advanced format - Page 256

My computer got virus and give me the massage that "Hard drive may cause an issue" [duplicate]

- by alinajoneze

This question already has an answer here: How do I get rid of malicious spyware, malware, viruses or rootkits from my PC? 15 answers My computer got virus and give me the massage that "Hard drive may cause an issue". What can I do to solve this one. While I have format it many times and it is quite easily done each.

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Is there a legal way to obtain Windows 7 DVD?

- by user37170

Bought a new laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium and want to format and reinstall. Is there a legal way to obtain a copy of Windows 7 on DVD?

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How to screenshot part of the screen under windows?

- by T...

I would like to use mouse to select a part of a window under Windows and then take screenshot and save it as jpeg format. Is there such a functionality provided by Windows or some applications? I asked on behalf of a friend, as I am using Ubuntu exclusively and the built-in screen-shot in Ubuntu allows using mouse to select part of screen. Not sure which Windows edition he has, maybe Windows 7 or XP. Thanks!

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Renderpartial or renderaction

- by femi

have an action that generates active vacancies. The code is below; public ViewResult OpenVacancies() { var openvacancies = db.GetActiveVacancies(); return View(openvacancies); } I want to use this list on several pages so i guess the best thing to use is html.renderaction (please correct me if i am wrong here). Please note that the view and .ascx control are in an Area. I then created a view by right clicking inside the action and create a .ascx and a strongly typed view of Vacancy. I chose a view content of "List". I then added this line to the required page; <% Html.RenderAction("OpenVacancies"); % Please note that the view and .ascx control are in an Area. The error i got is; The type or namespace name 'Vacancy' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) the .ascx code is below; <%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" % <table> <tr> <th></th> <th> VacancyID </th> <th> JobTitle </th> <th> PositionID </th> <th> LocationID </th> <th> JobDescription </th> <th> JobConditions </th> <th> Qualifications </th> <th> RequiredSkills </th> <th> Certifications </th> <th> AdvertDate </th> <th> AdvertExpiryDate </th> <th> Status </th> <th> StaffLevel </th> <th> LineManagerEmail </th> <th> ApprovalFlag </th> <th> RequisitionDate </th> </tr> <% foreach (var item in Model) { %> <tr> <td> <%= Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit", new { id=item.VacancyID }) %> | <%= Html.ActionLink("Details", "Details", new { id=item.VacancyID })%> | <%= Html.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id=item.VacancyID })%> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.VacancyID) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.JobTitle) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.PositionID) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.LocationID) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.JobDescription) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.JobConditions) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.Qualifications) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.RequiredSkills) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.Certifications) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(String.Format("{0:g}", item.AdvertDate)) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(String.Format("{0:g}", item.AdvertExpiryDate)) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.Status) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.StaffLevel) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.LineManagerEmail) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(item.ApprovalFlag) %> </td> <td> <%= Html.Encode(String.Format("{0:g}", item.RequisitionDate)) %> </td> </tr> <% } %> </table> <p> <%= Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create") %> </p>

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Getting Paperclip to work in Rails

- by Danny McClelland

Hi Everyone, I have installed the Paperclip plugin to attempt to upload an avatar for my kase model. For some reason, the select the file button shows, and I can choose a file - but then when I click update the kase - it takes me to the show page, but the missing.png rather than the selected image. kase.rb class Kase < ActiveRecord::Base def self.all_latest find(:all, :order => 'created_at DESC', :limit => 5) end def self.search(search, page) paginate :per_page => 5, :page => page, :conditions => ['name like ?', "%#{search}%"], :order => 'name' end # Paperclip has_attached_file :avatar, :styles => { :medium => "300x300>", :thumb => "100x100>" } end kases_controller.rb # GET /kases/new # GET /kases/new.xml def new @kase = Kase.new respond_to do |format| format.html # new.html.erb format.xml { render :xml => @kase } end end new.html.erb <% content_for :header do -%> Cases <% end -% <% form_for(@kase) do |f| %> <%= f.error_messages %> <ul id="kases_new"> <li> <%= f.file_field :avatar %></li> <li>Job Ref.<span><%= f.text_field :jobno %></span></li> <li>Case Subject<span><%= f.text_field :casesubject %></span></li> <li>Transport<span><%= f.text_field :transport %></span></li> <li>Goods<span><%= f.text_field :goods %></span></li> <li>Date Instructed<span><%= f.date_select :dateinstructed %></span></li> <li>Case Status<span><%= f.select "kase_status", ['Active', 'On Hold', 'Archived'] %> </span></li> <li>Client Company Name<span><%= f.text_field :clientcompanyname %></span></li> <li>Client Company Address<span><%= f.text_field :clientcompanyaddress %></span></li> <li>Client Company Fax<span><%= f.text_field :clientcompanyfax %></span></li> <li>Case Handler Name<span><%= f.text_field :casehandlername %></span></li> <li>Case Handler Tel<span><%= f.text_field :casehandlertel %></span></li> <li>Case Handler Email<span><%= f.text_field :casehandleremail %></span></li> <li>Claimant Name<span><%= f.text_field :claimantname %></span></li> <li>Claimant Address<span><%= f.text_field :claimantaddress %></span></li> <li>Claimant Contact<span><%= f.text_field :claimantcontact %></span></li> <li>Claimant Tel<span><%= f.text_field :claimanttel %></span></li> <li>Claimant Mob<span><%= f.text_field :claimantmob %></span></li> <li>Claimant Email<span><%= f.text_field :claimantemail %></span></li> <li>Claimant URL<span><%= f.text_field :claimanturl %></span></li> <li>Comments<span><%= f.text_field :comments %></span></li> </ul> <div class="js_option"> <%= link_to_function "Show financial options.", "Element.show('finance_showhide');" %> </div> <div id="finance_showhide" style="display:none"> <ul id="kases_new_finance"> <li>Invoice Number<span><%= f.text_field :invoicenumber %></span></li> <li>Net Amount<span><%= f.text_field :netamount %></span></li> <li>VAT<span><%= f.text_field :vat %></span></li> <li>Gross Amount<span><%= f.text_field :grossamount %></span></li> <li>Date Closed<span><%= f.date_select :dateclosed %></span></li> <li>Date Paid<span><%= f.date_select :datepaid %></span></li> </ul> <div class="js_option"> <%= link_to_function "I'm confused! Hide financial options.", "Element.hide('finance_showhide');" %> </div> </div> <p> <%= f.submit "Create" %> </p> <% end %> <%= link_to 'Back', kases_path %> I have tried putting the <%= f.file_field :avatar % in it's own form on the same page, but that didn't make a difference. Thanks in advanced! Thanks, Danny

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Why does this XML validation via XSD fail in libxml2 (but succeed in xmllint) and how do I fix it?

- by mtree

If I run this XML validation via xmllint: xmllint --noout --schema schema.xsd test.xml I get this success message: .../test.xml validates However if I run the same validation via libxml2's C API: int result = xmlSchemaValidateDoc(...) I get a return value of 1845 and this failure message: Element '{http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0}foo': No matching global declaration available for the validation root. Which I can make absolutely no sense of. :( schema.xsd: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <!DOCTYPE xs:schema PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XMLSCHEMA 200102//EN" "XMLSchema.dtd" > <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0" targetNamespace="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0" elementFormDefault="qualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified"> <xs:element name="foo"> </xs:element> </xs:schema> test.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <foo xmlns="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0"> </foo> main.c: #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <string.h> #include <libxml/parser.h> #include <libxml/valid.h> #include <libxml/xmlschemas.h> u_int32_t get_file_size(const char *file_name) { struct stat buf; if ( stat(file_name, &buf) != 0 ) return(0); return (unsigned int)buf.st_size; } void handleValidationError(void *ctx, const char *format, ...) { char *errMsg; va_list args; va_start(args, format); vasprintf(&errMsg, format, args); va_end(args); fprintf(stderr, "Validation Error: %s", errMsg); free(errMsg); } int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) { const char *xsdPath = argv[1]; const char *xmlPath = argv[2]; printf("\n"); printf("XSD File: %s\n", xsdPath); printf("XML File: %s\n", xmlPath); int xmlLength = get_file_size(xmlPath); char *xmlSource = (char *)malloc(sizeof(char) * xmlLength); FILE *p = fopen(xmlPath, "r"); char c; unsigned int i = 0; while ((c = fgetc(p)) != EOF) { xmlSource[i++] = c; } printf("\n"); printf("XML Source:\n\n%s\n", xmlSource); fclose(p); printf("\n"); int result = 42; xmlSchemaParserCtxtPtr parserCtxt = NULL; xmlSchemaPtr schema = NULL; xmlSchemaValidCtxtPtr validCtxt = NULL; xmlDocPtr xmlDocumentPointer = xmlParseMemory(xmlSource, xmlLength); parserCtxt = xmlSchemaNewParserCtxt(xsdPath); if (parserCtxt == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not create XSD schema parsing context.\n"); goto leave; } schema = xmlSchemaParse(parserCtxt); if (schema == NULL) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not parse XSD schema.\n"); goto leave; } validCtxt = xmlSchemaNewValidCtxt(schema); if (!validCtxt) { fprintf(stderr, "Could not create XSD schema validation context.\n"); goto leave; } xmlSetStructuredErrorFunc(NULL, NULL); xmlSetGenericErrorFunc(NULL, handleValidationError); xmlThrDefSetStructuredErrorFunc(NULL, NULL); xmlThrDefSetGenericErrorFunc(NULL, handleValidationError); result = xmlSchemaValidateDoc(validCtxt, xmlDocumentPointer); leave: if (parserCtxt) { xmlSchemaFreeParserCtxt(parserCtxt); } if (schema) { xmlSchemaFree(schema); } if (validCtxt) { xmlSchemaFreeValidCtxt(validCtxt); } printf("\n"); printf("Validation successful: %s (result: %d)\n", (result == 0) ? "YES" : "NO", result); return 0; } console output: XSD File: /Users/dephiniteloop/Desktop/xml_validate/schema.xsd XML File: /Users/dephiniteloop/Desktop/xml_validate/test.gkml XML Source: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <foo xmlns="http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0"> </foo> Validation Error: Element '{http://example.com/XMLSchema/1.0}foo': No matching global declaration available for the validation root. Validation successful: NO (result: 1845) In case it matters: I'm on OSX 10.6.7 with its default libxml2.dylib (/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk/usr/lib/libxml2.2.7.3.dylib)

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creating a Menu from SQLite values in Java

- by shanahobo86

I am trying to create a ListMenu using data from an SQLite database to define the name of each MenuItem. So in a class called menu.java I have defined the array String classes [] = {}; which should hold each menu item name. In a DBAdapter class I created a function so the user can insert info to a table (This all works fine btw). public long insertContact(String name, String code, String location, String comments, int days, int start, int end, String type) { ContentValues initialValues = new ContentValues(); initialValues.put(KEY_NAME, name); initialValues.put(KEY_CODE, code); initialValues.put(KEY_LOCATION, location); initialValues.put(KEY_COMMENTS, comments); initialValues.put(KEY_DAYS, days); initialValues.put(KEY_START, start); initialValues.put(KEY_END, end); initialValues.put(KEY_TYPE, type); return db.insert(DATABASE_TABLE, null, initialValues); } It would be the Strings inserted into KEY_NAME that I need to populate that String array with. Does anyone know if this is possible? Thanks so much for the help guys. If I implement that function by Sam/Mango the program crashes, am I using it incorrectly or is the error due to the unknown size of the array? DBAdapter db = new DBAdapter(this); String classes [] = db.getClasses(); edit: I should mention that if I manually define the array: String classes [] = {"test1", "test2", "test3", etc}; It works fine. The error is a NullPointerException Here's the logcat (sorry about the formatting). I hadn't initialized with db = helper.getReadableDatabase(); in the getClasses() function but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem. 11-11 22:53:39.117: D/dalvikvm(17856): Late-enabling CheckJNI 11-11 22:53:39.297: D/TextLayoutCache(17856): Using debug level: 0 - Debug Enabled: 0 11-11 22:53:39.337: D/libEGL(17856): loaded /system/lib/egl/libGLES_android.so 11-11 22:53:39.337: D/libEGL(17856): loaded /system/lib/egl/libEGL_adreno200.so 11-11 22:53:39.357: D/libEGL(17856): loaded /system/lib/egl/libGLESv1_CM_adreno200.so 11-11 22:53:39.357: D/libEGL(17856): loaded /system/lib/egl/libGLESv2_adreno200.so 11-11 22:53:39.387: I/Adreno200-EGLSUB(17856): <ConfigWindowMatch:2078>: Format RGBA_8888. 11-11 22:53:39.407: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x5c66d000 size:36593664 offset:32825344 fd:65 11-11 22:53:39.417: E/(17856): Can't open file for reading 11-11 22:53:39.417: E/(17856): Can't open file for reading 11-11 22:53:39.417: D/OpenGLRenderer(17856): Enabling debug mode 0 11-11 22:53:39.477: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x5ecd3000 size:40361984 offset:36593664 fd:68 11-11 22:53:40.507: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x61451000 size:7254016 offset:3485696 fd:71 11-11 22:53:41.077: I/Adreno200-EGLSUB(17856): <ConfigWindowMatch:2078>: Format RGBA_8888. 11-11 22:53:41.077: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x61c4c000 size:7725056 offset:7254016 fd:74 11-11 22:53:41.097: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x623aa000 size:8196096 offset:7725056 fd:80 11-11 22:53:41.937: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x62b7b000 size:8667136 offset:8196096 fd:83 11-11 22:53:41.977: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Unmapping buffer base:0x61c4c000 size:7725056 offset:7254016 11-11 22:53:41.977: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Unmapping buffer base:0x623aa000 size:8196096 offset:7725056 11-11 22:53:41.977: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Unmapping buffer base:0x62b7b000 size:8667136 offset:8196096 11-11 22:53:42.167: I/Adreno200-EGLSUB(17856): <ConfigWindowMatch:2078>: Format RGBA_8888. 11-11 22:53:42.177: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x61c5d000 size:17084416 offset:13316096 fd:74 11-11 22:53:42.317: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x63853000 size:20852736 offset:17084416 fd:80 11-11 22:53:42.357: D/OpenGLRenderer(17856): Flushing caches (mode 0) 11-11 22:53:42.357: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Unmapping buffer base:0x5c66d000 size:36593664 offset:32825344 11-11 22:53:42.357: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Unmapping buffer base:0x5ecd3000 size:40361984 offset:36593664 11-11 22:53:42.367: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Unmapping buffer base:0x61451000 size:7254016 offset:3485696 11-11 22:53:42.757: D/memalloc(17856): /dev/pmem: Mapped buffer base:0x5c56d000 size:24621056 offset:20852736 fd:65 11-11 22:53:44.247: D/AndroidRuntime(17856): Shutting down VM 11-11 22:53:44.247: W/dalvikvm(17856): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x40ac3210) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to instantiate activity ComponentInfo{niall.shannon.timetable/niall.shannon.timetable.menu}: java.lang.NullPointerException 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1891) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1992) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$600(ActivityThread.java:127) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1158) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4441) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:823) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:590) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.content.ContextWrapper.openOrCreateDatabase(ContextWrapper.java:221) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper.getWritableDatabase(SQLiteOpenHelper.java:157) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at niall.shannon.timetable.DBAdapter.getClasses(DBAdapter.java:151) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at niall.shannon.timetable.menu.<init>(menu.java:15) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at java.lang.Class.newInstanceImpl(Native Method) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:1319) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.app.Instrumentation.newActivity(Instrumentation.java:1023) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1882) 11-11 22:53:44.257: E/AndroidRuntime(17856): ... 11 more 11-11 22:53:46.527: I/Process(17856): Sending signal. PID: 17856 SIG: 9

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Where would you document standardized complex data that is passed between many objects and methods?

- by Eli

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PHP Export Date range

- by menormedia

I have a working database export to xls but I need it to export a particular date range based on the 'closed' date. (See code below). For example, I'd like it to export all 'closed' dates for last month and/or this month (Range: Sept 1, 2012 to Sept 30, 2012 or Oct 1, 2012 to Oct 31, 2012) <?PHP //EDIT YOUR MySQL Connection Info: $DB_Server = "localhost"; //your MySQL Server $DB_Username = "root"; //your MySQL User Name $DB_Password = ""; //your MySQL Password $DB_DBName = "ost_helpdesk"; //your MySQL Database Name $DB_TBLName = "ost_ticket"; //your MySQL Table Name //$DB_TBLName, $DB_DBName, may also be commented out & passed to the browser //as parameters in a query string, so that this code may be easily reused for //any MySQL table or any MySQL database on your server //DEFINE SQL QUERY: //edit this to suit your needs $sql = "Select ticketID, name, company, subject, closed from $DB_TBLName ORDER BY closed DESC"; //Optional: print out title to top of Excel or Word file with Timestamp //for when file was generated: //set $Use_Titel = 1 to generate title, 0 not to use title $Use_Title = 1; //define date for title: EDIT this to create the time-format you need $now_date = DATE('m-d-Y'); //define title for .doc or .xls file: EDIT this if you want $title = "MDT Database Dump For Table $DB_TBLName from Database $DB_DBName on $now_date"; /* Leave the connection info below as it is: just edit the above. (Editing of code past this point recommended only for advanced users.) */ //create MySQL connection $Connect = @MYSQL_CONNECT($DB_Server, $DB_Username, $DB_Password) or DIE("Couldn't connect to MySQL:<br>" . MYSQL_ERROR() . "<br>" . MYSQL_ERRNO()); //select database $Db = @MYSQL_SELECT_DB($DB_DBName, $Connect) or DIE("Couldn't select database:<br>" . MYSQL_ERROR(). "<br>" . MYSQL_ERRNO()); //execute query $result = @MYSQL_QUERY($sql,$Connect) or DIE("Couldn't execute query:<br>" . MYSQL_ERROR(). "<br>" . MYSQL_ERRNO()); //if this parameter is included ($w=1), file returned will be in word format ('.doc') //if parameter is not included, file returned will be in excel format ('.xls') IF (ISSET($w) && ($w==1)) { $file_type = "msword"; $file_ending = "doc"; }ELSE { $file_type = "vnd.ms-excel"; $file_ending = "xls"; } //header info for browser: determines file type ('.doc' or '.xls') HEADER("Content-Type: application/$file_type"); HEADER("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=MDT_DB_$now_date.$file_ending"); HEADER("Pragma: no-cache"); HEADER("Expires: 0"); /* Start of Formatting for Word or Excel */ IF (ISSET($w) && ($w==1)) //check for $w again { /* FORMATTING FOR WORD DOCUMENTS ('.doc') */ //create title with timestamp: IF ($Use_Title == 1) { ECHO("$title\n\n"); } //define separator (defines columns in excel & tabs in word) $sep = "\n"; //new line character WHILE($row = MYSQL_FETCH_ROW($result)) { //set_time_limit(60); // HaRa $schema_insert = ""; FOR($j=0; $j<mysql_num_fields($result);$j++) { //define field names $field_name = MYSQL_FIELD_NAME($result,$j); //will show name of fields $schema_insert .= "$field_name:\t"; IF(!ISSET($row[$j])) { $schema_insert .= "NULL".$sep; } ELSEIF ($row[$j] != "") { $schema_insert .= "$row[$j]".$sep; } ELSE { $schema_insert .= "".$sep; } } $schema_insert = STR_REPLACE($sep."$", "", $schema_insert); $schema_insert .= "\t"; PRINT(TRIM($schema_insert)); //end of each mysql row //creates line to separate data from each MySQL table row PRINT "\n----------------------------------------------------\n"; } }ELSE{ /* FORMATTING FOR EXCEL DOCUMENTS ('.xls') */ //create title with timestamp: IF ($Use_Title == 1) { ECHO("$title\n"); } //define separator (defines columns in excel & tabs in word) $sep = "\t"; //tabbed character //start of printing column names as names of MySQL fields FOR ($i = 0; $i < MYSQL_NUM_FIELDS($result); $i++) { ECHO MYSQL_FIELD_NAME($result,$i) . "\t"; } PRINT("\n"); //end of printing column names //start while loop to get data WHILE($row = MYSQL_FETCH_ROW($result)) { //set_time_limit(60); // HaRa $schema_insert = ""; FOR($j=0; $j<mysql_num_fields($result);$j++) { IF(!ISSET($row[$j])) $schema_insert .= "NULL".$sep; ELSEIF ($row[$j] != "") $schema_insert .= "$row[$j]".$sep; ELSE $schema_insert .= "".$sep; } $schema_insert = STR_REPLACE($sep."$", "", $schema_insert); //this corrects output in excel when table fields contain \n or \r //these two characters are now replaced with a space $schema_insert = PREG_REPLACE("/\r\n|\n\r|\n|\r/", " ", $schema_insert); $schema_insert .= "\t"; PRINT(TRIM($schema_insert)); PRINT "\n"; } } ?>

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Rails 3 Nested Forms

- by Mike

I have a Person model and an Address Model: class Person < ActiveRecord::Base has_one :address accepts_nested_attributes_for :address end class Address < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :person end In my people controller I have @person.build_address in my new action. My forms builds correctly. The problem is that when I submit the form, a person record and an address record is created but they aren't linked via the address_id column in the Person table. Am I missing a step in the controller? Thanks! New Action UPDATE def new @person = Person.new @person.build_address respond_to do |format| format.html # new.html.erb format.xml { render :xml => @person } end end Form Code UPDATE <%= form_for(@person) do |f| %> <% if @person.errors.any? %> <div id="error_explanation"> <h2><%= pluralize(@person.errors.count, "error") %> prohibited this person from being saved:</h2> <ul> <% @person.errors.full_messages.each do |msg| %> <li><%= msg %></li> <% end %> </ul> </div> <% end %> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :first_name %><br /> <%= f.text_field :first_name %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :last_name %><br /> <%= f.text_field :last_name %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :email %><br /> <%= f.text_field :email %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :telephone %><br /> <%= f.text_field :telephone %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :mobile_phone %><br /> <%= f.text_field :mobile_phone %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :date_of_birth %><br /> <%= f.date_select :date_of_birth %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :gender %><br /> <%= f.select(:gender, Person::GENDER_TYPES) %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :notes %><br /> <%= f.text_area :notes %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= f.label :person_type %><br /> <%= f.select(:person_type, Person::PERSON_TYPES) %> </div> <%= f.fields_for :address do |address_fields| %> <div class="field"> <%= address_fields.label :street_1 %><br /> <%= address_fields.text_field :street_1 %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= address_fields.label :street_2 %><br /> <%= address_fields.text_field :street_2 %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= address_fields.label :city %><br /> <%= address_fields.text_field :city %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= address_fields.label :state %><br /> <%= address_fields.select(:state, Address::STATES) %> </div> <div class="field"> <%= address_fields.label :zip_code %><br /> <%= address_fields.text_field :zip_code %> </div> <% end %> <div class="actions"> <%= f.submit %> </div> <% end %>

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Why should you choose Oracle WebLogic 12c instead of JBoss EAP 6?

- by Ricardo Ferreira

In this post, I will cover some technical differences between Oracle WebLogic 12c and JBoss EAP 6, which was released a couple days ago from Red Hat. This article claims to help you in the evaluation of key points that you should consider when choosing for an Java EE application server. In the following sections, I will present to you some important aspects that most customers ask us when they are seriously evaluating for an middleware infrastructure, specially if you are considering JBoss for some reason. I would suggest that you keep the following question in mind while you are reading the points: "Why should I choose JBoss instead of WebLogic?" 1) Multi Datacenter Deployment and Clustering - D/R ("Disaster & Recovery") architecture support is embedded on the WebLogic Server 12c product. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct D/R support included, Red Hat relies on third-part tools with higher prices. When you consider a middleware solution to host your business critical application, you should worry with every architectural aspect that are related with the solution. Fail-over support is one little aspect of a truly reliable solution. If you do not worry about D/R, your solution will not be reliable. Having said that, with Red Hat and JBoss EAP 6, you have this extra cost that will increase considerably the total cost of ownership of the solution. As we commonly hear from analysts, open-source are not so cheaper when you start seeing the big picture. - WebLogic Server 12c supports advanced LAN clustering, detection of death servers and have a common alert framework. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has limited LAN clustering support with no server death detection. They do not generate any alerts when servers goes down (only if you buy JBoss ON which is a separated technology, but until now does not support JBoss EAP 6) and manual intervention are required when servers goes down. In most cases, admin people must rely on "kill -9", "tail -f someFile.log" and "ps ax | grep java" commands to manage failures and clustering anomalies. - WebLogic Server 12c supports the concept of Node Manager, which is a separated process that runs on the physical | virtual servers that allows extend the administration of the cluster to WebLogic managed servers that are often distributed across multiple machines and geographic locations. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no equivalent technology. Whole server instances must be managed individually. - WebLogic Server 12c Node Manager supports Coherence to boost performance when managing servers. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no similar technology. There is no way to coordinate JBoss and infiniband instances provided by JBoss using high throughput and low latency protocols like InfiniBand. The Node Manager feature also allows another very important feature that JBoss EAP lacks: secure the administration. When using WebLogic Node Manager, all the administration tasks are sent to the managed servers in a secure tunel protected by a certificate, which means that the transport layer that separates the WebLogic administration console from the managed servers are secured by SSL. - WebLogic Server 12c are now integrated with OTD ("Oracle Traffic Director") which is a web server technology derived from the former Sun iPlanet Web Server. This software complements the web server support offered by OHS ("Oracle HTTP Server"). Using OTD, WebLogic instances are load-balanced by a high powerful software that knows how to handle SDP ("Socket Direct Protocol") over InfiniBand, which boost performance when used with engineered systems technologies like Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand only offers support to Apache Web Server with custom modules created to deal with JBoss clusters, but only across standard TCP/IP networks. 2) Application and Runtime Diagnostics - WebLogic Server 12c have diagnostics capabilities embedded on the server called WLDF ("WebLogic Diagnostic Framework") so there is no need to rely on third-part tools. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no diagnostics capabilities. Their only diagnostics tool is the log generated by the application server. Admin people are encouraged to analyse thousands of log lines to find out what is going on. - WebLogic Server 12c complement WLDF with JRockit MC ("Mission Control"), which provides to administrators and developers a complete insight about the JVM performance, behavior and possible bottlenecks. WebLogic Server 12c also have an classloader analysis tool embedded, and even a log analyzer tool that enables administrators and developers to view logs of multiple servers at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand relies on third-part tools to do something similar. Again, only log searching are offered to find out whats going on. - WebLogic Server 12c offers end-to-end traceability and monitoring available through Oracle EM ("Enterprise Manager"), including monitoring of business transactions that flows through web servers, ESBs, application servers and database servers, all of this with high deep JVM analysis and diagnostics. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand, even using JBoss ON ("Operations Network"), which is a separated technology, does not support those features. Red Hat relies on third-part tools to provide direct Oracle database traceability across JVMs. One of those tools are Oracle EM for non-Oracle middleware that manage JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere and IIS transparently. - WebLogic Server 12c with their JRockit support offers a tool called JRockit Flight Recorder, which can give developers a complete visibility of a certain period of application production monitoring with zero extra overhead. This automatic recording allows you to deep analyse threads latency, memory leaks, thread contention, resource utilization, stack overflow damages and GC ("Garbage Collection") cycles, to observe in real time stop-the-world phenomenons, generational, reference count and parallel collects and mutator threads analysis. JBoss EAP 6 don't even dream to support something similar, even because they don't have their own JVM. 3) Application Server Administration - WebLogic Server 12c offers a complete administration console complemented with scripting and macro-like recording capabilities. A single WebLogic console can managed up to hundreds of WebLogic servers belonging to the same domain. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited console and provides a XML centric administration. JBoss, after ten years, started the development of a rudimentary centralized administration that still leave a lot of administration tasks aside, so admin people and developers must touch scripts and XML configuration files for most advanced and even simple administration tasks. This lead applications to error prone and risky deployments. Even using JBoss ON, JBoss EAP are not able to offer decent administration features for admin people which must be high skilled in JBoss internal architecture and its managing capabilities. - Oracle EM is available to manage multiple domains, databases, application servers, operating systems and virtualization, with a complete end-to-end visibility. JBoss ON does not provide management capabilities across the complete architecture, only basic monitoring. Even deployment must be done aside JBoss ON which does no integrate well with others softwares than JBoss. Until now, JBoss ON does not supports JBoss EAP 6, so even their minimal support for JBoss are not available for JBoss EAP 6 leaving customers uncovered and subject to high skilled JBoss admin people. - WebLogic Server 12c has the same administration model whatever is the topology selected by the customer. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand differentiates between two operational models: standalone-mode and domain-mode, that are not consistent with each other. Depending on the mode used, the administration skill is different. - WebLogic Server 12c has no point-of-failures processes, and it does not need to define any specialized server. Domain model in WebLogic is available for years (at least ten years or more) and is production proven. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand needs special processes to garantee JBoss integrity, the PC ("Process-Controller") and the HC ("Host-Controller"). Different from WebLogic, the domain model in JBoss is quite new (one year at tops) of maturity, and need to mature considerably until start doing things like WebLogic domain model does. - WebLogic Server 12c supports parallel deployment model which enables some artifacts being deployed at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have any similar feature. Every deployment are done atomically in the containers. This means that if you have a huge EAR (an EAR of 120 MB of size for instance) and deploy onto JBoss EAP 6, this EAR will take some minutes in order to starting accept thread requests. The same EAR deployed onto WebLogic Server 12c will reduce the deployment time at least in 2X compared to JBoss. 4) Support and Upgrades - WebLogic Server 12c has patch management available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no patch management available, each JBoss EAP instance should be patched manually. To achieve such feature, you need to buy a separated technology called JBoss ON ("Operations Network") that manage this type of stuff. But until now, JBoss ON does not support JBoss EAP 6 so, in practice, JBoss EAP 6 does not have this feature. - WebLogic Server 12c supports previuous WebLogic domains without any reconfiguration since its kernel is robust and mature since its creation in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a proven lack of supportability between JBoss AS 4, 5, 6 and 7. Different kernels and messaging engines were implemented in JBoss stack in the last five years reveling their incapacity to create a well architected and proven middleware technology. - WebLogic Server 12c has patch prescription based on customer configuration. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such capability. People need to create ticket supports and have their installations revised by Red Hat support guys to gain some patch prescription from them. - Oracle WebLogic Server independent of the version has 8 years of support of new patches and has lifetime release of existing patches beyond that. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand provides patches for a specific application server version up to 5 years after the release date. JBoss EAP 4 and previous versions had only 4 years. A good question that Red Hat will argue to answer is: "what happens when you find issues after year 5"? 5) RAC ("Real Application Clusters") Support - WebLogic Server 12c ships with a specific JDBC driver to leverage Oracle RAC clustering capabilities (Fast-Application-Notification, Transaction Affinity, Fast-Connection-Failover, etc). Oracle JDBC thin driver are also available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand ships only the standard Oracle JDBC thin driver. Load balancing with Oracle RAC are not supported. Manual intervention in case of planned or unplanned RAC downtime are necessary. In JBoss EAP 6, situation does not reestablish automatically after downtime. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called Active GridLink for Oracle RAC which provides up to 3X performance on OLTP applications. This seamless integration between WebLogic and Oracle database enable more value added to critical business applications leveraging their investments in Oracle database technology and Oracle middleware. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no performance gains at all, even when admin people implement some kind of connection-pooling tuning. - WebLogic Server 12c also supports transaction and web session affinity to the Oracle RAC, which provides aditional gains of performance. This is particularly interesting if you are creating a reliable solution that are distributed not only in an LAN cluster, but into a different data center. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. 6) Standards and Technology Support - WebLogic Server 12c is fully Java EE 6 compatible and production ready since december of 2011. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand became fully compatible with Java EE 6 only in the community version after three months, and production ready only in a few days considering that this article was written in June of 2012. Red Hat says that they are the masters of innovation and technology proliferation, but compared with Oracle and even other proprietary vendors like IBM, they historically speaking are lazy to deliver the most newest technologies and standards adherence. - Oracle is the steward of Java, driving innovation into the platform from commercial and open-source vendors. Red Hat on the other hand does not have its own JVM and relies on third-part JVMs to complete their application server offer. 95% of Red Hat customers are using Oracle HotSpot as JVM, which means that without Oracle involvement, their support are limited exclusively to the application server layer and we all know that most problems are happens in the JVM layer. - WebLogic Server 12c supports natively JDK 7, which empower developers to explore the maximum of the Java platform productivity when writing code. This feature differentiate WebLogic from others application servers (except GlassFish that are also managed by Oracle) because the usage of JDK 7 introduce such remarkable productivity features like the "try-with-resources" enhancement, catching multiple exceptions with one try block, Strings in the switch statements, JVM improvements in terms of JDBC, I/O, networking, security, concurrency and of course, the most important feature of Java 7: native support for multiple non-Java languages. More features regarding JDK 7 can be found here. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not support JDK 7 officially, they comment in their community version that "Java SE 7 can be used with JBoss 7" which does not gives you any guarantees of enterprise support for JDK 7. - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c supports integration with Spring framework allowing Spring applications to use WebLogic special transaction manager, exposing bean interfaces to WebLogic MBeans to take advantage of all WebLogic monitoring and administration advantages. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no special integration with Spring. In fact, Red Hat offers a suspicious package called "JBoss Web Platform" that in theory supports Spring, but in practice this package does not offers any special integration. It is just a facility for Red Hat customers to have support from both JBoss and Spring technology using the same customer support. 7) Lightweight Development - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle GlassFish are completely integrated and can share applications without any modifications. Starting with the 12c version, WebLogic now understands natively GlassFish deployment descriptors and specific configurations in order to offer you a truly and reliable migration path from a community Java EE application server to a enterprise middleware product like WebLogic. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no support to natively reuse an existing (or still in development) application from JBoss AS community server. Users of JBoss suffer of critical issues during deployment time that includes: changing the libraries and dependencies of the application, patching the DTD or XSD deployment descriptors, refactoring of the application layers due classloading issues and anomalies, rebuilding of persistence, business and web layers due issues with "usage of the certified version of an certain dependency" or "frameworks that Red Hat potentially does not recommend" etc. If you have the culture or enterprise IT directive of developing Java EE applications using community middleware to in a certain future, transition to enterprise (supported by a vendor) middleware, Oracle WebLogic plus Oracle GlassFish offers you a more sustainable solution. - WebLogic Server 12c has a very light ZIP distribution (less than 165 MB). JBoss EAP 6 ZIP size is around 130 MB, together with JBoss ON you have more 100 MB resulting in a higher download footprint. This is particularly interesting if you plan to use automated setup of application server instances (for example, to rapidly setup a development or staging environment) using Maven or Hudson. - WebLogic Server 12c has a complete integration with Maven allowing developers to setup WebLogic domains with few commands. Tasks like downloading WebLogic, installation, domain creation, data sources deployment are completely integrated. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited offer integration with those tools. - WebLogic Server 12c has a startup mode called WLX that turns-off EJB, JMS and JCA containers leaving enabled only the web container with Java EE 6 web profile. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such feature, you need to disable manually the containers that you do not want to use. - WebLogic Server 12c supports fastswap, which enables you to change classes without redeployment. This is particularly interesting if you are developing patches for the application that is already deployed and you do not want to redeploy the entire application. This is the same behavior that most application servers offers to JSP pages, but with WebLogic Server 12c, you have the same feature for Java classes in general. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. Even JBoss EAP 5 does not support this until now. 8) JMS and Messaging - WebLogic Server 12c has a proven and high scalable JMS implementation since its initial release in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a still immature technology called HornetQ, which was introduced in JBoss EAP 5 replacing everything that was implemented in the previous versions. Red Hat loves to introduce new technologies across JBoss versions, playing around with customers and their investments. And when they are asked about why they have changed the implementation and caused such a mess, their answer is always: "the previous implementation was inadequate and not aligned with the community strategy so we are creating a new a improved one". This Red Hat practice leads to uncomfortable investments that in a near future (sometimes less than a year) will be affected in someway. - WebLogic Server 12c has troubleshooting and monitoring features included on the WebLogic console and WLDF. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct monitoring on the console, activity is reflected only on the logs, no debug logs available in case of JMS issues. - WebLogic Server 12c has extremely good performance and scalability. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a JMS storage mechanism relying on Oracle database or MySQL. This means that if an issue in production happens and Red Hat affirms that an performance issue is happening due to database problems, they will not support you on the performance issue. They will orient you to call Oracle instead. - WebLogic Server 12c supports messaging enterprise features like SAF ("Store and Forward"), Distributed Queues/Topics and Foreign JMS providers support that leverage JMS implementations without compromise developer code making things completely transparent. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand do not even dream to support such features. 9) Caching and Grid - Coherence, which is the leading and most mature data grid technology from Oracle, is available since early 2000 and was integrated with WebLogic in 2009. Coherence and WebLogic clusters can be both managed from WebLogic administrative console. Even Node Manager supports Coherence. JBoss on the other hand discontinued JBoss Cache, which was their caching implementation just like they did with the messaging implementation (JBossMQ) which was a issue for long term customers. JBoss EAP 6 ships InfiniSpan version 1.0 which is immature and lack a proven record of successful cases and reliability. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called ActiveCache which uses Coherence to, without any code changes, replicate HTTP sessions from both WebLogic and other application servers like JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere, GlassFish and even Microsoft IIS. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does have such support and even when they do in the future, they probably will support only their own application server. - Coherence can be used to manage both L1 and L2 cache levels, providing support to Oracle TopLink and others JPA compliant implementations, even Hibernate. JBoss EAP 6 and Infinispan on the other hand supports only Hibernate. And most important of all: Infinispan does not have any successful case of L1 or L2 caching level support using Hibernate, which lead us to reflect about its viability. 10) Performance - WebLogic Server 12c is certified with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and can run unchanged applications at this engineered system. This approach can benefit customers from Exalogic optimization's of both kernel and JVM layers to boost performance in terms of 10X for web, OLTP, JMS and grid applications. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no investment on engineered systems: customers do not have the choice to deploy on a Java ultra fast system if their project becomes relevant and performance issues are detected. - WebLogic Server 12c maintains a performance gain across each new release: starting on WebLogic 5.1, the overall performance gain has been close to 4X, which close to a 20% gain release by release. JBoss on the other hand does not provide SPECJAppServer or SPECJEnterprise performance benchmarks. Their so called "performance gains" remains hidden in their customer environments, which lead us to think if it is true or not since we will never get access to those environments. - WebLogic Server 12c has industry performance benchmarks with submissions across platforms and configurations leading SPECJ. Oracle WebLogic leads SPECJAppServer performance in multiple categories, fitting all customer topologies like: dual-node, single-node, multi-node and multi-node with RAC. JBoss... again, does not provide any SPECJAppServer performance benchmarks. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called work manager which allows your application to embrace new performance levels based on critical resource utilization of the CPUs usage. Work managers prioritizes work and allocates threads based on an execution model that takes into account administrator-defined parameters and actual run-time performance and throughput. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no compared feature and probably they never will. Not supporting such feature like work managers, JBoss EAP 6 forces admin people and specially developers to uncover performance gains in a intrusive way, rewriting the code and doing performance refactorings. 11) Professional Services Support - WebLogic Server 12c and any other technology sold by Oracle give customers the possibility of hire OCS ("Oracle Consulting Services") to manage critical scenarios, deployment assistance of new applications, high skilled consultancy of architecture, best practices and people allocation together with customer teams. All OCS services are available without any restrictions, having the customer bought software from Oracle or just starting their implementation before any acquisition. JBoss EAP 6 or Red Hat to be more specifically, only offers professional services if you buy subscriptions from them. If you are developing a new critical application for your business and need the help of Red Hat for a serious issue or architecture decision, they will probably say: "OK... I can help you but after you buy subscriptions from me". Red Hat also does not allows their professional services consultants to manage environments that uses community based software. They will probably force you to first buy a subscription, download their "enterprise" version and them, optionally hire their consultants. - Oracle provides you our university to educate your team into our technologies, including of course specialized trainings of WebLogic application server. At any time and location, you can hire Oracle to train your team so you get trustful knowledge according to your specific needs. Certifications for the products are also available if your technical people desire to differentiate themselves as professionals. Red Hat on the other hand have a limited pool of resources to train your team in their technologies. Basically they are selling training and certification for RHEL ("Red Hat Enterprise Linux") but if you demand more specialized training in JBoss middleware, they will probably connect you to some "certified" partner localized training since they are apparently discontinuing their education center, at least here in Brazil. They were not able to reproduce their success with RHEL education to their middleware division since they need first sell the subscriptions to after gives you specialized training. And again, they only offer you specialized training based on their enterprise version (EAP in the case of JBoss) which means that the courses will be a quite outdated. There are reports of developers that took official training's from Red Hat at this year (2012) and in a certain JBoss advanced course, Red Hat supposedly covered JBossMQ as the messaging subsystem, and even the printed material provided was based on JBossMQ since the training was created for JBoss EAP 4.3. 12) Encouraging Transparency without Ulterior Motives - WebLogic Server 12c like any other software from Oracle can be downloaded any time from anywhere, you should only possess an OTN ("Oracle Technology Network") credential and you can download any enterprise software how many times you want. And is not some kind of "trial" version. It is the official binaries that will be running for ever in your data center. Oracle does not encourages the usage of "specific versions" of our software. The binaries you buy from Oracle are the same binaries anyone in the world could download and use for testing and personal education. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand are not available for download unless you buy a subscription and get access to the Red Hat enterprise repositories. If you need to test, learn or just start creating your application using Red Hat's middleware software, you should download it from the community website. You are not allowed to download the enterprise version that, according to Red Hat are more secure, reliable and robust. But no one of us want to start the development of a software with an unsecured, unreliable and not scalable middleware right? So what you do? You are "invited" by Red Hat to buy subscriptions from them to get access to the "cool" version of the software. - WebLogic Server 12c prices are publicly available in the Oracle website. If you want to know right now how much WebLogic will cost to your organization, just click here and get access to our price list. In the case of WebLogic, check out the "US Oracle Technology Commercial Price List". Oracle also encourages you to get in touch with a sales representative to discuss discounts that would make possible the investment into our technology. But you are not required to do this, only if you are interested in buying our technology or maybe you want to discuss some discount scenarios. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have its cost publicly available in Red Hat's website or in any other media, at least is not so easy to get such information. The only link you will possibly find in their website is a "Contact a Sales Representative" link. This is not a very good relationship between an customer and an vendor. This is not an example of transparency, mainly when the software are sold as open. In this situations, customers expects to see the software prices publicly available, so they can have the chance to decide, based on the existing features of the software, if the cost is fair or not. Conclusion Oracle WebLogic is the most mature, secure, reliable and scalable Java EE application server of the market, and have a proven record of success around the globe to prove it's majority. Don't lose the chance to discover today how WebLogic could fit your needs and sustain your global IT middleware strategy, no matter if your strategy are completely based on the Cloud or not.

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Is a text file with names/pixel locations something a graphic artist can/should produce? [on hold]

- by edA-qa mort-ora-y

I have an artist working on 2D graphics for a game UI. He has no problem producing a screenshot showing all the bits, but we're having some trouble exporting this all into an easy-to-use format. For example, take the game HUD, which is a bunch of elements laid out around the screen. He exports the individual graphics for each one, but how should he communicate the positioning of each of them? My desire is to have a yaml file (or some other simple markup file) that contains the name of each asset and pixel position of that element. For example: fire_icon: pos: 20, 30 fire_bar: pos: 30, 80 Is producing such files a common task of a graphic artist? Is is reasonable to request them to produce such files as part of their graphic work?

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Oracle Enhances Oracle Social Cloud with Next-Generation User Experience

- by Richard Lefebvre

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Today’s enterprise must meet the technology standards of today’s consumer. According to a recent IDG Enterprise report, enterprises that invest in consumerized, easy-to-use technologies experience a 56 percent increase in employee productivity and a 46 percent increase in customer satisfaction. In order to deliver that simple and intuitive experience across even the most advanced social management capabilities, Oracle today introduced Social Station, an innovative new workspace within Oracle Social Cloud’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform. With Social Station, users benefit from a personalized and intuitive user experience that helps increase both the productivity and performance of social business practices. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:"Times New Roman","serif";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} News Facts Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle today introduced Social Station, an innovative new workspace within Oracle Social Cloud’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform that helps organizations socially enable the way they do business. With an advanced yet intuitive user interface, Social Station delivers a compelling user experience that improves productivity and helps users more easily deliver on social objectives. To help users quickly and easily build out and configure their social workspaces, Social Station provides drag-and-drop capabilities that allow users to personalize their workspace with different social modules. With a new Custom Analytics module that mixes and matches more than 120 metrics with thousands of customizable reporting options, users can customize their view of social data and access constantly refreshed updates that support real-time understanding. One-click sharing capabilities and annotation functionality within the new Custom Analytics module also drives productivity by improving sharing and collaboration across teams, departments, and executives. Multiview layout capabilities further allows visibility into social insights by offering users the flexibility to monitor conversations by network, stream, metric, graph type, date range, and relative time period. Social Station also includes an Enhanced Calendar module that provides a clear visual representation of content, posts, networks, and views, helping users easily and efficiently understand information and toggle between various functions and views. To support different user personas and social business needs, Oracle plans to continue building out Social Station with additional modules, including content curation, influencer engagement, and command center creation. /* 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:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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Installing Lubuntu 14.04.1 forcepae fails

- by Rantanplan

I tried to install Lubuntu 14.04.1 from a CD. First, I chose Try Lubuntu without installing which gave: ERROR: PAE is disabled on this Pentium M (PAE can potentially be enabled with kernel parameter "forcepae" ... Following the description on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE, I used forcepae and tried Try Lubuntu without installing again. That worked fine. dmesg | grep -i pae showed: [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: file=/cdrom/preseed/lubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- forcepae [ 0.008118] PAE forced! On the live-CD session, I tried installing Lubuntu double clicking on the install button on the desktop. Here, the CD starts running but then stops running and nothing happens. Next, I rebooted and tried installing Lubuntu directly from the boot menu screen using forcepae again. After a while, I receive the following error message: The installer encountered an unrecoverable error. A desktop session will now be run so that you may investigate the problem or try installing again. Hitting Enter brings me to the desktop. For what errors should I search? And how? Finally, I rebooted once more and tried Check disc for defects with forcepae option; no errors have been found. Now, I am wondering how to find the error or whether it would be better to follow advice c in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PAE: "Move the hard disk to a computer on which the processor has PAE capability and PAE flag (that is, almost everything else than a Banias). Install the system as usual but don't add restricted drivers. After the install move the disk back." Thanks for some hints! Perhaps some of the following can help: On Lubuntu 12.04: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz stepping : 6 microcode : 0x17 cpu MHz : 600.000 cache size : 2048 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe up bts est tm2 bogomips : 1284.76 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 32 bits physical, 32 bits virtual power management: uname -a Linux humboldt 3.2.0-67-generic #101-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 17:45:51 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS Release: 12.04 Codename: precise cpuid eax in eax ebx ecx edx 00000000 00000002 756e6547 6c65746e 49656e69 00000001 000006d6 00000816 00000180 afe9f9bf 00000002 02b3b001 000000f0 00000000 2c04307d 80000000 80000004 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000001 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 80000002 20202020 20202020 65746e49 2952286c 80000003 6e655020 6d756974 20295228 7270204d 80000004 7365636f 20726f73 30352e31 007a4847 Vendor ID: "GenuineIntel"; CPUID level 2 Intel-specific functions: Version 000006d6: Type 0 - Original OEM Family 6 - Pentium Pro Model 13 - Stepping 6 Reserved 0 Brand index: 22 [not in table] Extended brand string: " Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz" CLFLUSH instruction cache line size: 8 Feature flags afe9f9bf: FPU Floating Point Unit VME Virtual 8086 Mode Enhancements DE Debugging Extensions PSE Page Size Extensions TSC Time Stamp Counter MSR Model Specific Registers MCE Machine Check Exception CX8 COMPXCHG8B Instruction SEP Fast System Call MTRR Memory Type Range Registers PGE PTE Global Flag MCA Machine Check Architecture CMOV Conditional Move and Compare Instructions FGPAT Page Attribute Table CLFSH CFLUSH instruction DS Debug store ACPI Thermal Monitor and Clock Ctrl MMX MMX instruction set FXSR Fast FP/MMX Streaming SIMD Extensions save/restore SSE Streaming SIMD Extensions instruction set SSE2 SSE2 extensions SS Self Snoop TM Thermal monitor 31 reserved TLB and cache info: b0: unknown TLB/cache descriptor b3: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 02: Instruction TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 2 entries f0: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 7d: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 30: unknown TLB/cache descriptor 04: Data TLB: 4MB pages, 4-way set assoc, 8 entries 2c: unknown TLB/cache descriptor On Lubuntu 14.04.1 live-CD with forcepae: cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 13 model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz stepping : 6 microcode : 0x17 cpu MHz : 600.000 cache size : 2048 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 1 core id : 0 cpu cores : 1 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fdiv_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe bts est tm2 bogomips : 1284.68 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 32 bits virtual power management: uname -a Linux lubuntu 3.13.0-32-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jul 15 03:51:12 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i686 GNU/Linux lsb_release -a No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS Release: 14.04 Codename: trusty cpuid CPU 0: vendor_id = "GenuineIntel" version information (1/eax): processor type = primary processor (0) family = Intel Pentium Pro/II/III/Celeron/Core/Core 2/Atom, AMD Athlon/Duron, Cyrix M2, VIA C3 (6) model = 0xd (13) stepping id = 0x6 (6) extended family = 0x0 (0) extended model = 0x0 (0) (simple synth) = Intel Pentium M (Dothan B1) / Celeron M (Dothan B1), 90nm miscellaneous (1/ebx): process local APIC physical ID = 0x0 (0) cpu count = 0x0 (0) CLFLUSH line size = 0x8 (8) brand index = 0x16 (22) brand id = 0x16 (22): Intel Pentium M, .13um feature information (1/edx): x87 FPU on chip = true virtual-8086 mode enhancement = true debugging extensions = true page size extensions = true time stamp counter = true RDMSR and WRMSR support = true physical address extensions = false machine check exception = true CMPXCHG8B inst. = true APIC on chip = false SYSENTER and SYSEXIT = true memory type range registers = true PTE global bit = true machine check architecture = true conditional move/compare instruction = true page attribute table = true page size extension = false processor serial number = false CLFLUSH instruction = true debug store = true thermal monitor and clock ctrl = true MMX Technology = true FXSAVE/FXRSTOR = true SSE extensions = true SSE2 extensions = true self snoop = true hyper-threading / multi-core supported = false therm. monitor = true IA64 = false pending break event = true feature information (1/ecx): PNI/SSE3: Prescott New Instructions = false PCLMULDQ instruction = false 64-bit debug store = false MONITOR/MWAIT = false CPL-qualified debug store = false VMX: virtual machine extensions = false SMX: safer mode extensions = false Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology = true thermal monitor 2 = true SSSE3 extensions = false context ID: adaptive or shared L1 data = false FMA instruction = false CMPXCHG16B instruction = false xTPR disable = false perfmon and debug = false process context identifiers = false direct cache access = false SSE4.1 extensions = false SSE4.2 extensions = false extended xAPIC support = false MOVBE instruction = false POPCNT instruction = false time stamp counter deadline = false AES instruction = false XSAVE/XSTOR states = false OS-enabled XSAVE/XSTOR = false AVX: advanced vector extensions = false F16C half-precision convert instruction = false RDRAND instruction = false hypervisor guest status = false cache and TLB information (2): 0xb0: instruction TLB: 4K, 4-way, 128 entries 0xb3: data TLB: 4K, 4-way, 128 entries 0x02: instruction TLB: 4M pages, 4-way, 2 entries 0xf0: 64 byte prefetching 0x7d: L2 cache: 2M, 8-way, sectored, 64 byte lines 0x30: L1 cache: 32K, 8-way, 64 byte lines 0x04: data TLB: 4M pages, 4-way, 8 entries 0x2c: L1 data cache: 32K, 8-way, 64 byte lines extended feature flags (0x80000001/edx): SYSCALL and SYSRET instructions = false execution disable = false 1-GB large page support = false RDTSCP = false 64-bit extensions technology available = false Intel feature flags (0x80000001/ecx): LAHF/SAHF supported in 64-bit mode = false LZCNT advanced bit manipulation = false 3DNow! PREFETCH/PREFETCHW instructions = false brand = " Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz" (multi-processing synth): none (multi-processing method): Intel leaf 1 (synth) = Intel Pentium M (Dothan B1), 90nm

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Download the ‘Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04' Manual for Free

- by Asian Angel

If you or someone you know is new to Ubuntu, then the release of this free 143 page manual for the latest LTS edition of Ubuntu is the perfect download. The manual will take you from installing Ubuntu 12.04 all the way through to trouble-shooting the system if you run into problems. On the downloads page you can select a preferred language version, the specific version of Ubuntu you would like a manual for (10.04, 10.10, 11.10, and 12.04), and whether you prefer a ‘print or screen‘ version. Multiple Options Download Page for the Ubuntu Manual (Free Electronic Version) Note: Manual is in PDF format. Here is the link for those of you who prefer to use a regular print paperback copy of the manual. Purchase the ‘Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04′ Manual Download the Official How-To Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless

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Download and Try Out the New ‘Australis UI’ Test-Build of Firefox for Windows

- by Asian Angel

We have all been hearing about the upcoming changes to the UI in Firefox and now the first test build is finally available to try out. Mozilla software engineer Jared Wein has worked hard and put together an unofficial (at the moment) Australis UI build that you can download as a regular installer or as a portable in zip file format. Here is a closer look at the new tab setup in the Australis build. Notice that only the focused tab is non-transparent while the non-active tabs blend nicely into the background. Special Note: Our screenshots were taken in Windows 8, thus the slightly different looking (non-rounded) corners on the app window. The test build only works on Windows at the moment, but you can bet that Linux and MacOS builds are coming in the near future! How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It? HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me?

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Wipe 12.04/Windows 7 dual boot setup and start fresh new 12.04

- by dswhite85

I have an Asus u56e laptop running dual boot setup, Windows 7 and 12.04. I had Windows 7 first. I was wondering what's the easiest way possible to erase/format my drive (500GB) so that it deletes Ubuntu and Windows 7 so I can reinstall 12.04 onto my whole drive? Does the Ubuntu Live CD help make this a possibility or is there something with gparted I have to tinker with? I've already got everything I need backed up. Any help would be much appreciated.

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Secure wipe of a hard drive using WinPE.

- by Derek Meier

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The wiping of a hard drive is typically seen as fairly trivial. There are tons of applications out there that will do it for you. Point àClickàGlobal-Thermo Nuclear War. However, these applications are typically expensive or unreliable. Plus, if you have a laptop or lack a secondary computer to put the hard drive into – how on earth do you wipe it quickly and easily while still conforming to a 7 pass rule (this means that every possible bit on the hard drive is set to 0 and then to 1 seven times in a row)? Yes, one pass should be enough – as turning every bit from a 1 to a zero will wipe the data from existence. But, we’re dealing with tinfoil hat wearing types here people. DOD standards dictate at least 3 passes, and typically 7 is the preferred amount. I’m not going to argue about data recovery. I have been told to use 7 passes, and so I will. So say we all! Quite some time ago I used to make a BartPE XP-based boot cd for the original purpose of securely wiping data. I loved BartPE and integrated so many plugins into my builds that I could do pretty much anything directly from CD. Reset passwords, uninstall security updates, wipe drives, chkdsk, remove spyware, install Windows, etc. However, with the newer multi-core systems and new chipsets coming out from vendors, I found that BartPE was rather difficult to keep up to date. I have since switched to WinPE 3.0 (Windows Preinstallation Environment). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748933(WS.10).aspx It is fairly simple to create your own CD, and I have made a few helpful scripts to easily integrate drivers and rebuild the ISO file for you. I’ll cover making your own boot CD utilizing WinPE 3.0 in a later post – I can talk about WinPE forever and need to collect my thoughts!! My wife loves talking about WinPE almost as much as talking about Doctor Who. Wait, did I say loves? Hmmmm, I may have meant loathes. The topic at hand? Right. Wiping a drive! I must have drunk too much coffee this morning. I like to use a simple batch script that calls a combination of diskpart.exe from Microsoft® and Sdelete.exe created by our friend Mark Russinovich. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx All of the following files are located within the same directory on my WinPE boot CD. Here are the contents of wipe_me.bat, script.txt and sdelete.reg. Wipe_me.bat: @echo off echo. echo I will completely wipe the local hard drives using echo 7 individual wipes. The data will NOT echo be recoverable. I will begin after you pause echo. echo Preparing to partition and format disk. Diskpart.exe /s "script.txt" REM I was annoyed by not having a completely automated script – and Sdelete wants you to accept the license agreement. So, I added a registry file to skip doing that. regedit /S sdelete.reg rem sdelete options selected are: -p (passes) -c (zero free space) -s (recurse through subdirectories, if any) -z (clean free space) [drive letter] sdelete.exe -p 7 -c -s -z c: echo. echo Pass seven complete. echo. echo Wiping complete. Pause exit script.txt: list disk select disk 0 clean create partition primary select partition 1 active format FS=NTFS LABEL="New Volume" QUICK assign letter=c exit *Notes: This script assumes one local hard drive – change the script as you see fit for your environment. The clean command will overwrite the master boot record and any hidden sector information – so be careful! sdelete.reg: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\SDelete] "EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001 With a combination of WinPE, sdelete.exe and your friendly neighborhood text editor you can begin wiping drives as quickly and easily as possible! I hope this helps, I get asked this a lot in my line of work. Best of luck, Derek

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OBIEE 11.1.1 - OBIEE 11g Full Sample App on VMware Player 4

- by user809526

The Full Sample App is designed to run on Virtual Box. Let's describe how to run it on VMware Player 4. Open Virtualization Format Tool http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/ovf VMware Player Documentation https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/player_pubs.html Full Sample App Deployment Guide sampleapp107-vbimage-deployguide-453583.pdf INSTALL VMplayer 4.0.0 as root LINUX # sh VMware-Player-4.0.0-471780.x86_64.bundle (A new VM is not needed and can be deleted later after that installation is completed. "I will install OS later" - blank hard disk Guest: linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5-64bits => rename to RHEL target: eg /a/root/vmware/ Max disk size: 5 GB (will be deleted) Disk: Single file Dummy RHEL.vmk, RHEL.vmdk is generated. "Delete VM from Disk" in VM Player.) Copy Full Sample App files to target /a/root/vmware/ WARNING: Select a target eg /a/root/vmware/ with lots of free space, 95 GB. Check checksums (md5sum). Please do it! ff85c7eacf7fb8c382e98da875e879e1 Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk1.vmdk 973258cb3c7d64ab03ae853278cf2233 Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk2.vmdk e576be16e36d810479736bfb15d050f5 Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk3.vmdk 3455df77279e53e07d5fee6712f1597d Sampleapp_v107_GA-disk4.vmdk OVF FILE Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf CONVERSION $ cd /a/root/vmware/ LINUX $ /usr/bin/ovftool -tt=ovf --compress=1 -dm=monolithicSparse Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf . [dot] Opening OVF source: Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Warning: No manifest file Opening OVF target: . Writing OVF package: Sampleapp_v107_GA/Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Disk Transfer Completed Completed successfully WINDOWS CYGWIN $ /cygdrive/c/VMwarePlayer/OVFTool/ovftool.exe -tt=ovf --compress=1 -dm=monolithicSparse Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf . [dot] Opening OVF source: Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Warning: No manifest file Opening OVF target: . Writing OVF package: Sampleapp_v107_GA\Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf Disk Transfer Completed Completed successfully /a/root/vmware$ du -sk 49095328 . [50 GB already occupied] IMPORT - First start of VM Player 4: /usr/bin/vmplayer "Open a Virtual Machine" Browse to /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf [the new generated .ovf] "Import Virtual Machine" dialog Name: Sampleapp_v107_GA Location: /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/storage [was /home/tdubois/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA] "Import" "The import failed because /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/Sampleapp_v107_GA.ovf did not pass OVF specification conformance or virtual hardware compliance checks. Click Retry to relax OVF specification..." "Retry" ; Long import /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/storage/Sampleapp_v107_GA.vmx and new .vmdk files are created. /a/root/vmware$ du -sk 95551384 . [95 GB occupied] Full Sample App GUEST SETUP "Edit VM settings" min 3GB, 2+ processors, network bridged. For OBIEE + Essbase testing use 8 GB RAM hardware. At first time lauch of Full Sample App, leave OEL booting for several minutes undisturbed. Problem with X display server may occur [/usr/bin/Xorg ; man Xorg]. "Failed to start the X server.... Would you like to view the X server output to diagnose the problem?" "No" [tab key] "Would you like to try to configure the X server? Note that you will need the root password for this." "Yes" [oracle] X Display Settings 800x600 saved in /etc/X11/xorg.conf "Trying to restart the X server" Login as root/oracle in guest OEL. In guest OEL, Virtual Machine > Install VMware Tools... Extract archive VMwareTools-8.8.0-471268.tar.gz all files in writable local directory eg /root In Terminal run Perl script # cd /root/vmware-tools-distrib ; ./vmware-install.pl [keep all default answers] Set keyboard layout System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layouts Restart X server eg System > Log Out root... , relogin Modify X resolution System > Preferences > Screen Resolution Full Sample App OEL login: oracle/oracle ; root/oracle [default US keyboard layout] Credentials are described in the 'sampleapp107-vbimage-deployguide-453583.pdf' The large files in /a/root/vmware/ /a/root/vmware/Sampleapp_v107_GA/ may be removed. FAILURE REMARK: Adding the 4 original Sampleapp_v107_GA-disks[1234].vmdk to VM Player does NOT work as described below. "Edit VM settings" "Remove" "Hard Disk" "Edit VM settings" "Add" "Hard Disk" "Next" "Use an existing virtual disk" "Browse" "Finish" "Keep existing format" "Ok" for each 4 disks settings one by one. Start VM Player 4. "You do not have write access to a partition" Allow all Sampleapp_v107 OEL linux launches. OEL stalls silently after 'Checking filesystems'.

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IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

- by Rick Strahl

I’m in the middle of my annual certificate renewal for the West Wind site and I can honestly say that I hate IIS’s certificate system. When it works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t man can it be a pain. Because I deal with public certificates on my site merely once a year, and you have to perform the certificate dance just the right way, I seem to run into some sort of trouble every year, thinking that Microsoft surely must have addressed the issues I ran into previously – HA! Not so. Don’t ever use the Renew Certificate Feature in IIS! The first rule that I should have never forgotten is that certificate renewals in IIS (7 is what I’m using but I think it’s no different in 7.5 and 8), simply don’t work if you’re submitting to get a public certificate from a certificate authority. I use DNSimple for my DNS domain management and SSL certificates because they provide ridiculously easy domain management and good prices for SSL certs – especially wildcard certificates, which is what I use on west-wind.com. Certificates in IIS can be found pegged to the machine root. If you go into the IIS Manager, go to the machine root the tree and then click on certificates and you then get various certificate options: Both of these options create a new Certificate request (CSR), which is just a text file. But if you’re silly enough like me to click on the Renew button on your old certificate, you’ll find that you end up generating a very long Certificate Request that looks nothing like the original certificate request and the format that’s used for this is not accepted by most certificate authorities. While I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, it simply looks like IIS is respecting none of your original certificate bit size choices and is generating a huge certificate request that is 3 times the size of a ‘normal’ certificate request. The end result is (and I’ve done this at least twice now) is that the certificate processor is likely to fail processing those renewals. Always create a new Certificate While it’s a little more work and you have to remember how to fill out the certificate request properly, this is the safe way to make sure your certificate generates properly. First comes the Distinguished Name Properties dialog: Ah yes you have to love the nomenclature of this stuff. Distinguished name, Common name – WTF is a common name? It doesn’t look common to me! Make sure this form gets filled out correctly. Common NameThis is the domain name of the Web site. In my case I’m creating a wildcard certificate so I’m using the * prefix. If you’re purchasing a certificate for a specific domain use www.west-wind.com or store.west-wind.com for example. Make sure this matches the EXACT domain you’re trying to use secure access on because that’s all the certificate is going to work on unless you get a wildcard certificate. Organization Is the name of your company or organization. Depending on the kind of certificate you purchase this name will show up on your certificate. Most low end SSL certificates (ie. those that cost under $100 for single domains) don’t list the organization, the higher signature certificates that also require extensive validation by the cert authority do. Regardless you should make sure this matches the right company/organization. Organizational Unit This can be anything. Not really sure what this is for, but traditionally I’ve always set this to Web because – well this is a Web thing after all right? I’ve never seen this used anywhere that I can tell other than to internally reference the cert. State and CountryPretty obvious. Should reflect the location of the business/organization/person or site. Next you have to configure the bit size used for the certificate: The default on this dialog is 1024, but I’ve found that most providers these days request a minimum bit length of 2048, as did my DNSimple provider. Again check with the provider when you submit to make sure. Bit length mismatches can cause problems if you use a size that isn’t supported by the provider. I had that happen last year when I submitted my CSR and it got rejected quite a bit later, when the certs usually are issued within an hour or less. When you’re done here, the certificate is saved to disk as a .txt file and it should look something like this (this is a 2048 bit length CSR):-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIEVGCCAz0CAQAwdjELMAkGA1UEBhMCVVMxDzANBgNVBAgMBkhhd2FpaTENMAsG A1UEBwwEUGFpYTEfMB0GA1UECgwWV2VzdCBXaW5kIFRlY2hub2xvZ2llczEMMAoG B1UECwwDV2ViMRgwFgYDVQQDDA8qLndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEKAoIBAQDIPWOFMkMVRp2Ftj9w/cCVV4OYYhoZYtl+8lTk oqDwKca0xWHLgioX/9v0rZLS6a82MHqKEBxVXu+cuCmSE4AQtB/1YH9lS4tpc/be OZDvnTotP6l4MCEzzAfROcw4CiIg6X0RMSnl8IATAvv2V5LQM9TDdt9oDdMpX2IY +vVC9RZ7PMHBmR9kwI2i/lrKitzhQKaHgpmKcRlM6iqpALUiX28w5HJaDKK1MDHN 607tyFJLHijuJKx7PdTqZYf50KkC3NupfZ2avVycf18Q13jHWj59tvwEOczoVzRL l4LQivAqbhyiqMpWnrZunIOUZta5aGm+jo7O1knGWJjxuraTAgMBAAGgggGYMBoG CisGAQQBgjcNAgMxDBYKNi4yLjkyMDAuMjA0BgkrBgEEAYI3FRQxJzAlAgEFDAZS QVNYUFMMC1JBU1hQU1xSaWNrDAtJbmV0TWdyLmV4ZTByBgorBgEEAYI3DQICMWQw YgIBAR5aAE0AaQBjAHIAbwBzAG8AZgB0ACAAUgBTAEEAIABTAEMAaABhAG4AbgBl AGwAIABDAHIAeQBwAHQAbwBnAHIAYQBwAGgAaQBjACAAUAByAG8AdgBpAGQAZQBy AwEAMIHPBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ4xgcEwgb4wDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgTwMBMGA1UdJQQM MAoGCCsGAQUFBwMBMHgGCSqGSIb3DQEJDwRrMGkwDgYIKoZIhvcNAwICAgCAMA4G CCqGSIb3DQMEAgIAgDALBglghkgBZQMEASowCwYJYIZIAWUDBAEtMAsGCWCGSAFl AwQBAjALBglghkgBZQMEAQUwBwYFKw4DAgcwCgYIKoZIhvcNAwcwHQYDVR0OBBYE FD/yOsTbXE+GVFCFMmldzQvyloz9MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAA4IBAQCK6LlsCuIM 1AU0niB6QZ9v0FTsGFxP1dYvVUnJyY6VEKNiGFiQjZac7UCs0p58yScdXWEFOE8V OsjAYD3xYNc05+ckyD67UHRGEUAVB9RBvbKW23KeR/8kBmEzc8PemD52YOgExxAJ 57xWmAwEHAvbgYzQvhO8AOzH3TGvvHbg5UKM1pYgNmuwZq5DkL/IDoeIJwfk/wrI wghNTuxxIFgbH4YrgLgv4PRvrS/LaTCRBdboaCgzATMczaOb1nd/DVNR+3fCtMhM W0psTAjzRbmXF3nJyAQa7jF/52gkY0RfFX2lG5tJnG+XDsVNvKNvh9Qa5Tlmkm06 ILKCm9ciWCKk -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- You can take that certificate request and submit that to your certificate provider. Since this is base64 encoded you can typically just paste it into a text box on the submission page, or some providers will ask you to upload the CSR as a file. What does a Renewal look like? Note the length of the CSR will vary somewhat with key strength, but compare this to a renewal request that IIS generated from my existing site:-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- MIIPpwYFKoZIhvcNAQcCoIIPmDCCD5QCAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIIIqAYJKoZI hvcNAQcBoIIImQSCCJUwggiRMIIH+gIBADBdMSEwHwYDVQQLDBhEb21haW4gQ29u dHJvbCBWYWxpFGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsMFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBXaWxkY2FyZDEY MBYGA1UEAwwPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCB iQKBgQCK4OuIOR18Wb8tNMGRZiD1c9X57b332Lj7DhbckFqLs0ys8kVDHrTXSj+T Ye9nmAvfPpZmBtE5p9qRNN79rUYugAdl+qEtE4IJe1bRfxXzcKa1SXa8+TEs3zQa zYSmcR2dDuC8om1eAdeCtt0NnkvANgm1VLwGOor/UHMASaEhCQIDAQABoIIG8jAa BgorBgEEAYI3DQIDMQwWCjYuMi45MjAwLjIwNAYJKwYBBAGCNxUUMScwJQIBBQwG UkFTWFBTDAtSQVNYUFNcUmljawwLSW5ldE1nci5leGUwZgYKKwYBBAGCNw0CAjFY MFYCAQIeTgBNAGkAYwByAG8AcwBvAGYAdAAgAFMAdAByAG8AbgBnACAAQwByAHkA cAB0AG8AZwByAGEAcABoAGkAYwAgAFAAcgBvAHYAaQBkAGUAcgMBADCCAQAGCSqG SIb3DQEJDjGB8jCB7zAOBgNVHQ8BAf8EBAMCBaAwDAYDVR0TAQH/BAIwADA0BgNV HSUELTArBggrBgEFBQcDAQYIKwYBBQUHAwIGCisGAQQBgjcKAwMGCWCGSAGG+EIE ATBPBgNVHSAESDBGMDoGCysGAQQBsjEBAgIHMCswKQYIKwYBBQUHAgEWHWh0dHBz Oi8vc2VjdXJlLmNvbW9kby5jb20vQ1BTMAgGBmeBDAECATApBgNVHREEIjAggg8q Lndlc3Qtd2luZC5jb22CDXdlc3Qtd2luZC5jb20wHQYDVR0OBBYEFEVLAyO8gDiv lsfovKrx9mHPyrsiMIIFMAYJKwYBBAGCNw0BMYIFITCCBR0wggQFoAMCAQICEQDu 1E1T5Jvtkm5LOfSHabWlMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMHIxCzAJBgNVBAYTAkdCMRsw GQYDVQQIExJHcmVhdGVyIE1hbmNoZXN0ZXIxEDAOBgNVBAcTB1NhbGZvcmQxGjAY BgNVBAoTEUNPTU9ETyBDQSBMaW1pdGVkMRgwFgYDVQQDEw9Fc3NlbnRpYWxTU0wg Q0EwHhcNMTQwNTA3MDAwMDAwWhcNMTUwNjA2MjM1OTU5WjBdMSEwHwYDVQQLExhE b21haW4gQ29udHJvbCBWYWxpZGF0ZWQxHjAcBgNVBAsTFUVzc2VudGlhbFNTTCBX aWxkY2FyZDEYMBYGA1UEAxQPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0B AQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAiyKfL66XB51DlUfm6xXqJBcvMU2qorRHxC+WjEpB amvg8XoqNfCKzDAvLMbY4BLhbYCTagqtslnP3Gj4AKhXqRKU0n6iSbmS1gcWzCJM CHufZ5RDtuTuxhTdJxzP9YqZUfKV5abWQp/TK6V1ryaBJvdqM73q4tRjrQODtkiR PfZjxpybnBHFJS8jYAf8jcOjSDZcgN1d9Evc5MrEJCp/90cAkozyF/NMcFtD6Yj8 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9Evc5MrEJCp/90cAkozyF/NMcFtD6Yj8UM97z3MzDT2JPDoH3kAr3cCgpUNyQ2+w DNCnL9eWYFkOQi8FZMsZol7KlZ5NgNfOa7iZMVGbqDg6rkS//2uGe6tSQJTTs+mA ZB+na+M8XT2UqwIDAQABo4IBwTCCAb0wHwYDVR0jBBgwFoAU2svqrVsIXcz//CZU zknlVcY49PgwHQYDVR0OBBYEFH0AmLiLRSEL9+sQD/n5O4N7/nnqMA4GA1UdDwEB /wQEAwIFoDAMBgNVHRMBAf8EAjAAMDQGA1UdJQQtMCsGCCsGAQUFBwMBBggrBgEF BQcDAgYKKwYBBAGCNwoDAwYJYIZIAYb4QgQBME8GA1UdIARIMEYwOgYLKwYBBAGy MQECAgcwKzApBggrBgEFBQcCARYdaHR0cHM6Ly9zZWN1cmUuY29tb2RvLmNvbS9D UFMwCAYGZ4EMAQIBMDsGA1UdHwQ0MDIwMKAuoCyGKmh0dHA6Ly9jcmwuY29tb2Rv Y2EuY29tL0Vzc2VudGlhbFNTTENBLmNybDBuBggrBgEFBQcBAQRiMGAwOAYIKwYB BQUHMAKGLGh0dHA6Ly9jcnQuY29tb2RvY2EuY29tL0Vzc2VudGlhbFNTTENBXzIu Y3J0MCQGCCsGAQUFBzABhhhodHRwOi8vb2NzcC5jb21vZG9jYS5jb20wKQYDVR0R BCIwIIIPKi53ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tgg13ZXN0LXdpbmQuY29tMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEB BQUAA4IBAQBqBfd6QHrxXsfgfKARG6np8yszIPhHGPPmaE7xq7RpcZjY9H+8l6fe 4jQbGFjbA5uHBklYI4m2snhPaW2p8iF8YOkm2V2hEsSTnkf5/flw9mZtlCFEDFXS sBxBdNz8RYTthPMu1h09C0XuDB30sztgnR692FrxJN5/bXsk+MC9nEweTFW/t2HW +XZ8bhM7vsAS+pZionR4MyuQ0mYIt/lDcsZVZ91KxTsIm8rNMkkYGFoSIXjQ0+0t CbxMF0i2qnpmNRpA6PU8l7lxxvPkplsk9KB8QIPFrR5p/i/SUAd9vECWh5+/ktlc rfFP2PK7XcEwWizsvMrNqLyvQVNXSUPTMYIBrzCCAasCAQEwgYcwcjELMAkGA1UE BhMCR0IxGzAZBgNVBAgTEkdyZWF0ZXIgTWFuY2hlc3RlcjEQMA4GA1UEBxMHU2Fs Zm9yZDEaMBgGA1UEChMRQ09NT0RPIENBIExpbWl0ZWQxGDAWBgNVBAMTD0Vzc2Vu dGlhbFNTTCBDQQIRAO7UTVPkm+2Sbks59IdptaUwCQYFKw4DAhoFADANBgkqhkiG 9w0BAQEFAASCAQB8PNQ6bYnQpWfkHyxnDuvNKw3wrqF2p7JMZm+SuN2qp3R2LpCR mW2LrGtQIm9Iob/QOYH+8houYNVdvsATGPXX2T8gzn+anof4tOG0vCTK1Bp9bwf9 MkRP+1c8RW/vkYmUW4X5/C+y3CZpMH5dDTaXBIpXFzjX/fxNpH/rvLzGiaYYL3Cn OLO+aOADr9qq5yoqwpiYCSfYNNYKTUNNGfYIidQwYtbHXEYhSukB2oR89xD2sZZ4 bOqFjUPgTa5SsERLDDeg3omMKiIXVYGxlqBEq51Kge6IQt4qQV9P9VgInW7cWmKe dTqNHI9ri3ttewdEnT++TKGKKfTjX9SR8Waj -----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST----- Clearly there’s something very different between this an my original request! And it didn’t work. IIS creates a custom CSR that is encoded in a format that no certificate authority I’ve ever used uses. If you want the gory details of what’s in there look at this ServerFault question (thanks to Mika in the comments). In the end it doesn’t matter though – no certificate authority knows what to do with this CSR. So create a new CSR and skip the renewal. Always! Use the same Server Keep in mind that on IIS at least you should always create your certificate on a single server and then when you receive the final certificate from your provider import it on that server. IIS tracks the CSR it created and requires it in order to import the final certificate properly. So if for some reason you try to install the certificate on another server, it won’t work. I’ve also run into trouble trying to install the same certificate twice – this time around I didn’t give my certificate the proper friendly name and IIS failed to allow me to assign the certificate to any of my Web sites. So I removed the certificate and tried to import again, only to find it failed the second time around. There are other ways to fix this, but in my case I had to have the certificate re-issued to work – not what you want to do. Regardless of what you do though, when you import make sure you do it right the first time by crossing all your t’s and dotting your i's– it’ll save you a lot of grief! You don’t actually have to use the server that the certificate gets installed on to generate the CSR and first install it, but it is generally a good idea to do so just so you can get the certificate installed into the right place right away. If you have access to the server where you need to install the certificate you might as well use it. But you can use another machine to generated the and install the certificate, then export the certificate and move it to another machine as needed. So you can use your Dev machine to create a certificate then export it and install it on a live server. More on installation and back up/export later. Installing the Certificate Once you’ve submitted a CSR request your provider will process the request and eventually issue you a new final certificate that contains another text file with the final key to import into your certificate store. IIS does this by combining the content in your certificate request with the original CSR. If all goes well your new certificate shows up in the certificate list and you’re ready to assign the certificate to your sites. Make sure you use a friendly name that matches domain name of your site. So use *.mysite.com or www.mysite.com or store.mysite.com to ensure IIS recognizes the certificate. I made the mistake of not naming my friendly name this way and found that IIS was unable to link my sites to my wildcard certificate. It needed to have the *. as part of the certificate otherwise the Hostname input field was blanked out. Changing the Friendly Name If you by accidentally used an invalid friendly name you can change it later in the Windows certificate store. Bring up a Run Box Type MMC File | Add/Remove Snap In Add Certificates | Computer Account | Local Computer Drill into Certificates | Personal | Certificates Find your Certificate | Right Click | Properties Edit the Friendly Name | Click OK Backing up your Certificate The first thing you should do once your certificate is successfully installed is to back it up! In case your server crashes or you otherwise lose your configuration this will ensure you have an easy way to recover and reinstall your certificate either on the same server or a different one. If you’re running a server farm or using a wildcard certificate you also need to get the certificate onto other machines and a PFX file import is the easiest way to do this. To back up your certificate select your certificate and choose Export from the context or sidebar menu: The Export Certificate option allows you to export a password protected binary file that you can import in a single step. You can copy the resulting binary PFX file to back up or copy to other machines to install on. Importing the certificate on another machine is as easy as pointing at the PFX file and specifying the password. IIS handles the rest. Assigning a new certificate to your Site Once you have the new certificate installed, all that’s left to do is assign it to your site. In IIS select your Web site and bring up the Site Bindings from the right sidebar. Add a new binding for https, bind it to port 443, specify your hostname and pick the certificate from the pick list. If you’re using a root site make sure to set up your certificate for www.yoursite.com and also for yoursite.com so that both work properly with SSL. Note that you need to explicitly configure each hostname for a certificate if you plan to use SSL. Luckily if you update your SSL certificate in the following year, IIS prompts you and asks whether you like to update all other sites that are using the existing cert to the newer cert. And you’re done. So what’s the Pain? So, all of this is old hat and it doesn’t look all that bad right? So what’s the pain here? Well if you follow the instructions and do everything right, then the process is about as straight forward as you would expect it to be. You create a cert request, you import it and assign it to your sites. That’s the basic steps and to be perfectly fair it works well – if nothing goes wrong. However, renewing tends to be the problem. The first unintuitive issue is that you simply shouldn’t renew but create a new CSR and generate your new certificate from that. Over the years I’ve fallen prey to the belief that Microsoft eventually will fix this so that the renewal creates the same type of CSR as the old cert, but apparently that will just never happen. Booo! The other problem I ran into is that I accidentally misnamed my imported certificate which in turn set off a chain of events that caused my originally issued certificate to become uninstallable. When I received my completed certificate I installed it and it installed just fine, but the friendly name was wrong. As a result IIS refused to assign the certificate to any of my host headered sites. That’s strike number one. Why the heck should the friendly name have any effect on the ability to attach the certificate??? Next I uninstalled the certificate because I figured that would be the easiest way to make sure I get it right. But I found that I could not reinstall my certificate. I kept getting these stop errors: "ASN1 bad tag value met" that would prevent the installation from completion. After searching around for this error and reading countless long messages on forums, I found that this error supposedly does not actually mean the install failed, but the list wouldn’t refresh. Commodo has this to say: Note: There is a known issue in IIS 7 giving the following error: "Cannot find the certificate request associated with this certificate file. A certificate request must be completed on the computer where it was created." You may also receive a message stating "ASN1 bad tag value met". If this is the same server that you generated the CSR on then, in most cases, the certificate is actually installed. Simply cancel the dialog and press "F5" to refresh the list of server certificates. If the new certificate is now in the list, you can continue with the next step. If it is not in the list, you will need to reissue your certificate using a new CSR (see our CSR creation instructions for IIS 7). After creating a new CSR, login to your Comodo account and click the 'replace' button for your certificate. Not sure if this issue is fixed in IIS 8 but that’s an insane bug to have crop up. As it turns out, in my case the refresh didn’t work and the certificate didn’t show up in the IIS list after the reinstall. In fact when looking at the certificate store I could see my certificate was installed in the right place, but the private key is missing which is most likely why IIS is not picking it up. It looks like IIS could not match the final cert to the original CSR generated. But again some sort of message to that affect might be helpful instead of ASN1 bad tag value met. Recovering the Private Key So it turns out my original problem was that I received the published key, but when I imported the private key was missing. There’s a relatively easy way to recover from this. If your certificate doesn’t show up in IIS check in the certificate store for the local machine (see steps above on how to bring this up). If you look at the certificate in Certificates/Personal/Certificates make sure you see the key as shown in the image below: if the key is missing it means that the certificate is missing the private key most likely. To fix a certificate you can do the following: Double click the certificate Go to the Details Tab Copy down the Serial number You can copy the serial number from the area blurred out above. The serial number will be in a format like ?00 a7 9b a1 a4 9d 91 63 57 d6 9f 26 b8 ee 79 b5 cb and you’ll need to strip out the spaces in order to use it in the next step. Next open up an Administrative command prompt and issue the following command: certutil -repairstore my 00a79ba1a49d916357d69f26b8ee79b5cb You should get a confirmation message that the repair worked. If you now go back to the certificate store you should now see the key icon show up on the certificate. Your certificate is fixed. Now go back into IIS Manager and refresh the list of certificates and if all goes well you should see all the certificates that showed in the cert store now: Remember – back up the key first then map to your site… Summary I deal with a lot of customers who run their own IIS servers, and I can’t tell you how often I hear about botched SSL installations. When I posted some of my issues on Twitter yesterday I got a hell storm of “me too” responses. I’m clearly not the only one, who’s run into this especially with renewals. I feel pretty comfortable with IIS configuration and I do a lot of it for support purposes, but the SSL configuration is one that never seems to go seamlessly. This blog post is meant as reminder to myself to read next time I do a renewal. So I can dot my i's and dash my t’s before I get caught in the mess I’m dealing with today. Hopefully some of you find this useful as well.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in IIS7 Security Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Using jQuery to POST Form Data to an ASP.NET ASMX AJAX Web Service

- by Rick Strahl

The other day I got a question about how to call an ASP.NET ASMX Web Service or PageMethods with the POST data from a Web Form (or any HTML form for that matter). The idea is that you should be able to call an endpoint URL, send it regular urlencoded POST data and then use Request.Form[] to retrieve the posted data as needed. My first reaction was that you can’t do it, because ASP.NET ASMX AJAX services (as well as Page Methods and WCF REST AJAX Services) require that the content POSTed to the server is posted as JSON and sent with an application/json or application/x-javascript content type. IOW, you can’t directly call an ASP.NET AJAX service with regular urlencoded data. Note that there are other ways to accomplish this. You can use ASP.NET MVC and a custom route, an HTTP Handler or separate ASPX page, or even a WCF REST service that’s configured to use non-JSON inputs. However if you want to use an ASP.NET AJAX service (or Page Methods) with a little bit of setup work it’s actually quite easy to capture all the form variables on the client and ship them up to the server. The basic steps needed to make this happen are: Capture form variables into an array on the client with jQuery’s .serializeArray() function Use $.ajax() or my ServiceProxy class to make an AJAX call to the server to send this array On the server create a custom type that matches the .serializeArray() name/value structure Create extension methods on NameValue[] to easily extract form variables Create a [WebMethod] that accepts this name/value type as an array (NameValue[]) This seems like a lot of work but realize that steps 3 and 4 are a one time setup step that can be reused in your entire site or multiple applications. Let’s look at a short example that looks like this as a base form of fields to ship to the server: The HTML for this form looks something like this: <div id="divMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display: none"> </div> <div> <div class="label">Name:</div> <div><asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /></div> </div> <div> <div class="label">Company:</div> <div><asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtCompany"/></div> </div> <div> <div class="label" ></div> <div> <asp:DropDownList runat="server" ID="lstAttending"> <asp:ListItem Text="Attending" Value="Attending"/> <asp:ListItem Text="Not Attending" Value="NotAttending" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Maybe Attending" Value="MaybeAttending" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Not Sure Yet" Value="NotSureYet" /> </asp:DropDownList> </div> </div> <div> <div class="label">Special Needs:<br /> <small>(check all that apply)</small></div> <div> <asp:ListBox runat="server" ID="lstSpecialNeeds" SelectionMode="Multiple"> <asp:ListItem Text="Vegitarian" Value="Vegitarian" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Vegan" Value="Vegan" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Kosher" Value="Kosher" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Special Access" Value="SpecialAccess" /> <asp:ListItem Text="No Binder" Value="NoBinder" /> </asp:ListBox> </div> </div> <div> <div class="label"></div> <div> <asp:CheckBox ID="chkAdditionalGuests" Text="Additional Guests" runat="server" /> </div> </div> <hr /> <input type="button" id="btnSubmit" value="Send Registration" /> The form includes a few different kinds of form fields including a multi-selection listbox to demonstrate retrieving multiple values. Setting up the Server Side [WebMethod] The [WebMethod] on the server we’re going to call is going to be very simple and just capture the content of these values and echo then back as a formatted HTML string. Obviously this is overly simplistic but it serves to demonstrate the simple point of capturing the POST data on the server in an AJAX callback. public class PageMethodsService : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string SendRegistration(NameValue[] formVars) { StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.AppendFormat("Thank you {0}, <br/><br/>", HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(formVars.Form("txtName"))); sb.AppendLine("You've entered the following: <hr/>"); foreach (NameValue nv in formVars) { // strip out ASP.NET form vars like _ViewState/_EventValidation if (!nv.name.StartsWith("__")) { if (nv.name.StartsWith("txt") || nv.name.StartsWith("lst") || nv.name.StartsWith("chk")) sb.Append(nv.name.Substring(3)); else sb.Append(nv.name); sb.AppendLine(": " + HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(nv.value) + "<br/>"); } } sb.AppendLine("<hr/>"); string[] needs = formVars.FormMultiple("lstSpecialNeeds"); if (needs == null) sb.AppendLine("No Special Needs"); else { sb.AppendLine("Special Needs: <br/>"); foreach (string need in needs) { sb.AppendLine("  " + need + "<br/>"); } } return sb.ToString(); } } The key feature of this method is that it receives a custom type called NameValue[] which is an array of NameValue objects that map the structure that the jQuery .serializeArray() function generates. There are two custom types involved in this: The actual NameValue type and a NameValueExtensions class that defines a couple of extension methods for the NameValue[] array type to allow for single (.Form()) and multiple (.FormMultiple()) value retrieval by name. The NameValue class is as simple as this and simply maps the structure of the array elements of .serializeArray(): public class NameValue { public string name { get; set; } public string value { get; set; } } The extension method class defines the .Form() and .FormMultiple() methods to allow easy retrieval of form variables from the returned array: /// <summary> /// Simple NameValue class that maps name and value /// properties that can be used with jQuery's /// $.serializeArray() function and JSON requests /// </summary> public static class NameValueExtensionMethods { /// <summary> /// Retrieves a single form variable from the list of /// form variables stored /// </summary> /// <param name="formVars"></param> /// <param name="name">formvar to retrieve</param> /// <returns>value or string.Empty if not found</returns> public static string Form(this NameValue[] formVars, string name) { var matches = formVars.Where(nv => nv.name.ToLower() == name.ToLower()).FirstOrDefault(); if (matches != null) return matches.value; return string.Empty; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves multiple selection form variables from the list of /// form variables stored. /// </summary> /// <param name="formVars"></param> /// <param name="name">The name of the form var to retrieve</param> /// <returns>values as string[] or null if no match is found</returns> public static string[] FormMultiple(this NameValue[] formVars, string name) { var matches = formVars.Where(nv => nv.name.ToLower() == name.ToLower()).Select(nv => nv.value).ToArray(); if (matches.Length == 0) return null; return matches; } } Using these extension methods it’s easy to retrieve individual values from the array: string name = formVars.Form("txtName"); or multiple values: string[] needs = formVars.FormMultiple("lstSpecialNeeds"); if (needs != null) { // do something with matches } Using these functions in the SendRegistration method it’s easy to retrieve a few form variables directly (txtName and the multiple selections of lstSpecialNeeds) or to iterate over the whole list of values. Of course this is an overly simple example – in typical app you’d probably want to validate the input data and save it to the database and then return some sort of confirmation or possibly an updated data list back to the client. Since this is a full AJAX service callback realize that you don’t have to return simple string values – you can return any of the supported result types (which are most serializable types) including complex hierarchical objects and arrays that make sense to your client code. POSTing Form Variables from the Client to the AJAX Service To call the AJAX service method on the client is straight forward and requires only use of little native jQuery plus JSON serialization functionality. To start add jQuery and the json2.js library to your page: <script src="Scripts/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="Scripts/json2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> json2.js can be found here (be sure to remove the first line from the file): http://www.json.org/json2.js It’s required to handle JSON serialization for those browsers that don’t support it natively. With those script references in the document let’s hookup the button click handler and call the service: $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSubmit").click(sendRegistration); }); function sendRegistration() { var arForm = $("#form1").serializeArray(); $.ajax({ url: "PageMethodsService.asmx/SendRegistration", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ formVars: arForm }), dataType: "json", success: function (result) { var jEl = $("#divMessage"); jEl.html(result.d).fadeIn(1000); setTimeout(function () { jEl.fadeOut(1000) }, 5000); }, error: function (xhr, status) { alert("An error occurred: " + status); } }); } The key feature in this code is the $("#form1").serializeArray(); call which serializes all the form fields of form1 into an array. Each form var is represented as an object with a name/value property. This array is then serialized into JSON with: JSON.stringify({ formVars: arForm }) The format for the parameter list in AJAX service calls is an object with one property for each parameter of the method. In this case its a single parameter called formVars and we’re assigning the array of form variables to it. The URL to call on the server is the name of the Service (or ASPX Page for Page Methods) plus the name of the method to call. On return the success callback receives the result from the AJAX callback which in this case is the formatted string which is simply assigned to an element in the form and displayed. Remember the result type is whatever the method returns – it doesn’t have to be a string. Note that ASP.NET AJAX and WCF REST return JSON data as a wrapped object so the result has a ‘d’ property that holds the actual response: jEl.html(result.d).fadeIn(1000); Slightly simpler: Using ServiceProxy.js If you want things slightly cleaner you can use the ServiceProxy.js class I’ve mentioned here before. The ServiceProxy class handles a few things for calling ASP.NET and WCF services more cleanly: Automatic JSON encoding Automatic fix up of ‘d’ wrapper property Automatic Date conversion on the client Simplified error handling Reusable and abstracted To add the service proxy add: <script src="Scripts/ServiceProxy.js" type="text/javascript"></script> and then change the code to this slightly simpler version: <script type="text/javascript"> proxy = new ServiceProxy("PageMethodsService.asmx/"); $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSubmit").click(sendRegistration); }); function sendRegistration() { var arForm = $("#form1").serializeArray(); proxy.invoke("SendRegistration", { formVars: arForm }, function (result) { var jEl = $("#divMessage"); jEl.html(result).fadeIn(1000); setTimeout(function () { jEl.fadeOut(1000) }, 5000); }, function (error) { alert(error.message); } ); } The code is not very different but it makes the call as simple as specifying the method to call, the parameters to pass and the actions to take on success and error. No more remembering which content type and data types to use and manually serializing to JSON. This code also removes the “d” property processing in the response and provides more consistent error handling in that the call always returns an error object regardless of a server error or a communication error unlike the native $.ajax() call. Either approach works and both are pretty easy. The ServiceProxy really pays off if you use lots of service calls and especially if you need to deal with date values returned from the server on the client. Summary Making Web Service calls and getting POST data to the server is not always the best option – ASP.NET and WCF AJAX services are meant to work with data in objects. However, in some situations it’s simply easier to POST all the captured form data to the server instead of mapping all properties from the input fields to some sort of message object first. For this approach the above POST mechanism is useful as it puts the parsing of the data on the server and leaves the client code lean and mean. It’s even easy to build a custom model binder on the server that can map the array values to properties on an object generically with some relatively simple Reflection code and without having to manually map form vars to properties and do string conversions. Keep in mind though that other approaches also abound. ASP.NET MVC makes it pretty easy to create custom routes to data and the built in model binder makes it very easy to deal with inbound form POST data in its original urlencoded format. The West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit also includes functionality for AJAX callbacks using plain POST values. All that’s needed is a Method parameter to query/form value to specify the method to be called on the server. After that the content type is completely optional and up to the consumer. It’d be nice if the ASP.NET AJAX Service and WCF AJAX Services weren’t so tightly bound to the content type so that you could more easily create open access service endpoints that can take advantage of urlencoded data that is everywhere in existing pages. It would make it much easier to create basic REST endpoints without complicated service configuration. Ah one can dream! In the meantime I hope this article has given you some ideas on how you can transfer POST data from the client to the server using JSON – it might be useful in other scenarios beyond ASP.NET AJAX services as well. Additional Resources ServiceProxy.js A small JavaScript library that wraps $.ajax() to call ASP.NET AJAX and WCF AJAX Services. Includes date parsing extensions to the JSON object, a global dataFilter for processing dates on all jQuery JSON requests, provides cleanup for the .NET wrapped message format and handles errors in a consistent fashion. Making jQuery Calls to WCF/ASMX with a ServiceProxy Client More information on calling ASMX and WCF AJAX services with jQuery and some more background on ServiceProxy.js. Note the implementation has slightly changed since the article was written. ww.jquery.js The West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit also includes ServiceProxy.js in the West Wind jQuery extension library. This version is slightly different and includes embedded json encoding/decoding based on json2.js.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery ASP.NET AJAX

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Transportable Database 11gR2 Certified with E-Business Suite

- by Steven Chan

Platform migration is the process of moving a database from one operating system platform to a different operating system platform. You might wish to migrate your E-Business Suite database to create testing instances, experiment with new architectures, perform benchmarks, or prepare for actual platform changes in your production environment. Database migration across platforms of the same "endian" format (byte ordering) using the Transportable Database (TDB) process is now certified with Oracle Database 11gR2 (11.2.0.1) for:Oracle E-Business Suite Releases 11i (11.5.10.2) Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.0.4 or higherOracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.1 or higherThis EBS database migration process was previously certified only for 10gR2 and 11gR1.

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Introducing Oracle VM Server for SPARC

- by Honglin Su

As you are watching Oracle's Virtualization Strategy Webcast and exploring the great virtualization offerings of Oracle VM product line, I'd like to introduce Oracle VM Server for SPARC -- highly efficient, enterprise-class virtualization solution for Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology. Oracle VM Server for SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains, leverages the built-in SPARC hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, network, and storage) by creating partitions called logical (or virtual) domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides the flexibility to deploy multiple Oracle Solaris operating systems simultaneously on a single platform. Oracle VM Server also allows you to create up to 128 virtual servers on one system to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by the CMT architecture. Oracle VM Server for SPARC integrates both the industry-leading CMT capability of the UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 Plus processors and the Oracle Solaris operating system. This combination helps to increase flexibility, isolate workload processing, and improve the potential for maximum server utilization. Oracle VM Server for SPARC delivers the following: Leading Price/Performance - The low-overhead architecture provides scalable performance under increasing workloads without additional license cost. This enables you to meet the most aggressive price/performance requirement Advanced RAS - Each logical domain is an entirely independent virtual machine with its own OS. It supports virtual disk mutipathing and failover as well as faster network failover with link-based IP multipathing (IPMP) support. Moreover, it's fully integrated with Solaris FMA (Fault Management Architecture), which enables predictive self healing. CPU Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) - Enable your resource management policy and domain workload to trigger the automatic addition and removal of CPUs. This ability helps you to better align with your IT and business priorities. Enhanced Domain Migrations - Perform domain migrations interactively and non-interactively to bring more flexibility to the management of your virtualized environment. Improve active domain migration performance by compressing memory transfers and taking advantage of cryptographic acceleration hardware. These methods provide faster migration for load balancing, power saving, and planned maintenance. Dynamic Crypto Control - Dynamically add and remove cryptographic units (aka MAU) to and from active domains. Also, migrate active domains that have cryptographic units. Physical-to-virtual (P2V) Conversion - Quickly convert an existing SPARC server running the Oracle Solaris 8, 9 or 10 OS into a virtualized Oracle Solaris 10 image. Use this image to facilitate OS migration into the virtualized environment. Virtual I/O Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) - Add and remove virtual I/O services and devices without needing to reboot the system. CPU Power Management - Implement power saving by disabling each core on a Sun UltraSPARC T2 or T2 Plus processor that has all of its CPU threads idle. Advanced Network Configuration - Configure the following network features to obtain more flexible network configurations, higher performance, and scalability: Jumbo frames, VLANs, virtual switches for link aggregations, and network interface unit (NIU) hybrid I/O. Official Certification Based On Real-World Testing - Use Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the most sophisticated enterprise workloads under real-world conditions, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Affordable, Full-Stack Enterprise Class Support - Obtain worldwide support from Oracle for the entire virtualization environment and workloads together. The support covers hardware, firmware, OS, virtualization, and the software stack. SPARC Server Virtualization Oracle offers a full portfolio of virtualization solutions to address your needs. SPARC is the leading platform to have the hard partitioning capability that provides the physical isolation needed to run independent operating systems. Many customers have already used Oracle Solaris Containers for application isolation. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides another important feature with OS isolation. This gives you the flexibility to deploy multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single Sun SPARC T-Series server with finer granularity for computing resources. For SPARC CMT processors, the natural level of granularity is an execution thread, not a time-sliced microsecond of execution resources. Each CPU thread can be treated as an independent virtual processor. The scheduler is naturally built into the CPU for lower overhead and higher performance. Your organizations can couple Oracle Solaris Containers and Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the breakthrough space and energy savings afforded by Sun SPARC Enterprise systems with CMT technology to deliver a more agile, responsive, and low-cost environment. Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center The Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of virtual guests, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Containers. It helps you streamline operations and reduce downtime. Together, the Virtualization Management Pack and the Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack provide an end-to-end management solution for physical and virtual systems through a single web-based console. This solution automates the lifecycle management of physical and virtual systems and is the most effective systems management solution for Oracle's Sun infrastructure. Ease of Deployment with Configuration Assistant The Oracle VM Server for SPARC Configuration Assistant can help you easily create logical domains. After gathering the configuration data, the Configuration Assistant determines the best way to create a deployment to suit your requirements. The Configuration Assistant is available as both a graphical user interface (GUI) and terminal-based tool. Oracle Solaris Cluster HA Support The Oracle Solaris Cluster HA for Oracle VM Server for SPARC data service provides a mechanism for orderly startup and shutdown, fault monitoring and automatic failover of the Oracle VM Server guest domain service. In addition, applications that run on a logical domain, as well as its resources and dependencies can be controlled and managed independently. These are managed as if they were running in a classical Solaris Cluster hardware node. Supported Systems Oracle VM Server for SPARC is supported on all Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology. UltraSPARC T2 Plus Systems · Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 Server · Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 Server · Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server · Sun Netra T5440 Server · Sun Blade T6340 Server Module · Sun Netra T6340 Server Module UltraSPARC T2 Systems · Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server · Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server · Sun Netra T5220 Server · Sun Blade T6320 Server Module · Sun Netra CP3260 ATCA Blade Server Note that UltraSPARC T1 systems are supported on earlier versions of the software.Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology come with the right to use (RTU) of Oracle VM Server, and the software is pre-installed. If you have the systems under warranty or with support, you can download the software and system firmware as well as their updates. Oracle Premier Support for Systems provides fully-integrated support for your server hardware, firmware, OS, and virtualization software. Visit oracle.com/support for information about Oracle's support offerings for Sun systems. For more information about Oracle's virtualization offerings, visit oracle.com/virtualization.

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How to Play FLAC Files in Windows 7 Media Center & Player

- by Mysticgeek

An annoyance for music lovers who enjoy FLAC format, is there’s no native support for WMP or WMC. If you’re a music enthusiast who prefers FLAC format, we’ll look at adding support to Windows 7 Media Center and Player. For the following article we are using Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit edition. Download and Install madFLAC v1.8 The first thing we need to do is download and install the madFLAC v1.8 decoder (link below). Just unzip the file and run install.bat… You’ll get a message that it has been successfully registered, click Ok. To verify everything is working, open up one of your FLAC files with WMP, and you’ll get the following message. Check the box Don’t ask me again for this extension and click Yes. Now Media Player should play the track you’ve chosen. Delete Current Music Library But what if you want to add your entire collection of FLAC files to the Library? If you already have it set up as your default music player, unfortunately we need to remove the current library and delete the database. The best way to manage the music library in Windows 7 is via WMP 12. Since we don’t want to delete songs from the computer we need to Open WMP, press “Alt+T” and navigate to Tools \ Options \ Library. Now uncheck the box Delete files from computer when deleted from library and click Ok. Now in your Library click “Ctrl + A” to highlight all of the songs in the Library, then hit the “Delete” key. If you have a lot of songs in your library (like on our system) you’ll see the following dialog box while it collects all of the information. After all of the data is collected, make sure the radio button next to Delete from library only is marked and click Ok. Again you’ll see the Working progress window while the songs are deleted. Deleting Current Database Now we need to make sure we’re starting out fresh. Close out of Media Player, then we’ll basically follow the same directions The Geek pointed out for fixing the WMP Library. Click on Start and type in services.msc into the search box and hit Enter. Now scroll down and stop the service named Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service. Now, navigate to the following directory and the main file to delete CurrentDatabase_372.wmdb %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\ Again, the main file to delete is CurrentDatabase_372.wmdb, though if you want, you can delete them all. If you’re uneasy about deleting these files, make sure to back them up first. Now after you restart WMP you can begin adding your FLAC files. For those of us with large collections, it’s extremely annoying to see WMP try to pick up all of your media by default. To delete the other directories go to Organize \ Manage Libraries then open the directories you want to remove. For example here we’re removing the default libraries it tries to check for music. Remove the directories you don’t want it to gather contents from in each of the categories. We removed all of the other collections and only added the FLAC music directory from our home server. SoftPointer Tag Support Plugin Even though we were able to get FLAC files to play in WMP and WMC at this point, there’s another utility from SoftPointer to add. It enables FLAC (and other file formats) to be picked up in the library much easier. It has a long name but is effective –M4a/FLAC/Ogg/Ape/Mpc Tag Support Plugin for Media Player and Media Center (link below). Just install it by accepting the defaults, and you’ll be glad you did. After installing it, and re-launching Media Player, give it some time to collect all of the data from your FLAC directory…it can take a while. In fact, if your collection is huge, just walk away and let it do its thing. If you try to use it right away, WMP slows down considerably while updating the library. Once the library is setup you’ll be able to play your FLAC tunes in Windows 7 Media Center as well and Windows Media Player 12. Album Art One caveat is that some of our albums didn’t show any cover art. But we were usually able to get it by right-clicking the album and selecting Find album info. Then confirming the album information is correct… Conclusion Although this seems like several steps to go through to play FLAC files in Windows 7 Media Center and Player, it seems to work really well after it’s set up. We haven’t tried this with a 64-bit machine, but the process should be similar, but you might want to make sure the codecs you use are 64-bit. We’re sure there are other methods out there that some of you use, and if so leave us a comment and tell us about it. Download madFlac V1.8 M4a/FLAC/Ogg/Ape/Mpc Tag Support Plugin for Media Player and Media Center from SoftPointer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Play .OGM Video Files in Windows VistaFixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add FilesUsing Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Kantaris is a Unique Media Player Based on VLCEasily Change Audio File Formats with XRECODE TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook Windows 7 Easter Theme YoWindoW, a real time weather screensaver Optimize your computer the Microsoft way Stormpulse provides slick, real time weather data Geek Parents – Did you try Parental Controls in Windows 7?

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JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue

- by John-Brown.Evans

JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue ol{margin:0;padding:0} .c11_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c9_4{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;background-color:#f3f3f3;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt}.c14{vertical-align:top;width:207pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c17_4{vertical-align:top;width:129.8pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c7_4{vertical-align:top;width:130pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c19_4{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c22_4{background-color:#ffffff} .c20_4{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0} .c6_4{font-size:8pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c24_4{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c23_4{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c0_4{height:11pt;direction:ltr} .c10_4{font-size:10pt;font-family:"Courier New"} .c3_4{padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} .c18_4{font-size:8pt} .c8_4{text-align:center} .c12_4{background-color:#ffff00} .c2_4{font-weight:bold} .c21_4{background-color:#00ff00} .c4_4{line-height:1.0} .c1_4{direction:ltr} .c15_4{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c13_4{font-family:"Courier New"} .c5_4{font-style:italic} .c16_4{border-collapse:collapse} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:0pt} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal;padding-bottom:0pt} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";padding-bottom:0pt} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue In this example we will create a BPEL process which will write (enqueue) a message to a JMS queue using a JMS adapter. The JMS adapter will enqueue the full XML payload to the queue. This sample will use the following WebLogic Server objects. The first two, the Connection Factory and JMS Queue, were created as part of the first blog post in this series, JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g. If you haven't created those objects yet, please see that post for details on how to do so. The Connection Pool will be created as part of this example. Object Name Type JNDI Name TestConnectionFactory Connection Factory jms/TestConnectionFactory TestJMSQueue JMS Queue jms/TestJMSQueue eis/wls/TestQueue Connection Pool eis/wls/TestQueue 1. Verify Connection Factory and JMS Queue As mentioned above, this example uses a WLS Connection Factory called TestConnectionFactory and a JMS queue TestJMSQueue. As these are prerequisites for this example, let us verify they exist. Log in to the WebLogic Server Administration Console. Select Services > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule You should see the following objects: If not, or if the TestJMSModule is missing, please see the abovementioned article and create these objects before continuing. 2. Create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server The BPEL process we are about to create uses a JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. The JMS adapter is deployed to the WebLogic server and needs to be configured to include a connection pool which references the connection factory associated with the JMS queue. In the WebLogic Server Console Go to Deployments > Next and select (click on) the JmsAdapter Select Configuration > Outbound Connection Pools and expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory. This will display the list of connections configured for this adapter. For example, eis/aqjms/Queue, eis/aqjms/Topic etc. These JNDI names are actually quite confusing. We are expecting to configure a connection pool here, but the names refer to queues and topics. One would expect these to be called *ConnectionPool or *_CF or similar, but to conform to this nomenclature, we will call our entry eis/wls/TestQueue . This JNDI name is also the name we will use later, when creating a BPEL process to access this JMS queue! Select New, check the oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory check box and Next. Enter JNDI Name: eis/wls/TestQueue for the connection instance, then press Finish. Expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory again and select (click on) eis/wls/TestQueue The ConnectionFactoryLocation must point to the JNDI name of the connection factory associated with the JMS queue you will be writing to. In our example, this is the connection factory called TestConnectionFactory, with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory.( As a reminder, this connection factory is contained in the JMS Module called TestJMSModule, under Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule which we verified at the beginning of this document. )Enter jms/TestConnectionFactory into the Property Value field for Connection Factory Location. After entering it, you must press Return/Enter then Save for the value to be accepted. If your WebLogic server is running in Development mode, you should see the message that the changes have been activated and the deployment plan successfully updated. If not, then you will manually need to activate the changes in the WebLogic server console. Although the changes have been activated, the JmsAdapter needs to be redeployed in order for the changes to become effective. This should be confirmed by the message Remember to update your deployment to reflect the new plan when you are finished with your changes as can be seen in the following screen shot: The next step is to redeploy the JmsAdapter.Navigate back to the Deployments screen, either by selecting it in the left-hand navigation tree or by selecting the “Summary of Deployments” link in the breadcrumbs list at the top of the screen. Then select the checkbox next to JmsAdapter and press the Update button On the Update Application Assistant page, select “Redeploy this application using the following deployment files” and press Finish. After a few seconds you should get the message that the selected deployments were updated. The JMS adapter configuration is complete and it can now be used to access the JMS queue. To summarize: we have created a JMS adapter connection pool connector with the JNDI name jms/TestConnectionFactory. This is the JNDI name to be accessed by a process such as a BPEL process, when using the JMS adapter to access the previously created JMS queue with the JNDI name jms/TestJMSQueue. In the following step, we will set up a BPEL process to use this JMS adapter to write to the JMS queue. 3. Create a BPEL Composite with a JMS Adapter Partner Link This step requires that you have a valid Application Server Connection defined in JDeveloper, pointing to the application server on which you created the JMS Queue and Connection Factory. You can create this connection in JDeveloper under the Application Server Navigator. Give it any name and be sure to test the connection before completing it. This sample will use the connection name jbevans-lx-PS5, as that is the name of the connection pointing to my SOA PS5 installation. When using a JMS adapter from within a BPEL process, there are various configuration options, such as the operation type (consume message, produce message etc.), delivery mode and message type. One of these options is the choice of the format of the JMS message payload. This can be structured around an existing XSD, in which case the full XML element and tags are passed, or it can be opaque, meaning that the payload is sent as-is to the JMS adapter. In the case of an XSD-based message, the payload can simply be copied to the input variable of the JMS adapter. In the case of an opaque message, the JMS adapter’s input variable is of type base64binary. So the payload needs to be converted to base64 binary first. I will go into this in more detail in a later blog entry. This sample will pass a simple message to the adapter, based on the following simple XSD file, which consists of a single string element: stringPayload.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.example.org" targetNamespace="http://www.example.org" elementFormDefault="qualified" <xsd:element name="exampleElement" type="xsd:string"> </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The following steps are all executed in JDeveloper. The SOA project will be created inside a JDeveloper Application. If you do not already have an application to contain the project, you can create a new one via File > New > General > Generic Application. Give the application any name, for example JMSTests and, when prompted for a project name and type, call the project JmsAdapterWriteWithXsd and select SOA as the project technology type. If you already have an application, continue below. Create a SOA Project Create a new project and choose SOA Tier > SOA Project as its type. Name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema. When prompted for the composite type, choose Composite With BPEL Process. When prompted for the BPEL Process, name it JmsAdapterWriteSchema too and choose Synchronous BPEL Process as the template. This will create a composite with a BPEL process and an exposed SOAP service. Double-click the BPEL process to open and begin editing it. You should see a simple BPEL process with a Receive and Reply activity. As we created a default process without an XML schema, the input and output variables are simple strings. Create an XSD File An XSD file is required later to define the message format to be passed to the JMS adapter. In this step, we create a simple XSD file, containing a string variable and add it to the project. First select the xsd item in the left-hand navigation tree to ensure that the XSD file is created under that item. Select File > New > General > XML and choose XML Schema. Call it stringPayload.xsd and when the editor opens, select the Source view. then replace the contents with the contents of the stringPayload.xsd example above and save the file. You should see it under the xsd item in the navigation tree. Create a JMS Adapter Partner Link We will create the JMS adapter as a service at the composite level. If it is not already open, double-click the composite.xml file in the navigator to open it. From the Component Palette, drag a JMS adapter over onto the right-hand swim lane, under External References. This will start the JMS Adapter Configuration Wizard. Use the following entries: Service Name: JmsAdapterWrite Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service (OEMS): Oracle Weblogic JMS AppServer Connection: Use an existing application server connection pointing to the WebLogic server on which the above JMS queue and connection factory were created. You can use the “+” button to create a connection directly from the wizard, if you do not already have one. This example uses a connection called jbevans-lx-PS5. Adapter Interface > Interface: Define from operation and schema (specified later) Operation Type: Produce Message Operation Name: Produce_message Destination Name: Press the Browse button, select Destination Type: Queues, then press Search. Wait for the list to populate, then select the entry for TestJMSQueue , which is the queue created earlier. JNDI Name: The JNDI name to use for the JMS connection. This is probably the most important step in this exercise and the most common source of error. This is the JNDI name of the JMS adapter’s connection pool created in the WebLogic Server and which points to the connection factory. JDeveloper does not verify the value entered here. If you enter a wrong value, the JMS adapter won’t find the queue and you will get an error message at runtime, which is very difficult to trace. In our example, this is the value eis/wls/TestQueue . (See the earlier step on how to create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in WebLogic Server for details.) MessagesURL: We will use the XSD file we created earlier, stringPayload.xsd to define the message format for the JMS adapter. Press the magnifying glass icon to search for schema files. Expand Project Schema Files > stringPayload.xsd and select exampleElement: string. Press Next and Finish, which will complete the JMS Adapter configuration. Wire the BPEL Component to the JMS Adapter In this step, we link the BPEL process/component to the JMS adapter. From the composite.xml editor, drag the right-arrow icon from the BPEL process to the JMS adapter’s in-arrow. This completes the steps at the composite level. 4. Complete the BPEL Process Design Invoke the JMS Adapter Open the BPEL component by double-clicking it in the design view of the composite.xml, or open it from the project navigator by selecting the JmsAdapterWriteSchema.bpel file. This will display the BPEL process in the design view. You should see the JmsAdapterWrite partner link under one of the two swim lanes. We want it in the right-hand swim lane. If JDeveloper displays it in the left-hand lane, right-click it and choose Display > Move To Opposite Swim Lane. An Invoke activity is required in order to invoke the JMS adapter. Drag an Invoke activity between the Receive and Reply activities. Drag the right-hand arrow from the Invoke activity to the JMS adapter partner link. This will open the Invoke editor. The correct default values are entered automatically and are fine for our purposes. We only need to define the input variable to use for the JMS adapter. By pressing the green “+” symbol, a variable of the correct type can be auto-generated, for example with the name Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable. Press OK after creating the variable. ( For some reason, while I was testing this, the JMS Adapter moved back to the left-hand swim lane again after this step. There is no harm in leaving it there, but I find it easier to follow if it is in the right-hand lane, because I kind-of think of the message coming in on the left and being routed through the right. But you can follow your personal preference here.) Assign Variables Drag an Assign activity between the Receive and Invoke activities. We will simply copy the input variable to the JMS adapter and, for completion, so the process has an output to print, again to the process’s output variable. Double-click the Assign activity and create two Copy rules: for the first, drag Variables > inputVariable > payload > client:process > client:input_string to Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable > body > ns2:exampleElement for the second, drag the same input variable to outputVariable > payload > client:processResponse > client:result This will create two copy rules, similar to the following: Press OK. This completes the BPEL and Composite design. 5. Compile and Deploy the Composite We won’t go into too much detail on how to compile and deploy. In JDeveloper, compile the process by pressing the Make or Rebuild icons or by right-clicking the project name in the navigator and selecting Make... or Rebuild... If the compilation is successful, deploy it to the SOA server connection defined earlier. (Right-click the project name in the navigator, select Deploy to Application Server, choose the application server connection, choose the partition on the server (usually default) and press Finish. You should see the message ---- Deployment finished. ---- in the Deployment frame, if the deployment was successful. 6. Test the Composite This is the exciting part. Open two tabs in your browser and log in to the WebLogic Administration Console in one tab and the Enterprise Manager 11g Fusion Middleware Control (EM) for your SOA installation in the other. We will use the Console to monitor the messages being written to the queue and the EM to execute the composite. In the Console, go to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules > TestJMSModule > TestJMSQueue > Monitoring. Note the number of messages under Messages Current. In the EM, go to SOA > soa-infra (soa_server1) > default (or wherever you deployed your composite to) and click on JmsAdapterWriteSchema [1.0], then press the Test button. Under Input Arguments, enter any string into the text input field for the payload, for example Test Message then press Test Web Service. If the instance is successful you should see the same text in the Response message, “Test Message”. In the Console, refresh the Monitoring screen to confirm a new message has been written to the queue. Check the checkbox and press Show Messages. Click on the newest message and view its contents. They should include the full XML of the entered payload. 7. Troubleshooting If you get an exception similar to the following at runtime ... BINDING.JCA-12510 JCA Resource Adapter location error. Unable to locate the JCA Resource Adapter via .jca binding file element The JCA Binding Component is unable to startup the Resource Adapter specified in the element: location='eis/wls/QueueTest'. The reason for this is most likely that either 1) the Resource Adapters RAR file has not been deployed successfully to the WebLogic Application server or 2) the '' element in weblogic-ra.xml has not been set to eis/wls/QueueTest. In the last case you will have to add a new WebLogic JCA connection factory (deploy a RAR). Please correct this and then restart the Application Server at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.AdapterBindingException. createJndiLookupException(AdapterBindingException.java:130) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.createJCAConnectionFactory (JCAConnectionManager.java:1387) at oracle.integration.platform.blocks.adapter.fw.jca.cci. JCAConnectionManager$JCAConnectionPool.newPoolObject (JCAConnectionManager.java:1285) ... then this is very likely due to an incorrect JNDI name entered for the JMS Connection in the JMS Adapter Wizard. Recheck those steps. The error message prints the name of the JNDI name used. In this example, it was incorrectly entered as eis/wls/QueueTest instead of eis/wls/TestQueue. This concludes this example. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

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