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• Autounattend.xml not being recognized in VirtualBox

  - by beagle

  I am working my way through the steps on this page to prepare an unattended installation of Windows 7 Enterprise x64 for purposes of a college assignment which simply requires the process to be carried out and documented. Both the "technician" and "reference" computers are virtual machines created in VirtualBox 4.3.12, as will be the destination computer. I seem to have successfully completed Step 1, building an Autounattend.xml answer file using Windows System Image Manager, in as far as the answer file validates successfully. The problem arises when I try to install Windows on the reference machine from the DVD image in conjunction with the Autounattend file on a USB drive. I have tried a couple of different USB devices, and the devices themselves seem to be recognized, but the answer file does not, as instead of taking the configuration settings from the file the user interface appears as in a manual installation. Has anyone come across this problem or a solution? The xml created by Windows SIM is below for reference in case the problem is with the file itself. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend"> <settings pass="oobeSystem"> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <Reseal> <Mode>Audit</Mode> </Reseal> </component> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <OOBE> <HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage> <ProtectYourPC>3</ProtectYourPC> </OOBE> </component> </settings> <settings pass="windowsPE"> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <SetupUILanguage> <UILanguage>en-IE</UILanguage> </SetupUILanguage> <InputLocale>en-IE</InputLocale> <SystemLocale>en-IE</SystemLocale> <UILanguage>en-IE</UILanguage> <UserLocale>en-IE</UserLocale> </component> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <DiskConfiguration> <Disk wcm:action="add"> <CreatePartitions> <CreatePartition wcm:action="add"> <Order>1</Order> <Size>300</Size> <Type>Primary</Type> </CreatePartition> <CreatePartition wcm:action="add"> <Order>2</Order> <Extend>true</Extend> <Type>Primary</Type> </CreatePartition> </CreatePartitions> <ModifyPartitions> <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add"> <Active>true</Active> <Format>NTFS</Format> <Label>System</Label> <Order>1</Order> <PartitionID>1</PartitionID> </ModifyPartition> <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add"> <Format>NTFS</Format> <Label>Windows</Label> <Order>2</Order> <PartitionID>2</PartitionID> </ModifyPartition> </ModifyPartitions> <DiskID>0</DiskID> <WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk> </Disk> <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI> </DiskConfiguration> <ImageInstall> <OSImage> <InstallTo> <DiskID>0</DiskID> <PartitionID>2</PartitionID> </InstallTo> <InstallToAvailablePartition>false</InstallToAvailablePartition> <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI> </OSImage> </ImageInstall> <UserData> <ProductKey> <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI> </ProductKey> <AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula> </UserData> </component> </settings> <settings pass="specialize"> <component name="Microsoft-Windows-IE-InternetExplorer" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <Home_Page>http://www.example.com</Home_Page> </component> </settings> <cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim://technician/users/user/desktop/install.wim#Windows 7 ENTERPRISE" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />

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• Django CMS - not able to upload images through cmsplugin_filer_image

  - by Luke

  i have a problem with a local installation on django cms 2.3.3: i've installed it trough pip, in a separated virtualenv. next i followed the tutorial for settings.py configuration, i started the server. Then in the admin i created an page (home), and i've tried to add an image in the placeholder through the cmsplugin_filer_image, but the upload seems that doesn't work. here's my settings.py: # Django settings for cms1 project. # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- import os gettext = lambda s: s PROJECT_PATH = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)) DEBUG = True TEMPLATE_DEBUG = DEBUG ADMINS = ( # ('Your Name', '[email protected]'), ) MANAGERS = ADMINS DATABASES = { 'default': { 'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2', # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'. 'NAME': 'cms1', # Or path to database file if using sqlite3. 'USER': 'cms', # Not used with sqlite3. 'PASSWORD': 'cms', # Not used with sqlite3. 'HOST': '', # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3. 'PORT': '', # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3. } } # Local time zone for this installation. Choices can be found here: # http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_zones_by_name # although not all choices may be available on all operating systems. # In a Windows environment this must be set to your system time zone. TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Rome' # Language code for this installation. All choices can be found here: # http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/language-identifiers.html LANGUAGE_CODE = 'it-it' SITE_ID = 1 # If you set this to False, Django will make some optimizations so as not # to load the internationalization machinery. USE_I18N = True # If you set this to False, Django will not format dates, numbers and # calendars according to the current locale. USE_L10N = True # If you set this to False, Django will not use timezone-aware datetimes. USE_TZ = True # Absolute filesystem path to the directory that will hold user-uploaded files. # Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/media/" MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, "media") # URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Make sure to use a # trailing slash. # Examples: "http://media.lawrence.com/media/", "http://example.com/media/" MEDIA_URL = '/media/' # Absolute path to the directory static files should be collected to. # Don't put anything in this directory yourself; store your static files # in apps' "static/" subdirectories and in STATICFILES_DIRS. # Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/static/" STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, "static") STATIC_URL = "/static/" # Additional locations of static files STATICFILES_DIRS = ( os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, "static_auto"), # Put strings here, like "/home/html/static" or "C:/www/django/static". # Always use forward slashes, even on Windows. # Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths. ) # List of finder classes that know how to find static files in # various locations. STATICFILES_FINDERS = ( 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder', 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder', # 'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.DefaultStorageFinder', ) # Make this unique, and don't share it with anybody. SECRET_KEY = '^c2q3d8w)f#gk%5i)(#i*lwt%lm-!2=(*1d!1cf+rg&amp;-hqi_9u' # List of callables that know how to import templates from various sources. TEMPLATE_LOADERS = ( 'django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader', 'django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader', # 'django.template.loaders.eggs.Loader', ) MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = ( 'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware', 'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware', 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware', 'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware', 'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware', 'cms.middleware.multilingual.MultilingualURLMiddleware', 'cms.middleware.page.CurrentPageMiddleware', 'cms.middleware.user.CurrentUserMiddleware', 'cms.middleware.toolbar.ToolbarMiddleware', # Uncomment the next line for simple clickjacking protection: # 'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware', ) ROOT_URLCONF = 'cms1.urls' # Python dotted path to the WSGI application used by Django's runserver. WSGI_APPLICATION = 'cms1.wsgi.application' TEMPLATE_DIRS = ( os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, "templates"), # Put strings here, like "/home/html/django_templates" or "C:/www/django/templates". # Always use forward slashes, even on Windows. # Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths. ) CMS_TEMPLATES = ( ('template_1.html', 'Template One'), ('template_2.html', 'Template Two'), ) TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = ( 'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth', 'django.core.context_processors.i18n', 'django.core.context_processors.request', 'django.core.context_processors.media', 'django.core.context_processors.static', 'cms.context_processors.media', 'sekizai.context_processors.sekizai', ) LANGUAGES = [ ('it', 'Italiano'), ('en', 'English'), ] INSTALLED_APPS = ( 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'django.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.sites', 'django.contrib.messages', 'django.contrib.staticfiles', 'cms', #django CMS itself 'mptt', #utilities for implementing a modified pre-order traversal tree 'menus', #helper for model independent hierarchical website navigation 'south', #intelligent schema and data migrations 'sekizai', #for javascript and css management #'cms.plugins.file', 'cms.plugins.flash', 'cms.plugins.googlemap', 'cms.plugins.link', #'cms.plugins.picture', 'cms.plugins.snippet', 'cms.plugins.teaser', 'cms.plugins.text', #'cms.plugins.video', 'cms.plugins.twitter', 'filer', 'cmsplugin_filer_file', 'cmsplugin_filer_folder', 'cmsplugin_filer_image', 'cmsplugin_filer_teaser', 'cmsplugin_filer_video', 'easy_thumbnails', 'PIL', # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin: 'django.contrib.admin', # Uncomment the next line to enable admin documentation: # 'django.contrib.admindocs', ) # A sample logging configuration. The only tangible logging # performed by this configuration is to send an email to # the site admins on every HTTP 500 error when DEBUG=False. # See http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/logging for # more details on how to customize your logging configuration. LOGGING = { 'version': 1, 'disable_existing_loggers': False, 'filters': { 'require_debug_false': { '()': 'django.utils.log.RequireDebugFalse' } }, 'handlers': { 'mail_admins': { 'level': 'ERROR', 'filters': ['require_debug_false'], 'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler' } }, 'loggers': { 'django.request': { 'handlers': ['mail_admins'], 'level': 'ERROR', 'propagate': True, }, } } when i try to upload an image, in the clipboard section i don't have the thumbnail, but just an 'undefined' message: and this is the runserver console while trying to upload: [20/Oct/2012 15:15:56] "POST /admin/filer/clipboard/operations/upload/?qqfile=29708_1306856312320_7706073_n.jpg HTTP/1.1" 500 248133 [20/Oct/2012 15:15:56] "GET /it/admin/filer/folder/unfiled_images/undefined HTTP/1.1" 301 0 [20/Oct/2012 15:15:56] "GET /it/admin/filer/folder/unfiled_images/undefined/ HTTP/1.1" 404 1739 Also, this is project filesystem: cms1 +-- cms1 ¦   +-- __init__.py ¦   +-- __init__.pyc ¦   +-- media ¦   ¦   +-- filer_public ¦   ¦   +-- 2012 ¦   ¦   +-- 10 ¦   ¦   +-- 20 ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n_1.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n_2.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n_3.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n_4.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n_5.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n_6.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n_7.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- 29708_1306856312320_7706073_n.jpg ¦   ¦   +-- torrent-client-macosx.jpg ¦   +-- settings.py ¦   +-- settings.pyc ¦   +-- static ¦   +-- static_auto ¦   +-- static_manual ¦   +-- templates ¦   ¦   +-- base.html ¦   ¦   +-- template_1.html ¦   ¦   +-- template_2.html ¦   +-- urls.py ¦   +-- urls.pyc ¦   +-- wsgi.py ¦   +-- wsgi.pyc +-- manage.py So files are uploaded, but they are not accessible to cms. there's a similar question here, but doens't help me so much. It would be very helpful any help on this issue to me. Thanks, luke

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• TFS, G.I. Joe and Under-doing

  If I were to rank the most consistently irritating parts of my work day, using TFS would come in first by a wide margin. Even repeated network outages this week seem like a pleasant reprieve from this monolithic beast. This is not a reflexive anti-Microsoft feeling, that attitude just wouldnt work for a consultant who does .NET development. It is also not an utter dismissal of TFS as worthless; Ive seen people use it effectively on several projects. So why? Ill start with a laundry list of shortcomings. An out of the box UI for work items that is insultingly bad, a source control system that is confoundingly fragile when handling merges, folder renames and long file names, the arcane XML wizardry necessary to customize a template and a build system that adds an extra layer of oddness on top of msbuild. Im sure my legion of readers will soon point out to me how I can work around all these issues, how this is fixed in TFS 2010 or with this add-in, and how once you have everything set up, youre fine. And theyd be right, any one of these problems could be worked around. If not dirty laundry, what else? I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that TFS is so irritating to me because it represents a vision of software development that I find unappealing. To expand upon this, lets start with some wisdom from those great PSAs at the end of the G.I. Joe cartoons of the 80s: Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. In software development, Id go further and say knowing is more than half the battle. Understanding the dimensions of the problem you are trying to solve, the needs of the users, the value that your software can provide are more than half the battle. Implementation of this understanding is not easy, but it is not even possible without this knowledge. Assuming we have a fixed amount of time and mental energy for any project, why does this spell trouble for TFS? If you think about what TFS is doing, its offering you a huge array of options to track the day to day implementation of your project. From tasks, to code churn, to test coverage. All valuable metrics, but only in exchange for valuable time to get it all working. In addition, when you have a shiny toy like TFS, the temptation is to feel obligated to use it. So the push from TFS is to encourage a project manager and team to focus on process and metrics around process. You can get great visibility, and graphs to show your project stakeholders, but none of that is important if you are not implementing the right product. Not just unimportant, these activities can be harmful as they drain your time and sap your creativity away from the rest of the project. To be more concrete, lets suppose your organization has invested the time to create a template for your projects and trained people in how to use it, so there is no longer a big investment of time for each project to get up and running. First, Id challenge if that template could be specific enough to be full featured and still applicable for any project. Second, the very existence of this template would be a indication to a project manager that the success of their project was somehow directly related to fitting management of that project into this format. Again, while the capabilities are wonderful, the mirage is there; just get everything into TFS and your project will run smoothly. Ill close the loop on this first topic by proposing a thought experiment. Think of the projects youve worked on. How many times have you been chagrined to discover youve implemented the wrong feature, misunderstood how a feature should work or just plain spent too much time on a screen that nobody uses? That sounds like a really worthwhile area to invest time in improving. How about going back to these projects and thinking about how many times you wished you had optimized the state change flow of your tasks or been embarrassed to not have a code churn report linked back to the latest changeset? With thanks to the Real American Heroes, Ill move on to a more current influence, that of the developers at 37signals, and their philosophy towards software development. This philosophy, fully detailed in the books Getting Real and Rework, is a vision of software that under does the competition. This is software that is deliberately limited in functionality in order to concentrate fully on making sure ever feature that is there is awesome and needed. Why is this relevant? Well, in one of those fun seeming paradoxes in life, constraints can be a spark for creativity. Think Twitter, the small screen of an iPhone, the limitations of HTML for applications, the low memory limits of older or embedded system. As long as there is some freedom within those constraints, amazing things emerge. For project management, some of the most respected people in the industry recommend using just index cards, pens and tape. They argue that with change the constant in software development, your process should be as limited (yet rigorous) as possible. Looking at TFS, this is not a system designed to under do anybody. It is a big jumble of components and options, with every feature you could think of. Predictably this means many basic functions are hard to use. For task management, many people just use an Excel spreadsheet linked up to TFS. Not a stirring endorsement of the tooling there. TFS as a whole would be far more appealing to me if there was less of it, but better. Id cut 50% of the features to make the other half really amaze and inspire me. And thats really the heart of the matter. TFS has great promise and I want to believe it can work better. But ultimately it focuses your attention on a lot of stuff that doesnt really matter and then clamps down your creativity in a mess of forms and dialogs obscuring what does.   --- Relevant Links --- All those great G.I. Joe PSAs are on YouTube, including lots of mashed up versions. A simple Google search will get you on the right track.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• MSCC: Scripting - Administrator's­ toolbox of magic...

  Finally, we made it to have our April meetup - in May. The most obvious explanation is the increased amount of open source and IT activities that either the MSCC, the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), or the University of Mauritius Student's Computer Club is organising. It's absolutely incredible to see the recent hype of events here on the island. And I'm loving it! Unfortunately, we also had to deal with arranging for a location this time. It was kind of an odyssey as my requests (and phone calls) haven't been answered, even though I tried it several times - well, kind of disappointing and I have to look into that for future gatherings. In my opinion, it is essential that two parameters of a community meeting are fixed as early as possible: Location, and Date and time You can't just change one or both on the very last minute. Well, this time we had to do it due to unforeseen reasons, and I apologise to any MSCC member which couldn't make it to our April meetup. Okay, lesson learned but now back to the actual meetup report ... Shortly after the meeting I placed the following statement as my first impression: "Spontaneous and improvised :) No, seriously, Ish and Dan had well prepared presentations on shell scripting, mainly focused towards Bourne Again Shell (bash), and the pros and cons of scripting versus actually writing something in a decent programming language. I thought that I could cut myself out of the equation but the demand for information about PowerShell was higher than expected..." Well, it turned out that the interest in Windows PowerShell was high, as I even got a couple of questions on it via social media networks during the evening. I also like to mention that the number of attendees went back to what I would call a "standard" number of participation. This time there were 12 craftsmen, but again a good number of First Timers. Reactions of other attendees Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Enjoyed the bash and powershell (linux / windows) presentations ..." -- Nadim on event comments "He [Daniel] also showed us some syntax loopholes in Bash that could leave someone with bad code." -- Ish on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting   Glad to see a couple of first time attendees, especially students from the university itself. Some details on the presentations MSCC: First time visit at the University of Mauritius - Phase II Engineering Tower, room 2.9 Gimme some love ... bash and other shells Ish gave a great introduction into shell scripting as he spoke about existing shell environments and a little bit about their history. Furthermore, he talked about various built-in commands, the use of coreutils, the ability to daisy-chain multiple commands using pipes, the importance of the standard I/O streams and their file descriptors in advanced scripting techniques. Combined with a couple of sample statements in the Linux terminal on Ubuntu 14.04 machine it was a solid presentation. Have a closer look at his slides - published on his blog on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting. Oddities of scripting After the brief introduction into bash it was Daniel's turn to highlight a good number of oddities when working with shell scripts. First of all, it should be clear that scripting is not supposed for any kind of implementations in terms of software but simply to automate administrative procedures and to simplify routine jobs on a system. One of the cool oddities that he mentioned is that everything (!) in a shell is represented by strings; there are no other types like integer, float, date-time, etc. that you'd like to use in a full-fledged programming language. Let's have a look at his sample:  more to come... What's the output? As a conclusion, Daniel suggests that shell scripting should be limited but not restricted to automatic repetitive command stacks and batch jobs, startup wrapper for applications in order to set up the execution environment, and other not too sophisticated jobs. But as soon as it might involve a little bit more logic or you might rely on performance it's better to write an application in Ruby, Python, or Perl (among others of course). This is also enables the possibility to test your code properly. MSCC: Ish talking about Bourne Again Shell (bash) and shell scripting to automate regular tasks MSCC: Daniel gives an overview about the pros and cons of shell scripting versus programming MSCC: PowerShell as your scripting solution on Windows operating systems The path of the Enlightened is long ... and tough. Honestly, even though PowerShell was mentioned without any further details on the meetup's agenda, I didn't expect that there would be demand to give a presentation on Microsoft PowerShell after all. I already took this topic out of the announcement but the audience wanted to have some information. Okay, then let's see what I could do - improvised style. While my machine booted and got hooked up to the projector, I started to talk about the beginnings of PowerShell from back in 2006, and its predecessors MS DOS and Command Prompt. A throwback in history... always good for young people. As usual, Microsoft didn't get it at that time. Instead of listening to their client's needs and demands they ignored the feasibility to administrate Windows server farms without any UI tools. PowerShell is actually a result of this, and seeing that shell scripting is a common, reliable and fast way in an administrator's toolbox for decades, Microsoft had to adapt from their Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to a broader approach. It's not like shell scripting was something new; it is in daily use by alternative operating systems like AIX, HP UX, Solaris, and last but not least Linux. Most interestingly, Microsoft is very good at renovating existing architectures, and over the years PowerShell not only replaced their own combination of Command Prompt and Scripting Hosts (VBScript and CScript) but really turned into a challenging competitor on the market. The shell is easy to extend with cmdlets, and open to other Microsoft products like SQL Server, SharePoint, as well as Third-party software applications. Similar to MMC PowerShell also offers the ability to administer other machine remotely - only without a graphical user interface and therefore it's easier to automate and schedule regular tasks. Following is a sample of a PowerShell script file (extension .ps1): $strComputer = "." $colItems = get-wmiobject -class Win32_BIOS -namespace root\CIMV2 -comp $strComputer foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {write-host "BIOS Characteristics: " $objItem.BiosCharacteristicswrite-host "BIOS Version: " $objItem.BIOSVersionwrite-host "Build Number: " $objItem.BuildNumberwrite-host "Caption: " $objItem.Captionwrite-host "Code Set: " $objItem.CodeSetwrite-host "Current Language: " $objItem.CurrentLanguagewrite-host "Description: " $objItem.Descriptionwrite-host "Identification Code: " $objItem.IdentificationCodewrite-host "Installable Languages: " $objItem.InstallableLanguageswrite-host "Installation Date: " $objItem.InstallDatewrite-host "Language Edition: " $objItem.LanguageEditionwrite-host "List Of Languages: " $objItem.ListOfLanguageswrite-host "Manufacturer: " $objItem.Manufacturerwrite-host "Name: " $objItem.Namewrite-host "Other Target Operating System: " $objItem.OtherTargetOSwrite-host "Primary BIOS: " $objItem.PrimaryBIOSwrite-host "Release Date: " $objItem.ReleaseDatewrite-host "Serial Number: " $objItem.SerialNumberwrite-host "SMBIOS BIOS Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSBIOSVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Major Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMajorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Minor Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMinorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Present: " $objItem.SMBIOSPresentwrite-host "Software Element ID: " $objItem.SoftwareElementIDwrite-host "Software Element State: " $objItem.SoftwareElementStatewrite-host "Status: " $objItem.Statuswrite-host "Target Operating System: " $objItem.TargetOperatingSystemwrite-host "Version: " $objItem.Versionwrite-host} Which gives you information about your BIOS and Windows OS. Then change the computer name to another one on your network (NetBIOS based) and run the script again. There lots of samples and tutorials at the Microsoft Script Center, and I would advise you to pay a visit over there if you are more interested in PowerShell. The Script Center provides the download links, too. Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Hacking Defence (14. May 2014) WebCup Maurice (7. & 8. June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! My resume of the day Spontaneous and improvised :) The new location at the University of Mauritius turned out very well, there is plenty of space, and it could be a good choice for future meetings. Especially, having the ability to get more and more students into our IT community sounds like a great opportunity. Later during the day, I got some promising mails from Nadim regarding future sessions at the local branch of the Middlesex University. Well, we will see in the future... But for now this will be on hold until approximately October when students resume their regular studies. Anyway, it was a good experience at the university, and thanks again to the UoM Student's Computer Club that made the necessary arrangements for the MSCC!

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• Generate Strongly Typed Observable Events for the Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx)

  - by Bobby Diaz

  I must have tried reading through the various explanations and introductions to the new Reactive Extensions for .NET before the concepts finally started sinking in.  The article that gave me the ah-ha moment was over on SilverlightShow.net and titled Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight.  The author did a good job comparing the "normal" way of handling events vs. the new "reactive" methods. Admittedly, I still have more to learn about the Rx Framework, but I wanted to put together a sample project so I could start playing with the new Observable and IObservable<T> constructs.  I decided to throw together a whiteboard application in Silverlight based on the Drawing with Rx example on the aforementioned article.  At the very least, I figured I would learn a thing or two about a new technology, but my real goal is to create a fun application that I can share with the kids since they love drawing and coloring so much! Here is the code sample that I borrowed from the article: var mouseMoveEvent = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(this, "MouseMove"); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonDown"); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonUp");       var draggingEvents = from pos in mouseMoveEvent                              .SkipUntil(mouseLeftButtonDown)                              .TakeUntil(mouseLeftButtonUp)                              .Let(mm => mm.Zip(mm.Skip(1), (prev, cur) =>                                  new                                  {                                      X2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      X1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      Y2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y,                                      Y1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y                                  })).Repeat()                          select pos;       draggingEvents.Subscribe(p =>     {         Line line = new Line();         line.Stroke = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Black);         line.StrokeEndLineCap = PenLineCap.Round;         line.StrokeLineJoin = PenLineJoin.Round;         line.StrokeThickness = 5;         line.X1 = p.X1;         line.Y1 = p.Y1;         line.X2 = p.X2;         line.Y2 = p.Y2;         this.LayoutRoot.Children.Add(line);     }); One thing that was nagging at the back of my mind was having to deal with the event names as strings, as well as the verbose syntax for the Observable.FromEvent<TEventArgs>() method.  I came up with a couple of static/helper classes to resolve both issues and also created a T4 template to auto-generate these helpers for any .NET type.  Take the following code from the above example: var mouseMoveEvent = Observable.FromEvent<MouseEventArgs>(this, "MouseMove"); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonDown"); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Observable.FromEvent<MouseButtonEventArgs>(this, "MouseLeftButtonUp"); Turns into this with the new static Events class: var mouseMoveEvent = Events.Mouse.Move.On(this); var mouseLeftButtonDown = Events.Mouse.LeftButtonDown.On(this); var mouseLeftButtonUp = Events.Mouse.LeftButtonUp.On(this); Or better yet, just remove the variable declarations altogether:     var draggingEvents = from pos in Events.Mouse.Move.On(this)                              .SkipUntil(Events.Mouse.LeftButtonDown.On(this))                              .TakeUntil(Events.Mouse.LeftButtonUp.On(this))                              .Let(mm => mm.Zip(mm.Skip(1), (prev, cur) =>                                  new                                  {                                      X2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      X1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).X,                                      Y2 = cur.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y,                                      Y1 = prev.EventArgs.GetPosition(this).Y                                  })).Repeat()                          select pos; The Move, LeftButtonDown and LeftButtonUp members of the Events.Mouse class are readonly instances of the ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> class that provide type-safe access to the events via the On() method.  Here is the code for the class: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq;   namespace System.Linq {     /// <summary>     /// Represents an event that can be managed via the <see cref="Observable"/> API.     /// </summary>     /// <typeparam name="TTarget">The type of the target.</typeparam>     /// <typeparam name="TEventArgs">The type of the event args.</typeparam>     public class ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> where TEventArgs : EventArgs     {         /// <summary>         /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ObservableEvent"/> class.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="eventName">Name of the event.</param>         protected ObservableEvent(String eventName)         {             EventName = eventName;         }           /// <summary>         /// Registers the specified event name.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="eventName">Name of the event.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs> Register(String eventName)         {             return new ObservableEvent<TTarget, TEventArgs>(eventName);         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates an enumerable sequence of event values for the specified target.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="target">The target.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public IObservable<IEvent<TEventArgs>> On(TTarget target)         {             return Observable.FromEvent<TEventArgs>(target, EventName);         }           /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the name of the event.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The name of the event.</value>         public string EventName { get; private set; }     } } And this is how it's used:     /// <summary>     /// Categorizes <see cref="ObservableEvents"/> by class and/or functionality.     /// </summary>     public static partial class Events     {         /// <summary>         /// Implements a set of predefined <see cref="ObservableEvent"/>s         /// for the <see cref="System.Windows.System.Windows.UIElement"/> class         /// that represent mouse related events.         /// </summary>         public static partial class Mouse         {             /// <summary>Represents the MouseMove event.</summary>             public static readonly ObservableEvent<UIElement, MouseEventArgs> Move =                 ObservableEvent<UIElement, MouseEventArgs>.Register("MouseMove");               // additional members omitted...         }     } The source code contains a static Events class with prefedined members for various categories (Key, Mouse, etc.).  There is also an Events.tt template that you can customize to generate additional event categories for any .NET type.  All you should have to do is add the name of your class to the types collection near the top of the template:     types = new Dictionary<String, Type>()     {         //{ "Microsoft.Maps.MapControl.Map, Microsoft.Maps.MapControl", null }         { "System.Windows.FrameworkElement, System.Windows", null },         { "Whiteboard.MainPage, Whiteboard", null }     }; The template is also a bit rough at this point, but at least it generates code that *should* compile.  Please let me know if you run into any issues with it.  Some people have reported errors when trying to use T4 templates within a Silverlight project, but I was able to get it to work with a little black magic...  You can download the source code for this project or play around with the live demo.  Just be warned that it is at a very early stage so don't expect to find much today.  I plan on adding alot more options like pen colors and sizes, saving, printing, etc. as time permits.  HINT: hold down the ESC key to erase! Enjoy! Additional Resources Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight DevLabs: Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx) Rx Framework Part III - LINQ to Events - Generating GetEventName() Wrapper Methods using T4

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• API Message Localization

  - by Jesse Taber

  In my post, “Keep Localizable Strings Close To Your Users” I talked about the internationalization and localization difficulties that can arise when you sprinkle static localizable strings throughout the different logical layers of an application. The main point of that post is that you should have your localizable strings reside as close to the user-facing modules of your application as possible. For example, if you’re developing an ASP .NET web forms application all of the localizable strings should be kept in .resx files that are associated with the .aspx views of the application. In this post I want to talk about how this same concept can be applied when designing and developing APIs. An API Facilitates Machine-to-Machine Interaction You can typically think about a web, desktop, or mobile application as a collection “views” or “screens” through which users interact with the underlying logic and data. The application can be designed based on the assumption that there will be a human being on the other end of the screen working the controls. You are designing a machine-to-person interaction and the application should be built in a way that facilitates the user’s clear understanding of what is going on. Dates should be be formatted in a way that the user will be familiar with, messages should be presented in the user’s preferred language, etc. When building an API, however, there are no screens and you can’t make assumptions about who or what is on the other end of each call. An API is, by definition, a machine-to-machine interaction. A machine-to-machine interaction should be built in a way that facilitates a clear and unambiguous understanding of what is going on. Dates and numbers should be formatted in predictable and standard ways (e.g. ISO 8601 dates) and messages should be presented in machine-parseable formats. For example, consider an API for a time tracking system that exposes a resource for creating a new time entry. The JSON for creating a new time entry for a user might look like: 1: { 2: "userId": 4532, 3: "startDateUtc": "2012-10-22T14:01:54.98432Z", 4: "endDateUtc": "2012-10-22T11:34:45.29321Z" 5: }   Note how the parameters for start and end date are both expressed as ISO 8601 compliant dates in UTC. Using a date format like this in our API leaves little room for ambiguity. It’s also important to note that using ISO 8601 dates is a much, much saner thing than the \/Date(<milliseconds since epoch>)\/ nonsense that is sometimes used in JSON serialization. Probably the most important thing to note about the JSON snippet above is the fact that the end date comes before the start date! The API should recognize that and disallow the time entry from being created, returning an error to the caller. You might inclined to send a response that looks something like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   While this may seem like an appropriate thing to do there are a few problems with this approach: What if there is a user somewhere on the other end of the API call that doesn’t speak English?  What if the message provided here won’t fit properly within the UI of the application that made the API call? What if the verbiage of the message isn’t consistent with the rest of the application that made the API call? What if there is no user directly on the other end of the API call (e.g. this is a batch job uploading time entries once per night unattended)? The API knows nothing about the context from which the call was made. There are steps you could take to given the API some context (e.g.allow the caller to send along a language code indicating the language that the end user speaks), but that will only get you so far. As the designer of the API you could make some assumptions about how the API will be called, but if we start making assumptions we could very easily make the wrong assumptions. In this situation it’s best to make no assumptions and simply design the API in such a way that the caller has the responsibility to convey error messages in a manner that is appropriate for the context in which the error was raised. You would work around some of these problems by allowing callers to add metadata to each request describing the context from which the call is being made (e.g. accepting a ‘locale’ parameter denoting the desired language), but that will add needless clutter and complexity. It’s better to keep the API simple and push those context-specific concerns down to the caller whenever possible. For our very simple time entry example, this can be done by simply changing our error message response to look like this: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100}] 3: }   By changing our error error from exposing a string to a numeric code that is easily parseable by another application, we’ve placed all of the responsibility for conveying the actual meaning of the error message on the caller. It’s best to have the caller be responsible for conveying this meaning because the caller understands the context much better than the API does. Now the caller can see error code 100, know that it means that the end date submitted falls before the start date and take appropriate action. Now all of the problems listed out above are non-issues because the caller can simply translate the error code of ‘100’ into the proper action and message for the current context. The numeric code representation of the error is a much better way to facilitate the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate. An API Does Have Human Users While APIs should be built for machine-to-machine interaction, people still need to wire these interactions together. As a programmer building a client application that will consume the time entry API I would find it frustrating to have to go dig through the API documentation every time I encounter a new error code (assuming the documentation exists and is accurate). The numeric error code approach hurts the discoverability of the API and makes it painful to integrate with. We can help ease this pain by merging our two approaches: 1: { 2: "errors": [ {"code": 100, "message" : "The end date must come after the start date"}] 3: }   Now we have an easily parseable numeric error code for the machine-to-machine interaction that the API is meant to facilitate and a human-readable message for programmers working with the API. The human-readable message here is not intended to be viewed by end-users of the API and as such is not really a “localizable string” in my opinion. We could opt to expose a locale parameter for all API methods and store translations for all error messages, but that’s a lot of extra effort and overhead that doesn’t add a lot real value to the API. I might be a bit of an “ugly American”, but I think it’s probably fine to have the API return English messages when the target for those messages is a programmer. When resources are limited (which they always are), I’d argue that you’re better off hard-coding these messages in English and putting more effort into building more useful features, improving security, tweaking performance, etc.

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• On StringComparison Values

  - by Jesse

  When you use the .NET Framework’s String.Equals and String.Compare methods do you use an overloStringComparison enumeration value? If not, you should be because the value provided for that StringComparison argument can have a big impact on the results of your string comparison. The StringComparison enumeration defines values that fall into three different major categories: Culture-sensitive comparison using a specific culture, defaulted to the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture value (StringComparison.CurrentCulture and StringComparison.CurrentCutlureIgnoreCase) Invariant culture comparison (StringComparison.InvariantCulture and StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) Ordinal (byte-by-byte) comparison of  (StringComparison.Ordinal and StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) There is a lot of great material available that detail the technical ins and outs of these different string comparison approaches. If you’re at all interested in the topic these two MSDN articles are worth a read: Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd465121.aspx How To Compare Strings: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc165449.aspx Those articles cover the technical details of string comparison well enough that I’m not going to reiterate them here other than to say that the upshot is that you typically want to use the culture-sensitive comparison whenever you’re comparing strings that were entered by or will be displayed to users and the ordinal comparison in nearly all other cases. So where does that leave the invariant culture comparisons? The “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” article has the following to say: “On balance, the invariant culture has very few properties that make it useful for comparison. It does comparison in a linguistically relevant manner, which prevents it from guaranteeing full symbolic equivalence, but it is not the choice for display in any culture. One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. For example, if a large data file that contains a list of sorted identifiers for display accompanies an application, adding to this list would require an insertion with invariant-style sorting.” I don’t know about you, but I feel like that paragraph is a bit lacking. Are there really any “real world” reasons to use the invariant culture comparison? I think the answer to this question is, “yes”, but in order to understand why we should first think about what the invariant culture comparison really does. The invariant culture comparison is really just a culture-sensitive comparison using a special invariant culture (Michael Kaplan has a great post on the history of the invariant culture on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2004/12/29/344136.aspx). This means that the invariant culture comparison will apply the linguistic customs defined by the invariant culture which are guaranteed not to differ between different machines or execution contexts. This sort of consistently does prove useful if you needed to maintain a list of strings that are sorted in a meaningful and consistent way regardless of the user viewing them or the machine on which they are being viewed. Example: Prototype Names Let’s say that you work for a large multi-national toy company with branch offices in 10 different countries. Each year the company would work on 15-25 new toy prototypes each of which is assigned a “code name” while it is under development. Coming up with fun new code names is a big part of the company culture that everyone really enjoys, so to be fair the CEO of the company spent a lot of time coming up with a prototype naming scheme that would be fun for everyone to participate in, fair to all of the different branch locations, and accessible to all members of the organization regardless of the country they were from and the language that they spoke. Each new prototype will get a code name that begins with a letter following the previously created name using the alphabetical order of the Latin/Roman alphabet. Each new year prototype names would start back at “A”. The country that leads the prototype development effort gets to choose the name in their native language. (An appropriate Romanization system will be used for countries where the primary language is not written in the Latin/Roman alphabet. For example, the Pinyin system could be used for Chinese). To avoid repeating names, a list of all current and past prototype names will be maintained on each branch location’s company intranet site. Assuming that maintaining a single pre-sorted list is not feasible among all of the highly distributed intranet implementations, what string comparison method would you use to sort each year’s list of prototype names so that the list is both meaningful and consistent regardless of the country within which the list is being viewed? Sorting the list with a culture-sensitive comparison using the default configured culture on each country’s intranet server the list would probably work most of the time, but subtle differences between cultures could mean that two different people would see a list that was sorted slightly differently. The CEO wants the prototype names to be a unifying aspect of company culture and is adamant that everyone see the the same list sorted in the same order and there’s no way to guarantee a consistent sort across different cultures using the culture-sensitive string comparison rules. The culture-sensitive sort would produce a meaningful list for the specific user viewing it, but it wouldn’t always be consistent between different users. Sorting with the ordinal comparison would certainly be consistent regardless of the user viewing it, but would it be meaningful? Let’s say that the current year’s prototype name list looks like this: Antílope (Spanish) Babouin (French) Cahoun (Czech) Diamond (English) Flosse (German) If you were to sort this list using ordinal rules you’d end up with: Antílope Babouin Diamond Flosse Cahoun This sort is no good because the entry for “C” appears the bottom of the list after “F”. This is because the Czech entry for the letter “C” makes use of a diacritic (accent mark). The ordinal string comparison does a byte-by-byte comparison of the code points that make up each character in the string and the code point for the “C” with the diacritic mark is higher than any letter without a diacritic mark, which pushes that entry to the bottom of the sorted list. The CEO wants each country to be able to create prototype names in their native language, which means we need to allow for names that might begin with letters that have diacritics, so ordinal sorting kills the meaningfulness of the list. As it turns out, this situation is actually well-suited for the invariant culture comparison. The invariant culture accounts for linguistically relevant factors like the use of diacritics but will provide a consistent sort across all machines that perform the sort. Now that we’ve walked through this example, the following line from the “Best Practices For Using Strings in the .NET Framework” makes a lot more sense: One of the few reasons to use StringComparison.InvariantCulture for comparison is to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display That line describes the prototype name example perfectly: we need a way to persist ordered data for a cross-culturally identical display. While this example is 100% made-up, I think it illustrates that there are indeed real-world situations where the invariant culture comparison is useful.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010New Projects.NET StarCraft II Replay Parser: A .NET 3.5 Library used to parse StarCraft II replays. Developed in C# 3.5.BackToBasics "B2B" Chat: With technology and software getting more and more complicated, why not get back to basics with BackToBasicsChat. B2B allows you to chat over a ser...Dark Neuron Game Engine: Dark Neuron allows you to easily create fun and interesting games with no need of developing basic game components. This engine is developed for C#...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: Library to make building DeepZoom images and Pivot displays simpler.ePaper reader: The project is aimed at creating a tool which helps in reading electronic editions of news papers(pdf/flash)FSharpPageProvider for EPiServer CMS 6: This project starts as the port of EPiServer XmlPageProvider to F# programming language. Hammock for REST: Hammock is a REST library for .NET that greatly simplifies consuming and wrapping RESTful services.Kirill Osenkov: Various small projects, tools, utilities and samples by Kirill OsenkovliveDB: liveDB - web client for sql serverLucilla Framework: lucilla frameworkMVC Foolproof Validation: MVC Foolproof Validation aims to extend the Data Annotation validation provided in ASP.NET MVC. Initial efforts are focused on adding contingent va...MVC2Forums: MVC2Forums is simply a forum system based upon MVC2.Mvvm Foundation Silverlight: Mvvm Foundation Silverlight is a library of classes that are helpful when building Silverlight applications based in the MVVM pattern. This librar...MyPersonalWebsite: This is my personal web site developed using ASP.NET MVC 2Planner: Planner makes it easier for all peoples to plan your tasks. It's developed in Delphi.Prose: Prose is an playground for an experimental JavaScript like language compiler. Eventually it will implement 0-CFA, CFA2, and a Tracing JITQuestTracker: QuestTracker is a todo list presented in the format of a quest tracking list such as the one in World of Warcraft.SevenZipLib: SevenZipLib is a C# interface to the 7-zip library.SimpleGeo .Net: .Net Client library for the SimpleGeo.com serviceNew ReleasesAutenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: DLL LDAPAuth Plus: New Group: No LoginBMap.NET: BMap.NET 2: This is the 2nd version of BMap.NET. It has included these tags: Bing Maps, and "About BMap.NET".Cronos: Version 2.04: This is primarily a bug-fix release. Several numerical issues have been resolved, and a resource leak (of MS Windows graphics objects) has been fi...EV Dashboard: v1.0: This release includes support for an App.config file and Auto Connect, which will connect to the specified BMS at startup. Note: You still have to ...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Beta: 0.1 Beta Added More utilities and functions RefactoringsGLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.2 Beta: Beta build that includes a new player creator.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003222215): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed bugs of unable to parse XML file stream returned from HKGolden API, as the encoding of XML file stream chang...jQuery Web Controls ASP.Net: jQueryWebControls 1.1.1.2: En esta versión se han corregido problemas existentes en la ejecución de los scripts de jquery cuando se utilizaban MasterPage y/o Ajax Control Too...LightKit: Version 0.2.2: Fixed: fixed bug when CollectionItemsEditor ditermines IsChanged property incorrectly fixed ObjectEditor`a thisstring propertyName method wrong l...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.8: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 22): This version fixes the icons for the desktop installer and changes the install directory to Program Files\MapWindow instead of Program Files\ISU.Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.22.1334 Build: Latest alpha buildMiniCalendar Web Part: MiniCalendar Web Part 1.8: A small web part to display links to events stored in a list (or document library) in a mini calendar (in month view mode). It shows tooltips for t...OCInject: Release Two: This release brings some missing features such as Singleton support, Func<T> factories and child containers. It, also, has an updated constructor ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (March 2010): Installer of the latest binaries of Phalanger 2.0 (March 2010) and its integration into Visual Studio 2008. Easy installer with automatic IIS int...Planner: Planner: firstQuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1: This is the preliminary release of QuestTracker. There's not much documentation or many features yet, but it is functional. Any feedback would be a...QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.1: Bugfix for QuestTracker 0.1QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.2: Fixes an issue with saving the quest list.Rawr: Rawr 2.3.13: We're pleased to announce that, after long last, Rawr3 has entered public beta. You're still welcome to continue using Rawr2 (that's what you're re...Single Web Session: Alpha Model Plugin: !How to use Single Web Session add following line into your web config <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.W...SMIL - SharePoint Map Integration Layer: SMIL 1.0: Custom data field Extracts Lat/Lon from EXIF from images being uploaded. Map Web Part Filter with SharePoint views Filter by connecting to...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 42532 (Developer Alpha): This release is only to verify the currently decoded task structure... Supported files: tasks.data (v1.3.6 client)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30322.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Notepad (Visual C++ 2008): An notepad written in c that can save in a rich text file format.Wallpaper Rotator: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5 This version includes the following improvements: Saving the choice of "Random Order (Shuffle Mode)" Updating the configu...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterPHPExcelFarseer Physics EngineFacebook Developer ToolkitNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightN2 CMS

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• Should I refactor this code?

  - by user156814

  The code is for a view debate page. The code is supposed to determine whether or not to show an add reply form to the viewing user. If the user is logged in, and the user is not the creator of the debate, then check if the user already replied to the debate. If the user did not already reply to the debate then show the form... Otherwise, Check If the user wants to edit their already existing reply by looking in the url for the reply id If any of these tests dont pass, Then I save the reason as an int and pass that to a switch statement in the view. The logic seems easy enough, but my code seems a little sloppy. Here's the code.. (using Kohana V2.3.4) public function view($id = 0) { $debate = ORM::factory('debate')->with('user')->with('category')->find($id); if ($debate->loaded == FALSE) { url::redirect(); } // series of tests to show an add reply form if ($this->logged_in) { // is the viewer the creator? if ($this->user->id != $debate->user->id) { // has the user already replied? if (ORM::factory('reply') ->where(array('debate_id' => $id, 'user_id' => $this->user->id)) ->count_all() == 0) { $form = $errors = array ( 'body' => '', 'choice_id' => '', 'add' => '' ); if ($post = $this->input->post()) { $reply = ORM::factory('reply'); // validate and insert the reply if ($reply->add($post, TRUE)) { url::redirect(url::current()); } $form = arr::overwrite($form, $post->as_array()); $errors = arr::overwrite($errors, $post->errors('reply_errors')); } } // editing a reply? else if (($rid = (int) $this->input->get('edit')) AND ($reply = ORM::factory('reply') ->where(array('debate_id' => $id, 'user_id' => $this->user->id)) ->find($rid))) { $form = $errors = array ( 'body' => '', 'choice_id' => '', 'add' => '' ); // autocomplete the form $form = arr::overwrite($form, $reply->as_array()); if ($post = $this->input->post()) { // validate and insert the reply if ($reply->edit($post, TRUE)) { url::redirect(url::current()); } $form = arr::overwrite($form, $post->as_array()); $errors = arr::overwrite($errors, $post->errors('reply_errors')); } } else { // user already replied $reason = 3; } } else { // user started the debate $reason = 2; } } else { // user is not logged in. $reason = 1; } $limits = Kohana::config('app/debate.limits'); $page = (int) $this->input->get('page', 1); $offset = ($page > 0) ? ($page - 1) * $limits['replies'] : 0; $replies = ORM::factory('reply')->with('user')->with('choice')->where('replies.debate_id', $id); $this->template->title = $debate->topic; $this->template->debate = $debate; $this->template->body = View::factory('debate/view') ->set('debate', $debate) ->set('replies', $replies->find_all($limits['replies'], $offset)) ->set('pagination', Pagination::factory(array ( 'style' => 'digg', 'items_per_page' => $limits['replies'], 'query_string' => 'page', 'auto_hide' => TRUE, 'total_items' => $total = $replies->count_last_query() )) ) ->set('total', $total); // are we showing the add reply form? if (isset($form, $errors)) { $this->template->body->add_reply_form = View::factory('reply/add_reply_form') ->set('debate', $debate) ->set('form', $form) ->set('errors', $errors); } else { $this->template->body->reason = $reason; } } Heres the view, theres some logic in here that determines what message to show the user. <!-- Add Reply Form --> <?php if (isset($add_reply_form)): ?> <?php echo $add_reply_form; ?> <?php else: ?> <?php switch ($reason) { case 1 : // not logged in, show a message $message = 'Add your ' . html::anchor('login?url=' . url::current(TRUE), '<b>vote</b>') . ' to this discussion'; break; case 2 : // started the debate. dont show a message for that. $message = NULL; break; case 3: // already replied, show a message $message = 'You have already replied to this debate'; break; default: // unknown reason. dont show a message $message = NULL; break; } ?> <?php echo app::show_message($message, 'h2'); ?> <?php endif; ?> <!-- End Add Reply Form --> Should I refactor the add reply logic into another function or something.... It all works, it just seems real sloppy. Thanks

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• Package management fails in update-manager with gzip problems and compilation errors. U12.04LTS

  - by HarveyP

  Similar to but not the same as Package management system corrupted. Cannot install or remove packages. U12.04LTS (an earlier problem) with package management system. Followed all of L. D. James suggestions in his answer to no avail. This time as well as the gzip error I am also getting compilation errors. The difference may be due to a lack of compilation in my earlier problem so it may be the same error. The packages concerned are enumerated in the output from update-manager below. Also included below that is the output from apt-get -f install apt-get autoremove gives same output. Tried update without SSL updates - 9 to install and got "Unhandled Error in aptdaemon". Output number 3 below. One at a time - output 4 - is for firefox, first in the list of packages. Falls over at libssl1.0.0 despite deselection of it from update ... Tried apt-get install --reinstall dpkg which succeeded, apt-get install --reinstall tar and apt-get install --reinstall gzip both of which failed at libssl1.0.0 as ever. (as suggested by Subv3rsion elsewhere in this forum) Now cannot apt-get update with complete success even after changing server and apt-get clean - output number 5 below ... 1). Output from update-manager The following packages will be upgraded:<> firefox firefox-globalmenu firefox-locale-en libavcodec-extra-53 libavformat53 libavutil-extra-51 libjson0 libpostproc52 libssl1.0.0 libswscale2 openssl 11 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.<br> Need to get 0 B/46.5 MB of archives. After this operation, 1,416 kB of additional disk space will be used.<br> Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (Bareword "gensym" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 67. BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 366. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.14/FileHandle.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 3. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 3. ) -- aborting (Reading database ... 160575 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace libssl1.0.0 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14 (using .../libssl1.0.0_1.0.1-4ubuntu5.15_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement libssl1.0.0 ... dpkg-deb (subprocess): data: internal gzip read error: '<fd:4>: data error' dpkg-deb: error: subprocess <decompress> returned error exit status 2 dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libssl1.0.0_1.0.1-4ubuntu5.15_i386.deb (--unpack):<br> subprocess dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile returned error exit status 2 No apport report written because MaxReports has already been reached Bareword "gensym" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 67. BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 366. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.14/FileHandle.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Log.pm line 10. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Db.pm line 7. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Db.pm line 7. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/debconf/frontend line 6. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/debconf/frontend line 6. dpkg: error whale cleanang up: subprgcess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/libssl1.0.0_1.0.1-4ubuntu5.15_i386.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) 2). Output from install -f harveyp@harveyp:~$ sudo apt-get -f install [sudo] password for harveyp: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 11 not to upgrade. 1 not fully installed or removed.<br> After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. E: Internal Error, No file name for libssl1.0.0 3). Unhandled error from aptdaemon Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1045, in _simulate trans.unauthenticated = self.__simulate(trans) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1160, in __simulate unauthenticated = self._get_unauthenticated() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 347, in _get_unauthenticated for pkg in self._iterate_packages(): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1356, in _iterate_packages for enum, pkg in enumerate(self._cache): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 216, in __iter__ yield self[pkgname] File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 201, in __getitem__ pkg = self._weakref[key] = Package(self, self._cache[key]) KeyError: 'librqrcode-rubq-doc 4). output from update of firefox installArchives() failed: Error in function: < Setting up libssl1.0.0 (1.0.1-4ubuntu5.14) ... Bareword "gensym" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 67. BEGIN not safe after errors--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Handle.pm line 366. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/Seekable.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl/5.14/IO/File.pm line 11. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.14/FileHandle.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Template.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 8. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 7. Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Log.pm line 10. 5. output from apt-get update ...snip ... Hit http://ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org precise-security/multiverse Translation-en Hit http://ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org precise-security/restricted Translation-en Hit http://ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org precise-security/universe Translation-en Fetched 368 kB in 6s (59.5 kB/s) W: Failed to fetch gzip:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/ubuntu-archive.mirrors.free.org_ubuntu_dists_precise_universe_source_Sources Hash Sum mismatch E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

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• Configuration "diff" across Oracle WebCenter Sites instances

  - by Mark Fincham-Oracle

  Problem Statement With many Oracle WebCenter Sites environments - how do you know if the various configuration assets and settings are in sync across all of those environments? Background At Oracle we typically have a "W" shaped set of environments.  For the "Production" environments we typically have a disaster recovery clone as well and sometimes additional QA environments alongside the production management environment. In the case of www.java.com we have 10 different environments. All configuration assets/settings (CSElements, Templates, Start Menus etc..) start life on the Development Management environment and are then published downstream to other environments as part of the software development lifecycle. Ensuring that each of these 10 environments has the same set of Templates, CSElements, StartMenus, TreeTabs etc.. is impossible to do efficiently without automation. Solution Summary  The solution comprises of two components. A JSON data feed from each environment. A simple HTML page that consumes these JSON data feeds.  Data Feed: Create a JSON WebService on each environment. The WebService is no more than a SiteEntry + CSElement. The CSElement queries various DB tables to obtain details of the assets/settings returning this data in a JSON feed. Report: Create a simple HTML page that uses JQuery to fetch the JSON feed from each environment and display the results in a table. Since all assets (CSElements, Templates etc..) are published between environments they will have the same last modified date. If the last modified date of an asset is different in the JSON feed or is mising from an environment entirely then highlight that in the report table. Example Solution Details Step 1: Create a Site Entry + CSElement that outputs JSON Site Entry & CSElement Setup  The SiteEntry should be uncached so that the most recent configuration information is returned at all times. In the CSElement set the contenttype accordingly: Step 2: Write the CSElement Logic The basic logic, that we repeat for each asset or setting that we are interested in, is to query the DB using <ics:sql> and then loop over the resultset with <ics:listloop>. For example: <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> "templates": [ <ics:listloop listname="TemplateList"> {"name":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList"  fieldname="name"/>", "modified":"<ics:listget listname="TemplateList"  fieldname="updateddate"/>"}, </ics:listloop> ], A comprehensive list of SQL queries to fetch each configuration asset/settings can be seen in the appendix at the end of this article. For the generation of the JSON data structure you could use Jettison (the library ships with the 11.1.1.8 version of the product), native Java 7 capabilities or (as the above example demonstrates) you could roll-your-own JSON output but that is not advised. Step 3: Create an HTML Report The JavaScript logic looks something like this.. 1) Create a list of JSON feeds to fetch: ENVS['dev-mgmngt'] = 'http://dev-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json'; ENVS['dev-dlvry'] = 'http://dev-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json';  ENVS['test-mngmnt'] = 'http://test-mngmnt.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json';  ENVS['test-dlvry'] = 'http://test-dlvry.example.com/sites/ContentServer?d=&pagename=settings.json';   2) Create a function to get the JSON feeds: function getDataForEnvironment(url){ return $.ajax({ type: 'GET', url: url, dataType: 'jsonp', beforeSend: function (jqXHR, settings){ jqXHR.originalEnv = env; jqXHR.originalUrl = url; }, success: function(json, status, jqXHR) { console.log('....success fetching: ' + jqXHR.originalUrl); // store the returned data in ALLDATA ALLDATA[jqXHR.originalEnv] = json; }, error: function(jqXHR, status, e) { console.log('....ERROR: Failed to get data from [' + url + '] ' + status + ' ' + e); } }); } 3) Fetch each JSON feed: for (var env in ENVS) { console.log('Fetching data for env [' + env +'].'); var promisedData = getDataForEnvironment(ENVS[env]); promisedData.success(function (data) {}); }  4) For each configuration asset or setting create a table in the report For example, CSElements: 1) Get a list of unique CSElement names from all of the returned JSON data. 2) For each unique CSElement name, create a row in the table  3) Select 1 environment to represent the master or ideal state (e.g. "Everything should be like Production Delivery") 4) For each environment, compare the last modified date of this envs CSElement to the master. Highlight any differences in last modified date or missing CSElements. 5) Repeat...    Appendix This section contains various SQL statements that can be used to retrieve configuration settings from the DB.  Templates  <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM Template WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="TemplateList" table="Template" /> CSElements <ics:sql sql="SELECT name,updateddate FROM CSElement WHERE status != 'VO'" listname="CSEList" table="CSElement" /> Start Menus <ics:sql sql="select sm.id, sm.cs_name, sm.cs_description, sm.cs_assettype, sm.cs_assetsubtype, sm.cs_itemtype, smr.cs_rolename, p.name from StartMenu sm, StartMenu_Sites sms, StartMenu_Roles smr, Publication p where sm.id=sms.ownerid and sm.id=smr.cs_ownerid and sms.pubid=p.id order by sm.id" listname="startList" table="Publication,StartMenu,StartMenu_Roles,StartMenu_Sites"/>  Publishing Configurations <ics:sql sql="select id, name, description, type, dest, factors from PubTarget" listname="pubTargetList" table="PubTarget" /> Tree Tabs <ics:sql sql="select tt.id, tt.title, tt.tooltip, p.name as pubname, ttr.cs_rolename, ttsect.name as sectname from TreeTabs tt, TreeTabs_Roles ttr, TreeTabs_Sect ttsect,TreeTabs_Sites ttsites LEFT JOIN Publication p  on p.id=ttsites.pubid where p.id is not null and tt.id=ttsites.ownerid and ttsites.pubid=p.id and tt.id=ttr.cs_ownerid and tt.id=ttsect.ownerid order by tt.id" listname="treeTabList" table="TreeTabs,TreeTabs_Roles,TreeTabs_Sect,TreeTabs_Sites,Publication" />  Filters <ics:sql sql="select name,description,classname from Filters" listname="filtersList" table="Filters" /> Attribute Types <ics:sql sql="select id,valuetype,name,updateddate from AttrTypes where status != 'VO'" listname="AttrList" table="AttrTypes" /> WebReference Patterns <ics:sql sql="select id,webroot,pattern,assettype,name,params,publication from WebReferencesPatterns" listname="WebRefList" table="WebReferencesPatterns" /> Device Groups <ics:sql sql="select id,devicegroupsuffix,updateddate,name from DeviceGroup" listname="DeviceList" table="DeviceGroup" /> Site Entries <ics:sql sql="select se.id,se.name,se.pagename,se.cselement_id,se.updateddate,cse.rootelement from SiteEntry se LEFT JOIN CSElement cse on cse.id = se.cselement_id where se.status != 'VO'" listname="SiteList" table="SiteEntry,CSElement" /> Webroots <ics:sql sql="select id,name,rooturl,updatedby,updateddate from WebRoot" listname="webrootList" table="WebRoot" /> Page Definitions <ics:sql sql="select pd.id, pd.name, pd.updatedby, pd.updateddate, pd.description, pdt.attributeid, pa.name as nameattr, pdt.requiredflag, pdt.ordinal from PageDefinition pd, PageDefinition_TAttr pdt, PageAttribute pa where pd.status != 'VO' and pa.id=pdt.attributeid and pdt.ownerid=pd.id order by pd.id,pdt.ordinal" listname="pageDefList" table="PageDefinition,PageAttribute,PageDefinition_TAttr" /> FW_Application <ics:sql sql="select id,name,updateddate from FW_Application where status != 'VO'" listname="FWList" table="FW_Application" /> Custom Elements <ics:sql sql="select elementname from ElementCatalog where elementname like 'CustomElements%'" listname="elementList" table="ElementCatalog" />

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• Using Apache FOP from .NET level

  - by Lukasz Kurylo

  In one of my previous posts I was talking about FO.NET which I was using to generate a pdf documents from XSL-FO. FO.NET is one of the .NET ports of Apache FOP. Unfortunatelly it is no longer maintained. I known it when I decidec to use it, because there is a lack of available (free) choices for .NET to render a pdf form XSL-FO. I hoped in this implementation I will find all I need to create a pdf file with my really simple requirements. FO.NET is a port from some old version of Apache FOP and I found really quickly that there is a lack of some features that I needed, like dotted borders, double borders or support for margins. So I started to looking for some alternatives. I didn’t try the NFOP, another port of Apache FOP, because I found something I think much more better, the IKVM.NET project.   IKVM.NET it is not a pdf renderer. So what it is? From the project site:   IKVM.NET is an implementation of Java for Mono and the Microsoft .NET Framework. It includes the following components: a Java Virtual Machine implemented in .NET a .NET implementation of the Java class libraries tools that enable Java and .NET interoperability   In the simplest form IKVM.NET allows to use a Java code library in the C# code and vice versa.   I tried to use an Apache FOP, the best I think open source pdf –> XSL-FO renderer written in Java from my project written in C# using an IKVM.NET and it work like a charm. In the rest of the post I want to show, how to prepare a .NET *.dll class library from Apache FOP *.jar’s with IKVM.NET and generate a simple Hello world pdf document.   To start playing with IKVM.NET and Apache FOP we need to download their packages: IKVM.NET Apache FOP and then unpack them.   From the FOP directory copy all the *.jar’s files from lib and build catalogs to some location, e.g. d:\fop. Second step is to build the *.dll library from these files. On the console execute the following comand:   ikvmc –target:library –out:d:\fop\fop.dll –recurse:d:\fop   The ikvmc is located in the bin subdirectory where you unpacked the IKVM.NET. You must execute this command from this catalog, add this path to the global variable PATH or specify the full path to the bin subdirectory.   In no error occurred during this process, the fop.dll library should be created. Right now we can create a simple project to test if we can create a pdf file.   So let’s create a simple console project application and add reference to the fop.dll and the IKVM dll’s: IKVM.OpenJDK.Core and IKVM.OpenJDK.XML.API.   Full code to generate a pdf file from XSL-FO template:   static void Main(string[] args)         {             //initialize the Apache FOP             FopFactory fopFactory = FopFactory.newInstance();               //in this stream we will get the generated pdf file             OutputStream o = new DotNetOutputMemoryStream();             try             {                 Fop fop = fopFactory.newFop("application/pdf", o);                 TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();                 Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer();                   //read the template from disc                 Source src = new StreamSource(new File("HelloWorld.fo"));                 Result res = new SAXResult(fop.getDefaultHandler());                 transformer.transform(src, res);             }             finally             {                 o.close();             }             using (System.IO.FileStream fs = System.IO.File.Create("HelloWorld.pdf"))             {                 //write from the .NET MemoryStream stream to disc the generated pdf file                 var data = ((DotNetOutputMemoryStream)o).Stream.GetBuffer();                 fs.Write(data, 0, data.Length);             }             Process.Start("HelloWorld.pdf");             System.Console.ReadLine();         }   Apache FOP be default using a Java’s Xalan to work with XML files. I didn’t find a way to replace this piece of code with equivalent from .NET standard library. If any error or warning will occure during generating the pdf file, on the console will ge shown, that’s why I inserted the last line in the sample above. The DotNetOutputMemoryStream this is my wrapper for the Java OutputStream. I have created it to have the possibility to exchange data between the .NET <-> Java objects. It’s implementation:   class DotNetOutputMemoryStream : OutputStream     {         private System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();         public System.IO.MemoryStream Stream         {             get             {                 return ms;             }         }         public override void write(int i)         {             ms.WriteByte((byte)i);         }         public override void write(byte[] b, int off, int len)         {             ms.Write(b, off, len);         }         public override void write(byte[] b)         {             ms.Write(b, 0, b.Length);         }         public override void close()         {             ms.Close();         }         public override void flush()         {             ms.Flush();         }     } The last thing we need, this is the HelloWorld.fo template.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">   <fo:layout-master-set>     <fo:simple-page-master master-name="simple"                   page-height="29.7cm"                   page-width="21cm"                   margin-top="1.8cm"                   margin-bottom="0.8cm"                   margin-left="1.6cm"                   margin-right="1.2cm">       <fo:region-body margin-top="3cm"/>       <fo:region-before extent="3cm"/>       <fo:region-after extent="1.5cm"/>     </fo:simple-page-master>   </fo:layout-master-set>   <fo:page-sequence master-reference="simple">     <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">       <fo:block font-size="18pt" color="black" text-align="center">         Hello, World!       </fo:block>     </fo:flow>   </fo:page-sequence> </fo:root>   I’m not going to explain how how this template is created, because this will be covered in the near future posts.   Generated pdf file should look that:

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• Am I crazy? (How) should I create a jQuery content editor?

  - by Brendon Muir

  Ok, so I created a CMS mainly aimed at Primary Schools. It's getting fairly popular in New Zealand but the one thing I hate with a passion is the largely bad quality of in browser WYSIWYG editors. I've been using KTML (made by InterAKT which was purchased by Adobe a few years ago). In my opinion this editor does a lot of great things (image editing/management, thumbnailing and pretty good content editing). Unfortunately time has had its nasty way with this product and new browsers are beginning to break features and generally degrade the performance of this tool. It's also quite scary basing my livelihood on a defunct product! I've been hunting, in fact I regularly hunt around to see if anything has changed in the WYSIWYG arena. The closest thing I've seen that excites me is the WYSIHAT framework, but they've decided to ignore a pretty relevant editing paradigm which I'm going to outline below. This is the idea for my proposed editor, and I don't know of any existing products that can do this properly: Right, so the traditional model for editing let's say a Page in a CMS is to log into a 'back end' and click edit on the page. This will then load another screen with the editor in it and perhaps a few other fields. More advanced CMS's will maybe have several editing boxes that are for different portions of the page. Anyway, the big problem with this way of doing things is that the user is editing a document outside of the final context it will appear in. In the simplest terms, this means the page template. Many things can be wrong, e.g. the with of the editing area might be different to the width of the actual template area. The height is nearly always fixed because existing editors always seem to use IFRAMES for backward compatibility. And there are plenty of other beefs which I'm sure you're quite aware of if you're in this development area. Here's my editor utopia: You click 'Edit Page': The actual page (with its actual template) displays. Portions of the page have been marked as editable via a class name. You click on one of these areas (in my case it'd just be the big 'body' area in the middle of the template) and a editing bar drops down from the top of the screen with all your standard controls (bold, italic, insert image etc...). Iframes are never used, instead we rely on setting contentEditable to true on the DIV's in question. Firefox 2 and IE6 can go away, let's move on. You can edit the page knowing exactly how it will look when you save it. Because all the styles for this template are loaded, your headings will look correct, everything will be just dandy. Is this such a radical concept? Why are we still content with TinyMCE and that other editor that is too embarrassing to use because it sounds like a swear word!? Let's face the facts: I'm a JavaScript novice. I did once play around in this area using the Javascript Anthology from SitePoint as a guide. It was quite a cool learning experience, but they of course used the IFRAME to make their lives easier. I tried to go a different route and just use contentEditable and even tried to sidestep the native content editing routines (execCommand) and instead wrote my own. They kind of worked but there were always issues. Now we have jQuery, and a few libraries that abstract things like IE's lack of Range support. I'm wondering, am I crazy, or is it actually a good idea to try and build an editor around this editing paradigm using jQuery and relevant plugins to make the job easier? My actual questions: Where would you start? What plugins do you know of that would help the most? Is it worth it, or is there a magical project that already exists that I should join in on? What are the biggest hurdles to overcome in a project like this? Am I crazy? I hope this question has been posted on the right board. I figured it is a technical question as I'm wanting to know specific hurdles and pitfalls to watch out for and also if it is technically feasible with todays technology. Looking forward to hearing peoples thoughts and opinions.

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• Following my passion

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} What makes you go the extra mile? What makes you move forward and be ambitious? My name is Alin Gheorghe and I am currently working as a Contracts Administrator in the Shared Service Centre in Bucharest, Romania. I have graduated from the Political Science Faculty of the National School of Political and Administrative Studies here in Bucharest and I am currently undergoing a Master Program on Security and Diplomacy at the same university. Although I have been working a full time job here at Oracle since January 2011 and also going to school after work, I am going to tell you how I spend my spare time and about my passion. I always thought that if one doesn’t have something that he would consider a passion it’s always just a matter of time until he would discover one. Looking back, I can tell you that I discovered mine when I was 14 years old and I remember watching a football game when suddenly I became fascinated by the “man in black” that all football players obeyed during the match. That year I attended and promoted a referee course within my local referee committee and about 6 months later I was delegated to my first official game at youth tournament. Almost 10 years have passed since then and I can tell you that I very much love and appreciate this activity that I have spent doing, each and every weekend, 9 months every year, acquiring more than 600 official games until now. And even if not having a real free weekend or holiday might be sound very consuming, I can say that having something I am passionate about helps me to keep myself balanced and happy while giving me an option to channel any stress or anxiety I may feel. I think it’s important to have something of your own besides work that you spend time and effort on. Whether it’s painting, writing or a sport, having a passion can only have a positive effect on your life. And as every extra thing, it’s not always easy to follow your passion, but is it worth it? Speaking from my own experience I am sure it is, and here are some tips and tricks I constantly use not to give up on my passion: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:RO;} No matter how much time you spend at work and how much credit you get for that, it will always be the passion related achievements that will comfort you more and boost your self esteem and nothing compares to that feeling you get. I always try to keep this in mind so that each time I think about giving up I get even more ambitious to move forward. Everybody can just do what they are paid to do or what they are requested to do at work but not everybody can go that extra mile when it comes to following their passion and putting in extra work for that. By exercising this constantly you get used to also applying this attitude on the work related tasks. It takes accurate planning, anticipation and forecasting in order to combine your work with your passion. Therefore having a full schedule and keeping up with it will only help develop and exercise such skills and also will prove to you that you are up to such a challenge. I always keep in mind as a final goal that if you get very good at your passion you can actually start earning from it. And I think that is the ultimate level when you can say that you make a living by doing exactly what you are passionate about. In conclusion, by taking the easy way not only do you miss out on something nice, but life’s priceless rewards are usually given by those things that you actually believe in and know how to stand up for over time.

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• Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

  - by Tania Le Voi

  Today’s CIO job description:  ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.”   Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame.  The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’.  IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way?  Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria.  No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar.  Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here.  What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1:  Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2:  Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT.  Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3:  Observe the data over time.  You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT.  Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels.  Step 4:  Change the information about which you and the business communicate.  It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language.  You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.  

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• placing the matched 2 different child elements xml values in a single line from xslt2.0

  - by Girikumar Mathivanan

  I have the below input xml, <GSKProductHierarchy> <GlobalBusinessIdentifier>ZGB001</GlobalBusinessIdentifier> <Hierarchy> <Material>335165140779</Material> <Level1>02</Level1> <Level2>02AQ</Level2> <Level3>02AQ006</Level3> <Level4>02AQ006309</Level4> <Level5>02AQ006309</Level5> <Level6>02AQ006309</Level6> <Level7>02AQ006309</Level7> <Level8>02AQ006309</Level8> </Hierarchy> <Hierarchy> <Material>335165140780</Material> <Level1>02</Level1> <Level2>02AQ</Level2> <Level3>02AQ006</Level3> <Level4>02AQ006309</Level4> <Level5>02AQ006309</Level5> <Level6>02AQ006309</Level6> <Level7>02AQ006309</Level7> <Level8>02AQ006310</Level8> </Hierarchy> <Texts> <ProductHierarchy>02AQ006310</ProductHierarchy> <Language>A</Language> <Description>CREAM</Description> </Texts> <Texts> <ProductHierarchy>02AQ006309</ProductHierarchy> <Language>B</Language> <Description>CREAM</Description> </Texts> as per the requirement, xsl should check the matched value of GSKProductHierarchy/Hierarchy/Level8 in the GSKProductHierarchy/Texts/ProductHierarchy elements...and its should result as below flat file. 335165140779|02|02AQ|02AQ006|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|A|CREAM| 335165140780|02|02AQ|02AQ006|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006309|02AQ006310|02AQ006310|B|CREAM| Right now I have the below xslt, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="2.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common" xmlns:set="http://exslt.org/sets" xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings" xmlns:java="http://xml.apache.org/xslt/java" xmlns:saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/" exclude-result-prefixes="exsl set str java saxon"> <xsl:output method="text" indent="yes"/> <xsl:variable name="VarPipe" select="'|'"/> <xsl:variable name="VarBreak" select="'&#xa;'"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:for-each select="GSKProductHierarchy/Hierarchy"> <xsl:variable name="currentIndex" select="position()"/> <xsl:variable name="Level8" select="Level8"/> <xsl:variable name="ProductHierarchy" select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/ProductHierarchy"/> <xsl:if test="$Level8=$ProductHierarchy"> <xsl:value-of select="Material"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level1"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level2"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level3"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level4"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level5"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level6"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level7"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="Level8"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/ProductHierarchy"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/Language"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:value-of select="../Texts[$currentIndex]/Description"/> <xsl:value-of select="$VarPipe"/> <xsl:if test="not(position() = last())"> <xsl:value-of select="$VarBreak"/> </xsl:if> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> can anyone please suggest what function should i need to use to get the desired result. Regards, Giri

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• How to make negate_unary work with any type?

  - by Chan

  Hi, Following this question: How to negate a predicate function using operator ! in C++? I want to create an operator ! can work with any functor that inherited from unary_function. I tried: template<typename T> inline std::unary_negate<T> operator !( const T& pred ) { return std::not1( pred ); } The compiler complained: Error 5 error C2955: 'std::unary_function' : use of class template requires template argument list c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 223 1 Graphic Error 7 error C2451: conditional expression of type 'std::unary_negate<_Fn1>' is illegal c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\ostream 529 1 Graphic Error 3 error C2146: syntax error : missing ',' before identifier 'argument_type' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 222 1 Graphic Error 4 error C2065: 'argument_type' : undeclared identifier c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 222 1 Graphic Error 2 error C2039: 'argument_type' : is not a member of 'std::basic_ostream<_Elem,_Traits>::sentry' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 222 1 Graphic Error 6 error C2039: 'argument_type' : is not a member of 'std::basic_ostream<_Elem,_Traits>::sentry' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xfunctional 230 1 Graphic Any idea? Update Follow "templatetypedef" solution, I got new error: Error 3 error C2831: 'operator !' cannot have default parameters c:\visual studio 2010 projects\graphic\graphic\main.cpp 39 1 Graphic Error 2 error C2808: unary 'operator !' has too many formal parameters c:\visual studio 2010 projects\graphic\graphic\main.cpp 39 1 Graphic Error 4 error C2675: unary '!' : 'is_prime' does not define this operator or a conversion to a type acceptable to the predefined operator c:\visual studio 2010 projects\graphic\graphic\main.cpp 52 1 Graphic Update 1 Complete code: #include <iostream> #include <functional> #include <utility> #include <cmath> #include <algorithm> #include <iterator> #include <string> #include <boost/assign.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/vector.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/map.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/set.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/list.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/stack.hpp> #include <boost/assign/std/deque.hpp> struct is_prime : std::unary_function<int, bool> { bool operator()( int n ) const { if( n < 2 ) return 0; if( n == 2 || n == 3 ) return 1; if( n % 2 == 0 || n % 3 == 0 ) return 0; int upper_bound = std::sqrt( static_cast<double>( n ) ); for( int pf = 5, step = 2; pf <= upper_bound; ) { if( n % pf == 0 ) return 0; pf += step; step = 6 - step; } return 1; } }; /* template<typename T> inline std::unary_negate<T> operator !( const T& pred, typename T::argument_type* dummy = 0 ) { return std::not1<T>( pred ); } */ inline std::unary_negate<is_prime> operator !( const is_prime& pred ) { return std::not1( pred ); } template<typename T> inline void print_con( const T& con, const std::string& ms = "", const std::string& sep = ", " ) { std::cout << ms << '\n'; std::copy( con.begin(), con.end(), std::ostream_iterator<typename T::value_type>( std::cout, sep.c_str() ) ); std::cout << "\n\n"; } int main() { using namespace boost::assign; std::vector<int> nums; nums += 1, 3, 5, 7, 9; nums.erase( remove_if( nums.begin(), nums.end(), !is_prime() ), nums.end() ); print_con( nums, "After remove all primes" ); } Thanks, Chan Nguyen

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• Help with understanding why UAC dialog pops up on Win7 for our application

  - by Tim

  We have a C++ unmanaged application that appears to cause a UAC prompt. It seems to happen on Win7 and NOT on Vista Unfortunately the UAC dlg is system modal so I can't attach a debugger to check in the code where it is, and running under msdev (we're using 2008) runs in elevated mode. We put a message box at the start of our program/winmain but it doesn't even get that far, so apparently this is in the startup code. What can cause a UAC notification so early and what other things can I do to track down the cause? EDIT Apparently the manifest is an important issue here, but it seems not to be helping me - or perhaps I am not configuring the manifest file correctly. Can someone provide a sample manifest? Also, does the linker/UAC magic figure out that the program "might" write to the registry and set its UAC requirements based on that? There are code paths that might trigger UAC, but we are not even at that point when the UAC dlg comes up. An additional oddity is that this does not seem to happen on Vista with UAC turned on. Here is a manifest (that I think is/was generated automatically): <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes'?> <assembly xmlns='urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1' manifestVersion='1.0'> <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3"> <security> <requestedPrivileges> <requestedExecutionLevel level='asInvoker' uiAccess='false' /> </requestedPrivileges> </security> </trustInfo> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='*' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*' /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type='win32' name='Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls' version='6.0.0.0' processorArchitecture='x86' publicKeyToken='6595b64144ccf1df' language='*' /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> </assembly> And then this one was added to the manifest list to see if it would help <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> <assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" name="[removed for anonymity]" type="win32" /> <description> [removed for anonymity] </description> <dependency> <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2"> <security> <requestedPrivileges> <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false"/> </requestedPrivileges> </security> </trustInfo> </assembly> The following is from the actual EXE using the ManifestViewer tool - <assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> <assemblyIdentity version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" name="[removed]" type="win32" /> <description>[removed]</description> - <dependency> - <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> - <dependency> - <dependentAssembly> <assemblyIdentity type="win32" name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" version="6.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="*" publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" language="*" /> </dependentAssembly> </dependency> - <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2"> - <security> - <requestedPrivileges> <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false" /> </requestedPrivileges> </security> </trustInfo> </assembly> It appears that it might be due to the xp compatibility setting on our app. I'll have to test that. (we set that in the installer I found out because some sound drivers don't work correctly on win7)

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• Troubleshoot Perl module installation on Mac OS X

  - by Daniel Standage

  I'm trying to install the Perl module Set::IntervalTree on Mac OS X. I recently installed it today on an Ubuntu box with no problem. I simply started cpan, entered install Set:IntervalTree, and it all worked out. However, the installation failed on Mac OS X--it spits out a huge list of compiler errors (below). How would I troubleshoot this. I don't even know where to begin. cpan[1]> install Set::IntervalTree CPAN: Storable loaded ok (v2.18) Going to read /Users/standage/.cpan/Metadata Database was generated on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 02:58:42 GMT CPAN: YAML loaded ok (v0.72) Going to read /Users/standage/.cpan/build/ ............................................................................DONE Found 1 old build, restored the state of 1 Running install for module 'Set::IntervalTree' Running make for B/BE/BENBOOTH/Set-IntervalTree-0.01.tar.gz CPAN: Digest::SHA loaded ok (v5.45) CPAN: Compress::Zlib loaded ok (v2.008) Checksum for /Users/standage/.cpan/sources/authors/id/B/BE/BENBOOTH/Set-IntervalTree-0.01.tar.gz ok Scanning cache /Users/standage/.cpan/build for sizes ............................................................................DONE x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/ x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/src/ x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/src/Makefile x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/src/interval_tree.h x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/src/test_main.cc x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/lib/ x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/lib/Set/ x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/lib/Set/IntervalTree.pm x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/Changes x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/MANIFEST x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/t/ x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/t/Set-IntervalTree.t x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/typemap x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/perlobject.map x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/IntervalTree.xs x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/Makefile.PL x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/README x Set-IntervalTree-0.01/META.yml CPAN: File::Temp loaded ok (v0.18) CPAN.pm: Going to build B/BE/BENBOOTH/Set-IntervalTree-0.01.tar.gz Checking if your kit is complete... Looks good Writing Makefile for Set::IntervalTree cp lib/Set/IntervalTree.pm blib/lib/Set/IntervalTree.pm AutoSplitting blib/lib/Set/IntervalTree.pm (blib/lib/auto/Set/IntervalTree) /usr/bin/perl /System/Library/Perl/5.10.0/ExtUtils/xsubpp -C++ -typemap /System/Library/Perl/5.10.0/ExtUtils/typemap -typemap perlobject.map -typemap typemap IntervalTree.xs > IntervalTree.xsc && mv IntervalTree.xsc IntervalTree.c g++ -c -Isrc -arch x86_64 -arch i386 -arch ppc -g -pipe -fno-common -DPERL_DARWIN -fno-strict-aliasing -I/usr/local/include -g -O0 -DVERSION=\"0.01\" -DXS_VERSION=\"0.01\" "-I/System/Library/Perl/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level/CORE" -Isrc IntervalTree.c In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/basic_ios.h:44, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ios:50, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ostream:45, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/iostream:45, from IntervalTree.xs:16: /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4420:40: error: macro "do_open" requires 7 arguments, but only 2 given /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4467:34: error: macro "do_close" requires 2 arguments, but only 1 given /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4486:55: error: macro "do_open" requires 7 arguments, but only 2 given /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4513:23: error: macro "do_close" requires 2 arguments, but only 1 given In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4599, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/basic_ios.h:44, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ios:50, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ostream:45, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/iostream:45, from IntervalTree.xs:16: /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/i686-apple-darwin10/x86_64/bits/messages_members.h:58:38: error: macro "do_open" requires 7 arguments, but only 2 given /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/i686-apple-darwin10/x86_64/bits/messages_members.h:67:71: error: macro "do_open" requires 7 arguments, but only 2 given /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/i686-apple-darwin10/x86_64/bits/messages_members.h:78:39: error: macro "do_close" requires 2 arguments, but only 1 given In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/basic_ios.h:44, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ios:50, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ostream:45, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/iostream:45, from IntervalTree.xs:16: /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4486: error: ‘do_open’ declared as a ‘virtual’ field /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4486: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘const’ /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4513: error: variable or field ‘do_close’ declared void /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4513: error: expected ‘;’ before ‘const’ In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/locale_facets.h:4599, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/bits/basic_ios.h:44, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ios:50, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/ostream:45, from /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/iostream:45, from IntervalTree.xs:16: /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/i686-apple-darwin10/x86_64/bits/messages_members.h:67: error: expected initializer before ‘const’ /usr/include/c++/4.2.1/i686-apple-darwin10/x86_64/bits/messages_members.h:78: error: expected initializer before ‘const’ In file included from IntervalTree.xs:19: src/interval_tree.h:95: error: type/value mismatch at argument 1 in template parameter list for ‘template<class _Tp, class _Alloc> class std::vector’ src/interval_tree.h:95: error: expected a type, got ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::it_recursion_node’ src/interval_tree.h:95: error: template argument 2 is invalid src/interval_tree.h: In constructor ‘IntervalTree<T, N>::IntervalTree()’: src/interval_tree.h:130: error: expected type-specifier src/interval_tree.h:130: error: expected `;' src/interval_tree.h:135: error: expected type-specifier src/interval_tree.h:135: error: expected `;' src/interval_tree.h:141: error: request for member ‘push_back’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘void IntervalTree<T, N>::LeftRotate(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*)’: src/interval_tree.h:178: error: ‘y’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘void IntervalTree<T, N>::RightRotate(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*)’: src/interval_tree.h:240: error: ‘x’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘void IntervalTree<T, N>::TreeInsertHelp(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*)’: src/interval_tree.h:298: error: ‘x’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:299: error: ‘y’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘typename IntervalTree<T, N>::Node* IntervalTree<T, N>::insert(const T&, N, N)’: src/interval_tree.h:375: error: ‘y’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:376: error: ‘x’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:377: error: ‘newNode’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:379: error: expected type-specifier src/interval_tree.h:379: error: expected `;' src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘typename IntervalTree<T, N>::Node* IntervalTree<T, N>::GetSuccessorOf(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*) const’: src/interval_tree.h:450: error: ‘y’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘typename IntervalTree<T, N>::Node* IntervalTree<T, N>::GetPredecessorOf(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*) const’: src/interval_tree.h:483: error: ‘y’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h: In destructor ‘IntervalTree<T, N>::~IntervalTree()’: src/interval_tree.h:546: error: ‘x’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:547: error: type/value mismatch at argument 1 in template parameter list for ‘template<class _Tp, class _Alloc> class std::vector’ src/interval_tree.h:547: error: expected a type, got ‘(IntervalTree<T,N>::Node * <expression error>)’ src/interval_tree.h:547: error: template argument 2 is invalid src/interval_tree.h:547: error: invalid type in declaration before ‘;’ token src/interval_tree.h:551: error: request for member ‘push_back’ in ‘stuffToFree’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:554: error: request for member ‘push_back’ in ‘stuffToFree’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:557: error: request for member ‘empty’ in ‘stuffToFree’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:558: error: request for member ‘back’ in ‘stuffToFree’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:559: error: request for member ‘pop_back’ in ‘stuffToFree’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:561: error: request for member ‘push_back’ in ‘stuffToFree’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:564: error: request for member ‘push_back’ in ‘stuffToFree’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘void IntervalTree<T, N>::DeleteFixUp(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*)’: src/interval_tree.h:613: error: ‘w’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:614: error: ‘rootLeft’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘T IntervalTree<T, N>::remove(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*)’: src/interval_tree.h:697: error: ‘y’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:698: error: ‘x’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘std::vector<T, std::allocator<_CharT> > IntervalTree<T, N>::fetch(N, N)’: src/interval_tree.h:819: error: ‘x’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:833: error: invalid types ‘int[size_t]’ for array subscript src/interval_tree.h:836: error: request for member ‘push_back’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:837: error: request for member ‘back’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:838: error: request for member ‘back’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:839: error: request for member ‘back’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:840: error: request for member ‘size’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:846: error: request for member ‘size’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:847: error: expected `;' before ‘back’ src/interval_tree.h:848: error: request for member ‘pop_back’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:850: error: ‘back’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:853: error: invalid types ‘int[size_t]’ for array subscript IntervalTree.c: In function ‘void boot_Set__IntervalTree(PerlInterpreter*, CV*)’: IntervalTree.c:365: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’ src/interval_tree.h: In constructor ‘IntervalTree<T, N>::IntervalTree() [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: IntervalTree.c:67: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:130: error: cannot convert ‘int*’ to ‘IntervalTree<std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, long int>::Node*’ in assignment src/interval_tree.h:135: error: cannot convert ‘int*’ to ‘IntervalTree<std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, long int>::Node*’ in assignment ...blah blah blah... ...blah blah blah... ...blah blah blah... ...blah blah blah... ...blah blah blah... ...blah blah blah... src/interval_tree.h:848: error: request for member ‘pop_back’ in ‘((IntervalTree<T, N>*)this)->IntervalTree<T, N>::recursionNodeStack’, which is of non-class type ‘int’ src/interval_tree.h:850: error: ‘back’ was not declared in this scope src/interval_tree.h:853: error: invalid types ‘int[size_t]’ for array subscript IntervalTree.c: In function ‘void boot_Set__IntervalTree(PerlInterpreter*, CV*)’: IntervalTree.c:365: warning: deprecated conversion from string constant to ‘char*’ src/interval_tree.h: In constructor ‘IntervalTree<T, N>::IntervalTree() [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: IntervalTree.c:67: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:130: error: cannot convert ‘int*’ to ‘IntervalTree<std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, long int>::Node*’ in assignment src/interval_tree.h:135: error: cannot convert ‘int*’ to ‘IntervalTree<std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, long int>::Node*’ in assignment src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘typename IntervalTree<T, N>::Node* IntervalTree<T, N>::insert(const T&, N, N) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: IntervalTree.xs:57: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:375: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:375: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h:376: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:376: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h:377: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:377: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘std::vector<T, std::allocator<_CharT> > IntervalTree<T, N>::fetch(N, N) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: IntervalTree.xs:65: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:819: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:819: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant IntervalTree.xs:65: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:847: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::it_recursion_node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:847: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::it_recursion_node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h: In destructor ‘IntervalTree<T, N>::~IntervalTree() [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: IntervalTree.c:205: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:546: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:546: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘void IntervalTree<T, N>::TreeInsertHelp(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: src/interval_tree.h:380: instantiated from ‘typename IntervalTree<T, N>::Node* IntervalTree<T, N>::insert(const T&, N, N) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’ IntervalTree.xs:57: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:298: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:298: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h:299: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:299: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘void IntervalTree<T, N>::LeftRotate(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: src/interval_tree.h:395: instantiated from ‘typename IntervalTree<T, N>::Node* IntervalTree<T, N>::insert(const T&, N, N) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’ IntervalTree.xs:57: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:178: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:178: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant src/interval_tree.h: In member function ‘void IntervalTree<T, N>::RightRotate(IntervalTree<T, N>::Node*) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’: src/interval_tree.h:399: instantiated from ‘typename IntervalTree<T, N>::Node* IntervalTree<T, N>::insert(const T&, N, N) [with T = std::tr1::shared_ptr<sv>, N = long int]’ IntervalTree.xs:57: instantiated from here src/interval_tree.h:240: error: dependent-name ‘IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ is parsed as a non-type, but instantiation yields a type src/interval_tree.h:240: note: say ‘typename IntervalTree<T,N>::Node’ if a type is meant lipo: can't open input file: /var/tmp//ccLthuaw.out (No such file or directory) make: *** [IntervalTree.o] Error 1 BENBOOTH/Set-IntervalTree-0.01.tar.gz make -- NOT OK Running make test Can't test without successful make Running make install Make had returned bad status, install seems impossible Failed during this command: BENBOOTH/Set-IntervalTree-0.01.tar.gz : make NO

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• Building Visual Studio Setup Projects with TFS 2010 Team Build

  - by Jakob Ehn

  One of the most common complaints from people starting to use Team Build is that is doesn’t support building Microsoft’s own Setup and Deployment project (*.vdproj). When creating a default build definition that compiles a solution containing a setup project, you’ll get the following warning: The project file "MyProject.vdproj" is not supported by MSBuild and cannot be built.   This is what the problem is all about. MSBuild, that is used for compiling your projects, does not understand the proprietary vdproj format defined by Microsoft quite some time ago. Unfortunately there is no sign that this will change in the near future, in fact the setup projects has barely changed at all since they were introduced. VS 2010 brings no new features or improvements hen it comes to the setup projects. VS 2010 does include a limited version of InstallShield which promises to be more MSBuild friendly and with more or less the same features as VS setup projects. I hope to get a closer look at this installer project type soon. But, how do we go about to build a Visual Studio setup project and produce an MSI as part of a Team Build process? Well, since only one application known to man understands the vdproj projects, we will have to installa copy of Visual Studio on the build server. Sad but true. After doing this, we use the Visual Studio command line interface (devenv) to perform the build. In this post I will show how to do this by using the InvokeProcess activity directly in a build workflow template. You’ll want to run build your setup projects after you have successfully compiled the projects.   Install Visual Studio 2010 on the build server(s)   Open your build process template /remember to branch or copy the xaml file before modifying it!)   Locate the Try to Compile the Project activity   Drop an instance of the InvokeProcess activity from the toolbox onto the designer, after the Run MSBuild for Project activity   Drop an instance of the WriteBuildMessage activity inside the Handle Standard Output section. Set the Importance property to Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Build.Client.BuildMessageImportance.High (NB: This is necessary if you want the output from devenv to show up in the build log when running the build with the default verbosity) Set the Message property to stdOutput   Drop an instance of the WriteBuildError activity to the Handle Error Output section Set the Message property to errOutput   Select the InvokeProcess activity and set the values of the parameters to:     The finished workflow should look like this:     This will generate the MSI files, but they won’t be copied to the drop location. This is because we are using devenv and not MSBuild, so we have to do this explicitly   Drop a Sequence activity somewhere after the Copy to Drop location activity.   Create a variable in the Sequence activity of type IEnumerable<String> and call it GeneratedInstallers   Drop a FindMatchingFiles activity in the sequence activity and set the properties to:     Drop a ForEach<String> activity after the FindMatchingFiles activity. Set the Value property to GeneratedInstallers   Drop an InvokeProcess activity inside the ForEach activity.  FileName: “xcopy.exe” Arguments: String.Format("""{0}"" ""{1}""", item, BuildDetail.DropLocation) The Sequence activity should look like this:     Save the build process template and check it in.   Run the build and verify that the MSI’s is built and copied to the drop location.   Note 1: One of the drawback of using devenv like this in a team build is that since all the output from the default compilations is placed in the Binaries folder, the outputs is not avaialable when devenv is invoked, which causes the whole solution to rebuild again. In TFS 2008, this was pretty simple to fix by using the CustomizableOutDir property. In TFS 2010, the same feature is not avaialble. Jim Lamb blogged about this recently, have a look at it if you have a problem with this: http://blogs.msdn.com/jimlamb/archive/2010/04/13/customizableoutdir-in-tfs-2010.aspx   Note 2: Although the above solution works, a better approach is to wrap this in a custom activity that you can use in your builds. I will come back to this in a future post.

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• SQL SERVER – History of SQL Server Database Encryption

  - by pinaldave

  I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly give me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. Encryption in SQL Server 2000 Built-in cryptographic encryption functionality was nonexistent in SQL Server 2000 and prior versions. In order to get server-side encryption in SQL Server you had to resort to purchasing or creating your own SQL Server XPs. Creating your own cryptographic XPs could be a daunting task owing to the fact that XPs had to be compiled as native DLLs (using a language like C or C++) and the XP application programming interface (API) was poorly documented. In addition there were always concerns around creating wellbehaved XPs that “played nicely” with the SQL Server process. Encryption in SQL Server 2005 Prior to the release of SQL Server 2005 there was a flurry of regulatory activity in response to accounting scandals and attacks on repositories of confidential consumer data. Much of this regulation centered onthe need for protecting and controlling access to sensitive financial and consumer information. With the release of SQL Server 2005 Microsoft responded to the increasing demand for built-in encryption byproviding the necessary tools to encrypt data at the column level. This functionality prominently featured the following: Support for column-level encryption of data using symmetric keys or passphrases. Built-in access to a variety of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms, including AES, DES, Triple DES, RC2, RC4, and RSA. Capability to create and manage symmetric keys. Key creation and management. Ability to generate asymmetric keys and self-signed certificates, or to install external asymmetric keys and certificates. Implementation of hierarchical model for encryption key management, similar to the ANSI X9.17 standard model. SQL functions to generate one-way hash codes and digital signatures, including SHA-1 and MD5 hashes. Additional SQL functions to encrypt and decrypt data. Extensions to the SQL language to support creation, use, and administration of encryption keys and certificates. SQL CLR extensions that provide access to .NET-based encryption functionality. Encryption in SQL Server 2008 Encryption demands have increased over the past few years. For instance, there has been a demand for the ability to store encryption keys “off-the-box,” physically separate from the database and the data it contains. Also there is a recognized requirement for legacy databases and applications to take advantage of encryption without changing the existing code base. To address these needs SQL Server 2008 adds the following features to its encryption arsenal: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE): Allows you to encrypt an entire database, including log files and the tempdb database, in such a way that it is transparent to client applications. Extensible Key Management (EKM): Allows you to store and manage your encryption keys on an external device known as a hardware security module (HSM). Cryptographic random number generation functionality. Additional cryptography-related catalog views and dynamic management views. SQL language extensions to support the new encryption functionality. The encryption book covers all the tools in its various chapter in one simple story. If you are interested how encryption evolved and reached to the stage where it is today, this book is must for everyone. You can read my earlier review of the book over here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Encryption, SQL Server Encryption, SQLPASS

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• The Incremental Architect&rsquo;s Napkin - #5 - Design functions for extensibility and readability

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/24/the-incremental-architectrsquos-napkin---5---design-functions-for.aspx The functionality of programs is entered via Entry Points. So what we´re talking about when designing software is a bunch of functions handling the requests represented by and flowing in through those Entry Points. Designing software thus consists of at least three phases: Analyzing the requirements to find the Entry Points and their signatures Designing the functionality to be executed when those Entry Points get triggered Implementing the functionality according to the design aka coding I presume, you´re familiar with phase 1 in some way. And I guess you´re proficient in implementing functionality in some programming language. But in my experience developers in general are not experienced in going through an explicit phase 2. “Designing functionality? What´s that supposed to mean?” you might already have thought. Here´s my definition: To design functionality (or functional design for short) means thinking about… well, functions. You find a solution for what´s supposed to happen when an Entry Point gets triggered in terms of functions. A conceptual solution that is, because those functions only exist in your head (or on paper) during this phase. But you may have guess that, because it´s “design” not “coding”. And here is, what functional design is not: It´s not about logic. Logic is expressions (e.g. +, -, && etc.) and control statements (e.g. if, switch, for, while etc.). Also I consider calling external APIs as logic. It´s equally basic. It´s what code needs to do in order to deliver some functionality or quality. Logic is what´s doing that needs to be done by software. Transformations are either done through expressions or API-calls. And then there is alternative control flow depending on the result of some expression. Basically it´s just jumps in Assembler, sometimes to go forward (if, switch), sometimes to go backward (for, while, do). But calling your own function is not logic. It´s not necessary to produce any outcome. Functionality is not enhanced by adding functions (subroutine calls) to your code. Nor is quality increased by adding functions. No performance gain, no higher scalability etc. through functions. Functions are not relevant to functionality. Strange, isn´t it. What they are important for is security of investment. By introducing functions into our code we can become more productive (re-use) and can increase evolvability (higher unterstandability, easier to keep code consistent). That´s no small feat, however. Evolvable code can hardly be overestimated. That´s why to me functional design is so important. It´s at the core of software development. To sum this up: Functional design is on a level of abstraction above (!) logical design or algorithmic design. Functional design is only done until you get to a point where each function is so simple you are very confident you can easily code it. Functional design an logical design (which mostly is coding, but can also be done using pseudo code or flow charts) are complementary. Software needs both. If you start coding right away you end up in a tangled mess very quickly. Then you need back out through refactoring. Functional design on the other hand is bloodless without actual code. It´s just a theory with no experiments to prove it. But how to do functional design? An example of functional design Let´s assume a program to de-duplicate strings. The user enters a number of strings separated by commas, e.g. a, b, a, c, d, b, e, c, a. And the program is supposed to clear this list of all doubles, e.g. a, b, c, d, e. There is only one Entry Point to this program: the user triggers the de-duplication by starting the program with the string list on the command line C:\>deduplicate "a, b, a, c, d, b, e, c, a" a, b, c, d, e …or by clicking on a GUI button. This leads to the Entry Point function to get called. It´s the program´s main function in case of the batch version or a button click event handler in the GUI version. That´s the physical Entry Point so to speak. It´s inevitable. What then happens is a three step process: Transform the input data from the user into a request. Call the request handler. Transform the output of the request handler into a tangible result for the user. Or to phrase it a bit more generally: Accept input. Transform input into output. Present output. This does not mean any of these steps requires a lot of effort. Maybe it´s just one line of code to accomplish it. Nevertheless it´s a distinct step in doing the processing behind an Entry Point. Call it an aspect or a responsibility - and you will realize it most likely deserves a function of its own to satisfy the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP). Interestingly the above list of steps is already functional design. There is no logic, but nevertheless the solution is described - albeit on a higher level of abstraction than you might have done yourself. But it´s still on a meta-level. The application to the domain at hand is easy, though: Accept string list from command line De-duplicate Present de-duplicated strings on standard output And this concrete list of processing steps can easily be transformed into code:static void Main(string[] args) { var input = Accept_string_list(args); var output = Deduplicate(input); Present_deduplicated_string_list(output); } Instead of a big problem there are three much smaller problems now. If you think each of those is trivial to implement, then go for it. You can stop the functional design at this point. But maybe, just maybe, you´re not so sure how to go about with the de-duplication for example. Then just implement what´s easy right now, e.g.private static string Accept_string_list(string[] args) { return args[0]; } private static void Present_deduplicated_string_list( string[] output) { var line = string.Join(", ", output); Console.WriteLine(line); } Accept_string_list() contains logic in the form of an API-call. Present_deduplicated_string_list() contains logic in the form of an expression and an API-call. And then repeat the functional design for the remaining processing step. What´s left is the domain logic: de-duplicating a list of strings. How should that be done? Without any logic at our disposal during functional design you´re left with just functions. So which functions could make up the de-duplication? Here´s a suggestion: De-duplicate Parse the input string into a true list of strings. Register each string in a dictionary/map/set. That way duplicates get cast away. Transform the data structure into a list of unique strings. Processing step 2 obviously was the core of the solution. That´s where real creativity was needed. That´s the core of the domain. But now after this refinement the implementation of each step is easy again:private static string[] Parse_string_list(string input) { return input.Split(',') .Select(s => s.Trim()) .ToArray(); } private static Dictionary<string,object> Compile_unique_strings(string[] strings) { return strings.Aggregate( new Dictionary<string, object>(), (agg, s) => { agg[s] = null; return agg; }); } private static string[] Serialize_unique_strings( Dictionary<string,object> dict) { return dict.Keys.ToArray(); } With these three additional functions Main() now looks like this:static void Main(string[] args) { var input = Accept_string_list(args); var strings = Parse_string_list(input); var dict = Compile_unique_strings(strings); var output = Serialize_unique_strings(dict); Present_deduplicated_string_list(output); } I think that´s very understandable code: just read it from top to bottom and you know how the solution to the problem works. It´s a mirror image of the initial design: Accept string list from command line Parse the input string into a true list of strings. Register each string in a dictionary/map/set. That way duplicates get cast away. Transform the data structure into a list of unique strings. Present de-duplicated strings on standard output You can even re-generate the design by just looking at the code. Code and functional design thus are always in sync - if you follow some simple rules. But about that later. And as a bonus: all the functions making up the process are small - which means easy to understand, too. So much for an initial concrete example. Now it´s time for some theory. Because there is method to this madness ;-) The above has only scratched the surface. Introducing Flow Design Functional design starts with a given function, the Entry Point. Its goal is to describe the behavior of the program when the Entry Point is triggered using a process, not an algorithm. An algorithm consists of logic, a process on the other hand consists just of steps or stages. Each processing step transforms input into output or a side effect. Also it might access resources, e.g. a printer, a database, or just memory. Processing steps thus can rely on state of some sort. This is different from Functional Programming, where functions are supposed to not be stateful and not cause side effects.[1] In its simplest form a process can be written as a bullet point list of steps, e.g. Get data from user Output result to user Transform data Parse data Map result for output Such a compilation of steps - possibly on different levels of abstraction - often is the first artifact of functional design. It can be generated by a team in an initial design brainstorming. Next comes ordering the steps. What should happen first, what next etc.? Get data from user Parse data Transform data Map result for output Output result to user That´s great for a start into functional design. It´s better than starting to code right away on a given function using TDD. Please get me right: TDD is a valuable practice. But it can be unnecessarily hard if the scope of a functionn is too large. But how do you know beforehand without investing some thinking? And how to do this thinking in a systematic fashion? My recommendation: For any given function you´re supposed to implement first do a functional design. Then, once you´re confident you know the processing steps - which are pretty small - refine and code them using TDD. You´ll see that´s much, much easier - and leads to cleaner code right away. For more information on this approach I call “Informed TDD” read my book of the same title. Thinking before coding is smart. And writing down the solution as a bunch of functions possibly is the simplest thing you can do, I´d say. It´s more according to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle than returning constants or other trivial stuff TDD development often is started with. So far so good. A simple ordered list of processing steps will do to start with functional design. As shown in the above example such steps can easily be translated into functions. Moving from design to coding thus is simple. However, such a list does not scale. Processing is not always that simple to be captured in a list. And then the list is just text. Again. Like code. That means the design is lacking visuality. Textual representations need more parsing by your brain than visual representations. Plus they are limited in their “dimensionality”: text just has one dimension, it´s sequential. Alternatives and parallelism are hard to encode in text. In addition the functional design using numbered lists lacks data. It´s not visible what´s the input, output, and state of the processing steps. That´s why functional design should be done using a lightweight visual notation. No tool is necessary to draw such designs. Use pen and paper; a flipchart, a whiteboard, or even a napkin is sufficient. Visualizing processes The building block of the functional design notation is a functional unit. I mostly draw it like this: Something is done, it´s clear what goes in, it´s clear what comes out, and it´s clear what the processing step requires in terms of state or hardware. Whenever input flows into a functional unit it gets processed and output is produced and/or a side effect occurs. Flowing data is the driver of something happening. That´s why I call this approach to functional design Flow Design. It´s about data flow instead of control flow. Control flow like in algorithms is of no concern to functional design. Thinking about control flow simply is too low level. Once you start with control flow you easily get bogged down by tons of details. That´s what you want to avoid during design. Design is supposed to be quick, broad brush, abstract. It should give overview. But what about all the details? As Robert C. Martin rightly said: “Programming is abot detail”. Detail is a matter of code. Once you start coding the processing steps you designed you can worry about all the detail you want. Functional design does not eliminate all the nitty gritty. It just postpones tackling them. To me that´s also an example of the SRP. Function design has the responsibility to come up with a solution to a problem posed by a single function (Entry Point). And later coding has the responsibility to implement the solution down to the last detail (i.e. statement, API-call). TDD unfortunately mixes both responsibilities. It´s just coding - and thereby trying to find detailed implementations (green phase) plus getting the design right (refactoring). To me that´s one reason why TDD has failed to deliver on its promise for many developers. Using functional units as building blocks of functional design processes can be depicted very easily. Here´s the initial process for the example problem: For each processing step draw a functional unit and label it. Choose a verb or an “action phrase” as a label, not a noun. Functional design is about activities, not state or structure. Then make the output of an upstream step the input of a downstream step. Finally think about the data that should flow between the functional units. Write the data above the arrows connecting the functional units in the direction of the data flow. Enclose the data description in brackets. That way you can clearly see if all flows have already been specified. Empty brackets mean “no data is flowing”, but nevertheless a signal is sent. A name like “list” or “strings” in brackets describes the data content. Use lower case labels for that purpose. A name starting with an upper case letter like “String” or “Customer” on the other hand signifies a data type. If you like, you also can combine descriptions with data types by separating them with a colon, e.g. (list:string) or (strings:string[]). But these are just suggestions from my practice with Flow Design. You can do it differently, if you like. Just be sure to be consistent. Flows wired-up in this manner I call one-dimensional (1D). Each functional unit just has one input and/or one output. A functional unit without an output is possible. It´s like a black hole sucking up input without producing any output. Instead it produces side effects. A functional unit without an input, though, does make much sense. When should it start to work? What´s the trigger? That´s why in the above process even the first processing step has an input. If you like, view such 1D-flows as pipelines. Data is flowing through them from left to right. But as you can see, it´s not always the same data. It get´s transformed along its passage: (args) becomes a (list) which is turned into (strings). The Principle of Mutual Oblivion A very characteristic trait of flows put together from function units is: no functional units knows another one. They are all completely independent of each other. Functional units don´t know where their input is coming from (or even when it´s gonna arrive). They just specify a range of values they can process. And they promise a certain behavior upon input arriving. Also they don´t know where their output is going. They just produce it in their own time independent of other functional units. That means at least conceptually all functional units work in parallel. Functional units don´t know their “deployment context”. They now nothing about the overall flow they are place in. They are just consuming input from some upstream, and producing output for some downstream. That makes functional units very easy to test. At least as long as they don´t depend on state or resources. I call this the Principle of Mutual Oblivion (PoMO). Functional units are oblivious of others as well as an overall context/purpose. They are just parts of a whole focused on a single responsibility. How the whole is built, how a larger goal is achieved, is of no concern to the single functional units. By building software in such a manner, functional design interestingly follows nature. Nature´s building blocks for organisms also follow the PoMO. The cells forming your body do not know each other. Take a nerve cell “controlling” a muscle cell for example:[2] The nerve cell does not know anything about muscle cells, let alone the specific muscel cell it is “attached to”. Likewise the muscle cell does not know anything about nerve cells, let a lone a specific nerve cell “attached to” it. Saying “the nerve cell is controlling the muscle cell” thus only makes sense when viewing both from the outside. “Control” is a concept of the whole, not of its parts. Control is created by wiring-up parts in a certain way. Both cells are mutually oblivious. Both just follow a contract. One produces Acetylcholine (ACh) as output, the other consumes ACh as input. Where the ACh is going, where it´s coming from neither cell cares about. Million years of evolution have led to this kind of division of labor. And million years of evolution have produced organism designs (DNA) which lead to the production of these different cell types (and many others) and also to their co-location. The result: the overall behavior of an organism. How and why this happened in nature is a mystery. For our software, though, it´s clear: functional and quality requirements needs to be fulfilled. So we as developers have to become “intelligent designers” of “software cells” which we put together to form a “software organism” which responds in satisfying ways to triggers from it´s environment. My bet is: If nature gets complex organisms working by following the PoMO, who are we to not apply this recipe for success to our much simpler “machines”? So my rule is: Wherever there is functionality to be delivered, because there is a clear Entry Point into software, design the functionality like nature would do it. Build it from mutually oblivious functional units. That´s what Flow Design is about. In that way it´s even universal, I´d say. Its notation can also be applied to biology: Never mind labeling the functional units with nouns. That´s ok in Flow Design. You´ll do that occassionally for functional units on a higher level of abstraction or when their purpose is close to hardware. Getting a cockroach to roam your bedroom takes 1,000,000 nerve cells (neurons). Getting the de-duplication program to do its job just takes 5 “software cells” (functional units). Both, though, follow the same basic principle. Translating functional units into code Moving from functional design to code is no rocket science. In fact it´s straightforward. There are two simple rules: Translate an input port to a function. Translate an output port either to a return statement in that function or to a function pointer visible to that function. The simplest translation of a functional unit is a function. That´s what you saw in the above example. Functions are mutually oblivious. That why Functional Programming likes them so much. It makes them composable. Which is the reason, nature works according to the PoMO. Let´s be clear about one thing: There is no dependency injection in nature. For all of an organism´s complexity no DI container is used. Behavior is the result of smooth cooperation between mutually oblivious building blocks. Functions will often be the adequate translation for the functional units in your designs. But not always. Take for example the case, where a processing step should not always produce an output. Maybe the purpose is to filter input. Here the functional unit consumes words and produces words. But it does not pass along every word flowing in. Some words are swallowed. Think of a spell checker. It probably should not check acronyms for correctness. There are too many of them. Or words with no more than two letters. Such words are called “stop words”. In the above picture the optionality of the output is signified by the astrisk outside the brackets. It means: Any number of (word) data items can flow from the functional unit for each input data item. It might be none or one or even more. This I call a stream of data. Such behavior cannot be translated into a function where output is generated with return. Because a function always needs to return a value. So the output port is translated into a function pointer or continuation which gets passed to the subroutine when called:[3]void filter_stop_words( string word, Action<string> onNoStopWord) { if (...check if not a stop word...) onNoStopWord(word); } If you want to be nitpicky you might call such a function pointer parameter an injection. And technically you´re right. Conceptually, though, it´s not an injection. Because the subroutine is not functionally dependent on the continuation. Firstly continuations are procedures, i.e. subroutines without a return type. Remember: Flow Design is about unidirectional data flow. Secondly the name of the formal parameter is chosen in a way as to not assume anything about downstream processing steps. onNoStopWord describes a situation (or event) within the functional unit only. Translating output ports into function pointers helps keeping functional units mutually oblivious in cases where output is optional or produced asynchronically. Either pass the function pointer to the function upon call. Or make it global by putting it on the encompassing class. Then it´s called an event. In C# that´s even an explicit feature.class Filter { public void filter_stop_words( string word) { if (...check if not a stop word...) onNoStopWord(word); } public event Action<string> onNoStopWord; } When to use a continuation and when to use an event dependens on how a functional unit is used in flows and how it´s packed together with others into classes. You´ll see examples further down the Flow Design road. Another example of 1D functional design Let´s see Flow Design once more in action using the visual notation. How about the famous word wrap kata? Robert C. Martin has posted a much cited solution including an extensive reasoning behind his TDD approach. So maybe you want to compare it to Flow Design. The function signature given is:string WordWrap(string text, int maxLineLength) {...} That´s not an Entry Point since we don´t see an application with an environment and users. Nevertheless it´s a function which is supposed to provide a certain functionality. The text passed in has to be reformatted. The input is a single line of arbitrary length consisting of words separated by spaces. The output should consist of one or more lines of a maximum length specified. If a word is longer than a the maximum line length it can be split in multiple parts each fitting in a line. Flow Design Let´s start by brainstorming the process to accomplish the feat of reformatting the text. What´s needed? Words need to be assembled into lines Words need to be extracted from the input text The resulting lines need to be assembled into the output text Words too long to fit in a line need to be split Does sound about right? I guess so. And it shows a kind of priority. Long words are a special case. So maybe there is a hint for an incremental design here. First let´s tackle “average words” (words not longer than a line). Here´s the Flow Design for this increment: The the first three bullet points turned into functional units with explicit data added. As the signature requires a text is transformed into another text. See the input of the first functional unit and the output of the last functional unit. In between no text flows, but words and lines. That´s good to see because thereby the domain is clearly represented in the design. The requirements are talking about words and lines and here they are. But note the asterisk! It´s not outside the brackets but inside. That means it´s not a stream of words or lines, but lists or sequences. For each text a sequence of words is output. For each sequence of words a sequence of lines is produced. The asterisk is used to abstract from the concrete implementation. Like with streams. Whether the list of words gets implemented as an array or an IEnumerable is not important during design. It´s an implementation detail. Does any processing step require further refinement? I don´t think so. They all look pretty “atomic” to me. And if not… I can always backtrack and refine a process step using functional design later once I´ve gained more insight into a sub-problem. Implementation The implementation is straightforward as you can imagine. The processing steps can all be translated into functions. Each can be tested easily and separately. Each has a focused responsibility. And the process flow becomes just a sequence of function calls: Easy to understand. It clearly states how word wrapping works - on a high level of abstraction. And it´s easy to evolve as you´ll see. Flow Design - Increment 2 So far only texts consisting of “average words” are wrapped correctly. Words not fitting in a line will result in lines too long. Wrapping long words is a feature of the requested functionality. Whether it´s there or not makes a difference to the user. To quickly get feedback I decided to first implement a solution without this feature. But now it´s time to add it to deliver the full scope. Fortunately Flow Design automatically leads to code following the Open Closed Principle (OCP). It´s easy to extend it - instead of changing well tested code. How´s that possible? Flow Design allows for extension of functionality by inserting functional units into the flow. That way existing functional units need not be changed. The data flow arrow between functional units is a natural extension point. No need to resort to the Strategy Pattern. No need to think ahead where extions might need to be made in the future. I just “phase in” the remaining processing step: Since neither Extract words nor Reformat know of their environment neither needs to be touched due to the “detour”. The new processing step accepts the output of the existing upstream step and produces data compatible with the existing downstream step. Implementation - Increment 2 A trivial implementation checking the assumption if this works does not do anything to split long words. The input is just passed on: Note how clean WordWrap() stays. The solution is easy to understand. A developer looking at this code sometime in the future, when a new feature needs to be build in, quickly sees how long words are dealt with. Compare this to Robert C. Martin´s solution:[4] How does this solution handle long words? Long words are not even part of the domain language present in the code. At least I need considerable time to understand the approach. Admittedly the Flow Design solution with the full implementation of long word splitting is longer than Robert C. Martin´s. At least it seems. Because his solution does not cover all the “word wrap situations” the Flow Design solution handles. Some lines would need to be added to be on par, I guess. But even then… Is a difference in LOC that important as long as it´s in the same ball park? I value understandability and openness for extension higher than saving on the last line of code. Simplicity is not just less code, it´s also clarity in design. But don´t take my word for it. Try Flow Design on larger problems and compare for yourself. What´s the easier, more straightforward way to clean code? And keep in mind: You ain´t seen all yet ;-) There´s more to Flow Design than described in this chapter. In closing I hope I was able to give you a impression of functional design that makes you hungry for more. To me it´s an inevitable step in software development. Jumping from requirements to code does not scale. And it leads to dirty code all to quickly. Some thought should be invested first. Where there is a clear Entry Point visible, it´s functionality should be designed using data flows. Because with data flows abstraction is possible. For more background on why that´s necessary read my blog article here. For now let me point out to you - if you haven´t already noticed - that Flow Design is a general purpose declarative language. It´s “programming by intention” (Shalloway et al.). Just write down how you think the solution should work on a high level of abstraction. This breaks down a large problem in smaller problems. And by following the PoMO the solutions to those smaller problems are independent of each other. So they are easy to test. Or you could even think about getting them implemented in parallel by different team members. Flow Design not only increases evolvability, but also helps becoming more productive. All team members can participate in functional design. This goes beyon collective code ownership. We´re talking collective design/architecture ownership. Because with Flow Design there is a common visual language to talk about functional design - which is the foundation for all other design activities.   PS: If you like what you read, consider getting my ebook “The Incremental Architekt´s Napkin”. It´s where I compile all the articles in this series for easier reading. I like the strictness of Function Programming - but I also find it quite hard to live by. And it certainly is not what millions of programmers are used to. Also to me it seems, the real world is full of state and side effects. So why give them such a bad image? That´s why functional design takes a more pragmatic approach. State and side effects are ok for processing steps - but be sure to follow the SRP. Don´t put too much of it into a single processing step. ? Image taken from www.physioweb.org ? My code samples are written in C#. C# sports typed function pointers called delegates. Action is such a function pointer type matching functions with signature void someName(T t). Other languages provide similar ways to work with functions as first class citizens - even Java now in version 8. I trust you find a way to map this detail of my translation to your favorite programming language. I know it works for Java, C++, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, Go. And if you´re using a Functional Programming language it´s of course a no brainer. ? Taken from his blog post “The Craftsman 62, The Dark Path”. ?

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• GPGPU

  WhatGPU obviously stands for Graphics Processing Unit (the silicon powering the display you are using to read this blog post). The extra GP in front of that stands for General Purpose computing.So, altogether GPGPU refers to computing we can perform on GPU for purposes beyond just drawing on the screen. In effect, we can use a GPGPU a bit like we already use a CPU: to perform some calculation (that doesn’t have to have any visual element to it). The attraction is that a GPGPU can be orders of magnitude faster than a CPU.WhyWhen I was at the SuperComputing conference in Portland last November, GPGPUs were all the rage. A quick online search reveals many articles introducing the GPGPU topic. I'll just share 3 here: pcper (ignoring all pages except the first, it is a good consumer perspective), gizmodo (nice take using mostly layman terms) and vizworld (answering the question on "what's the big deal").The GPGPU programming paradigm (from a high level) is simple: in your CPU program you define functions (aka kernels) that take some input, can perform the costly operation and return the output. The kernels are the things that execute on the GPGPU leveraging its power (and hence execute faster than what they could on the CPU) while the host CPU program waits for the results or asynchronously performs other tasks.However, GPGPUs have different characteristics to CPUs which means they are suitable only for certain classes of problem (i.e. data parallel algorithms) and not for others (e.g. algorithms with branching or recursion or other complex flow control). You also pay a high cost for transferring the input data from the CPU to the GPU (and vice versa the results back to the CPU), so the computation itself has to be long enough to justify the overhead transfer costs. If your problem space fits the criteria then you probably want to check out this technology.HowSo where can you get a graphics card to start playing with all this? At the time of writing, the two main vendors ATI (owned by AMD) and NVIDIA are the obvious players in this industry. You can read about GPGPU on this AMD page and also on this NVIDIA page. NVIDIA's website also has a free chapter on the topic from the "GPU Gems" book: A Toolkit for Computation on GPUs.If you followed the links above, then you've already come across some of the choices of programming models that are available today. Essentially, AMD is offering their ATI Stream technology accessible via a language they call Brook+; NVIDIA offers their CUDA platform which is accessible from CUDA C. Choosing either of those locks you into the GPU vendor and hence your code cannot run on systems with cards from the other vendor (e.g. imagine if your CPU code would run on Intel chips but not AMD chips). Having said that, both vendors plan to support a new emerging standard called OpenCL, which theoretically means your kernels can execute on any GPU that supports it. To learn more about all of these there is a website: gpgpu.org. The caveat about that site is that (currently) it completely ignores the Microsoft approach, which I touch on next.On Windows, there is already a cross-GPU-vendor way of programming GPUs and that is the DirectX API. Specifically, on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the DirectX 11 API offers a dedicated subset of the API for GPGPU programming: DirectCompute. You use this API on the CPU side, to set up and execute the kernels that run on the GPU. The kernels are written in a language called HLSL (High Level Shader Language). You can use DirectCompute with HLSL to write a "compute shader", which is the term DirectX uses for what I've been referring to in this post as a "kernel". For a comprehensive collection of links about this (including tutorials, videos and samples) please see my blog post: DirectCompute.Note that there are many efforts to build even higher level languages on top of DirectX that aim to expose GPGPU programming to a wider audience by making it as easy as today's mainstream programming models. I'll mention here just two of those efforts: Accelerator from MSR and Brahma by Ananth. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• JavaScript Browser Hacks

  Recently during one of my client side scripting classes, I was trying to show my students some basic examples of JavaScript as an introduction to the language.  My first basic example was to show an alert box using JavaScript via the address bar. The student’s reaction to my browser hack example really caught me off guard in a good way. After programming with a language for close to 10 years you start to lose the "Awe Cool!" effect that new learners of a language experience when writing code. New learns of JavaScript are the reason why I created this post. Please enjoy. Note: Place JavaScript in to address bar and then press the enter key. Example 1: JavaScript Alert box displaying My name: John Doe Javascript:alert('My name: \n John Doe') ; Example 2: JavaScript alert box displaying name entered by user. javascript:alert('My name: \n ' + prompt('Enter Name','Name')) ; Example 3: JavaScript alert box displaying name entered by user, and then displays the length of the name. javascript:var name= prompt('Enter Name','Name'); alert('My name: \n ' + name); alert(name.length); If you notice, the address bar will execute JavaScript on the current page loaded in the browser using the Document Object Model (DOM). Additionally, the address bar will allow multiple lines to be executed sequentially even though all of the code is contained within one line due to the fact that the JavaScript interpreter uses the “;” to indicate where a line of ends and a new one begins. After doing a little more research on the topic of JavaScript Browser Hacks I found a few other cool JavaScript hacks which I will list below. Example 4: Make any webpage editableSource: http://www.openjason.com/2008/09/02/browser-hack-make-any-web-page-editable/ javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0; Example 5: CHINESE DRAGON DANCING Source: http://nzeyi.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/dwrajaxjavascript-hacks-the-secrets-of-javascript-in-the-adress-bar/ javascript:R=0;x1=0.1;y1=0.05;x2=0.25;y2=0.24;x3=1.6; y3=0.24;x4=300;y4=200;x5=300;y5=200;DI=document.links; DIL=DI.length;A=function(){for(i=0;i-DIL;i++){DI[i].style. position='absolute';DI[i].style.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+ x5;DI[i].style.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++;}; setInterval('A()',5);void(0); Example 6: Reveal content stored in password protected fields javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = “”; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j Example 7: Force user to close browser windowSource: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=767053 javascript:while(1){alert('Restart your brower to close this box!')} Learn more about JavaScript Browser Hacks.

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• SQL SERVER – 2012 – All Download Links in Single Page – SQL Server 2012

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server 2012 RTM is just announced and recently I wrote about all the SQL Server 2012 Certification on single page. As a feedback, I received suggestions to have a single page where everything about SQL Server 2012 is listed. I will keep this page updated as new updates are announced. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Evaluation Microsoft SQL Server 2012 enables a cloud-ready information platform that will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express is a powerful and reliable free data management system that delivers a rich and reliable data store for lightweight Web Sites and desktop applications. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack is a collection of stand-alone packages which provide additional value for Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Report Builder Report Builder provides a productive report-authoring environment for IT professionals and power users. It supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Master Data Services Add-in For Microsoft Excel The Master Data Services Add-in for Excel gives multiple users the ability to update master data in a familiar tool without compromising the data’s integrity in Master Data Services. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Performance Dashboard Reports The SQL Server 2012 Performance Dashboard Reports are Reporting Services report files designed to be used with the Custom Reports feature of SQL Server Management Studio. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel® 2010 Microsoft PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010 provides ground-breaking technology; fast manipulation of large data sets, streamlined integration of data, and the ability to effortlessly share your analysis through Microsoft SharePoint. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies 2010 The SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technologies allows you to integrate your reporting environment with the collaborative SharePoint 2010 experience. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics The Semantic Language Statistics Database is a required component for the Statistical Semantic Search feature in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Semantic Language Statistics. Microsoft ®SQL Server 2012 FileStream Driver – Windows Logo Certification Catalog file for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 FileStream Driver that is certified for WindowsServer 2008 R2. It meets Microsoft standards for compatibility and recommended practices with the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems. Microsoft SQL Server StreamInsight 2.0 Microsoft StreamInsight is Microsoft’s Complex Event Processing technology to help businesses create event-driven applications and derive better insights by correlating event streams from multiple sources with near-zero latency. Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0 for SQL Server Download the Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0 for SQL Server, a Type 4 JDBC driver that provides database connectivity through the standard JDBC application program interfaces (APIs) available in Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 and 6. Data Quality Services Performance Best Practices Guide This guide focuses on a set of best practices for optimizing performance of Data Quality Services (DQS). Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for SQL Server for PHP The Microsoft Drivers 3.0 for SQL Server for PHP provide connectivity to Microsoft SQLServer from PHP applications. Product Documentation for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for firewall and proxy restricted environments The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 setup installs only the Help Viewer…install any documentation. All of the SQL Server documentation is available online. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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