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• XML parsing and transforming (XSLT or otherwise)

  - by observ

  I have several xml files that are formated this way: <ROOT> <OBJECT> <identity> <id>123</id> </identity> <child2 attr = "aa">32</child2> <child3> <childOfChild3 att1="aaa" att2="bbb" att3="CCC">LN</childOfChild3> </child3> <child4> <child5> <child6>3ddf</child6> <child7> <childOfChild7 att31="RR">1231</childOfChild7> </child7> </child5> </child4> </OBJECT> <OBJECT> <identity> <id>124</id> </identity> <child2 attr = "bb">212</child2> <child3> <childOfChild3 att1="ee" att2="ccc" att3="EREA">OP</childOfChild3> </child3> <child4> <child5> <child6>213r</child6> <child7> <childOfChild7 att31="EE">1233</childOfChild7> </child7> </child5> </child4> </OBJECT> </ROOT> How can i format it this way?: <ROOT> <OBJECT> <id>123</id> <child2>32</child2> <attr>aa</attr> <child3></child3> <childOfChild3>LN</childOfChild3> <att1>aaa</att1> <att2>bbb</att2> <att3>CCC</att3> <child4></child4> <child5></child5> <child6>3ddf</child6> <child7></child7> <childOfChild7>1231</childOfChild7> <att31>RR</att31> </OBJECT> <OBJECT> <id>124</id> <child2>212</child2> <attr>bb</attr> <child3></child3> <childOfChild3>LN</childOfChild3> <att1>ee</att1> <att2>ccc</att2> <att3>EREA</att3> <child4></child4> <child5></child5> <child6>213r</child6> <child7></child7> <childOfChild7>1233</childOfChild7> <att31>EE</att31> </OBJECT> </ROOT> I know some C# so maybe a parser there? or some generic xslt? The xml files are some data received from a client, so i can't control the way they are sending it to me. L.E. Basically when i am trying to test this data in excel (for example i want to make sure that the attribute of childOfChild7 corresponds to the correct identity id) i am getting a lot of blank spaces. If i am importing in access to get only the data i want out, i have to do a thousands subqueries to get them all in a nice table. Basically i just want to see for one Object all its data (one object - One row) and then just delete/hide the columns i don't need.

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• How can I keep a graphics object centered (like a circle) when zooming in or out on it?

  - by sonny5

  using System; using System.Drawing; using System.Collections; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Data; using System.Drawing.Drawing2D; using System.Drawing.Imaging; namespace testgrfx { public class Form1 : System.Windows.Forms.Form { float m_Scalef; float m_Scalefout; Rectangle m_r1; private System.Windows.Forms.Button button2; private System.Windows.Forms.Button button3; private System.ComponentModel.Container components = null; private void InitializeComponent() { m_Scalef = 1.0f; // for zooming purposes Console.WriteLine("opening m_Scalef= {0}",m_Scalef); m_Scalefout = 1.0f; Console.WriteLine("opening m_Scalefout= {0}",m_Scalefout); m_r1 = new Rectangle(50,50,100,100); this.AutoScrollMinSize = new Size(600,700); this.components = new System.ComponentModel.Container(); this.button2 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button(); this.button2.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.LightGray; this.button2.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(120, 30); this.button2.Name = "button2"; this.button2.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(72, 24); this.button2.TabIndex = 1; this.button2.Text = "Zoom In"; this.button2.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.mnuZoomin_Click); this.Controls.Add(button2); this.button3 = new System.Windows.Forms.Button(); this.button3.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.LightGray; this.button3.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(200, 30); this.button3.Name = "button3"; this.button3.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(72, 24); this.button3.TabIndex = 2; this.button3.Text = "Zoom Out"; this.button3.Click += new System.EventHandler(this.mnuZoomout_Click); this.Controls.Add(button3); //InitMyForm(); } public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); Text = " DrawLine"; BackColor = SystemColors.Window; // Gotta load these kind at start-up ... not with button assignments this.Paint+=new PaintEventHandler(this.Form1_Paint); } static void Main() { Application.Run(new Form1()); } /// Clean up any resources being used. protected override void Dispose( bool disposing ) { if( disposing ) { if (components != null) { components.Dispose(); } } base.Dispose( disposing ); } // autoscroll2.cs does work private void Form1_Paint(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs e) { Graphics dc = e.Graphics; dc.PageUnit = GraphicsUnit.Pixel; dc.PageScale = m_Scalef; Console.WriteLine("opening dc.PageScale= {0}",dc.PageScale); dc.TranslateTransform(this.AutoScrollPosition.X/m_Scalef, this.AutoScrollPosition.Y/m_Scalef); Pen pn = new Pen(Color.Blue,2); dc.DrawEllipse(pn,m_r1); Console.WriteLine("form_paint_dc.PageUnit= {0}",dc.PageUnit); Console.WriteLine("form_paint_dc.PageScale= {0}",dc.PageScale); //Console.Out.NewLine = "\r\n\r\n"; // makes all double spaces } private void mnuZoomin_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { m_Scalef = m_Scalef * 2.0f; Console.WriteLine("in mnuZoomin_Click m_Scalef= {0}",m_Scalef); Invalidate(); // to trigger Paint of entire client area } // try: System.Drawing.Rectangle resolution = Screen.GetWorkingArea(someForm); private void Form1_MouseDown(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs e) { // Uses the mouse wheel to scroll Graphics dc = CreateGraphics(); dc.TranslateTransform(this.AutoScrollPosition.X/m_Scalef, this.AutoScrollPosition.Y/m_Scalef); Console.WriteLine("opening Form1_MouseDown dc.PageScale= {0}", dc.PageScale); Console.WriteLine("Y wheel= {0}", this.AutoScrollPosition.Y/m_Scalef); dc.PageUnit = GraphicsUnit.Pixel; dc.PageScale = m_Scalef; Console.WriteLine("frm1_moudwn_dc.PageScale= {0}",dc.PageScale); Point [] mousep = new Point[1]; Console.WriteLine("mousep= {0}", mousep); // make sure to adjust mouse pos.for scroll position Size scrollOffset = new Size(this.AutoScrollPosition); mousep[0] = new Point(e.X-scrollOffset.Width, e.Y-scrollOffset.Height); dc.TransformPoints(CoordinateSpace.Page, CoordinateSpace.Device,mousep); Pen pen = new Pen(Color.Green,1); dc.DrawRectangle(pen,m_r1); Console.WriteLine("m_r1= {0}", m_r1); Console.WriteLine("mousep[0].X= {0}", mousep[0].X); Console.WriteLine("mousep[0].Y= {0}", mousep[0].Y); if (m_r1.Contains(new Rectangle(mousep[0].X, mousep[0].Y,1,1))) MessageBox.Show("click inside rectangle"); } private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { } private void mnuZoomout_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { Console.WriteLine("first line--mnuZoomout_Click m_Scalef={0}",m_Scalef); if(m_Scalef > 9 ) { m_Scalef = m_Scalef / 2.0f; Console.WriteLine("in >9 mnuZoomout_Click m_Scalef= {0}",m_Scalef); Console.WriteLine("in >9 mnuZoomout_Click__m_Scalefout= {0}",m_Scalefout); } else { Console.WriteLine("<= 9_Zoom-out B-4 redefining={0}",m_Scalef); m_Scalef = m_Scalef * 0.5f; // make it same as previous Zoom In Console.WriteLine("<= 9_Zoom-out after m_Scalef= {0}",m_Scalef); } Invalidate(); } } // public class Form1 }

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• NSLinguisticTagger on the contents of an NSTextStorage- crashing bug

  - by Remy Porter

  I'm trying to use an NSLinguisticTagger to monitor the contents of an NSTextStorage and provide some contextual information based on what the user types. To that end, I have an OverlayManager object, which wires up this relationship: -(void) setView:(NSTextView*) view { _view = view; _layout = view.layoutManager; _storage = view.layoutManager.textStorage; //get the TextStorage from the view [_tagger setString:_storage.string]; //pull the string out, this grabs the mutable version [self registerForNotificationsOn:self->_storage]; //subscribe to the willProcessEditing notification } When an edit occurs, I make sure to trap it and notify the tagger (and yes, I know I'm being annoyingly inconsistent with member access, I'm rusty on Obj-C, I'll fix it later): - (void) textStorageWillProcessEditing:(NSNotification*) notification{ if ([self->_storage editedMask] & NSTextStorageEditedCharacters) { NSRange editedRange = [self->_storage editedRange]; NSUInteger delta = [self->_storage changeInLength]; [_tagger stringEditedInRange:editedRange changeInLength:delta]; //should notify the tagger of the changes [self highlightEdits:self]; } } The highlightEdits message delegates the job out to a pool of "Overlay" objects. Each contains a block of code similar to this: [tagger enumerateTagsInRange:range scheme:NSLinguisticTagSchemeLexicalClass options:0 usingBlock:^(NSString *tag, NSRange tokenRange, NSRange sentenceRange, BOOL *stop) { if (tag == PartOfSpeech) { [self applyHighlightToRange:tokenRange onStorage:storage]; } }]; And that's where the problem is- the enumerateTagsInRange method crashes out with a message: 2014-06-04 10:07:19.692 WritersEditor[40191:303] NSMutableRLEArray replaceObjectsInRange:withObject:length:: Out of bounds This problem doesn't occur if I don't link to the mutable copy of the underlying string and instead do a [[_storage string] copy], but obviously I don't want to copy the entire backing store every time I want to do tagging. This all should be happening in the main run loop, so I don't think this is a threading issue. The NSRange I'm enumerating tags on exists both in the NSTextStorage and in the NSLinguisticTagger's view of the string. It's not even the fact that the applyHighlightToRange call adds attributes to the string, because it crashes before even reaching that line. I attempted to build a test case around the problem, but can't replicate it in those situations: - (void) testEdit { NSAttributedString* str = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"Quickly, this is a test."]; text = [[NSTextStorage alloc] initWithAttributedString:str]; NSArray* schemes = [NSLinguisticTagger availableTagSchemesForLanguage:@"en"]; tagger = [[NSLinguisticTagger alloc] initWithTagSchemes:schemes options:0]; [tagger setString:[text string]]; [text beginEditing]; [[text mutableString] appendString:@"T"]; NSRange edited = [text editedRange]; NSUInteger length = [text changeInLength]; [text endEditing]; [tagger stringEditedInRange:edited changeInLength:length]; [tagger enumerateTagsInRange:edited scheme:NSLinguisticTagSchemeLexicalClass options:0 usingBlock:^(NSString *tag, NSRange tokenRange, NSRange sentenceRange, BOOL *stop) { //doesn't matter, this should crash }]; } That code doesn't crash.

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• ASP.NET MVC 4/Web API Single Page App for Mobile Devices ... Needs Authentication

  - by lmttag

  We have developed an ASP.NET MVC 4/Web API single page, mobile website (also using jQuery Mobile) that is intended to be accessed only from mobile devices (e.g., iPads, iPhones, Android tables and phones, etc.), not desktop browsers. This mobile website will be hosted internally, like an intranet site. However, since we’re accessing it from mobile devices, we can’t use Windows authentication. We still need to know which user (and their role) is logging in to the mobile website app. We tried simply using ASP.NET’s forms authentication and membership provider, but couldn’t get it working exactly the way we wanted. What we need is for the user to be prompted for a user name and password only on the first time they access the site on their mobile device. After they enter a correct user name and password and have been authenticated once, each subsequent time they access the site they should just go right in. They shouldn’t have to re-enter their credentials (i.e., something needs to be saved locally to each device to identify the user after the first time). This is where we had troubles. Everything worked as expected the first time. That is, the user was prompted to enter a user name and password, and, after doing that, was authenticated and allowed into the site. The problem is every time after the browser was closed on the mobile device, the device and user were not know and the user had to re-enter user name and password. We tried lots of things too. We tried setting persistent cookies in JavaScript. No good. The cookies weren’t there to be read the second time. We tried manually setting persistent cookies from ASP.NET. No good. We, of course, used FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.UserName, true); as part of the form authentication framework. No good. We tried using HTML5 local storage. No good. No matter what we tried, if the user was on a mobile device, they would have to log in every single time. (Note: we’ve tried on an iPad and iPhone running both iOS 5.1 and 6.0, with Safari configure to allow cookies, and we’ve tried on Android 2.3.4.) Is there some trick to getting a scenario like this working? Or, do we have to write some sort of custom authentication mechanism? If so, how? And, what? Or, should we use something like claims-based authentication and WIF? Or??? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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• Deterministic key serialization

  - by Mike Boers

  I'm writing a mapping class which uses SQLite as the storage backend. I am currently allowing only basestring keys but it would be nice if I could use a couple more types hopefully up to anything that is hashable (ie. same requirements as the builtin dict). To that end I would like to derive a deterministic serialization scheme. Ideally, I would like to know if any implementation/protocol combination of pickle is deterministic for hashable objects (e.g. can only use cPickle with protocol 0). I noticed that pickle and cPickle do not match: >>> import pickle >>> import cPickle >>> def dumps(x): ... print repr(pickle.dumps(x)) ... print repr(cPickle.dumps(x)) ... >>> dumps(1) 'I1\n.' 'I1\n.' >>> dumps('hello') "S'hello'\np0\n." "S'hello'\np1\n." >>> dumps((1, 2, 'hello')) "(I1\nI2\nS'hello'\np0\ntp1\n." "(I1\nI2\nS'hello'\np1\ntp2\n." Another option is to use repr to dump and ast.literal_eval to load. This would only be valid for builtin hashable types. I have written a function to determine if a given key would survive this process (it is rather conservative on the types it allows): def is_reprable_key(key): return type(key) in (int, str, unicode) or (type(key) == tuple and all( is_reprable_key(x) for x in key)) The question for this method is if repr itself is deterministic for the types that I have allowed here. I believe this would not survive the 2/3 version barrier due to the change in str/unicode literals. This also would not work for integers where 2**32 - 1 < x < 2**64 jumping between 32 and 64 bit platforms. Are there any other conditions (ie. do strings serialize differently under different conditions)? (If this all fails miserably then I can store the hash of the key along with the pickle of both the key and value, then iterate across rows that have a matching hash looking for one that unpickles to the expected key, but that really does complicate a few other things and I would rather not do it.) Any insights?

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• Issues declaring already existing NSMutableArray in new class

  - by Graeme

  I have a class (DataImporter) which has the code to download an RSS feed. I also have a view and separate class (TableView) which displays the data in a UITableView and starts the parsing process, storing parsed information in an NSMutableArray (items) which is located in the (TableView) subclass. Now I wish to add a UIMapView which displays the items in the (items) NSMutableArray. Herein lies the issue - I need to somehow get the data from the (items) NSMutableArray into the new (mapView) subclass which I'm struggling with - and I preferably don't want to have to create a new class to download the data again for the mapView class when it already is in the applications memory. Is there a way I can transfer the information from the NSMutableArray (items) class to the (mapView) class (i.e. how do I declare the NSMutableArray in the (mapView) class)? Here's a overview of how the system works: App opened Data downloaded (using DataImporter class) when (TableView) viewDidLoad runs Data stored in NSMutableArray accessible by the (TableView) class And from here I need to access and declare the array from a new (mapView) class. Any help greatly appreciated, thanks. Code for viewDidLoad MapKit: Data *data = nil; NSString *ilocation = [data locations]; NSString *ilocation2 = @"New Zealand"; NSString *inewlString; inewlString = [ilocation stringByAppendingString:ilocation2]; NSLog(@"inewlString=%@",inewlString); if(forwardGeocoder == nil) { forwardGeocoder = [[BSForwardGeocoder alloc] initWithDelegate:self]; } // Forward geocode! [forwardGeocoder findLocation: inewlString]; Code for parsing data into original NSMutable Array: - (void)beginParsing { NSLog(@"Parsing has begun"); //self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem.enabled = NO; // Allocate the array for song storage, or empty the results of previous parses if (incidents == nil) { NSLog(@"Grabbing array"); self.datas = [NSMutableArray array]; } else { [datas removeAllObjects]; [self.tableView reloadData]; } // Create the parser, set its delegate, and start it. self.parser = [[DataImporter alloc] init]; parser.delegate = self; [parser start]; }

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• C -Segmentation fault after the 4th call of the function!

  - by FILIaS

  It seems at least weird to me... The program runs normally.But after I call the enter() function for the 4th time,there is a segmentation fault!I would appreciate any help. With the following function enter() I wanna add user commands' datas to a list. [Some part of the code is already posted on another question of me, but I think I should post it again...as it's a different problem I'm facing now.] /* struct for all the datas that user enters on file*/ typedef struct catalog { char short_name[50]; char surname[50]; signed int amount; char description[1000]; struct catalog *next; }catalog,*catalogPointer; catalogPointer current; catalogPointer head = NULL; void enter(void) //user command: i <name> <surname> <amount> <description> { int n,j=2,k=0; char temp[1500]; char *short_name,*surname,*description; signed int amount; char* params = strchr(command,' ') + 1; //strchr returns a pointer to the 1st space on the command.U want a pointer to the char right after that space. strcpy(temp, params); //params is saved as temp. char *curToken = strtok(temp," "); //strtok cuts 'temp' into strings between the spaces and saves them to 'curToken' printf("temp is:%s \n",temp); printf("\nWhat you entered for saving:\n"); for (n = 0; curToken; ++n) //until curToken ends: { if (curToken) { short_name = malloc(strlen(curToken) + 1); strncpy(short_name, curToken, sizeof (short_name)); } printf("Short Name: %s \n",short_name); curToken = strtok(NULL," "); if (curToken) { surname = malloc(strlen(curToken) + 1); strncpy(surname, curToken,sizeof (surname)); } printf("SurName: %s \n",surname); curToken = strtok(NULL," "); if (curToken) { //int * amount= malloc(sizeof (signed int *)); char *chk; amount = (int) strtol(curToken, &chk, 10); if (!isspace(*chk) && *chk != 0) fprintf(stderr,"Warning: expected integer value for amount, received %s instead\n",curToken); } printf("Amount: %d \n",amount); curToken = strtok(NULL,"\0"); if (curToken) { description = malloc(strlen(curToken) + 1); strncpy(description, curToken, sizeof (description)); } printf("Description: %s \n",description); break; } if (findEntryExists(head, surname,short_name) != NULL) //call function in order to see if entry exists already on the catalog printf("\nAn entry for <%s %s> is already in the catalog!\nNew entry not entered.\n",short_name,surname); else { printf("\nTry to entry <%s %s %d %s> in the catalog list!\n",short_name,surname,amount,description); newEntry(&head,short_name,surname,amount,description); printf("\n**Entry done!**\n"); } // Maintain the list in alphabetical order by surname. } catalogPointer findEntryExists (catalogPointer head, char num[],char first[]) { catalogPointer p = head; while (p != NULL && strcmp(p->surname, num) != 0 && strcmp(p->short_name,first) != 0) { p = p->next; } return p; } catalogPointer newEntry (catalog** headRef,char short_name[], char surname[], signed int amount, char description[]) { catalogPointer newNode = (catalogPointer)malloc(sizeof(catalog)); catalogPointer first; catalogPointer second; catalogPointer tmp; first=head; second=NULL; strcpy(newNode->short_name, short_name); strcpy(newNode->surname, surname); newNode->amount=amount; strcpy(newNode->description, description); //SEGMENTATION ON THE 4TH RUN OF PROGRAM STOPS HERE depending on the names each time it gets! while (first!=NULL) { if (strcmp(surname,first->surname)>0) second=first; else if (strcmp(surname,first->surname)==0) { if (strcmp(short_name,first->short_name)>0) second=first; } first=first->next; } if (second==NULL) { newNode->next=head; head=newNode; } else { tmp=second->next; newNode->next=tmp; first->next=newNode; } }

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• Drop down menus and pathetic art of styling

  - by fmz

  Sorry folks, I must be brain-dead or something but I can't get the styling on these drop-down menus to cooperate. I have the color and the font right, but I have unwanted spaces between the list elements and the a and the a:hover sizes should be the same. I would appreciate some help getting this to work correctly. Here is the page Here is the html: <ul class="dropdown"> <li><a href="#" id="home">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#" id="about">About Us</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li><a href="#">Our History</a></li> <li><a href="#">Our Process</a></li> <li><a href="#">Portfolio</a></li> <li><a href="#">Financing</a></li> <li><a href="#">Testimonials</a></li> <li><a href="#">Subcontractors</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#" id="personal">Personal Banking</a></li> <li><a href="#" id="commercial">Commercial Banking</a></li> <li><a href="#" id="service">Customer Service</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li><a href="#">Our History</a></li> <li><a href="#">Our Process</a></li> <li><a href="#">Portfolio</a></li> <li><a href="#">Financing</a></li> <li><a href="#">Testimonials</a></li> <li><a href="#">Subcontractors</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#" id="investors">Investor Relations</a></li> <li><a href="#" id="contact">Contact Us</a></li> Here is the CSS: ul.dropdown { position: relative; background: #4e8997; height: 40px; padding-left: 5px; } ul.dropdown li { float: left; zoom: 1; } ul.dropdown li a ul.dropdown li a:visited { display: block; margin-top: 5px; padding: .5em .6em; line-height: 16px; color: #fff; font: bold 14px "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; border: none; } ul.dropdown a:hover { background-color: #c29c5d; color: #fff; } ul.dropdown a:active { background-color: #c29c5d; color: #fff; } /* LEVEL TWO */ ul.dropdown ul { padding-left: 0; width: 200px; display: none; top:36px; margin-left: 0; position: absolute; } ul.dropdown ul li { font: 10px "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; display: block; margin: 0; padding: 0; float: none; color: #fff; background-color: #c29c5d; } ul.dropdown ul li a:link { display: block; font-size: 10px; width: 188px; height: 16px; } ul.dropdown ul li a:hover { background-color: #a2834d; color: #fff; } Thanks!

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• DB Design Pattern - Many to many classification / categorised tagging.

  - by Robin Day

  I have an existing database design that stores Job Vacancies. The "Vacancy" table has a number of fixed fields across all clients, such as "Title", "Description", "Salary range". There is an EAV design for "Custom" fields that the Clients can setup themselves, such as, "Manager Name", "Working Hours". The field names are stored in a "ClientText" table and the data stored in a "VacancyClientText" table with VacancyId, ClientTextId and Value. Lastly there is a many to many EAV design for custom tagging / categorising the vacancies with things such as Locations/Offices the vacancy is in, a list of skills required. This is stored as a "ClientCategory" table listing the types of tag, "Locations, Skills", a "ClientCategoryItem" table listing the valid values for each Category, e.g., "London,Paris,New York,Rome", "C#,VB,PHP,Python". Finally there is a "VacancyClientCategoryItem" table with VacancyId and ClientCategoryItemId for each of the selected items for the vacancy. There are no limits to the number of custom fields or custom categories that the client can add. I am now designing a new system that is very similar to the existing system, however, I have the ability to restrict the number of custom fields a Client can have and it's being built from scratch so I have no legacy issues to deal with. For the Custom Fields my solution is simple, I have 5 additional columns on the Vacancy Table called CustomField1-5. This removes one of the EAV designs. It is with the tagging / categorising design that I am struggling. If I limit a client to having 5 categories / types of tag. Should I create 5 tables listing the possible values "CustomCategoryItems1-5" and then an additional 5 many to many tables "VacancyCustomCategoryItem1-5" This would result in 10 tables performing the same storage as the three tables in the existing system. Also, should (heaven forbid) the requirements change in that I need 6 custom categories rather than 5 then this will result in a lot of code change. Therefore, can anyone suggest any DB Design Patterns that would be more suitable to storing such data. I'm happy to stick with the EAV approach, however, the existing system has come across all the usual performance issues and complex queries associated with such a design. Any advice / suggestions are much appreciated. The DBMS system used is SQL Server 2005, however, 2008 is an option if required for any particular pattern.

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• Asp.net Mvc - Kigg: Maintain User object in HttpContext.Items between requests.

  - by Pickels

  Hallo, first I want to say that I hope this doesn't look like I am lazy but I have some trouble understanding a piece of code from the following project. http://kigg.codeplex.com/ I was going through the source code and I noticed something that would be usefull for my own little project I am making. In their BaseController they have the following code: private static readonly Type CurrentUserKey = typeof(IUser); public IUser CurrentUser { get { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CurrentUserName)) { IUser user = HttpContext.Items[CurrentUserKey] as IUser; if (user == null) { user = AccountRepository.FindByClaim(CurrentUserName); if (user != null) { HttpContext.Items[CurrentUserKey] = user; } } return user; } return null; } } This isn't an exact copy of the code I adjusted it a little to my needs. This part of the code I still understand. They store their IUser in HttpContext.Items. I guess they do it so that they don't have to call the database eachtime they need the User object. The part that I don't understand is how they maintain this object in between requests. If I understand correctly the HttpContext.Items is a per request cache storage. So after some more digging I found the following code. internal static IDictionary<UnityPerWebRequestLifetimeManager, object> GetInstances(HttpContextBase httpContext) { IDictionary<UnityPerWebRequestLifetimeManager, object> instances; if (httpContext.Items.Contains(Key)) { instances = (IDictionary<UnityPerWebRequestLifetimeManager, object>) httpContext.Items[Key]; } else { lock (httpContext.Items) { if (httpContext.Items.Contains(Key)) { instances = (IDictionary<UnityPerWebRequestLifetimeManager, object>) httpContext.Items[Key]; } else { instances = new Dictionary<UnityPerWebRequestLifetimeManager, object>(); httpContext.Items.Add(Key, instances); } } } return instances; } This is the part where some magic happens that I don't understand. I think they use Unity to do some dependency injection on each request? In my project I am using Ninject and I am wondering how I can get the same result. I guess InRequestScope in Ninject is the same as UnityPerWebRequestLifetimeManager? I am also wondering which class/method they are binding to which interface? Since the HttpContext.Items get destroyed each request how do they prevent losing their user object? Anyway it's kinda a long question so I am gradefull for any push in the right direction. Kind regards, Pickels

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• Difference between Cloud and Virtualization

  - by Akash Kava

  Ops: This does not belong to ServerFault because it focuses on Programing Architecture. I have following questions regarding differences between Cloud and Virtualization.. How Cloud is different then Virtualization? Currently I tried to find out pricing of Rackspace, Amazone and all similar cloud providers, I found that our current 6 dedicated servers came cheaper then their pricing. So how one can claim cloud is cheaper? Is it cheaper only in comparison of normal hosting? We re organized our infrastructure in virtual environment to reduce or configuration overhead at time of failure, we did not have to rewrite any peice of code that is already written for earlier setup. So moving to virtualization does not require any re programming. But cloud is absoltely different and it will require entire reprogramming right? Is it really worth to recode when our current IT costs are 3-4 times lower then cloud hosting including raid backups and all sort of clustering for high availability? New programming architecture means new overheads of training staff, new methods of testing and new deployment schemes, does it justify over "on demand resource usage" words of cloud? We are having current development architecture with simple Server side ASP.NET WebServices with no local context and on client side Flex/Silverlight which offers pretty good REST architecture and its highly scalable. How does cloud differs from REST model of deployment? On storage, SQL Server or MySQL offers pretty good replication and high availibility then what is advantage in cloud? Data guarantee, one of our vendor hosting some other customer's app on cloud (one of most used), lost Entire Hard Disk (the virtual) and entire module in first 6 months. Second provider said its your duty to take backup, fine I agree, but no provider gives SLA for data guarantee, they give 99% uptime. However in most business apps, uptime is less important then data integrity. In our 10 years of dedicated hosting experience we had only one hard disk crash. This makes me little skeptical to go for cloud and loosing control over data. And I feel its just a big marketing buzz to sell virtulization in different form. Size of data, currently all providers charge very heavy for large data, if you are hosting only below 100GB cloud can be good alternative, but I think virtual servers and dedicated servers above 100GB to few TBs are still cheaper. Why would want to pay so high on cloud when there is no data guarentee as well as it doesnt say anything about redundancy. (I wish SO had something for spell check for Internet Explorer, sorry for wrong spellings in my post)

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• Why doesn't JFreeCharts correctly connect the points in my xy-line graph?

  - by Javajava

  /Each letter A,T,G,C represents a direction for the plot to graph. Specifically, “A” means move right, “T” is move down, “C” is move up, and “G” is move left. When the applet reads A,T,C, it plots the graph correctly. However, when I plot G, the graph is messed up. When I input "ACACACA," the graph is like a rising staircase. When I input "gtgtgt," the graph should look like a staircase, but it looks like a lightning bolt instead/ /This is all one code... i don't know why it's all split up like this:/ import java.applet.Applet; import java.awt.*; import java.awt.event.*; import java.util.Scanner.*; import java.jfree.chart.*; import java.jfree.data.xy.*; import java.jfree.chart.plot.PlotOrientation; public class If_Graph extends Applet implements ActionListener{ Panel panel; TextArea textarea, outputArea; Button move; String thetext; Scanner reader = new Scanner(System.in); String thetext2; int size,p,q; int x,y; public void init(){ setSize(500,500); //set size of applet panel = new Panel(); add(panel); setVisible(true); textarea= new TextArea(10,20); add(textarea); move=new Button("Graph"); move.addActionListener(this); add(move); } public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { XYSeries series = new XYSeries("DNA Walk"); x= 0; y = 0; series.add(x,y); if(e.getSource() == move) { thetext=textarea.getText(); //the text is the DNA bases pasted thetext=thetext.replaceAll(" ",""); //removes spaces thetext2 = ""; for(int i=0; i<thetext.length(); i++) { char a = thetext.charAt(i); switch (a) { case 'A': //moves right x+=1; y+=0; series.add(x,y); break; case 'a': x+=1;y+=0; series.add(x,y); break; case 'C': //moves up x+=0; y+=1; series.add(x,y); break; case 'c': x+=0; y+=1; System.out.println(x + "," + y); series.add(x,y); break; case 'G': //move left x-=1; y+=0; series.add(x,y); System.out.println("G is: "+ x +"," +y); break; case 'g': x-=1; y+=0; System.out.println("g is: " +x + "," + y); series.add(x,y); break; case 'T': //move down x+=0; y-=1; series.add(x,y); System.out.println("T is: "+ x +"," +y); break; case 't': x+=0; y-=1; series.add(x,y); System.out.println("t is: "+ x +"," +y); break; default: // series.add(0,0); break; } } XYDataset xyDataset = new XYSeriesCollection(series); JFreeChart chart = ChartFactory.createXYLineChart ("DNA Random Walk", "", "", xyDataset, PlotOrientation.VERTICAL, true, true, false); ChartFrame frame1=new ChartFrame("DNA Random Walk",chart); frame1.setVisible(true); frame1.setSize(300,300); outputArea.setText(thetext2); } } }

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• Rewrite code from Threads to AnyEvent

  - by user1779868

  I wrote a code: use LWP::UserAgent; use HTTP::Cookies; use threads; use threads::shared; $| = 1; $threads = 50; my @urls : shared = loadf('url.txt'); my @thread_list = (); $thread_list[$_] = threads->create(\&thread) for 0 .. $threads - 1; $_->join for @thread_list; thread(); sub thread { my ($web, $ck) = browser(); while(1) { my $url = shift @urls; if(!$url) { last; } $code = $web->get($url)->code; print "[+] $url - code: $code\n"; if($code == 200) { open F, ">>200.txt"; print F $url."\n"; close F; } elsif($code == 301) { open F, ">>301.txt"; print F $url."\n"; close F; } else { open F, ">>else.txt"; print F "$url code - $code\n"; close F; } } } sub loadf { open (F, "<".$_[0]) or erroropen($_[0]); chomp(my @data = <F>); close F; return @data; } sub browser { my $web = new LWP::UserAgent; my $ck = new HTTP::Cookies; $web->cookie_jar($ck); $web->agent('Opera/9.80 (Windows 7; U; en) Presto/2.9.168 Version/11.50'); $web->timeout(5); return $web, $ck; } After its working for some time physical storage is full. Can u help me to re-write it with AnyEvent. I tried but my code didn't work. I read that it will help me to safe some memory. Thanks a lot to any helpers.

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• Is there a way to efficiently yield every file in a directory containing millions of files?

  - by Josh Smeaton

  I'm aware of os.listdir, but as far as I can gather, that gets all the filenames in a directory into memory, and then returns the list. What I want, is a way to yield a filename, work on it, and then yield the next one, without reading them all into memory. Is there any way to do this? I worry about the case where filenames change, new files are added, and files are deleted using such a method. Some iterators prevent you from modifying the collection during iteration, essentially by taking a snapshot of the state of the collection at the beginning, and comparing that state on each move operation. If there is an iterator capable of yielding filenames from a path, does it raise an error if there are filesystem changes (add, remove, rename files within the iterated directory) which modify the collection? There could potentially be a few cases that could cause the iterator to fail, and it all depends on how the iterator maintains state. Using S.Lotts example: filea.txt fileb.txt filec.txt Iterator yields filea.txt. During processing, filea.txt is renamed to filey.txt and fileb.txt is renamed to filez.txt. When the iterator attempts to get the next file, if it were to use the filename filea.txt to find it's current position in order to find the next file and filea.txt is not there, what would happen? It may not be able to recover it's position in the collection. Similarly, if the iterator were to fetch fileb.txt when yielding filea.txt, it could look up the position of fileb.txt, fail, and produce an error. If the iterator instead was able to somehow maintain an index dir.get_file(0), then maintaining positional state would not be affected, but some files could be missed, as their indexes could be moved to an index 'behind' the iterator. This is all theoretical of course, since there appears to be no built-in (python) way of iterating over the files in a directory. There are some great answers below, however, that solve the problem by using queues and notifications. Edit: The OS of concern is Redhat. My use case is this: Process A is continuously writing files to a storage location. Process B (the one I'm writing), will be iterating over these files, doing some processing based on the filename, and moving the files to another location. Edit: Definition of valid: Adjective 1. Well grounded or justifiable, pertinent. (Sorry S.Lott, I couldn't resist). I've edited the paragraph in question above.

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• C++ SDL State Machine Segfault

  - by user1602079

  The code compiles and builds fine, but it immediately segfaults. I've looked at this for a while and have no idea why. Any help is appreciated. Thank you! Here's the code: main.cpp #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include "Globals.h" #include "Core.h" #include "GameStates.h" #include "Introduction.h" int main(int argc, char** args) { if(core.Initilize() == false) { SDL_Quit(); } while(core.desiredstate != core.Quit) { currentstate->EventHandling(); currentstate->Logic(); core.ChangeState(); currentstate->Render(); currentstate->Update(); } SDL_Quit(); } Core.h #ifndef CORE_H #define CORE_H #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include <string> class Core { public: SDL_Surface* Load(std::string filename); void ApplySurface(int X, int Y, SDL_Surface* source, SDL_Surface* destination); void SetState(int newstate); void ChangeState(); enum state { Intro, STATES_NULL, Quit }; int desiredstate, stateID; bool Initilize(); }; #endif Core.cpp #include "Core.h" #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include "Globals.h" #include "Introduction.h" #include <string> /* Initilizes SDL subsystems */ bool Core::Initilize() { //Inits subsystems, reutrns false upon error if(SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING) == -1) { return false; } SDL_WM_SetCaption("Game", NULL); return true; } /* Loads surfaces and optimizes them */ SDL_Surface* Core::Load(std::string filename) { //The surface to be optimized SDL_Surface* original = SDL_LoadBMP(filename.c_str()); //The optimized surface SDL_Surface* optimized = NULL; //Optimizes the image if it loaded properly if(original != NULL) { optimized = SDL_DisplayFormat(original); SDL_FreeSurface(original); } else { //returns NULL upon error return NULL; } return optimized; } /* Blits surfaces */ void Core::ApplySurface(int X, int Y, SDL_Surface* source, SDL_Surface* destination) { //Stores the coordinates of the surface SDL_Rect offsets; offsets.x = X; offsets.y = Y; //Bits the surface if both surfaces are present if(source != NULL && destination != NULL) { SDL_BlitSurface(source, NULL, destination, &offsets); } } /* Sets desiredstate to newstate */ void Core::SetState(int newstate) { if(desiredstate != Quit) { desiredstate = newstate; } } /* Changes the game state */ void Core::ChangeState() { if(desiredstate != STATES_NULL && desiredstate != Quit) { delete currentstate; switch(desiredstate) { case Intro: currentstate = new Introduction(); break; } stateID = desiredstate; desiredstate = core.STATES_NULL; } } Globals.h #ifndef GLOBALS_H #define GLOBALS_H #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include "Core.h" #include "GameStates.h" extern SDL_Surface* screen; extern Core core; extern GameStates* currentstate; #endif Globals.cpp #include "Globals.h" #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include "GameStates.h" SDL_Surface* screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(640, 480, 32, SDL_SWSURFACE); Core core; GameStates* currentstate = NULL; GameStates.h #ifndef GAMESTATES_H #define GAMESTATES_H class GameStates { public: virtual void EventHandling() = 0; virtual void Logic() = 0; virtual void Render() = 0; virtual void Update() = 0; }; #endif Introduction.h #ifndef INTRODUCTION_H #define INTRODUCTION_H #include "GameStates.h" #include "Globals.h" class Introduction : public GameStates { public: Introduction(); private: void EventHandling(); void Logic(); void Render(); void Update(); ~Introduction(); SDL_Surface* test; }; #endif Introduction.cpp #include "SDL/SDL.h" #include "Core.h" #include "Globals.h" #include "Introduction.h" /* Loads all the assets */ Introduction::Introduction() { test = core.Load("test.bmp"); } void Introduction::EventHandling() { SDL_Event event; while(SDL_PollEvent(&event)) { switch(event.type) { case SDL_QUIT: core.SetState(core.Quit); break; } } } void Introduction::Logic() { //to be coded } void Introduction::Render() { core.ApplySurface(30, 30, test, screen); } void Introduction::Update() { SDL_Flip(screen); } Introduction::~Introduction() { SDL_FreeSurface(test); } Sorry if the formatting is a bit off... Having to put four spaces for it to be put into a code block offset it a bit. I ran it through gdb and this is what I got: Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0x0000000000400e46 in main () Which isn't incredibly useful... Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

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• sys.path() and PYTHONPATH issues

  - by Justin

  I've been learning Python, I'm working in 2.7.3, and I'm trying to understand import statements. The documentation says that when you attempt to import a module, the interpreter will first search for one of the built-in modules. What is meant by a built-in module? Then, the documentation says that the interpreter searches in the directories listed by sys.path, and that sys.path is initialized from these sources: the directory containing the input script (or the current directory). PYTHONPATH (a list of directory names, with the same syntax as the shell variable PATH). the installation-dependent default. Here is a sample output of a sys.path command from my computer using python in command-line mode: (I deleted a few so that it wouldn't be huge) ['', '/usr/lib/python2.7', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-old', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gst-0.10', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntuone-couch', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ubuntuone-storage-protocol'] Now, I'm assuming that the '' path refers to the directory containing the 'script', and so I figured the rest of them would be coming from my PYTHONPATH environmental variable. However, when I go to the terminal and type env, PYTHONPATH doesn't exist as an environmental variable. I also tried import os then os.environ, but I get the same output. Do I really not have a PYTHONPATH environmental variable? I don't believe I ever specifically defined a PYTHONPATH environmental variable, but I assumed that when I installed new packages they automatically altered that environment variable. If I don't have a PYTHONPATH, how is my sys.path getting populated? If I download new packages, how does Python know where to look for them if I don't have this PYTHONPATH variable? How do environment variables work? From what I understand, environment variables are specific to the process for which they are set, however, if I open multiple terminal windows and run env, they all display a number of identical variables, for example, PATH. I know there file locations for persistent environment variables, for example /etc/environment, which contains my PATH variable. Is it possible to tell where a persistent environment variable is stored? What is the recommended location for storing new persistent environment variables? How do environment variables actually work with say, the Python interpreter? The Python interpreter looks for PYTHONPATH, but how does it work at the nitty-gritty level?

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• Android: How to properly exit application when inconsistent condition is unavoidable?

  - by Bevor

  First of all I already read about all this discussion that it isn't a good idea to manually exit an Android application. But in my case it seems to be needed. I have an AsyncTask which does a lof of operations in background. That means downloading data, saving it to local storage and preparing it for usage in application. It could happen that there is no internet connection or something different happens. For all that cases I have an Exception handling which returns the result. And if there is an exception, the application is unusable so I need to exit it. My question is, do I have to do some unregistration unloading or unbinding tasks or something when I exit the application by code or is System.exit(0) ok? I do all this in an AsyncTask, see my example: public class InitializationTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, InitializationResult> { private ProcessController processController = new ProcessController(); private ProgressDialog progressDialog; private Activity mainActivity; public InitializationTask(Activity mainActivity) { this.mainActivity = mainActivity; } @Override protected void onPreExecute() { super.onPreExecute(); progressDialog = new ProgressDialog(mainActivity); progressDialog.setMessage("Die Daten werden aufbereitet.\nBitte warten..."); progressDialog.setIndeterminate(true); //means that the "loading amount" is not measured. progressDialog.setCancelable(false); progressDialog.show(); }; @Override protected InitializationResult doInBackground(Void... params) { return processController.initializeData(); } @Override protected void onPostExecute(InitializationResult result) { super.onPostExecute(result); progressDialog.dismiss(); if (!result.isValid()) { AlertDialog.Builder dialog = new AlertDialog.Builder(mainActivity); dialog.setTitle("Initialisierungsfehler"); dialog.setMessage(result.getReason()); dialog.setPositiveButton("Ok", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) { dialog.cancel(); //TODO cancel application System.exit(0); } }); dialog.show(); } } }

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• IntentService android download and return file to Activity

  - by Andrew G

  I have a fairly tricky situation that I'm trying to determine the best design for. The basics are this: I'm designing a messaging system with a similar interface to email. When a user clicks a message that has an attachment, an activity is spawned that shows the text of that message along with a paper clip signaling that there is an additional attachment. At this point, I begin preloading the attachment so that when the user clicks on it - it loads more quickly. currently, when the user clicks the attachment, it prompts with a loading dialog until the download is complete at which point it loads a separate attachment viewer activity, passing in the bmp byte array. I don't ever want to save attachments to persistent storage. The difficulty I have is in supporting rotation as well as home button presses etc. The download is currently done with a thread and handler setup. Instead of this, I'd like the flow to be the following: User loads message as before, preloading begins of attachment as before (invisible to user). When the user clicks on the attachment link, the attachment viewer activity is spawned right away. If the download was done, the image is displayed. If not, a dialog is shown in THIS activity until it is done and can be displayed. Note that ideally the download never restarts or else I've wasted cycles on the preload. Obviously I need some persistent background process that is able to keep downloading and is able to call back to arbitrarily bonded Activities. It seems like the IntentService almost fits my needs as it does its work in a background thread and has the Service (non UI) lifecycle. However, will it work for my other needs? I notice that common implementations for what I want to do get a Messenger from the caller Activity so that a Message object can be sent back to a Handler in the caller's thread. This is all well and good but what happens in my case when the caller Activity is Stopped or Destroyed and the currently active Activity (the attachment viewer) is showing? Is there some way to dynamically bind a new Activity to a running IntentService so that I can send a Message back to the new Activity? The other question is on the Message object. Can I send arbitrarily large data back in this package? For instance, rather than send back that "The file was downloaded", I need to send back the byte array of the downloaded file itself since I never want to write it to disk (and yes this needs to be the case). Any advice on achieving the behavior I want is greatly appreciated. I've not been working with Android for that long and I often get confused with how to best handle asynchronous processes over the course of the Activity lifecycle especially when it comes to orientation changes and home button presses...

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• Multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC – Introduction

  - by zowens

  I’ve read a few different blogs that talk about multi-tenancy and how to resolve some of the issues surrounding multi-tenancy. What I’ve come to realize is that these implementations overcomplicate the issues and give only a muddy implementation! I’ve seen some really illogical code out there. I have recently been building a multi-tenancy framework for internal use at eagleenvision.net. Through this process, I’ve realized a few different techniques to make building multi-tenant applications actually quite easy. I will be posting a few different entries over the issue and my personal implementation. In this first post, I will discuss what multi-tenancy means and how my implementation will be structured.   So what’s the problem? Here’s the deal. Multi-tenancy is basically a technique of code-reuse of web application code. A multi-tenant application is an application that runs a single instance for multiple clients. Here the “client” is different URL bindings on IIS using ASP.NET MVC. The problem with different instances of the, essentially, same application is that you have to spin up different instances of ASP.NET. As the number of running instances of ASP.NET grows, so does the memory footprint of IIS. Stack Exchange shifted its architecture to multi-tenancy March. As the blog post explains, multi-tenancy saves cost in terms of memory utilization and physical disc storage. If you use the same code base for many applications, multi-tenancy just makes sense. You’ll reduce the amount of work it takes to synchronize the site implementations and you’ll thank your lucky stars later for choosing to use one application for multiple sites. Multi-tenancy allows the freedom of extensibility while relying on some pre-built code.   You’d think this would be simple. I have actually seen a real lack of reference material on the subject in terms of ASP.NET MVC. This is somewhat surprising given the number of users of ASP.NET MVC. However, I will certainly fill the void ;). Implementing a multi-tenant application takes a little thinking. It’s not straight-forward because the possibilities of implementation are endless. I have yet to see a great implementation of a multi-tenant MVC application. The only one that comes close to what I have in mind is Rob Ashton’s implementation (all the entries are listed on this page). There’s some really nasty code in there… something I’d really like to avoid. He has also written a library (MvcEx) that attempts to aid multi-tenant development. This code is even worse, in my honest opinion. Once I start seeing Reflection.Emit, I have to assume the worst :) In all seriousness, if his implementation makes sense to you, use it! It’s a fine implementation that should be given a look. At least look at the code. I will reference MvcEx going forward as a comparison to my implementation. I will explain why my approach differs from MvcEx and how it is better or worse (hopefully better).   Core Goals of my Multi-Tenant Implementation The first, and foremost, goal is to use Inversion of Control containers to my advantage. As you will see throughout this series, I pass around containers quite frequently and rely on their use heavily. I will be using StructureMap in my implementation. However, you could probably use your favorite IoC tool instead. <RANT> However, please don’t be stupid and abstract your IoC tool. Each IoC is powerful and by abstracting the capabilities, you’re doing yourself a real disservice. Who in the world swaps out IoC tools…? No one!</RANT> (It had to be said.) I will outline some of the goodness of StructureMap as we go along. This is really an invaluable tool in my tool belt and simple to use in my multi-tenant implementation. The second core goal is to represent a tenant as easily as possible. Just as a dependency container will be a first-class citizen, so will a tenant. This allows us to easily extend and use tenants. This will also allow different ways of “plugging in” tenants into your application. In my implementation, there will be a single dependency container for a single tenant. This will enable isolation of the dependencies of the tenant. The third goal is to use composition as a means to delegate “core” functions out to the tenant. More on this later.   Features In MvcExt, “Modules” are a code element of the infrastructure. I have simplified this concept and have named this “Features”. A feature is a simple element of an application. Controllers can be specified to have a feature and actions can have “sub features”. Each tenant can select features it needs and the other features will be hidden to the tenant’s users. My implementation doesn’t require something to be a feature. A controller can be common to all tenants. For example, (as you will see) I have a “Content” controller that will return the CSS, Javascript and Images for a tenant. This is common logic to all tenants and shouldn’t be hidden or considered a “feature”; Content is a core component.   Up next My next post will be all about the code. I will reveal some of the foundation to the way I do multi-tenancy. I will have posts dedicated to Foundation, Controllers, Views, Caching, Content and how to setup the tenants. Each post will be in-depth about the issues and implementation details, while adhering to my core goals outlined in this post. As always, comment with questions of DM me on twitter or send me an email.

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• Week in Geek: 4chan Falls Victim to DDoS Attack Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to tweak the low battery action on a Windows 7 laptop, access an eBook collection anywhere in the world, “extend iPad battery life, batch resize photos, & sync massive music collections”, went on a reign of destruction with Snow Crusher, and had fun decorating our desktops with abstract icon collections. Photo by pasukaru76. Random Geek Links We have included extra news article goodness to help you catch up on any developments that you may have missed during the holiday break this past week. Note: The three 27C3 articles listed here represent three different presentations at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference. 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. Report: FBI seizes server in probe of WikiLeaks attacks The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others. Mozilla exposes older user-account database Mozilla has disabled 44,000 older user accounts for its Firefox add-ons site after a security researcher found part of a database of the account information on a publicly available server. Data breach affects 4.9 million Honda customers Japanese automaker Honda has put some 2.2 million customers in the United States on a security breach alert after a database containing information on the owners and their cars was hacked. Chinese Trojan discovered in Android games An Android-based Trojan called “Geinimi” has been discovered in the wild and the Trojan is capable of sending personal information to remote servers and exhibits botnet-like behavior. 27C3 presentation claims many mobiles vulnerable to SMS attacks According to security experts, an ‘SMS of death’ threatens to disable many current Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG mobiles. 27C3: GSM cell phones even easier to tap Security researchers have demonstrated how open source software on a number of revamped, entry-level cell phones can decrypt and record mobile phone calls in the GSM network. 27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents Security researcher Julia Wolf has pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe’s PDF standard. Critical update for WordPress A critical update has been made available for WordPress in the form of version 3.0.4. The update fixes a security bug in WordPress’s KSES library. McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 The list comprises 2010’s most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise. Windows Phone 7 piracy materializes with FreeMarketplace A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Empty email accounts, and some bad buzz for Hotmail In the past few days, a number of Hotmail users have been complaining about a rather disconcerting issue: their Hotmail accounts, some up to 10 years old, appear completely empty.  No emails, no folders, nothing, just what appears to be a new account. Reports: Nintendo warns of 3DS risk for kids Nintendo has reportedly issued a warning that the 3DS, its eagerly awaited glasses-free 3D portable gaming device, should not be used by children under 6 when the gadget is in 3D-viewing mode. Google eyes ‘cloaking’ as next antispam target Google plans to take a closer look at the practice of “cloaking,” or presenting one look to a Googlebot crawling one’s site while presenting another look to users. Facebook, Twitter stock trading drawing SEC eye? The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren’t yet publicly traded–like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga–may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Random TinyHacker Links Photo by jcraveiro. Exciting Software Set for Release in 2011 A few bloggers from great websites such as How-To Geek, Guiding Tech and 7 Tutorials took the time to sit down and talk about their software wishes for 2011. Take the time to read it and share… Wikileaks Infopr0n An infographic detailing the quest to plug WikiLeaks. The New York Times Guide to Mobile Apps A growing collection of all mobile app coverage by the New York Times as well as lists of favorite apps from Times writers. 7,000,000,000 (Video) A fascinating look at the world’s population via National Geographic Magazine. Super User Questions Check out the great answers to these hot questions from Super User. How to use a Personal computer as a Linux web server for development purposes? How to link processing power of old computers together? Free virtualization tool for testing suspicious files? Why do some actions not work with Remote Desktop? What is the simplest way to send a large batch of pictures to a distant friend or colleague? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Had a busy week and need to get caught up on your HTG reading? Then sit back and relax while enjoying these hot posts full of how-to roundup goodness. The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud One Year Ago on How-To Geek Need more how-to geekiness for your weekend? Then look through this great batch of articles from one year ago that focus on dual-booting and O.S. installation goodness. Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Vista Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with XP How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7 Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Ubuntu Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer The Geek Note We hope that you and your families have had a terrific holiday break as everyone prepares to return to work and school this week. Remember to keep those great tips coming in to us at [email protected]! Photo by pjbeardsley. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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• Using jQuery and OData to Insert a Database Record

  - by Stephen Walther

  In my previous blog entry, I explored two ways of inserting a database record using jQuery. We added a new Movie to the Movie database table by using a generic handler and by using a WCF service. In this blog entry, I want to take a brief look at how you can insert a database record using OData. Introduction to OData The Open Data Protocol (OData) was developed by Microsoft to be an open standard for communicating data across the Internet. Because the protocol is compatible with standards such as REST and JSON, the protocol is particularly well suited for Ajax. OData has undergone several name changes. It was previously referred to as Astoria and ADO.NET Data Services. OData is used by Sharepoint Server 2010, Azure Storage Services, Excel 2010, SQL Server 2008, and project code name “Dallas.” Because OData is being adopted as the public interface of so many important Microsoft technologies, it is a good protocol to learn. You can learn more about OData by visiting the following websites: http://www.odata.org http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/bb931106.aspx When using the .NET framework, you can easily expose database data through the OData protocol by creating a WCF Data Service. In this blog entry, I will create a WCF Data Service that exposes the Movie database table. Create the Database and Data Model The MoviesDB database is a simple database that contains the following Movies table: You need to create a data model to represent the MoviesDB database. In this blog entry, I use the ADO.NET Entity Framework to create my data model. However, WCF Data Services and OData are not tied to any particular OR/M framework such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework. For details on creating the Entity Framework data model for the MoviesDB database, see the previous blog entry. Create a WCF Data Service You create a new WCF Service by selecting the menu option Project, Add New Item and selecting the WCF Data Service item template (see Figure 1). Name the new WCF Data Service MovieService.svc. Figure 1 – Adding a WCF Data Service Listing 1 contains the default code that you get when you create a new WCF Data Service. There are two things that you need to modify. Listing 1 – New WCF Data Service File using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Data.Services; using System.Data.Services.Common; using System.Linq; using System.ServiceModel.Web; using System.Web; namespace WebApplication1 { public class MovieService : DataService< /* TODO: put your data source class name here */ > { // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) { // TODO: set rules to indicate which entity sets and service operations are visible, updatable, etc. // Examples: // config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("MyEntityset", EntitySetRights.AllRead); // config.SetServiceOperationAccessRule("MyServiceOperation", ServiceOperationRights.All); config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; } } } First, you need to replace the comment /* TODO: put your data source class name here */ with a class that represents the data that you want to expose from the service. In our case, we need to replace the comment with a reference to the MoviesDBEntities class generated by the Entity Framework. Next, you need to configure the security for the WCF Data Service. By default, you cannot query or modify the movie data. We need to update the Entity Set Access Rule to enable us to insert a new database record. The updated MovieService.svc is contained in Listing 2: Listing 2 – MovieService.svc using System.Data.Services; using System.Data.Services.Common; namespace WebApplication1 { public class MovieService : DataService<MoviesDBEntities> { public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) { config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("Movies", EntitySetRights.AllWrite); config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; } } } That’s all we have to do. We can now insert a new Movie into the Movies database table by posting a new Movie to the following URL: /MovieService.svc/Movies The request must be a POST request. The Movie must be represented as JSON. Using jQuery with OData The HTML page in Listing 3 illustrates how you can use jQuery to insert a new Movie into the Movies database table using the OData protocol. Listing 3 – Default.htm <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>jQuery OData Insert</title> <script src="http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="Scripts/json2.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> <form> <label>Title:</label> <input id="title" /> <br /> <label>Director:</label> <input id="director" /> </form> <button id="btnAdd">Add Movie</button> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnAdd").click(function () { // Convert the form into an object var data = { Title: $("#title").val(), Director: $("#director").val() }; // JSONify the data var data = JSON.stringify(data); // Post it $.ajax({ type: "POST", contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", url: "MovieService.svc/Movies", data: data, dataType: "json", success: insertCallback }); }); function insertCallback(result) { // unwrap result var newMovie = result["d"]; // Show primary key alert("Movie added with primary key " + newMovie.Id); } </script> </body> </html> jQuery does not include a JSON serializer. Therefore, we need to include the JSON2 library to serialize the new Movie that we wish to create. The Movie is serialized by calling the JSON.stringify() method: var data = JSON.stringify(data); You can download the JSON2 library from the following website: http://www.json.org/js.html The jQuery ajax() method is called to insert the new Movie. Notice that both the contentType and dataType are set to use JSON. The jQuery ajax() method is used to perform a POST operation against the URL MovieService.svc/Movies. Because the POST payload contains a JSON representation of a new Movie, a new Movie is added to the database table of Movies. When the POST completes successfully, the insertCallback() method is called. The new Movie is passed to this method. The method simply displays the primary key of the new Movie: Summary The OData protocol (and its enabling technology named WCF Data Services) works very nicely with Ajax. By creating a WCF Data Service, you can quickly expose your database data to an Ajax application by taking advantage of open standards such as REST, JSON, and OData. In the next blog entry, I want to take a closer look at how the OData protocol supports different methods of querying data.

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• IIS SSL Certificate Renewal Pain

  - by Rick Strahl

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

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• Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite Now Available

  - by chung.wu

  Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite is now available. The management suite combines features that were available in the standalone Application Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite and Application Change Management Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle's market leading real user monitoring and configuration management capabilities to provide the most complete solution for managing E-Business Suite applications. The features that were available in the standalone management packs are now packaged into Oracle E-Business Suite Plug-in 4.0, which is now fully certified with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control. This latest plug-in extends Grid Control with E-Business Suite specific management capabilities and features enhanced change management support. In addition, this latest release of Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite also includes numerous real user monitoring improvements. General Enhancements This new release of Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite offers the following key capabilities: Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control Support: All components of the management suite are certified with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Grid Control. Built-in Diagnostic Ability: This release has numerous major enhancements that provide the necessary intelligence to determine if the product has been installed and configured correctly. There are diagnostics for Discovery, Cloning, and User Monitoring that will validate if the appropriate patches, privileges, setups, and profile options have been configured. This feature improves the setup and configuration time to be up and operational. Lifecycle Automation Enhancements Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite provides a centralized view to monitor and orchestrate changes (both functional and technical) across multiple Oracle E-Business Suite systems. In this latest release, it provides even more control and flexibility in managing Oracle E-Business Suite changes.Change Management: Built-in Diagnostic Ability: This latest release has numerous major enhancements that provide the necessary intelligence to determine if the product has been installed and configured correctly. There are diagnostics for Customization Manager, Patch Manager, and Setup Manager that will validate if the appropriate patches, privileges, setups, and profile options have been configured. Enhancing the setup time and configuration time to be up and operational. Customization Manager: Multi-Node Custom Application Registration: This feature automates the process of registering and validating custom products/applications on every node in a multi-node EBS system. Public/Private File Source Mappings and E-Business Suite Mappings: File Source Mappings & E-Business Suite Mappings can be created and marked as public or private. Only the creator/owner can define/edit his/her own mappings. Users can use public mappings, but cannot edit or change settings. Test Checkout Command for Versions: This feature allows you to test/verify checkout commands at the version level within the File Source Mapping page. Prerequisite Patch Validation: You can specify prerequisite patches for Customization packages and for Release 12 Oracle E-Business Suite packages. Destination Path Population: You can now automatically populate the Destination Path for common file types during package construction. OAF File Type Support: Ability to package Oracle Application Framework (OAF) customizations and deploy them across multiple Oracle E-Business Suite instances. Extended PLL Support: Ability to distinguish between different types of PLLs (that is, Report and Forms PLL files). Providing better granularity when managing PLL objects. Enhanced Standard Checker: Provides greater and more comprehensive list of coding standards that are verified during the package build process (for example, File Driver exceptions, Java checks, XML checks, SQL checks, etc.) HTML Package Readme: The package Readme is in HTML format and includes the file listing. Advanced Package Search Capabilities: The ability to utilize more criteria within the advanced search package (that is, Public, Last Updated by, Files Source Mapping, and E-Business Suite Mapping). Enhanced Package Build Notifications: More detailed information on the results of a package build process. Better, more detailed troubleshooting guidance in the event of build failures. Patch Manager:Staged Patches: Ability to run Patch Manager with no external internet access. Customer can download Oracle E-Business Suite patches into a shared location for Patch Manager to access and apply. Supports highly secured production environments that prohibit external internet connections. Support for Superseded Patches: Automatic check for superseded patches. Allows users to easily add superseded patches into the Patch Run. More comprehensive and correct Patch Runs. Removes many manual and laborious tasks, frees up Apps DBAs for higher value-added tasks. Automatic Primary Node Identification: Users can now specify which is the "primary node" (that is, which node hosts the Shared APPL_TOP) during the Patch Run interview process, available for Release 12 only. Setup Manager:Preview Extract Results: Ability to execute an extract in "proof mode", and examine the query results, to determine accuracy. Used in conjunction with the "where" clause in Advanced Filtering. This feature can provide better and more accurate fine tuning of extracts. Use Uploaded Extracts in New Projects: Ability to incorporate uploaded extracts in new projects via new LOV fields in package construction. Leverages the Setup Manager repository to access extracts that have been uploaded. Allows customer to reuse uploaded extracts to provision new instances. Re-use Existing (that is, historical) Extracts in New Projects: Ability to incorporate existing extracts in new projects via new LOV fields in package construction. Leverages the Setup Manager repository to access point-in-time extracts (snapshots) of configuration data. Allows customer to reuse existing extracts to provision new instances. Allows comparative historical reporting of identical APIs, executed at different times. Support for BR100 formats: Setup Manager can now automatically produce reports in the BR100 format. Native support for industry standard formats. Concurrent Manager API Support: General Foundation now provides an API for management of "Concurrent Manager" configuration data. Ability to migrate Concurrent Managers from one instance to another. Complete the setup once and never again; no need to redefine the Concurrent Managers. User Experience Management Enhancements Application Management Suite for Oracle E-Business Suite includes comprehensive capabilities for user experience management, supporting both real user and synthetic transaction based user monitoring techniques. This latest release of the management suite include numerous improvements in real user monitoring support. KPI Reporting: Configurable decimal precision for reporting of KPI and SLA values. By default, this is two decimal places. KPI numerator and denominator information. It is now possible to view KPI numerator and denominator information, and to have it available for export. Content Messages Processing: The application content message facility has been extended to distinguish between notifications and errors. In addition, it is now possible to specify matching rules that can be used to refine a selected content message specification. Note this is only available for XPath-based (not literal) message contents. Data Export: The Enriched data export facility has been significantly enhanced to provide improved performance and accessibility. Data is no longer stored within XML-based files, but is now stored within the Reporter database. However, it is possible to configure an alternative database for its storage. Access to the export data is through SQL. With this enhancement, it is now more easy than ever to use tools such as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to analyze correlated data collected from real user monitoring and business data sources. SNMP Traps for System Events: Previously, the SNMP notification facility was only available for KPI alerting. It has now been extended to support the generation of SNMP traps for system events, to provide external health monitoring of the RUEI system processes. Performance Improvements: Enhanced dashboard performance. The dashboard facility has been enhanced to support the parallel loading of items. In the case of dashboards containing large numbers of items, this can result in a significant performance improvement. Initial period selection within Data Browser and reports. The User Preferences facility has been extended to allow you to specify the initial period selection when first entering the Data Browser or reports facility. The default is the last hour. Performance improvement when querying the all sessions group. Technical Prerequisites, Download and Installation Instructions The Linux version of the plug-in is available for immediate download from Oracle Technology Network or Oracle eDelivery. For specific information regarding technical prerequisites, product download and installation, please refer to My Oracle Support note 1224313.1. The following certifications are in progress: * Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit) (9, 10) * HP-UX Itanium (11.23, 11.31) * HP-UX PA-RISC (64-bit) (11.23, 11.31) * IBM AIX on Power Systems (64-bit) (5.3, 6.1)

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• How to Reduce the Size of Your WinSXS Folder on Windows 7 or 8

  - by Chris Hoffman

  The WinSXS folder at C:\Windows\WinSXS is massive and continues to grow the longer you have Windows installed. This folder builds up unnecessary files over time, such as old versions of system components. This folder also contains files for uninstalled, disabled Windows components. Even if you don’t have a Windows component installed, it will be present in your WinSXS folder, taking up space. Why the WinSXS Folder Gets to Big The WinSXS folder contains all Windows system components. In fact, component files elsewhere in Windows are just links to files contained in the WinSXS folder. The WinSXS folder contains every operating system file. When Windows installs updates, it drops the new Windows component in the WinSXS folder and keeps the old component in the WinSXS folder. This means that every Windows Update you install increases the size of your WinSXS folder. This allows you to uninstall operating system updates from the Control Panel, which can be useful in the case of a buggy update — but it’s a feature that’s rarely used. Windows 7 dealt with this by including a feature that allows Windows to clean up old Windows update files after you install a new Windows service pack. The idea was that the system could be cleaned up regularly along with service packs. However, Windows 7 only saw one service pack — Service Pack 1 — released in 2010. Microsoft has no intention of launching another. This means that, for more than three years, Windows update uninstallation files have been building up on Windows 7 systems and couldn’t be easily removed. Clean Up Update Files To fix this problem, Microsoft recently backported a feature from Windows 8 to Windows 7. They did this without much fanfare — it was rolled out in a typical minor operating system update, the kind that don’t generally add new features. To clean up such update files, open the Disk Cleanup wizard (tap the Windows key, type “disk cleanup” into the Start menu, and press Enter). Click the Clean up System Files button, enable the Windows Update Cleanup option and click OK. If you’ve been using your Windows 7 system for a few years, you’ll likely be able to free several gigabytes of space. The next time you reboot after doing this, Windows will take a few minutes to clean up system files before you can log in and use your desktop. If you don’t see this feature in the Disk Cleanup window, you’re likely behind on your updates — install the latest updates from Windows Update. Windows 8 and 8.1 include built-in features that do this automatically. In fact, there’s a StartComponentCleanup scheduled task included with Windows that will automatically run in the background, cleaning up components 30 days after you’ve installed them. This 30-day period gives you time to uninstall an update if it causes problems. If you’d like to manually clean up updates, you can also use the Windows Update Cleanup option in the Disk Usage window, just as you can on Windows 7. (To open it, tap the Windows key, type “disk cleanup” to perform a search, and click the “Free up disk space by removing unnecessary files” shortcut that appears.) Windows 8.1 gives you more options, allowing you to forcibly remove all previous versions of uninstalled components, even ones that haven’t been around for more than 30 days. These commands must be run in an elevated Command Prompt — in other words, start the Command Prompt window as Administrator. For example, the following command will uninstall all previous versions of components without the scheduled task’s 30-day grace period: DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup The following command will remove files needed for uninstallation of service packs. You won’t be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs after running this command: DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /SPSuperseded The following command will remove all old versions of every component. You won’t be able to uninstall any currently installed service packs or updates after this completes: DISM.exe /online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase Remove Features on Demand Modern versions of Windows allow you to enable or disable Windows features on demand. You’ll find a list of these features in the Windows Features window you can access from the Control Panel. Even features you don’t have installed — that is, the features you see unchecked in this window — are stored on your hard drive in your WinSXS folder. If you choose to install them, they’ll be made available from your WinSXS folder. This means you won’t have to download anything or provide Windows installation media to install these features. However, these features take up space. While this shouldn’t matter on typical computers, users with extremely low amounts of storage or Windows server administrators who want to slim their Windows installs down to the smallest possible set of system files may want to get these files off their hard drives. For this reason, Windows 8 added a new option that allows you to remove these uninstalled components from the WinSXS folder entirely, freeing up space. If you choose to install the removed components later, Windows will prompt you to download the component files from Microsoft. To do this, open a Command Prompt window as Administrator. Use the following command to see the features available to you: DISM.exe /Online /English /Get-Features /Format:Table You’ll see a table of feature names and their states. To remove a feature from your system, you’d use the following command, replacing NAME with the name of the feature you want to remove. You can get the feature name you need from the table above. DISM.exe /Online /Disable-Feature /featurename:NAME /Remove If you run the /GetFeatures command again, you’ll now see that the feature has a status of “Disabled with Payload Removed” instead of just “Disabled.” That’s how you know it’s not taking up space on your computer’s hard drive. If you’re trying to slim down a Windows system as much as possible, be sure to check out our lists of ways to free up disk space on Windows and reduce the space used by system files.     

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• Top 10 Reasons SQL Developer is Perfect for Oracle Beginners

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Learning new technologies can be daunting. If you’ve never used a Mac before, you’ll probably be a bit baffled at first. But, you’re probably at least coming from a desktop computing background (Windows), so you common frame of reference. But what if you’re just now learning to use a relational database? Yes, you’ve played with Access a bit, but now your employer or college instructor has charged you with becoming proficient with Oracle database. Here’s 10 reasons why I think Oracle SQL Developer is the perfect vehicle to help get you started. 1. It’s free No need to break into one of these… No start-up costs, no need to wrangle budget dollars from your company. Students don’t have any money after books and lab fees anyway. And most employees don’t like having to ask for ‘special’ software anyway. So avoid all of that and make sure the free stuff doesn’t suit your needs first. Upgrades are available on a regular base, also at no cost, and support is freely available via our public forums. 2. It will run pretty much anywhere Windows – check. OSX (Apple) – check. Unix – check. Linux – check. No need to start up a windows VM to run your Windows-only software in your lab machine. 3. Anyone can install it There’s no installer, no registry to be updated, no admin privs to be obtained. If you can download and extract files to your machine or USB storage device, you can run it. You can be up and running with SQL Developer in under 5 minutes. Here’s a video tutorial to see how to get started. 4. It’s ubiquitous I admit it, I learned a new word yesterday and I wanted an excuse to use it. SQL Developer’s everywhere. It’s had over 2,500,000 downloads in the past year, and is the one of the most downloaded items from OTN. This means if you need help, there’s someone sitting nearby you that can assist, and since they’re in the same tool as you, they’ll be speaking the same language. 5. Simple User Interface Up-up-down-down-Left-right-left-right-A-B-A-B-START will get you 30 lives, but you already knew that, right? You connect, you see your objects, you click on your objects. Or, you can use the worksheet to write your queries and programs in. There’s only one toolbar, and just a few buttons. If you’re like me, video games became less fun when each button had 6 action items mapped to it. I just want the good ole ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘SELECT’, and ‘START’ controls. If you’re new to Oracle, you shouldn’t have the double-workload of learning a new complicated tool as well. 6. It’s not a ‘black box’ Click through your objects, but also get the SQL that drives the GUI As you use the wizards to accomplish tasks for you, you can view the SQL statement being generated on your behalf. Just because you have a GUI, doesn’t mean you’re ceding your responsibility to learn the underlying code that makes the database work. 7. It’s four tools in one It’s not just a query tool. Maybe you need to design a data model first? Or maybe you need to migrate your Sybase ASE database to Oracle for a new project? Or maybe you need to create some reports? SQL Developer does all of that. So once you get comfortable with one part of the tool, the others will be much easier to pick up as your needs change. 8. Great learning resources available Videos, blogs, hands-on learning labs – you name it, we got it. Why wait for someone to train you, when you can train yourself at your own pace? 9. You can use it to teach yourself SQL Instead of being faced with the white-screen-of-panic, you can visually build your queries by dragging and dropping tables and views into the Query Builder. Yes, ‘just like Access’ – only better. And as you build your query, toggle to the Worksheet panel and see the SQL statement. Again, SQL Developer is not a black box. If you prefer to learn by trial and error, the worksheet will attempt to suggest the next bit of your SQL statement with it’s completion insight feature. And if you have syntax errors, those will be highlighted – just like your misspelled words in your favorite word processor. 10. It scales to match your experience level You won’t be a n00b forever. In 6-8 months, when you’re ready to tackle something a bit more complicated, like XML DB or Oracle Spatial, the tool is already there waiting on you. No need to go out and find the ‘advanced’ tool. 11. Wait, you said this was a ‘Top 10′ list? Yes. Yes, I did. I’m using this ‘trick’ to get you to continue reading because I’m going to say something you might not want to hear. Are you ready? Tools won’t replace experience, failure, hard work, and training. Just because you have the keys to the car, doesn’t mean you’re ready to head out on the race track. While SQL Developer reduces the barriers to entry, it does not completely remove them. Many experienced folks simply do not like tools. Rather, they don’t like the people that pick up tools without the know-how to properly use them. If you don’t understand what ‘TRUNCATE’ means, don’t try it out. Try picking up a book first. Of course, it’s very nice to have your own sandbox to play in, so you don’t upset the other children. That’s why I really like our Dev Days Database Virtual Box image. It’s your own database to learn and experiment with.

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