgan’s law) later named Commutation tables. The labor involved in computing a life insurance premium was staggering and also very error prone. Clerks with pencil and paper would multiply and add mountains of numbers to do the task. The more steps the greater the probability of error and the more expensive the process. Commutation tables created a “summary” of many steps and reduced the work 100 fold. So had Microsoft taken a lesson in the history of computation, they would have developed a much faster way for rating that may be done in real-time and is also 100 times faster and less CPU intensive. How do we do this? We use a form of commutation. We always keep the number of votes and the total of stars. One simple division gives us the average. So we write an event receiver. When a vote is added, we just add the stars to the total-stars and 1 to the number of votes. We then recomputed the average. When a vote is updated, we reduce the total by the old vote, increase it by the new vote and leave the number of votes the same. Again we do the division to get the new average. When a vote is deleted (highly unlikely and maybe even prohibited), we reduce the total by that vote and reduce the number of votes by 1… Gone are the days of spanning lists, counting items, and tallying votes and we have no need for a timer process to run it all. This is the first of a few treatises on ranking. Even though I discussed the math and the history thereof, in here I am only going to solve the presentation issue. I wanted to create the CSS and Jscript needed to display the stars, create the various effects like hovering and clicking (onmouseover, onmouseout, onclick, etc.) and I wanted to create a general solution with any number of stars. When I had it all done, I created the ranking game so that I could test it. The game is interesting in and on itself, so here it is (or go to the games page and select “rank the stars”). BTW, when you play it, look at the source code and see how it was all done. Next, how the 5 stars are displayed in the New and Update forms. When the whole set of articles will be done, you’ll be able to create the complete solution. That’s all folks!

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DVD not detected?

- by Benjamin

As i insert a DVD in my drive (on a laptop) using Kubuntu 12.04, the DVD is not detected. The drive takes the DVD, I can hear it munching on it for a while, and then nothing. Even ejecting the DVD becomes a hassle, I need to do that at boot time otherwise the OS won't allow me to eject. Kubuntu 12.04 used to read and mount the same DVDs just fine a week ago. Edit: since I am able to boot from CD, can I safely assume the issue is not a hardware issue? How can I fix this? wodim --devices returns: wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) : ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 dev='/dev/sg1' rwrw-- : 'Optiarc' 'DVD+-RW AD-7640A' ------------------------------------------------------------------------- sudo lshw -class disk returns: *-cdrom description: DVD-RAM writer product: DVD+-RW AD-7640A vendor: Optiarc physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@3:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/cdrom2 logical name: /dev/cdrw2 logical name: /dev/dvd2 logical name: /dev/dvdrw2 logical name: /dev/sr0 version: JD06 capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram configuration: ansiversion=5 status=open lspci returns: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 0c) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary) (rev 0c) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01) 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) 08:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02) 08:05.2 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 02) 08:05.3 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MS/xD Controller (rev 01) and lsusb: Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0c45:63e0 Microdia Sonix Integrated Webcam Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader The /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf contains: # This file lists those modules which we don't want to be loaded by # alias expansion, usually so some other driver will be loaded for the # device instead. # evbug is a debug tool that should be loaded explicitly blacklist evbug # these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred blacklist usbmouse blacklist usbkbd # replaced by e100 blacklist eepro100 # replaced by tulip blacklist de4x5 # causes no end of confusion by creating unexpected network interfaces blacklist eth1394 # snd_intel8x0m can interfere with snd_intel8x0, doesn't seem to support much # hardware on its own (Ubuntu bug #2011, #6810) blacklist snd_intel8x0m # Conflicts with dvb driver (which is better for handling this device) blacklist snd_aw2 # causes failure to suspend on HP compaq nc6000 (Ubuntu: #10306) blacklist i2c_i801 # replaced by p54pci blacklist prism54 # replaced by b43 and ssb. blacklist bcm43xx # most apps now use garmin usb driver directly (Ubuntu: #114565) blacklist garmin_gps # replaced by asus-laptop (Ubuntu: #184721) blacklist asus_acpi # low-quality, just noise when being used for sound playback, causes # hangs at desktop session start (Ubuntu: #246969) blacklist snd_pcsp # ugly and loud noise, getting on everyone's nerves; this should be done by a # nice pulseaudio bing (Ubuntu: #77010) blacklist pcspkr # EDAC driver for amd76x clashes with the agp driver preventing the aperture # from being initialised (Ubuntu: #297750). Blacklist so that the driver # continues to build and is installable for the few cases where its # really needed. blacklist amd76x_edac

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Goodbye XML… Hello YAML (part 2)

- by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

Part 1 After I explained my motivation for using YAML instead of XML for my data, I got a lot of people asking me what type of tooling is available in the .Net space for consuming YAML. In this post, I will discuss a nice tooling option as well as describe some small modifications to leverage the extremely powerful dynamic capabilities of C# 4.0. I will be referring to the following YAML file throughout this post Recipe: Title: Macaroni and Cheese Description: My favorite comfort food. Author: Brian Genisio TimeToPrepare: 30 Minutes Ingredients: - Name: Cheese Quantity: 3 Units: cups - Name: Macaroni Quantity: 16 Units: oz Steps: - Number: 1 Description: Cook the macaroni - Number: 2 Description: Melt the cheese - Number: 3 Description: Mix the cooked macaroni with the melted cheese Tooling It turns out that there are several implementations of YAML tools out there. The neatest one, in my opinion, is YAML for .NET, Visual Studio and Powershell. It includes a great editor plug-in for Visual Studio as well as YamlCore, which is a parsing engine for .Net. It is in active development still, but it is certainly enough to get you going with YAML in .Net. Start by referenceing YamlCore.dll, load your document, and you are on your way. Here is an example of using the parser to get the title of the Recipe: var yaml = YamlLanguage.FileTo("Data.yaml") as Hashtable; var recipe = yaml["Recipe"] as Hashtable; var title = recipe["Title"] as string; In a similar way, you can access data in the Ingredients set: var yaml = YamlLanguage.FileTo("Data.yaml") as Hashtable; var recipe = yaml["Recipe"] as Hashtable; var ingredients = recipe["Ingredients"] as ArrayList; foreach (Hashtable ingredient in ingredients) { var name = ingredient["Name"] as string; } You may have noticed that YamlCore uses non-generic Hashtables and ArrayLists. This is because YamlCore was designed to work in all .Net versions, including 1.0. Everything in the parsed tree is one of two things: Hashtable, ArrayList or Value type (usually String). This translates well to the YAML structure where everything is either a Map, a Set or a Value. Taking it further Personally, I really dislike writing code like this. Years ago, I promised myself to never write the words Hashtable or ArrayList in my .Net code again. They are ugly, mostly depreciated collections that existed before we got generics in C# 2.0. Now, especially that we have dynamic capabilities in C# 4.0, we can do a lot better than this. With a relatively small amount of code, you can wrap the Hashtables and Array lists with a dynamic wrapper (wrapper code at the bottom of this post). The same code can be re-written to look like this: dynamic doc = YamlDoc.Load("Data.yaml"); var title = doc.Recipe.Title; And dynamic doc = YamlDoc.Load("Data.yaml"); foreach (dynamic ingredient in doc.Recipe.Ingredients) { var name = ingredient.Name; } I significantly prefer this code over the previous. That’s not all… the magic really happens when we take this concept into WPF. With a single line of code, you can bind to the data dynamically in the view: DataContext = YamlDoc.Load("Data.yaml"); Then, your XAML is extremely straight-forward (Nothing else. No static types, no adapter code. Nothing): <StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.Title}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.Description}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.Author}" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Recipe.TimeToPrepare}" /> <TextBlock Text="Ingredients:" FontWeight="Bold" /> <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Recipe.Ingredients}" Margin="10,0,0,0"> <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Quantity}" /> <TextBlock Text=" " /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Units}" /> <TextBlock Text=" of " /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}" /> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> </ItemsControl> <TextBlock Text="Steps:" FontWeight="Bold" /> <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Recipe.Steps}" Margin="10,0,0,0"> <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Number}" /> <TextBlock Text=": " /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Description}" /> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate> </ItemsControl> </StackPanel> This nifty XAML binding trick only works in WPF, unfortunately. Silverlight handles binding differently, so they don’t support binding to dynamic objects as of late (March 2010). This, in my opinion, is a major lacking feature in Silverlight and I really hope we will see this feature available to us in Silverlight 4 Release. (I am not very optimistic for Silverlight 4, but I can hope for the feature in Silverlight 5, can’t I?) Conclusion I still have a few things I want to say about using YAML in the .Net space including de-serialization and using IronRuby for your YAML parser, but this post is hopefully enough to see how easy it is to incorporate YAML documents in your code. Codeplex Site for YAML tools Dynamic wrapper for YamlCore

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Puppet: Making Windows Awesome Since 2011

- by Robz / Fervent Coder

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/robz/archive/2014/08/07/puppet-making-windows-awesome-since-2011.aspxPuppet was one of the first configuration management (CM) tools to support Windows, way back in 2011. It has the heaviest investment on Windows infrastructure with 1/3 of the platform client development staff being Windows folks. It appears that Microsoft believed an end state configuration tool like Puppet was the way forward, so much so that they cloned Puppet’s DSL (domain-specific language) in many ways and are calling it PowerShell DSC. Puppet Labs is pushing the envelope on Windows. Here are several things to note: Puppet x64 Ruby support for Windows coming in v3.7.0. An awesome ACL module (with order, SIDs and very granular control of permissions it is best of any CM). A wealth of modules that work with Windows on the Forge (and more on GitHub). Documentation solely for Windows folks - https://docs.puppetlabs.com/windows. Some of the common learning points with Puppet on Windows user are noted in this recent blog post. Microsoft OpenTech supports Puppet. Azure has the ability to deploy a Puppet Master (http://puppetlabs.com/solutions/microsoft). At Microsoft //Build 2014 in the Day 2 Keynote Puppet Labs CEO Luke Kanies co-presented with Mark Russonivich (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/KEY02 fast forward to 19:30)! Puppet has a Visual Studio Plugin! It can be overwhelming learning a new tool like Puppet at first, but Puppet Labs has some resources to help you on that path. Take a look at the Learning VM, which has a quest-based learning tool. For real-time questions, feel free to drop onto #puppet on freenode.net (yes, some folks still use IRC) with questions, and #puppet-dev with thoughts/feedback on the language itself. You can subscribe to puppet-users / puppet-dev mailing lists. There is also ask.puppetlabs.com for questions and Server Fault if you want to go to a Stack Exchange site. There are books written on learning Puppet. There are even Puppet User Groups (PUGs) and other community resources! Puppet does take some time to learn, but with anything you need to learn, you need to weigh the benefits versus the ramp up time. I learned NHibernate once, it had a very high ramp time back then but was the only game on the street. Puppet’s ramp up time is considerably less than that. The advantage is that you are learning a DSL, and it can apply to multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, OS X, etc.) with the same Puppet resource constructs. As you learn Puppet you may wonder why it has a DSL instead of just leveraging the language of Ruby (or maybe this is one of those things that keeps you up wondering at night). I like the DSL over a small layer on top of Ruby. It allows the Puppet language to be portable and go more places. It makes you think about the end state of what you want to achieve in a declarative sense instead of in an imperative sense. You may also find that right now Puppet doesn’t run manifests (scripts) in order of the way resources are specified. This is the number one learning point for most folks. As a long time consternation of some folks about Puppet, manifest ordering was not possible in the past. In fact it might be why some other CMs exist! As of 3.3.0, Puppet can do manifest ordering, and it will be the default in Puppet 4. http://puppetlabs.com/blog/introducing-manifest-ordered-resources You may have caught earlier that I mentioned PowerShell DSC. But what about DSC? Shouldn’t that be what Windows users want to choose? Other CMs are integrating with DSC, will Puppet follow suit and integrate with DSC? The biggest concern that I have with DSC is it’s lack of visibility in fine-grained reporting of changes (which Puppet has). The other is that it is a very young Microsoft product (pre version 3, you know what they say :) ). I tried getting it working in December and ran into some issues. I’m hoping that newer releases are there that actually work, it does have some promising capabilities, it just doesn’t quite come up to the standard of something that should be used in production. In contrast Puppet is almost a ten year old language with an active community! It’s very stable, and when trusting your business to configuration management, you want something that has been around awhile and has been proven. Give DSC another couple of releases and you might see more folks integrating with it. That said there may be a future with DSC integration. Portability and fine-grained reporting of configuration changes are reasons to take a closer look at Puppet on Windows. Yes, Puppet on Windows is here to stay and it’s continually getting better folks.

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Why Is Faulty Behaviour In The .NET Framework Not Fixed?

- by Alois Kraus

Here is the scenario: You have a Windows Form Application that calls a method via Invoke or BeginInvoke which throws exceptions. Now you want to find out where the error did occur and how the method has been called. Here is the output we do get when we call Begin/EndInvoke or simply Invoke The actual code that was executed was like this: private void cInvoke_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { InvokingFunction(CallMode.Invoke); } [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)] void InvokingFunction(CallMode mode) { switch (mode) { case CallMode.Invoke: this.Invoke(new MethodInvoker(GenerateError)); The faulting method is called GenerateError which does throw a NotImplementedException exception and wraps it in a NotSupportedException. [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)] void GenerateError() { F1(); } private void F1() { try { F2(); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new NotSupportedException("Outer Exception", ex); } } private void F2() { throw new NotImplementedException("Inner Exception"); } It is clear that the method F2 and F1 did actually throw these exceptions but we do not see them in the call stack. If we directly call the InvokingFunction and catch and print the exception we can find out very easily how we did get into this situation. We see methods F1,F2,GenerateError and InvokingFunction directly in the stack trace and we see that actually two exceptions did occur. Here is for comparison what we get from Invoke/EndInvoke System.NotImplementedException: Inner Exception StackTrace: at System.Windows.Forms.Control.MarshaledInvoke(Control caller, Delegate method, Object[] args, Boolean synchronous) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.Invoke(Delegate method, Object[] args) at WindowsFormsApplication1.AppForm.InvokingFunction(CallMode mode) at WindowsFormsApplication1.AppForm.cInvoke_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) The exception message is kept but the stack starts running from our Invoke call and not from the faulting method F2. We have therefore no clue where this exception did occur! The stack starts running at the method MarshaledInvoke because the exception is rethrown with the throw catchedException which resets the stack trace. That is bad but things are even worse because if previously lets say 5 exceptions did occur .NET will return only the first (innermost) exception. That does mean that we do not only loose the original call stack but all other exceptions and all data contained therein as well. It is a pity that MS does know about this and simply closes this issue as not important. Programmers will play a lot more around with threads than before thanks to TPL, PLINQ that do come with .NET 4. Multithreading is hyped quit a lot in the press and everybody wants to use threads. But if the .NET Framework makes it nearly impossible to track down the easiest UI multithreading issue I have a problem with that. The problem has been reported but obviously not been solved. .NET 4 Beta 2 did not have changed that dreaded GetBaseException call in MarshaledInvoke to return only the innermost exception of the complete exception stack. It is really time to fix this. WPF on the other hand does the right thing and wraps the exceptions inside a TargetInvocationException which makes much more sense. But Not everybody uses WPF for its daily work and Windows forms applications will still be used for a long time. Below is the code to repro the issues shown and how the exceptions can be rendered in a meaningful way. The default Exception.ToString implementation generates a hard to interpret stack if several nested exceptions did occur. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Threading; using System.Globalization; using System.Runtime.CompilerServices; namespace WindowsFormsApplication1 { public partial class AppForm : Form { enum CallMode { Direct = 0, BeginInvoke = 1, Invoke = 2 }; public AppForm() { InitializeComponent(); Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture; Application.ThreadException += new System.Threading.ThreadExceptionEventHandler(Application_ThreadException); } void Application_ThreadException(object sender, System.Threading.ThreadExceptionEventArgs e) { cOutput.Text = PrintException(e.Exception, 0, null).ToString(); } private void cDirectUnhandled_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { InvokingFunction(CallMode.Direct); } private void cDirectCall_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { try { InvokingFunction(CallMode.Direct); } catch (Exception ex) { cOutput.Text = PrintException(ex, 0, null).ToString(); } } private void cInvoke_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { InvokingFunction(CallMode.Invoke); } private void cBeginInvokeCall_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { InvokingFunction(CallMode.BeginInvoke); } [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)] void InvokingFunction(CallMode mode) { switch (mode) { case CallMode.Direct: GenerateError(); break; case CallMode.Invoke: this.Invoke(new MethodInvoker(GenerateError)); break; case CallMode.BeginInvoke: IAsyncResult res = this.BeginInvoke(new MethodInvoker(GenerateError)); this.EndInvoke(res); break; } } [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)] void GenerateError() { F1(); } private void F1() { try { F2(); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new NotSupportedException("Outer Exception", ex); } } private void F2() { throw new NotImplementedException("Inner Exception"); } StringBuilder PrintException(Exception ex, int identLevel, StringBuilder sb) { StringBuilder builtStr = sb; if( builtStr == null ) builtStr = new StringBuilder(); if( ex == null ) return builtStr; WriteLine(builtStr, String.Format("{0}: {1}", ex.GetType().FullName, ex.Message), identLevel); WriteLine(builtStr, String.Format("StackTrace: {0}", ShortenStack(ex.StackTrace)), identLevel + 1); builtStr.AppendLine(); return PrintException(ex.InnerException, ++identLevel, builtStr); } void WriteLine(StringBuilder sb, string msg, int identLevel) { foreach (string trimmedLine in SplitToLines(msg) .Select( (line) => line.Trim()) ) { for (int i = 0; i < identLevel; i++) sb.Append('\t'); sb.Append(trimmedLine); sb.AppendLine(); } } string ShortenStack(string stack) { int nonAppFrames = 0; // Skip stack frames not part of our app but include two foreign frames and skip the rest // If our stack frame is encountered reset counter to 0 return SplitToLines(stack) .Where((line) => { nonAppFrames = line.Contains("WindowsFormsApplication1") ? 0 : nonAppFrames + 1; return nonAppFrames < 3; }) .Select((line) => line) .Aggregate("", (current, line) => current + line + Environment.NewLine); } static char[] NewLines = Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray(); string[] SplitToLines(string str) { return str.Split(NewLines, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); } } }

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PowerShell Script to Enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 Permissions and Active Directory Group Membership

- by Brian T. Jackett

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/bjackett/archive/2013/07/01/powershell-script-to-enumerate-sharepoint-2010-or-2013-permissions-and.aspx In this post I will present a script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 permissions across the entire farm down to the site (SPWeb) level. As a bonus this script also recursively expands the membership of any Active Directory (AD) group including nested groups which you wouldn’t be able to find through the SharePoint UI. History Back in 2009 (over 4 years ago now) I published one my most read blog posts about enumerating SharePoint 2007 permissions. I finally got around to updating that script to remove deprecated APIs, supporting the SharePoint 2010 commandlets, and fixing a few bugs. There are 2 things that script did that I had to remove due to major architectural or procedural changes in the script. Indenting the XML output Ability to search for a specific user I plan to add back the ability to search for a specific user but wanted to get this version published first. As for indenting the XML that could be added but would take some effort. If there is user demand for it (let me know in the comments or email me using the contact button at top of blog) I’ll move it up in priorities. As a side note you may also notice that I’m not using the Active Directory commandlets. This was a conscious decision since not all environments have them available. Instead I’m relying on the older [ADSI] type accelerator and APIs. It does add a significant amount of code to the script but it is necessary for compatibility. Hopefully in a few years if I need to update again I can remove that legacy code. Solution Below is the script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 and 2013 permissions down to site level. You can also download it from my SkyDrive account or my posting on the TechNet Script Center Repository. SkyDrive TechNet Script Center Repository http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Enumerate-SharePoint-2010-35976bdb 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 ########################################################### #DisplaySPWebApp8.ps1 # #Author: Brian T. Jackett #Last Modified Date: 2013-07-01 # #Traverse the entire web app site by site to display # hierarchy and users with permissions to site. ########################################################### function Expand-ADGroupMembership { Param ( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=0)] [string] $ADGroupName, [Parameter(Position=1)] [string] $RoleBinding ) Process { $roleBindingText = "" if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($RoleBinding)) { $roleBindingText = " RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`"" } Write-Output "<ADGroup Name=`"$($ADGroupName)`"$roleBindingText>" $domain = $ADGroupName.substring(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1) $groupName = $ADGroupName.Remove(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1) #BEGIN - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY #http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/powershell/search/users/srch106.mspx #GET AD GROUP FROM DIRECTORY SERVICES SEARCH $strFilter = "(&(objectCategory=Group)(name="+($groupName)+"))" $objDomain = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry $objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher $objSearcher.SearchRoot = $objDomain $objSearcher.Filter = $strFilter # specify properties to be returned $colProplist = ("name","member","objectclass") foreach ($i in $colPropList) { $catcher = $objSearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add($i) } $colResults = $objSearcher.FindAll() #END - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY foreach ($objResult in $colResults) { if($objResult.Properties["Member"] -ne $null) { foreach ($member in $objResult.Properties["Member"]) { $indMember = [adsi] "LDAP://$member" $fullMemberName = $domain + ($indMember.Name) #if($indMember["objectclass"] # if child AD group continue down chain if(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "group") { Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $fullMemberName } elseif(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "user") { Write-Output "<ADUser>$fullMemberName</ADUser>" } } } } Write-Output "</ADGroup>" } } #end Expand-ADGroupMembership # main portion of script if((Get-PSSnapin -Name microsoft.sharepoint.powershell) -eq $null) { Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell } $farm = Get-SPFarm Write-Output "<Farm Guid=`"$($farm.Id)`">" $webApps = Get-SPWebApplication foreach($webApp in $webApps) { Write-Output "<WebApplication URL=`"$($webApp.URL)`" Name=`"$($webApp.Name)`">" foreach($site in $webApp.Sites) { Write-Output "<SiteCollection URL=`"$($site.URL)`">" foreach($web in $site.AllWebs) { Write-Output "<Site URL=`"$($web.URL)`">" # if site inherits permissions from parent then stop processing if($web.HasUniqueRoleAssignments -eq $false) { Write-Output "" } # else site has unique permissions else { foreach($assignment in $web.RoleAssignments) { if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($assignment.Member.Xml)) { $roleBindings = ($assignment.RoleDefinitionBindings | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name) -join "," # check if assignment is SharePoint Group if($assignment.Member.XML.StartsWith('<Group') -eq "True") { Write-Output "<SPGroup Name=`"$($assignment.Member.Name)`" RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">" foreach($SPGroupMember in $assignment.Member.Users) { # if SharePoint group member is an AD Group if($SPGroupMember.IsDomainGroup) { Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $SPGroupMember.Name } # else SharePoint group member is an AD User else { # remove claim portion of user login #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin.Remove(0,$SPGroupMember.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>" Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin)</ADUser>" } } Write-Output "</SPGroup>" } # else an indivdually listed AD group or user else { if($assignment.Member.IsDomainGroup) { Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $assignment.Member.Name -RoleBinding $roleBindings } else { # remove claim portion of user login #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($assignment.Member.UserLogin.Remove(0,$assignment.Member.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>" Write-Output "<ADUser RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">$($assignment.Member.UserLogin)</ADUser>" } } } } } Write-Output "</Site>" $web.Dispose() } Write-Output "</SiteCollection>" $site.Dispose() } Write-Output "</WebApplication>" } Write-Output "</Farm>" The output from the script can be sent to an XML which you can then explore using the [XML] type accelerator. This lets you explore the XML structure however you see fit. See the screenshot below for an example. If you do view the XML output through a text editor (Notepad++ for me) notice the format. Below we see a SharePoint site that has a SharePoint group Demo Members with Edit permissions assigned. Demo Members has an AD group corp\developers as a member. corp\developers has a child AD group called corp\DevelopersSub with 1 AD user in that sub group. As you can see the script recursively expands the AD hierarchy. Conclusion It took me 4 years to finally update this script but I‘m happy to get this published. I was able to fix a number of errors and smooth out some rough edges. I plan to develop this into a more full fledged tool over the next year with more features and flexibility (copy permissions, search for individual user or group, optional enumerate lists / items, etc.). If you have any feedback, feature requests, or issues running it please let me know. Enjoy the script! -Frog Out

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The SSIS tuning tip that everyone misses

- by Rob Farley

I know that everyone misses this, because I’m yet to find someone who doesn’t have a bit of an epiphany when I describe this. When tuning Data Flows in SQL Server Integration Services, people see the Data Flow as moving from the Source to the Destination, passing through a number of transformations. What people don’t consider is the Source, getting the data out of a database. Remember, the source of data for your Data Flow is not your Source Component. It’s wherever the data is, within your database, probably on a disk somewhere. You need to tune your query to optimise it for SSIS, and this is what most people fail to do. I’m not suggesting that people don’t tune their queries – there’s plenty of information out there about making sure that your queries run as fast as possible. But for SSIS, it’s not about how fast your query runs. Let me say that again, but in bolder text: The speed of an SSIS Source is not about how fast your query runs. If your query is used in a Source component for SSIS, the thing that matters is how fast it starts returning data. In particular, those first 10,000 rows to populate that first buffer, ready to pass down the rest of the transformations on its way to the Destination. Let’s look at a very simple query as an example, using the AdventureWorks database: We’re picking the different Weight values out of the Product table, and it’s doing this by scanning the table and doing a Sort. It’s a Distinct Sort, which means that the duplicates are discarded. It'll be no surprise to see that the data produced is sorted. Obvious, I know, but I'm making a comparison to what I'll do later. Before I explain the problem here, let me jump back into the SSIS world... If you’ve investigated how to tune an SSIS flow, then you’ll know that some SSIS Data Flow Transformations are known to be Blocking, some are Partially Blocking, and some are simply Row transformations. Take the SSIS Sort transformation, for example. I’m using a larger data set for this, because my small list of Weights won’t demonstrate it well enough. Seven buffers of data came out of the source, but none of them could be pushed past the Sort operator, just in case the last buffer contained the data that would be sorted into the first buffer. This is a blocking operation. Back in the land of T-SQL, we consider our Distinct Sort operator. It’s also blocking. It won’t let data through until it’s seen all of it. If you weren’t okay with blocking operations in SSIS, why would you be happy with them in an execution plan? The source of your data is not your OLE DB Source. Remember this. The source of your data is the NCIX/CIX/Heap from which it’s being pulled. Picture it like this... the data flowing from the Clustered Index, through the Distinct Sort operator, into the SELECT operator, where a series of SSIS Buffers are populated, flowing (as they get full) down through the SSIS transformations. Alright, I know that I’m taking some liberties here, because the two queries aren’t the same, but consider the visual. The data is flowing from your disk and through your execution plan before it reaches SSIS, so you could easily find that a blocking operation in your plan is just as painful as a blocking operation in your SSIS Data Flow. Luckily, T-SQL gives us a brilliant query hint to help avoid this. OPTION (FAST 10000) This hint means that it will choose a query which will optimise for the first 10,000 rows – the default SSIS buffer size. And the effect can be quite significant. First let’s consider a simple example, then we’ll look at a larger one. Consider our weights. We don’t have 10,000, so I’m going to use OPTION (FAST 1) instead. You’ll notice that the query is more expensive, using a Flow Distinct operator instead of the Distinct Sort. This operator is consuming 84% of the query, instead of the 59% we saw from the Distinct Sort. But the first row could be returned quicker – a Flow Distinct operator is non-blocking. The data here isn’t sorted, of course. It’s in the same order that it came out of the index, just with duplicates removed. As soon as a Flow Distinct sees a value that it hasn’t come across before, it pushes it out to the operator on its left. It still has to maintain the list of what it’s seen so far, but by handling it one row at a time, it can push rows through quicker. Overall, it’s a lot more work than the Distinct Sort, but if the priority is the first few rows, then perhaps that’s exactly what we want. The Query Optimizer seems to do this by optimising the query as if there were only one row coming through: This 1 row estimation is caused by the Query Optimizer imagining the SELECT operation saying “Give me one row” first, and this message being passed all the way along. The request might not make it all the way back to the source, but in my simple example, it does. I hope this simple example has helped you understand the significance of the blocking operator. Now I’m going to show you an example on a much larger data set. This data was fetching about 780,000 rows, and these are the Estimated Plans. The data needed to be Sorted, to support further SSIS operations that needed that. First, without the hint. ...and now with OPTION (FAST 10000): A very different plan, I’m sure you’ll agree. In case you’re curious, those arrows in the top one are 780,000 rows in size. In the second, they’re estimated to be 10,000, although the Actual figures end up being 780,000. The top one definitely runs faster. It finished several times faster than the second one. With the amount of data being considered, these numbers were in minutes. Look at the second one – it’s doing Nested Loops, across 780,000 rows! That’s not generally recommended at all. That’s “Go and make yourself a coffee” time. In this case, it was about six or seven minutes. The faster one finished in about a minute. But in SSIS-land, things are different. The particular data flow that was consuming this data was significant. It was being pumped into a Script Component to process each row based on previous rows, creating about a dozen different flows. The data flow would take roughly ten minutes to run – ten minutes from when the data first appeared. The query that completes faster – chosen by the Query Optimizer with no hints, based on accurate statistics (rather than pretending the numbers are smaller) – would take a minute to start getting the data into SSIS, at which point the ten-minute flow would start, taking eleven minutes to complete. The query that took longer – chosen by the Query Optimizer pretending it only wanted the first 10,000 rows – would take only ten seconds to fill the first buffer. Despite the fact that it might have taken the database another six or seven minutes to get the data out, SSIS didn’t care. Every time it wanted the next buffer of data, it was already available, and the whole process finished in about ten minutes and ten seconds. When debugging SSIS, you run the package, and sit there waiting to see the Debug information start appearing. You look for the numbers on the data flow, and seeing operators going Yellow and Green. Without the hint, I’d sit there for a minute. With the hint, just ten seconds. You can imagine which one I preferred. By adding this hint, it felt like a magic wand had been waved across the query, to make it run several times faster. It wasn’t the case at all – but it felt like it to SSIS.

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EPM and Business Analytics Talking-head Videos from Oracle OpenWorld 2013

- by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Here is a selection of 2 to 3 minute video interviews at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld: 1. George Somogyi, Solutions Architect, New Edge Group, talks about the importance of having their integrated Oracle Hyperion Platform consisting of Oracle Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, Oracle E-Business Suite R12 and Oracle Business Intelligence Extended Edition plus their use of Oracle Managed Cloud Services. Speaker: George Somogyi @ http://youtu.be/kWn0dQxCUy8 2. Gregg Thompson, Director of Financial Systems for ADT, talks about using Oracle Data Relationship Management prior to implementing an Enterprise Performance Management solution. Gregg confirmed that there are big benefits to bringing the full Oracle Hyperion Financial Close suite online with Oracle DRM as the metadata source. Reduced maintenance time and use of external consultants translates into significant time and cost savings and faster implementation times. Speaker: Gregg Thompson @ http://youtu.be/XnFrR9Uk4xk 3. Jeff Spangler, Director Financial Planning and Analysis for Speedy Cash Holdings Corp, talked to us about the benefits achieved through implementing Oracle Hyperion Planning and financial reporting solutions. He also describes how the use of Data Relationship Management will keep the process running smoothly now and in the future. Speaker: Jeff Spangler @ http://youtu.be/kkkuMkgJ22U 4. Marc Seewald, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Hyperion Tax Provision at Oracle, talks about Oracle Hyperion Tax Provision, how it is an integral part of the financial close process and that it provides better internal controls and automation of this task. Marc talks about Oracle Partners and customers alike who are seeing great value. Speaker: Marc Seewald @ http://youtu.be/lM_nfvACGuA 5. Matt Bradley, SVP of Product Development for Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Applications at Oracle, talked to us about different deployment options for Oracle EPM. Cloud services (SaaS), managed services, on-premise, off-premise all have their merits, and organizations need flexibility to easily move between them as their companies evolve. Speaker: Matt Bradley @ http://youtu.be/ATO7Z9dbE-o 6. Neil Sellers, Partner, Qubix International talks about their experience with previewing Oracle’s new Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service. He describes the benefits of the step-by-step task lists, the speed of getting the application up and running, and the huge benefits of not having to manage the software and hardware side of the planning process. Speaker: Neil Sellers @ http://youtu.be/xmosO28e4_I 7. Praveen Pasupuleti, Senior Business Intelligence Development Manager of Citrix Systems Inc., talks about their Oracle Hyperion Planning upgrade and the huge performance improvement now experienced in forecasting. He also talked about the benefits of Oracle Hyperion Workforce Planning achieved by Citrix. Speaker: Praveen Pasupuleti @ http://youtu.be/d1e_4hLqw8c 8. CheckPoint Consulting, talked to us about how Enterprise Performance Management should be viewed as an entire solution, rather than as a bunch of applications in silos, to provide significant benefits; and how Data Relationship Management can tie it all together effectively. Speaker: Ron Dimon @ http://youtu.be/sRwbdbbXvUE 9. Sonal Kulkarni, Enterprise Performance Management Leader, Cummins Inc., talks about their use of Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management (Account Reconciliation Manager), Oracle Hyperion Financial Management and Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management and how this is providing efficiency, visibility and compliance benefits. Speaker: Sonal Kulkarni @ http://youtu.be/OEgup5dKyVc 10. Todd Renard, Manager Financial Planning and Business Analytics for B/E Aerospace Inc., talks about the huge benefits that B/E Aerospace is experiencing from Oracle Financial Close Suite. He was extremely excited about Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management and how this helps them integrate a new business in as little as three weeks. Speaker: Todd Renard @ http://youtu.be/nIfqK46uVI8 11. Peter Smolianski, Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia Courts, talked to us about how D.C. Courts is using Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management to push their 5 year plan forward, to report results to their constituents, and take accountability for process changes to become more efficient. Speaker: Peter Smolianski @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-DtB5pl-uk 12. Rich Wilkie, Senior Director of Product Management for Financial Close Suite at Oracle, talked to us about Oracle Financial Management Analytics. He told us how the prebuilt dashboards on top of Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Suite make it easy for everyone to see the numbers and understand where they are in the close process, and if there is an issue, they can see where it is. Executives are excited to get this information on mobile devices too. Speaker: Rich Wilkie @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UHuHgx74Yg 13. Dinesh Balebail, Senior Director of Software Development for Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, talked to us about the power and speed of Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management and how it is being used to do deep costing for Telecoms, Hospitals, Banks and other high transaction volume organizations effectively. Speaker: Dinesh Balebail @ http://youtu.be/ivx5AZCXAfs /* 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-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}

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WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections

- by Kevin Smith

Kyle has a good post on how to modify the size and number of WebCenter Content (WCC) trace files. His post reminded me I have been meaning to write a post on WCC trace sections for a while. searchcache - Tells you if you query was found in the WCC search cache. searchquery - Shows the processing of the query as it is converted form what the user submitted to the end query that will be sent to the database. Shows conversion from the universal query syntax to the syntax specific to the search solution WCC is configured to use. services (verbose) - Lists the filters that are called for each service. This will let you know what filters are available for each service and will also tell you what filters are used by WCC add-on components and any custom components you have installed. The How To Component Sample has a list of filters, but it has not been updated since 7.5, so it is a little outdated now. With each new release WCC adds more filters. If you have a filter that has no code attached to it you will see output like this: services/6 09.25 06:40:26.270 IdcServer-423 Called filter event computeDocName with no filter plugins registered When a WCC add-on or custom component uses a filter you will see trace output like this: services/6 09.25 06:40:26.275 IdcServer-423 Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionValidateCheckinData with parameter postValidateCheckinDataservices/6 09.25 06:40:26.275 IdcServer-423 Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionFilters with parameter postValidateCheckinData As you can see from this sample output it is possible to have multiple code points using the same filter. systemdatabase - Dumps the database call AFTER it executes. This can be somewhat troublesome if you are trying to track down some weird database problems. We had a problem where WCC was getting into a deadlock situation. We turned on the systemdatabase trace section and thought we had the problem database call, but it turned out since it printed out the database call after it was executed we were looking at the database call BEFORE the one causing the deadlock. We ended up having to turn on tracing at the database level to see the database call WCC was making that was causing the deadlock. socketrequests (verbose) - dumps the actual messages received and sent over the socket connection by WCC for a service. If you have gzip enabled you will see junk on the response coming back from WCC. For debugging disable the gzip of the WCC response.Here is an example of the dump of the request for a GET_SEARCH_RESULTS service call. socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: REMOTE_USER=sysadmin.USER-AGENT=Java;.Stel socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: lent.CIS.11g.CONTENT_TYPE=text/html.HEADER socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: _ENCODING=UTF-8.REQUEST_METHOD=POST.CONTEN socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: T_LENGTH=270.HTTP_HOST=CIS.$$$$.NoHttpHead socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: ers=0.IsJava=1.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESUL socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: [email protected] socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: calData.SortField=dDocName.ClientEncoding= socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: UTF-8.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESULTS.UserTi socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: meZone=UTC.UserDateFormat=iso8601.SortDesc socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: =ASC.QueryText=dDocType..matches..`Documen socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: t`.@end. userstorage, jps - Provides trace details for user authentication and authorization. Includes information on the determination of what roles and accounts a user has access to. In 11g a new trace section, jps, was added with the addition of the JpsUserProvider to communicate with WebLogic Server. The WCC developers decide when to use the verbose option for their trace output, so sometime you need to try verbose to see what different information you get. One of the things I would always have liked to see if the ability to turn on verbose output selectively for individual trace sections. When you turn on verbose output you get it for all trace sections you have enabled. This can quickly fill up your trace files with a lot of information if you have the socket trace section turned on.

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How-to delete a tree node using the context menu

- by frank.nimphius

Hierarchical trees in Oracle ADF make use of View Accessors, which means that only the top level node needs to be exposed as a View Object instance on the ADF Business Components Data Model. This also means that only the top level node has a representation in the PageDef file as a tree binding and iterator binding reference. Detail nodes are accessed through tree rule definitions that use the accessor mentioned above (or nested collections in the case of POJO or EJB business services). The tree component is configured for single node selection, which however can be declaratively changed for users to press the ctrl key and selecting multiple nodes. In the following, I explain how to create a context menu on the tree for users to delete the selected tree nodes. For this, the context menu item will access a managed bean, which then determines the selected node(s), the internal ADF node bindings and the rows they represent. As mentioned, the ADF Business Components Data Model only needs to expose the top level node data sources, which in this example is an instance of the Locations View Object. For the tree to work, you need to have associations defined between entities, which usually is done for you by Oracle JDeveloper if the database tables have foreign keys defined Note: As a general hint of best practices and to simplify your life: Make sure your database schema is well defined and designed before starting your development project. Don't treat the database as something organic that grows and changes with the requirements as you proceed in your project. Business service refactoring in response to database changes is possible, but should be treated as an exception, not the rule. Good database design is a necessity – even for application developers – and nothing evil. To create the tree component, expand the Data Controls panel and drag the View Object collection to the view. From the context menu, select the tree component entry and continue with defining the tree rules that make up the hierarchical structure. As you see, when pressing the green plus icon in the Edit Tree Binding dialog, the data structure, Locations - Departments – Employees in my sample, shows without you having created a View Object instance for each of the nodes in the ADF Business Components Data Model. After you configured the tree structure in the Edit Tree Binding dialog, you press OK and the tree is created. Select the tree in the page editor and open the Structure Window (ctrl+shift+S). In the Structure window, expand the tree node to access the conextMenu facet. Use the right mouse button to insert a Popup into the facet. Repeat the same steps to insert a Menu and a Menu Item into the Popup you created. The Menu item text should be changed to something meaningful like "Delete". Note that the custom menu item later is added to the context menu together with the default context menu options like expand and expand all. To define the action that is executed when the menu item is clicked on, you select the Action Listener property in the Property Inspector and click the arrow icon followed by the Edit menu option. Create or select a managed bean and define a method name for the action handler. Next, select the tree component and browse to its binding property in the Property Inspector. Again, use the arrow icon | Edit option to create a component binding in the same managed bean that has the action listener defined. The tree handle is used in the action listener code, which is shown below: public void onTreeNodeDelete(ActionEvent actionEvent) { //access the tree from the JSF component reference created //using the af:tree "binding" property. The "binding" property //creates a pair of set/get methods to access the RichTree instance RichTree tree = this.getTreeHandler(); //get the list of selected row keys RowKeySet rks = tree.getSelectedRowKeys(); //access the iterator to loop over selected nodes Iterator rksIterator = rks.iterator(); //The CollectionModel represents the tree model and is //accessed from the tree "value" property CollectionModel model = (CollectionModel) tree.getValue(); //The CollectionModel is a wrapper for the ADF tree binding //class, which is JUCtrlHierBinding JUCtrlHierBinding treeBinding = (JUCtrlHierBinding) model.getWrappedData(); //loop over the selected nodes and delete the rows they //represent while(rksIterator.hasNext()){ List nodeKey = (List) rksIterator.next(); //find the ADF node binding using the node key JUCtrlHierNodeBinding node = treeBinding.findNodeByKeyPath(nodeKey); //delete the row. Row rw = node.getRow(); rw.remove(); } //only refresh the tree if tree nodes have been selected if(rks.size() > 0){ AdfFacesContext adfFacesContext = AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); adfFacesContext.addPartialTarget(tree); } } Note: To enable multi node selection for a tree, select the tree and change the row selection setting from "single" to "multiple". Note: a fully pictured version of this post will become available at the end of the month in a PDF summary on ADF Code Corner : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/learnmore/index-101235.html

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Create a Smoother Period Close

- by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

Untitled Document Do You Use Oracle E-Business Suite Products Involved in Accounting Period Closes? We understand that closing the periods in your system at the end of an accounting period enables your company to make the right business decisions. We also know this requires prior preparation, good procedures, and quality data. To help you meet that need, Oracle E-Business Suite’s proactive support team developed the Period Close Advisor to help your organization conduct a smooth period close for its Oracle E-Business Suite 12 products. The Period Close Advisor is composed of logical steps you can follow, aligned by the business requirement flow. It will help with an orderly close of the product sub-ledgers before posting to the General Ledger. It combines recommendations and industry best practices with tips from subject matter experts for troubleshooting. You will find patches needed and references to assist you during each phase. Get to know the E-Business Suite Period Close Advisor The Period Close Advisor does more than help the users of Oracle E-Business Suite products close their period. You can use it before and throughout the period to stay on track. Proactively it assists you as you set up your company’s period close process. During the period, it helps evaluate your system’s readiness for initiating the period close procedures and prepare the system for a smooth period close experience. The Period Close Advisor gets you to answers when you have questions and gives you the latest news from us on Oracle E-Business Suite’s period close. The Period Close Advisor is the right place to start. How to Use the E-Business Suite Period Close The Period Close Advisor graphically guides you through your period close. The tabs show you the products (also called applications or sub-ledgers) covered, and the product order required for the processing to handle any dependencies between the products. Users of all the products it covers can benefit from the information it contains. Structure of the Period Close Advisor Clicking on a tab gives you the details for that particular step in the process. This includes an overview, showing how the products fit into the overall period close process, and step-by-step information on each phase needed to complete the period close for the tab. You will also find multimedia training and related resources you can access if you need more information. Once you click on any of the phases, you see guidance for that phase. This can include: Tips from the subject-matter experts—here are examples from a Cash Management specialist: “For organizations with high transaction volumes bank statements should be loaded and reconciled on a daily basis.” “The automatic reconciliation process can be set up to create miscellaneous transactions automatically.” References to useful Knowledge Base documents: Information Centers for the products and features FAQs on functionality Known Issues and patches with both the errors and their solutions How-to documents that explain in detail how to use a feature or complete a process White papers that give overview of a feature, list setup required to use the feature, etc. Links to diagnosticsthat help debug issues you may find in a process Additional information and alerts about a process or reports that can help you prevent issues from surfacing This excerpt from the “Process Transaction” phase for the Receivables product lists documents you’ll find helpful. How to Get Started with the Period Close Advisor The Period Close Advisor is a great resource that can be used both as a proactive tool (while setting up your period end procedures) and as the first document to refer to when you encounter an issue during the period close procedures! As mentioned earlier, the order of the product tabs in the Period Close Advisor gives you the recommended order of closing. The first thing to do is to ensure that you are following the prescribed order for closing the period, if you are using more than one sub-ledger. Next, review the information shared in the Evaluate and Prepare and Process Transactions phases. Make sure that you are following the recommended best practices; you have applied the recommended patches, etc. The Reconcile phase gives you the recommended steps to follow for reconciling a sub-ledger with the General Ledger. Ensure that your reconciliation procedure aligns with those steps. At any stage during the period close processing, if you encounter an issue, you can revisit the Period Close Advisor. Choose the product you have an issue with and then select the phase you are in. You will be able to review information that can help you find a solution to the issue you are facing. Stay Informed Oracle updates the Period Close Advisor as we learn of new issues and information. Bookmark the Oracle E-Business Suite Period Close Advisor [ID 335.1] and keep coming back to it for the latest information on period close

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Integrating Windows Form Click Once Application into SharePoint 2007 – Part 2 of 4

- by Kelly Jones

In my last post, I explained why we decided to use a Click Once application to solve our business problem. To quickly review, we needed a way for our business users to upload documents to a SharePoint 2007 document library in mass, set the meta data, set the permissions per document, and to do so easily. Let’s look at the pieces that make up our solution. First, we have the Windows Form application. This app is deployed using Click Once and calls SharePoint web services in order to upload files and then calls web services to set the meta data (SharePoint columns and permissions). Second, we have a custom action. The custom action is responsible for providing our users a link that will launch the Windows app, as well as passing values to it via the query string. And lastly, we have the web services that the Windows Form application calls. For our solution, we used both out of the box web services and a custom web service in order to set the column values in the document library as well as the permissions on the documents. Now, let’s look at the technical details of each of these pieces. (All of the code is downloadable from here: ) Windows Form application deployed via Click Once The Windows Form application, called “Custom Upload”, has just a few classes in it: Custom Upload -- the form FileList.xsd -- the dataset used to track the names of the files and their meta data values SharePointUpload -- this class handles uploading the file SharePointUpload uses an HttpWebRequest to transfer the file to the web server. We had to change this code from a WebClient object to the HttpWebRequest object, because we needed to be able to set the time out value. public bool UploadDocument(string localFilename, string remoteFilename) { bool result = true; //Need to use an HttpWebRequest object instead of a WebClient object // so we can set the timeout (WebClient doesn't allow you to set the timeout!) HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(remoteFilename); try { req.Method = "PUT"; req.Timeout = 60 * 1000; //convert seconds to milliseconds req.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = true; req.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials; req.SendChunked = false; req.KeepAlive = true; Stream reqStream = req.GetRequestStream(); FileStream rdr = new FileStream(localFilename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read); byte[] inData = new byte[4096]; int bytesRead = rdr.Read(inData, 0, inData.Length); while (bytesRead > 0) { reqStream.Write(inData, 0, bytesRead); bytesRead = rdr.Read(inData, 0, inData.Length); } reqStream.Close(); rdr.Close(); System.Net.HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse(); if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK && response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.Created) { String msg = String.Format("An error occurred while uploading this file: {0}\n\nError response code: {1}", System.IO.Path.GetFileName(localFilename), response.StatusCode.ToString()); LogWarning(msg, "2ACFFCCA-59BA-40c8-A9AB-05FA3331D223"); result = false; } } catch (Exception ex) { LogException(ex, "{E9D62A93-D298-470d-A6BA-19AAB237978A}"); result = false; } return result; } The class also contains the LogException() and LogWarning() methods. When the application is launched, it parses the query string for some initial values. The query string looks like this: string queryString = "Srv=clickonce&Sec=N&Doc=DMI&SiteName=&Speed=128000&Max=50"; This Srv is the path to the server (my Virtual Machine is name “clickonce”), the Sec is short for security – meaning HTTPS or HTTP, the Doc is the shortcut for which document library to use, and SiteName is the name of the SharePoint site. Speed is used to calculate an estimate for download speed for each file. We added this so our users uploading documents would realize how long it might take for clients in remote locations (using slow WAN connections) to download the documents. The last value, Max, is the maximum size that the SharePoint site will allow documents to be. This allowed us to give users a warning that a file is too large before we even attempt to upload it. Another critical piece is the meta data collection. We organized our site using SharePoint content types, so when the app loads, it gets a list of the document library’s content types. The user then select one of the content types from the drop down list, and then we query SharePoint to get a list of the fields that make up that content type. We used both an out of the box web service, and one that we custom built, in order to get these values. Once we have the content type fields, we then add controls to the form. Which type of control we add depends on the data type of the field. (DateTime pickers for date/time fields, etc) We didn’t write code to cover every data type, since we were working with a limited set of content types and field data types. Here’s a screen shot of the Form, before and after someone has selected the content types and our code has added the custom controls: The other piece of meta data we collect is the in the upper right corner of the app, “Users with access”. This box lists the different SharePoint Groups that we have set up and by checking the boxes, the user can set the permissions on the uploaded documents. All of this meta data is collected and submitted to our custom web service, which then sets the values on the documents on the list. We’ll look at these web services in a future post. In the next post, we’ll walk through the Custom Action we built.

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Using Delegates in C# (Part 1)

- by rajbk

This post provides a very basic introduction of delegates in C#. Part 2 of this post can be read here. A delegate is a class that is derived from System.Delegate. It contains a list of one or more methods called an invocation list. When a delegate instance is “invoked” with the arguments as defined in the signature of the delegate, each of the methods in the invocation list gets invoked with the arguments. The code below shows example with static and instance methods respectively: Static Methods 1: using System; 2: using System.Linq; 3: using System.Collections.Generic; 4: 5: public delegate void SayName(string name); 6: 7: public class Program 8: { 9: [STAThread] 10: static void Main(string[] args) 11: { 12: SayName englishDelegate = new SayName(SayNameInEnglish); 13: SayName frenchDelegate = new SayName(SayNameInFrench); 14: SayName combinedDelegate =(SayName)Delegate.Combine(englishDelegate, frenchDelegate); 15: 16: combinedDelegate.Invoke("Tom"); 17: Console.ReadLine(); 18: } 19: 20: static void SayNameInFrench(string name) { 21: Console.WriteLine("J'ai m'appelle " + name); 22: } 23: 24: static void SayNameInEnglish(string name) { 25: Console.WriteLine("My name is " + name); 26: } 27: } We have declared a delegate of type SayName with return type of void and taking an input parameter of name of type string. On line 12, we create a new instance of this delegate which refers to a static method - SayNameInEnglish. SayNameInEnglish has the same return type and parameter list as the delegate declaration. Once a delegate is instantiated, the instance will always refer to the same target. Delegates are immutable. On line 13, we create a new instance of the delegate but point to a different static method. As you may recall, a delegate instance encapsulates an invocation list. You create an invocation list by combining delegates using the Delegate.Combine method (there is an easier syntax as you will see later). When two non null delegate instances are combined, their invocation lists get combined to form a new invocation list. This is done in line 14. On line 16, we invoke the delegate with the Invoke method and pass in the required string parameter. Since the delegate has an invocation list with two entries, each of the method in the invocation list is invoked. If an unhandled exception occurs during the invocation of one of these methods, the exception gets bubbled up to the line where the invocation was made (line 16). If a delegate is null and you try to invoke it, you will get a System.NullReferenceException. We see the following output when the method is run: My name is TomJ'ai m'apelle Tom Instance Methods The code below outputs the same results as before. The only difference here is we are creating delegates that point to a target object (an instance of Translator) and instance methods which have the same signature as the delegate type. The target object can never be null. We also use the short cut syntax += to combine the delegates instead of Delegate.Combine. 1: public delegate void SayName(string name); 2: 3: public class Program 4: { 5: [STAThread] 6: static void Main(string[] args) 7: { 8: Translator translator = new Translator(); 9: SayName combinedDelegate = new SayName(translator.SayNameInEnglish); 10: combinedDelegate += new SayName(translator.SayNameInFrench); 11: 12: combinedDelegate.Invoke("Tom"); 13: Console.ReadLine(); 14: } 15: } 16: 17: public class Translator { 18: public void SayNameInFrench(string name) { 19: Console.WriteLine("J'ai m'appelle " + name); 20: } 21: 22: public void SayNameInEnglish(string name) { 23: Console.WriteLine("My name is " + name); 24: } 25: } A delegate can be removed from a combination of delegates by using the –= operator. Removing a delegate from an empty list or removing a delegate that does not exist in a non empty list will not result in an exception. Delegates are invoked synchronously using the Invoke method. We can also invoke them asynchronously using the BeginInvoke and EndInvoke methods which are compiler generated.

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Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - CLR metadata 2

- by Simon Cooper

Before we look any further at the CLR metadata, we need a quick diversion to understand how the metadata is actually stored. Encoding table information As an example, we'll have a look at a row in the TypeDef table. According to the spec, each TypeDef consists of the following: Flags specifying various properties of the class, including visibility. The name of the type. The namespace of the type. What type this type extends. The field list of this type. The method list of this type. How is all this data actually represented? Offset & RID encoding Most assemblies don't need to use a 4 byte value to specify heap offsets and RIDs everywhere, however we can't hard-code every offset and RID to be 2 bytes long as there could conceivably be more than 65535 items in a heap or more than 65535 fields or types defined in an assembly. So heap offsets and RIDs are only represented in the full 4 bytes if it is required; in the header information at the top of the #~ stream are 3 bits indicating if the #Strings, #GUID, or #Blob heaps use 2 or 4 bytes (the #US stream is not accessed from metadata), and the rowcount of each table. If the rowcount for a particular table is greater than 65535 then all RIDs referencing that table throughout the metadata use 4 bytes, else only 2 bytes are used. Coded tokens Not every field in a table row references a single predefined table. For example, in the TypeDef extends field, a type can extend another TypeDef (a type in the same assembly), a TypeRef (a type in a different assembly), or a TypeSpec (an instantiation of a generic type). A token would have to be used to let us specify the table along with the RID. Tokens are always 4 bytes long; again, this is rather wasteful of space. Cutting the RID down to 2 bytes would make each token 3 bytes long, which isn't really an optimum size for computers to read from memory or disk. However, every use of a token in the metadata tables can only point to a limited subset of the metadata tables. For the extends field, we only need to be able to specify one of 3 tables, which we can do using 2 bits: 0x0: TypeDef 0x1: TypeRef 0x2: TypeSpec We could therefore compress the 4-byte token that would otherwise be needed into a coded token of type TypeDefOrRef. For each type of coded token, the least significant bits encode the table the token points to, and the rest of the bits encode the RID within that table. We can work out whether each type of coded token needs 2 or 4 bytes to represent it by working out whether the maximum RID of every table that the coded token type can point to will fit in the space available. The space available for the RID depends on the type of coded token; a TypeOrMethodDef coded token only needs 1 bit to specify the table, leaving 15 bits available for the RID before a 4-byte representation is needed, whereas a HasCustomAttribute coded token can point to one of 18 different tables, and so needs 5 bits to specify the table, only leaving 11 bits for the RID before 4 bytes are needed to represent that coded token type. For example, a 2-byte TypeDefOrRef coded token with the value 0x0321 has the following bit pattern: 0 3 2 1 0000 0011 0010 0001 The first two bits specify the table - TypeRef; the other bits specify the RID. Because we've used the first two bits, we've got to shift everything along two bits: 000000 1100 1000 This gives us a RID of 0xc8. If any one of the TypeDef, TypeRef or TypeSpec tables had more than 16383 rows (2^14 - 1), then 4 bytes would need to be used to represent all TypeDefOrRef coded tokens throughout the metadata tables. Lists The third representation we need to consider is 1-to-many references; each TypeDef refers to a list of FieldDef and MethodDef belonging to that type. If we were to specify every FieldDef and MethodDef individually then each TypeDef would be very large and a variable size, which isn't ideal. There is a way of specifying a list of references without explicitly specifying every item; if we order the MethodDef and FieldDef tables by the owning type, then the field list and method list in a TypeDef only have to be a single RID pointing at the first FieldDef or MethodDef belonging to that type; the end of the list can be inferred by the field list and method list RIDs of the next row in the TypeDef table. Going back to the TypeDef If we have a look back at the definition of a TypeDef, we end up with the following reprensentation for each row: Flags - always 4 bytes Name - a #Strings heap offset. Namespace - a #Strings heap offset. Extends - a TypeDefOrRef coded token. FieldList - a single RID to the FieldDef table. MethodList - a single RID to the MethodDef table. So, depending on the number of entries in the heaps and tables within the assembly, the rows in the TypeDef table can be as small as 14 bytes, or as large as 24 bytes. Now we've had a look at how information is encoded within the metadata tables, in the next post we can see how they are arranged on disk.

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Retrieving a list of eBay categories using the .NET SDK and GetCategoriesCall

- by Bill Osuch

eBay offers a .Net SDK for its Trading API - this post will show you the basics of making an API call and retrieving a list of current categories. You'll need the category ID(s) for any apps that post or search eBay. To start, download the latest SDK from https://www.x.com/developers/ebay/documentation-tools/sdks/dotnet and create a new console app project. Add a reference to the eBay.Service DLL, and a few using statements: using eBay.Service.Call; using eBay.Service.Core.Sdk; using eBay.Service.Core.Soap; I'm assuming at this point you've already joined the eBay Developer Network and gotten your app IDs and user tokens. If not: Join the developer program Generate tokens Next, add an app.config file that looks like this: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Environment.ApiServerUrl" value="https://api.ebay.com/wsapi"/> <add key="UserAccount.ApiToken" value="YourBigLongToken"/> </appSettings> </configuration> And then add the code to get the xml list of categories: ApiContext apiContext = GetApiContext(); GetCategoriesCall apiCall = new GetCategoriesCall(apiContext); apiCall.CategorySiteID = "0"; //Leave this commented out to retrieve all category levels (all the way down): //apiCall.LevelLimit = 4; //Uncomment this to begin at a specific parent category: //StringCollection parentCategories = new StringCollection(); //parentCategories.Add("63"); //apiCall.CategoryParent = parentCategories; apiCall.DetailLevelList.Add(DetailLevelCodeType.ReturnAll); CategoryTypeCollection cats = apiCall.GetCategories(); using (StreamWriter outfile = new StreamWriter(@"C:\Temp\EbayCategories.xml")) { outfile.Write(apiCall.SoapResponse); } GetApiContext() (provided in the sample apps in the SDK) is required for any call: static ApiContext GetApiContext() { //apiContext is a singleton, //to avoid duplicate configuration reading if (apiContext != null) { return apiContext; } else { apiContext = new ApiContext(); //set Api Server Url apiContext.SoapApiServerUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Environment.ApiServerUrl"]; //set Api Token to access eBay Api Server ApiCredential apiCredential = new ApiCredential(); apiCredential.eBayToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["UserAccount.ApiToken"]; apiContext.ApiCredential = apiCredential; //set eBay Site target to US apiContext.Site = SiteCodeType.US; return apiContext; } } Running this will give you a large (4 or 5 megs) XML file that looks something like this: <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <soapenv:Body> <GetCategoriesResponse > <Timestamp>2012-06-06T16:03:46.158Z</Timestamp> <Ack>Success</Ack> <CorrelationID>d02dd9e3-295a-4268-9ea5-554eeb2e0e18</CorrelationID> <Version>775</Version> <Build>E775_CORE_BUNDLED_14891042_R1</Build> - <CategoryArray> <Category> <BestOfferEnabled>true</BestOfferEnabled> <AutoPayEnabled>true</AutoPayEnabled> <CategoryID>20081</CategoryID> <CategoryLevel>1</CategoryLevel> <CategoryName>Antiques</CategoryName> <CategoryParentID>20081</CategoryParentID> </Category> <Category> <BestOfferEnabled>true</BestOfferEnabled> <AutoPayEnabled>true</AutoPayEnabled> <CategoryID>37903</CategoryID> <CategoryLevel>2</CategoryLevel> <CategoryName>Antiquities</CategoryName> <CategoryParentID>20081</CategoryParentID> </Category> (etc.) You could work with this, but I wanted a nicely nested view, like this: <CategoryArray> <Category Name='Antiques' ID='20081' Level='1'> <Category Name='Antiquities' ID='37903' Level='2'/> </CategoryArray> ...so I transformed the xml: private void TransformXML(CategoryTypeCollection cats) { XmlElement topLevelElement = null; XmlElement childLevelElement = null; XmlNode parentNode = null; string categoryString = ""; XmlDocument returnDoc = new XmlDocument(); XmlElement root = returnDoc.CreateElement("CategoryArray"); returnDoc.AppendChild(root); XmlNode rootNode = returnDoc.SelectSingleNode("/CategoryArray"); //Loop through CategoryTypeCollection foreach (CategoryType category in cats) { if (category.CategoryLevel == 1) { //Top-level category, so we know we can just add it topLevelElement = returnDoc.CreateElement("Category"); topLevelElement.SetAttribute("Name", category.CategoryName); topLevelElement.SetAttribute("ID", category.CategoryID); rootNode.AppendChild(topLevelElement); } else { // Level number will determine how many Category nodes we are deep categoryString = ""; for (int x = 1; x < category.CategoryLevel; x++) { categoryString += "/Category"; } parentNode = returnDoc.SelectSingleNode("/CategoryArray" + categoryString + "[@ID='" + category.CategoryParentID[0] + "']"); childLevelElement = returnDoc.CreateElement("Category"); childLevelElement.SetAttribute("Name", category.CategoryName); childLevelElement.SetAttribute("ID", category.CategoryID); parentNode.AppendChild(childLevelElement); } } returnDoc.Save(@"C:\Temp\EbayCategories-Modified.xml"); } Yes, there are probably much cleaner ways of dealing with it, but I'm not an xml expert… Keep in mind, eBay categories do not change on a regular basis, so you should be able to cache this data (either in a file or database) for some time. The xml returns a CategoryVersion node that you can use to determine if the category list has changed. Technorati Tags: Csharp, eBay

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Content Query Web Part and the Yes/No Field

- by Bil Simser

The Content Query Web Part (CQWP) is a pretty powerful beast. It allows you to do multiple site queries and aggregate the results. This is great for rolling up content and doing some summary type reporting. Here’s a trick to remember about Yes/No fields and using the CQWP. If you’re building a news style site and want to aggregate say all the announcements that people tag a certain way, up onto the home page this might be a solution. First we need to allow a way for users of all our sites to mark an announcement for inclusion on our Intranet Home Page. We’ll do this by just modifying the Announcement Content type and adding a Yes/No field to it. There are alternate ways of doing this like building a new Announcement type or stapling a feature to all sites to add our column but this is pretty low impact and only affects our current site collection so let’s go with it for now, okay? You can berate me in the comments about the proper way I should have done this part. Go to the Site Settings for the Site Collection and click on Site Content Types under the Galleries. This takes you to the gallery for this site and all subsites. Scroll down until you see the List Content Types and click on Announcements. Now we’re modifying the Announcement content type which affects all those announcement lists that are created by default if you’re building sites using the Team Site template (or creating a new Announcements list on any site for that matter). Click on Add from new site column under the Column list. This will allow us to create a new Yes/No field that users will see in Announcement items. This field will allow the user to flag the announcement for inclusion on the home page. Feel free to modify the fields as you see fit for your environment, this is just an example. Now that we’ve added the column to our Announcements Content type we can go into any site that has an announcement list, modify that announcement and flag it to be included on our home page. See the new Featured column? That was the result of modifying our Announcements Content Type on this site collection. Now we can move onto the dirty part, displaying it in a CQWP on the home page. And here is where the fun begins (and the head scratching should end). On our home page we want to drop a Content Query Web Part and aggregate any Announcement that’s been flagged as Featured by the users (we could also add the filter to handle Expires so we don’t show old content so go ahead and do that if you want). First add a CQWP to the page then modify the settings for the web part. In the first section, Query, we want the List Type to be set to Announcements and the Content type to be Announcement so set your options like this: Click Apply and you’ll see the results display all Announcements from any site in the site collection. I have five team sites created each with a unique announcement added to them. Now comes the filtering. We don’t want to include every announcement, only ones users flag using that Featured column we added. At first blush you might scroll down to the Additional Filters part of the Query options and set the Featured column to be equal to Yes: This seems correct doesn’t it? After all, the column is a Yes/No column and looking at an announcement in the site, it displays the field as Yes or No: However after applying the filter you get this result: (I have the announcements from Team Site 1 and Team Site 4 flagged as Featured) Huh? It’s BACKWARDS! Let’s confirm that. Go back in and change the Additional Filters section from Yes to No and hit Apply and you get this: Wait a minute? Shouldn’t I see Team Site 1 and 4 if the logic is backwards? Why am I seeing the same thing as before. What gives… For whatever reason, unknown to me, a Yes/No field (even though it displays as such) really uses 1 and 0 behind the scenes. Yeah, someone was stuck on using integer values for booleans when they wrote SharePoint (probably after a long night of white boarding ways to mess with developers heads) and came up with this. The solution is pretty simple but not very discoverable. Set the filter to include your flagged items like so: And it will filter the items marked as Featured correctly giving you this result: This kind of solution could also be extended and enhanced. Here are a few suggestions and ideas: Modify the ItemStyle.xsl file to add a new style for this aggregation which would include the first few paragraphs of the body (or perhaps add another field to the Content type called Excerpt or Summary and display that instead) Add an Image column to the Announcement Content type to include a Picture field and display it in the summary Add a Category choice field (Employee News, Current Events, Headlines, etc.) and add multiple CQWPs to the home page filtering each one on a different category I know some may find this topic old and dusty but I didn’t see a lot out there specifically on filtering the Yes/No fields and the whole 1/0 trick was a little wonky, so I figured a few pictures would help walk through overcoming yet another SharePoint weirdness. With a little work and some creative juices you can easily us the power of aggregation and the CQWP to build a news site from content on your team sites.

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RiverTrail - JavaScript GPPGU Data Parallelism

- by JoshReuben

Where is WebCL ? The Khronos WebCL working group is working on a JavaScript binding to the OpenCL standard so that HTML 5 compliant browsers can host GPGPU web apps – e.g. for image processing or physics for WebGL games - http://www.khronos.org/webcl/ . While Nokia & Samsung have some protype WebCL APIs, Intel has one-upped them with a higher level of abstraction: RiverTrail. Intro to RiverTrail Intel Labs JavaScript RiverTrail provides GPU accelerated SIMD data-parallelism in web applications via a familiar JavaScript programming paradigm. It extends JavaScript with simple deterministic data-parallel constructs that are translated at runtime into a low-level hardware abstraction layer. With its high-level JS API, programmers do not have to learn a new language or explicitly manage threads, orchestrate shared data synchronization or scheduling. It has been proposed as a draft specification to ECMA a (known as ECMA strawman). RiverTrail runs in all popular browsers (except I.E. of course). To get started, download a prebuilt version https://github.com/downloads/RiverTrail/RiverTrail/rivertrail-0.17.xpi , install Intel's OpenCL SDK http://www.intel.com/go/opencl and try out the interactive River Trail shell http://rivertrail.github.com/interactive For a video overview, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jueg6zB5XaM . ParallelArray the ParallelArray type is the central component of this API & is a JS object that contains ordered collections of scalars – i.e. multidimensional uniform arrays. A shape property describes the dimensionality and size– e.g. a 2D RGBA image will have shape [height, width, 4]. ParallelArrays are immutable & fluent – they are manipulated by invoking methods on them which produce new ParallelArray objects. ParallelArray supports several constructors over arrays, functions & even the canvas. // Create an empty Parallel Array var pa = new ParallelArray(); // pa0 = <> // Create a ParallelArray out of a nested JS array. // Note that the inner arrays are also ParallelArrays var pa = new ParallelArray([ [0,1], [2,3], [4,5] ]); // pa1 = <<0,1>, <2,3>, <4.5>> // Create a two-dimensional ParallelArray with shape [3, 2] using the comprehension constructor var pa = new ParallelArray([3, 2], function(iv){return iv[0] * iv[1];}); // pa7 = <<0,0>, <0,1>, <0,2>> // Create a ParallelArray from canvas. This creates a PA with shape [w, h, 4], var pa = new ParallelArray(canvas); // pa8 = CanvasPixelArray ParallelArray exposes fluent API functions that take an elemental JS function for data manipulation: map, combine, scan, filter, and scatter that return a new ParallelArray. Other functions are scalar - reduce returns a scalar value & get returns the value located at a given index. The onus is on the developer to ensure that the elemental function does not defeat data parallelization optimization (avoid global var manipulation, recursion). For reduce & scan, order is not guaranteed - the onus is on the dev to provide an elemental function that is commutative and associative so that scan will be deterministic – E.g. Sum is associative, but Avg is not. map Applies a provided elemental function to each element of the source array and stores the result in the corresponding position in the result array. The map method is shape preserving & index free - can not inspect neighboring values. // Adding one to each element. var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var plusOne = source.map(function inc(v) { return v+1; }); //<2,3,4,5,6> combine Combine is similar to map, except an index is provided. This allows elemental functions to access elements from the source array relative to the one at the current index position. While the map method operates on the outermost dimension only, combine, can choose how deep to traverse - it provides a depth argument to specify the number of dimensions it iterates over. The elemental function of combine accesses the source array & the current index within it - element is computed by calling the get method of the source ParallelArray object with index i as argument. It requires more code but is more expressive. var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var plusOne = source.combine(function inc(i) { return this.get(i)+1; }); reduce reduces the elements from an array to a single scalar result – e.g. Sum. // Calculate the sum of the elements var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var sum = source.reduce(function plus(a,b) { return a+b; }); scan Like reduce, but stores the intermediate results – return a ParallelArray whose ith elements is the results of using the elemental function to reduce the elements between 0 and I in the original ParallelArray. // do a partial sum var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var psum = source.scan(function plus(a,b) { return a+b; }); //<1, 3, 6, 10, 15> scatter a reordering function - specify for a certain source index where it should be stored in the result array. An optional conflict function can prevent an exception if two source values are assigned the same position of the result: var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var reorder = source.scatter([4,0,3,1,2]); // <2, 4, 5, 3, 1> // if there is a conflict use the max. use 33 as a default value. var reorder = source.scatter([4,0,3,4,2], 33, function max(a, b) {return a>b?a:b; }); //<2, 33, 5, 3, 4> filter // filter out values that are not even var source = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4,5]); var even = source.filter(function even(iv) { return (this.get(iv) % 2) == 0; }); // <2,4> Flatten used to collapse the outer dimensions of an array into a single dimension. pa = new ParallelArray([ [1,2], [3,4] ]); // <<1,2>,<3,4>> pa.flatten(); // <1,2,3,4> Partition used to restore the original shape of the array. var pa = new ParallelArray([1,2,3,4]); // <1,2,3,4> pa.partition(2); // <<1,2>,<3,4>> Get return value found at the indices or undefined if no such value exists. var pa = new ParallelArray([0,1,2,3,4], [10,11,12,13,14], [20,21,22,23,24]) pa.get([1,1]); // 11 pa.get([1]); // <10,11,12,13,14>

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RIF PRD: Presentation syntax issues

- by Charles Young

Over Christmas I got to play a bit with the W3C RIF PRD and came across a few issues which I thought I would record for posterity. Specifically, I was working on a grammar for the presentation syntax using a GLR grammar parser tool (I was using the current CTP of ‘M’ (MGrammer) and Intellipad – I do so hope the MS guys don’t kill off M and Intellipad now they have dropped the other parts of SQL Server Modelling). I realise that the presentation syntax is non-normative and that any issues with it do not therefore compromise the standard. However, presentation syntax is useful in its own right, and it would be great to iron out any issues in a future revision of the standard. The main issues are actually not to do with the grammar at all, but rather with the ‘running example’ in the RIF PRD recommendation. I started with the code provided in Example 9.1. There are several discrepancies when compared with the EBNF rules documented in the standard. Broadly the problems can be categorised as follows: · Parenthesis mismatch – the wrong number of parentheses are used in various places. For example, in GoldRule, the RHS of the rule (the ‘Then’) is nested in the LHS (‘the If’). In NewCustomerAndWidgetRule, the RHS is orphaned from the LHS. Together with additional incorrect parenthesis, this leads to orphanage of UnknownStatusRule from the entire Document. · Invalid use of parenthesis in ‘Forall’ constructs. Parenthesis should not be used to enclose formulae. Removal of the invalid parenthesis gave me a feeling of inconsistency when comparing formulae in Forall to formulae in If. The use of parenthesis is not actually inconsistent in these two context, but in an If construct it ‘feels’ as if you are enclosing formulae in parenthesis in a LISP-like fashion. In reality, the parenthesis is simply being used to group subordinate syntax elements. The fact that an If construct can contain only a single formula as an immediate child adds to this feeling of inconsistency. · Invalid representation of compact URIs (CURIEs) in the context of Frame productions. In several places the URIs are not qualified with a namespace prefix (‘ex1:’). This conflicts with the definition of CURIEs in the RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0 document. Here are the productions: CURIE ::= PNAME_LN | PNAME_NS PNAME_LN ::= PNAME_NS PN_LOCAL PNAME_NS ::= PN_PREFIX? ':' PN_LOCAL ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? PN_CHARS ::= PN_CHARS_U | '-' | [0-9] | #x00B7 | [#x0300-#x036F] | [#x203F-#x2040] PN_CHARS_U ::= PN_CHARS_BASE | '_' PN_CHARS_BASE ::= [A-Z] | [a-z] | [#x00C0-#x00D6] | [#x00D8-#x00F6] | [#x00F8-#x02FF] | [#x0370-#x037D] | [#x037F-#x1FFF] | [#x200C-#x200D] | [#x2070-#x218F] | [#x2C00-#x2FEF] | [#x3001-#xD7FF] | [#xF900-#xFDCF] | [#xFDF0-#xFFFD] | [#x10000-#xEFFFF] PN_PREFIX ::= PN_CHARS_BASE ((PN_CHARS|'.')* PN_CHARS)? The more I look at CURIEs, the more my head hurts! The RIF specification allows prefixes and colons without local names, which surprised me. However, the CURIE Syntax 1.0 working group note specifically states that this form is supported…and then promptly provides a syntactic definition that seems to preclude it! However, on (much) deeper inspection, it appears that ‘ex1:’ (for example) is allowed, but would really represent a ‘fragment’ of the ‘reference’, rather than a prefix! Ouch! This is so completely ambiguous that it surely calls into question the whole CURIE specification. In any case, RIF does not allow local names without a prefix. · Missing ‘External’ specifiers for built-in functions and predicates. The EBNF specification enforces this for terms within frames, but does not appear to enforce (what I believe is) the correct use of External on built-in predicates. In any case, the running example only specifies ‘External’ once on the predicate in UnknownStatusRule. External() is required in several other places. · The List used on the LHS of UnknownStatusRule is comma-delimited. This is not supported by the EBNF definition. Similarly, the argument list of pred:list-contains is illegally comma-delimited. · Unnecessary use of conjunction around a single formula in DiscountRule. This is strictly legal in the EBNF, but redundant. All the above issues concern the presentation syntax used in the running example. There are a few minor issues with the grammar itself. Note that Michael Kiefer stated in his paper “Rule Interchange Format: The Framework” that: “The presentation syntax of RIF … is an abstract syntax and, as such, it omits certain details that might be important for unambiguous parsing.” · The grammar cannot differentiate unambiguously between strategies and priorities on groups. A processor is forced to resolve this by detecting the use of IRIs and integers. This could easily be fixed in the grammar. · The grammar cannot unambiguously parse the ‘->’ operator in frames. Specifically, ‘-’ characters are allowed in PN_LOCAL names and hence a parser cannot determine if ‘status->’ is (‘status’ ‘->’) or (‘status-’ ‘>’). One way to fix this is to amend the PN_LOCAL production as follows: PN_LOCAL ::= ( PN_CHARS_U | [0-9] ) ((PN_CHARS|'.')* ((PN_CHARS)-('-')))? However, unilaterally changing the definition of this production, which is defined in the SPARQL Query Language for RDF specification, makes me uncomfortable. · I assume that the presentation syntax is case-sensitive. I couldn’t find this stated anywhere in the documentation, but function/predicate names do appear to be documented as being case-sensitive. · The EBNF does not specify whitespace handling. A couple of productions (RULE and ACTION_BLOCK) are crafted to enforce the use of whitespace. This is not necessary. It seems inconsistent with the rest of the specification and can cause parsing issues. In addition, the Const production exhibits whitespaces issues. The intention may have been to disallow the use of whitespace around ‘^^’, but any direct implementation of the EBNF will probably allow whitespace between ‘^^’ and the SYMSPACE. Of course, I am being a little nit-picking about all this. On the whole, the EBNF translated very smoothly and directly to ‘M’ (MGrammar) and proved to be fairly complete. I have encountered far worse issues when translating other EBNF specifications into usable grammars. I can’t imagine there would be any difficulty in implementing the same grammar in Antlr, COCO/R, gppg, XText, Bison, etc. A general observation, which repeats a point made above, is that the use of parenthesis in the presentation syntax can feel inconsistent and un-intuitive. It isn’t actually inconsistent, but I think the presentation syntax could be improved by adopting braces, rather than parenthesis, to delimit subordinate syntax elements in a similar way to so many programming languages. The familiarity of braces would communicate the structure of the syntax more clearly to people like me. If braces were adopted, parentheses could be retained around ‘var (frame | ‘new()’) constructs in action blocks. This use of parenthesis feels very LISP-like, and I think that this is my issue. It’s as if the presentation syntax represents the deformed love-child of LISP and C. In some places (specifically, action blocks), parenthesis is used in a LISP-like fashion. In other places it is used like braces in C. I find this quite confusing. Here is a corrected version of the running example (Example 9.1) in compliant presentation syntax: Document( Prefix( ex1 <http://example.com/2009/prd2> ) (* ex1:CheckoutRuleset *) Group rif:forwardChaining ( (* ex1:GoldRule *) Group 10 ( Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"]) (Forall ?shoppingCart such that ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart] (If Exists ?value (And(?shoppingCart[ex1:value->?value] External(pred:numeric-greater-than-or-equal(?value 2000)))) Then Do(Modify(?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"]))))) (* ex1:DiscountRule *) Group ( Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer (If Or( ?customer[ex1:status->"Silver"] ?customer[ex1:status->"Gold"]) Then Do ((?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart-> ?s]) (?v ?s[ex1:value->?v]) Modify(?s [ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply (?v 0.95))])))) (* ex1:NewCustomerAndWidgetRule *) Group ( Forall ?customer such that And(?customer # ex1:Customer ?customer[ex1:status->"New"] ) (If Exists ?shoppingCart ?item (And(?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?shoppingCart] ?shoppingCart[ex1:containsItem->?item] ?item # ex1:Widget ) ) Then Do( (?s ?customer[ex1:shoppingCart->?s]) (?val ?s[ex1:value->?val]) (?voucher ?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher]) Retract(?customer[ex1:voucher->?voucher]) Retract(?voucher) Modify(?s[ex1:value->External(func:numeric-multiply(?val 0.90))])))) (* ex1:UnknownStatusRule *) Group ( Forall ?customer such that ?customer # ex1:Customer (If Not(Exists ?status (And(?customer[ex1:status->?status] External(pred:list-contains(List("New" "Bronze" "Silver" "Gold") ?status)) ))) Then Do( Execute(act:print(External(func:concat("New customer: " ?customer)))) Assert(?customer[ex1:status->"New"])))) ) ) I hope that helps someone out there :-)

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How to display a dependent list box disabled if no child data exist

- by frank.nimphius

A requirement on OTN was to disable the dependent list box of a model driven list of value configuration whenever the list is empty. To disable the dependent list, the af:selectOneChoice component needs to be refreshed with every value change of the parent list, which however already is the case as the list boxes are already dependent. When you create model driven list of values as choice lists in an ADF Faces page, two ADF list bindings are implicitly created in the PageDef file of the page that hosts the input form. At runtime, a list binding is an instance of FacesCtrlListBinding, which exposes getItems() as a method to access a list of available child data (java.util.List). Using Expression Language, the list is accessible with #{bindings.list_attribute_name.items} To dynamically set the disabled property on the dependent af:selectOneChoice component, however, you need a managed bean that exposes the following two methods //empty – but required – setter method public void setIsEmpty(boolean isEmpty) {} //the method that returns true/false when the list is empty or //has values public boolean isIsEmpty() { FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); ELContext elctx = fctx.getELContext(); ExpressionFactory exprFactory = fctx.getApplication().getExpressionFactory(); ValueExpression vexpr = exprFactory.createValueExpression(elctx, "#{bindings.EmployeeId.items}", Object.class); List employeesList = (List) vexpr.getValue(elctx); return employeesList.isEmpty()? true : false; } If referenced from the dependent choice list, as shown below, the list is disabled whenever it contains no list data <! -- master list --> <af:selectOneChoice value="#{bindings.DepartmentId.inputValue}" label="#{bindings.DepartmentId.label}" required="#{bindings.DepartmentId.hints.mandatory}" shortDesc="#{bindings.DepartmentId.hints.tooltip}" id="soc1" autoSubmit="true"> <f:selectItems value="#{bindings.DepartmentId.items}" id="si1"/> </af:selectOneChoice> <! -- dependent list --> <af:selectOneChoice value="#{bindings.EmployeeId.inputValue}" label="#{bindings.EmployeeId.label}" required="#{bindings.EmployeeId.hints.mandatory}" shortDesc="#{bindings.EmployeeId.hints.tooltip}" id="soc2" disabled="#{lovTestbean.isEmpty}" partialTriggers="soc1"> <f:selectItems value="#{bindings.EmployeeId.items}" id="si2"/> </af:selectOneChoice>

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Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

- by Martin Hinshelwood

A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program. In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe. The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file. There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version. The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file. If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology. The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project. Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time. I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario. I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007. -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010? Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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Creating the Business Card Request InfoPath Form

- by JKenderdine

Business Card Request Demo Files Back in January I spoke at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach about InfoPath forms and Web Part deployment. Below is some of the information and details regarding the form I created for the session. There are many blogs and Microsoft articles on how to create a basic form so I won’t repeat that information here. This blog will just explain a few of the options I chose when creating the solutions for SPS Virginia Beach. The above link contains the zipped package files of the two InfoPath forms(no code solution and coded solution), the list template for the Location list I used, and the PowerPoint deck. If you plan to use these templates, you will need to update the forms to work within your own environments (change data connections, code links, etc.). Also, you must have the SharePoint Enterprise version, with InfoPath Services configured in order to use the Web Browser enabled forms. So what are the requirements for this template? Business Card Request Form Template Design Plan: Gather user information and requirements for card Pull in as much user information as possible. Use data from the user profile web services as a data source Show and hide fields as necessary for requirements Create multiple views – one for those submitting the form and Another view for the executive assistants placing the orders. Browser based form integrated into SharePoint team site Submitted directly to form library The base form was created using the blank template. The table and rows were added using Insert tab and selecting Custom Table. The use of tables is a great way to make sure everything lines up. You do have to split the tables from time to time. If you’ve ever split cells and then tried to re-align one to find that you impacted the others, you know why. Here is what the base form looks like in InfoPath. Show and hide fields as necessary for requirements You will notice I also used Sections within the form. These show or hide depending on options selected or whether or not fields are blank. This is a great way to prevent your users from feeling overwhelmed with a large form (this one wouldn’t apply). Although not used in this one, you can also use various views with a tab interface. I’ll show that in another post. Gather user information and requirements for card Pull in as much user information as possible. Use data from the user profile web services as a data source Utilizing rules you can load data when the form initiates (Data tab, Form Load). Anything you can automate is always appreciated by the user as that is data they don’t have to enter. For example, loading their user id or other user information on load: Always keep in mind though how much data you load and the method for loading that data (through rules, code, etc.). They have an impact on form performance. The form will take longer to load if you bring in a ton of data from external sources. Laura Rogers has a great blog post on using the User Information List to load user information. If the user has logged into SharePoint, then this can be used quite effectively and without a huge performance hit. What I have found is that using the User Profile service via code behind or the Web Service “GetUserProfileByName” (as above) can take more time to load the user data. Just food for thought. You must add the data connection in order for the above rules to work. You can connect to the data connection through the Data tab, Data Connections or select Manage Data Connections link which appears under the main data source. The data connections can be SharePoint lists or libraries, SQL data tables, XML files, etc. Create multiple views – one for those submitting the form and Another view for the executive assistants placing the orders. You can also create multiple views for the users to enhance their experience. Once they’ve entered the information and submitted their request for business cards, they don’t really need to see the main data input screen any more. They just need to view what they entered. From the Page Design tab, select New View and give the view a name. To review the existing views, click the down arrow under View: The ReviewView shows just what the user needs and nothing more: Once you have everything configured, the form should be tested within a Test SharePoint environment before final deployment to production. This validates you don’t have any rules or code that could impact the server negatively. Submitted directly to form library You will need to know the form library that you will be submitting to when publishing the template. Configure the Submit data connection to connect to this library. There is already one configured in the sample, but it will need to be updated to your environment prior to publishing. The Design template is different from the Published template. While both have the .XSN extension, the published template contains all the “package” information for the form. The published form is what is loaded into Central Admin, not the design template. Browser based form integrated into SharePoint team site In Central Admin, under General Settings, select Manage Form Templates. Upload the published form template and Activate it to a site collection. Now it is available as a content type to select in the form library. Some documentation on publishing form templates: Technet – Manage administrator approved form templates And that’s all our base requirements. Hope this helps to give a good start.

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Possible SWITCH Optimization in DAX – #powerpivot #dax #tabular

- by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

In one of the Advanced DAX Workshop I taught this year, I had an interesting discussion about how to optimize a SWITCH statement (which could be frequently used checking a slicer, like in the Parameter Table pattern). Let’s start with the problem. What happen when you have such a statement? Sales := SWITCH ( VALUES ( Period[Period] ), "Current", [Internet Total Sales], "MTD", [MTD Sales], "QTD", [QTD Sales], "YTD", [YTD Sales], BLANK () ) The SWITCH statement is in reality just syntax sugar for a nested IF statement. When you place such a measure in a pivot table, for every cell of the pivot table the IF options are evaluated. In order to optimize performance, the DAX engine usually does not compute cell-by-cell, but tries to compute the values in bulk-mode. However, if a measure contains an IF statement, every cell might have a different execution path, so the current implementation might evaluate all the possible IF branches in bulk-mode, so that for every cell the result from one of the branches will be already available in a pre-calculated dataset. The price for that could be high. If you consider the previous Sales measure, the YTD Sales measure could be evaluated for all the cells where it’s not required, and also when YTD is not selected at all in a Pivot Table. The actual optimization made by the DAX engine could be different in every build, and I expect newer builds of Tabular and Power Pivot to be better than older ones. However, we still don’t live in an ideal world, so it could be better trying to help the engine finding a better execution plan. One student (Niek de Wit) proposed this approach: Selection := IF ( HASONEVALUE ( Period[Period] ), VALUES ( Period[Period] ) ) Sales := CALCULATE ( [Internet Total Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "Current", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) + CALCULATE ( [MTD Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "MTD", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) + CALCULATE ( [QTD Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "QTD", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) + CALCULATE ( [YTD Sales], FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] ), 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity] = IF ( [Selection] = "YTD", 'Internet Sales'[Order Quantity], -1 ) ) ) At first sight, you might think it’s impossible that this approach could be faster. However, if you examine with the profiler what happens, there is a different story. Every original IF’s execution branch is now a separate CALCULATE statement, which applies a filter that does not execute the required measure calculation if the result of the FILTER is empty. I used the ‘Internet Sales’[Order Quantity] column in this example just because in Adventure Works it has only one value (every row has 1): in the real world, you should use a column that has a very low number of distinct values, or use a column that has always the same value for every row (so it will be compressed very well!). Because the value –1 is never used in this column, the IF comparison in the filter discharge all the values iterated in the filter if the selection does not match with the desired value. I hope to have time in the future to write a longer article about this optimization technique, but in the meantime I’ve seen this optimization has been useful in many other implementations. Please write your feedback if you find scenarios (in both Power Pivot and Tabular) where you obtain performance improvements using this technique!

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Mscorlib mocking minus the attribute

- by mehfuzh

Mocking .net framework members (a.k.a. mscorlib) is always a daunting task. It’s the breed of static and final methods and full of surprises. Technically intercepting mscorlib members is completely different from other class libraries. This is the reason it is dealt differently. Generally, I prefer writing a wrapper around an mscorlib member (Ex. File.Delete(“abc.txt”)) and expose it via interface but that is not always an easy task if you already have years old codebase. While mocking mscorlib members first thing that comes to people’s mind is DateTime.Now. If you Google through, you will find tons of example dealing with just that. May be it’s the most important class that we can’t ignore and I will create an example using JustMock Q2 with the same. In Q2 2012, we just get rid of the MockClassAtrribute for mocking mscorlib members. JustMock is already attribute free for mocking class libraries. We radically think that vendor specific attributes only makes your code smelly and therefore decided the same for mscorlib. Now, I want to fake DateTime.Now for the following class: public class NestedDateTime { public DateTime GetDateTime() { return DateTime.Now; } } It is the simplest one that can be. The first thing here is that I tell JustMock “hey we have a DateTime.Now in NestedDateTime class that we want to mock”. To do so, during the test initialization I write this: .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Mock.Replace(() => DateTime.Now).In<NestedDateTime>(x => x.GetDateTime());.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } I can also define it for all the members in the class, but that’s just a waste of extra watts. Mock.Replace(() => DateTime.Now).In<NestedDateTime>(); Now question, why should I bother doing it? The answer is that I am not using attribute and with this approach, I can mock any framework members not just File, FileInfo or DateTime. Here to note that we already mock beyond the three but when nested around a complex class, JustMock was not intercepting it correctly. Therefore, we decided to get rid of the attribute altogether fixing the issue. Finally, I write my test as usual. [TestMethod] public void ShouldAssertMockingDateTimeFromNestedClass() { var expected = new DateTime(2000, 1, 1); Mock.Arrange(() => DateTime.Now).Returns(expected); Assert.Equal(new NestedDateTime().GetDateTime(), expected); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } That’s it, we are good. Now let me do the same for a random one, let’s say I want mock a member from DriveInfo: Mock.Replace<DriveInfo[]>(() => DriveInfo.GetDrives()).In<MsCorlibFixture>(x => x.ShouldReturnExpectedDriveWhenMocked()); Moving forward, I write my test: [TestMethod] public void ShouldReturnExpectedDriveWhenMocked() { Mock.Arrange(() => DriveInfo.GetDrives()).MustBeCalled(); DriveInfo.GetDrives(); Mock.Assert(()=> DriveInfo.GetDrives()); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here is one convention; you have to replace the mscorlib member before executing the target method that contains it. Here the call to DriveInfo is within the MsCorlibFixture therefore it should be defined during test initialization or before executing the test method. Hope this gives you the idea.

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