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• Complex type support in process flow &ndash; XMLTYPE

  - by shawn

      Before OWB 11.2 release, there are only 5 simple data types supported in process flow: DATE, BOOLEAN, INTEGER, FLOAT and STRING. A new complex data type – XMLTYPE is added in 11.2, in order to support complex data being passed between the process flow activities. In this article we will give a simple example to illustrate the usage of the new type and some related editors.     Suppose there is a bookstore that uses XML format orders as shown below (we use the simplest form for the illustration purpose), then we can create a process flow to handle the order, take the order as the input, then extract necessary information, and generate a confirmation email to the customer automatically. <order id=’0001’>     <customer>         <name>Tom</name>         <email>[email protected]</email>     </customer>     <book id=’Java_001’>         <quantity>3</quantity>     </book> </order>     Considering a simple user case here: we use an input parameter/variable with XMLTYPE to hold the XML content of the order; then we can use an Assign activity to retrieve the email info from the order; after that, we can create an email activity to send the email (Other activities might be added in practical case, but will not be described here). 1) Set XML content value     For testing purpose, we will create a variable to hold the sample order, and then this will be used among the process flow activities. When the variable is of XMLTYPE and the “Literal” value is set the true, the advance editor will be enabled.     Click the “Advance Editor” shown as above, a simple xml editor will popup. The editor has basic features like syntax highlight and check as shown below:     We can also do the basic validation or validation against schema with the editor by selecting the normalized schema. With this, it will be easier to provide the value for XMLTYPE variables. 2) Extract information from XML content     After setting the value, we need to extract the email information with the Assign activity. In process flow, an enhanced expression builder is used to help users construct the XPath for extracting values from XML content. When the variable’s literal value is set the false, the advance editor is enabled.     Click the button, the advance editor will popup, as shown below:     The editor is based on the expression builder (which is often used in mapping etc), an XPath lib panel is appended which provides some help information on how to write the XPath. The expression used here is: “XMLTYPE.EXTRACT(XML_ORDER,'/order/customer/email/text()').getStringVal()”, which uses ‘/order/customer/email/text()’ as the XPath to extract the email info from the XML document.     A variable called “EMAIL_ADDR” is created with String data type to hold the value extracted.     Then we bind the “VARIABLE” parameter of Assign activity to “EMAIL_ADDR” variable, which means the value of the “EMAIL_ADDR” activity will be set to the result of the “VALUE” parameter of Assign activity. 3) Use the extracted information in Email activity     We bind the “TO_ADDRESS” parameter of the email activity to the “EMAIL_ADDR” variable created in above step.     We can also extract other information from the xml order directly through the expression, for example, we can set the “MESSAGE_BODY” with value “'Dear '||XMLTYPE.EXTRACT(XML_ORDER,'/order/customer/name/text()').getStringVal()||chr(13)||chr(10)||'   You have ordered '||XMLTYPE.EXTRACT(XML_ORDER,'/order/book/quantity/text()').getStringVal()||' '||XMLTYPE.EXTRACT(XML_ORDER,'/order/book/@id').getStringVal()”. This expression will extract the customer name, the quantity and the book id from the order to compose the message body.     To make the email activity work, we need provide some other necessary information, Such as “SMTP_SERVER” (which is the SMTP server used to send the emails, like “mail.bookstore.com”. The default PORT number is set to 25. You need to change the value accordingly), “FROM_ADDRESS” and “SUBJECT”. Then the process flow is ready to go.     After deploying the process flow package, we can simply run the process flow to check if the result is as expected (An email will be sent to the specified email address with proper subject and message body).     Note: In oracle 11g, there is an enhanced security feature - ACL (Access Control List), which restrict the network access within db, so we need to edit the list to allow UTL_SMTP work if you are using oracle 11g. Refer to chapter “Access Control Lists for UTL_TCP/HTTP/SMTP” and “Managing Fine-Grained Access to External Network Services” for more details.       In previous releases, XMLTYPE already exists in other OWB objects, like mapping/transformation etc. When the mapping/transformation is dragged into a process flow, the parameters with XMLTYPE are mapped to STRING. Now with the XMLTYPE support in process flow, the XMLTYPE will map to XMLTYPE in a more natural way, and we can leverage the new data type for the design.

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• How I understood monads, part 1/2: sleepless and self-loathing in Seattle

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  For some time now, I had been noticing some interest for monads, mostly in the form of unintelligible (to me) blog posts and comments saying “oh, yeah, that’s a monad” about random stuff as if it were absolutely obvious and if I didn’t know what they were talking about, I was probably an uneducated idiot, ignorant about the simplest and most fundamental concepts of functional programming. Fair enough, I am pretty much exactly that. Being the kind of guy who can spend eight years in college just to understand a few interesting concepts about the universe, I had to check it out and try to understand monads so that I too can say “oh, yeah, that’s a monad”. Man, was I hit hard in the face with the limitations of my own abstract thinking abilities. All the articles I could find about the subject seemed to be vaguely understandable at first but very quickly overloaded the very few concept slots I have available in my brain. They also seemed to be consistently using arcane notation that I was entirely unfamiliar with. It finally all clicked together one Friday afternoon during the team’s beer symposium when Louis was patient enough to break it down for me in a language I could understand (C#). I don’t know if being intoxicated helped. Feel free to read this with or without a drink in hand. So here it is in a nutshell: a monad allows you to manipulate stuff in interesting ways. Oh, OK, you might say. Yeah. Exactly. Let’s start with a trivial case: public static class Trivial { public static TResult Execute<T, TResult>( this T argument, Func<T, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument); } } This is not a monad. I removed most concepts here to start with something very simple. There is only one concept here: the idea of executing an operation on an object. This is of course trivial and it would actually be simpler to just apply that operation directly on the object. But please bear with me, this is our first baby step. Here’s how you use that thing: "some string" .Execute(s => s + " processed by trivial proto-monad.") .Execute(s => s + " And it's chainable!"); What we’re doing here is analogous to having an assembly chain in a factory: you can feed it raw material (the string here) and a number of machines that each implement a step in the manufacturing process and you can start building stuff. The Trivial class here represents the empty assembly chain, the conveyor belt if you will, but it doesn’t care what kind of raw material gets in, what gets out or what each machine is doing. It is pure process. A real monad will need a couple of additional concepts. Let’s say the conveyor belt needs the material to be processed to be contained in standardized boxes, just so that it can safely and efficiently be transported from machine to machine or so that tracking information can be attached to it. Each machine knows how to treat raw material or partly processed material, but it doesn’t know how to treat the boxes so the conveyor belt will have to extract the material from the box before feeding it into each machine, and it will have to box it back afterwards. This conveyor belt with boxes is essentially what a monad is. It has one method to box stuff, one to extract stuff from its box and one to feed stuff into a machine. So let’s reformulate the previous example but this time with the boxes, which will do nothing for the moment except containing stuff. public class Identity<T> { public Identity(T value) { Value = value; } public T Value { get; private set;} public static Identity<T> Unit(T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<U>( Identity<T> argument, Func<T, Identity<U>> operation) { return operation(argument.Value); } } Now this is a true to the definition Monad, including the weird naming of the methods. It is the simplest monad, called the identity monad and of course it does nothing useful. Here’s how you use it: Identity<string>.Bind( Identity<string>.Unit("some string"), s => Identity<string>.Unit( s + " was processed by identity monad.")).Value That of course is seriously ugly. Note that the operation is responsible for re-boxing its result. That is a part of strict monads that I don’t quite get and I’ll take the liberty to lift that strange constraint in the next examples. To make this more readable and easier to use, let’s build a few extension methods: public static class IdentityExtensions { public static Identity<T> ToIdentity<T>(this T value) { return new Identity<T>(value); } public static Identity<U> Bind<T, U>( this Identity<T> argument, Func<T, U> operation) { return operation(argument.Value).ToIdentity(); } } With those, we can rewrite our code as follows: "some string".ToIdentity() .Bind(s => s + " was processed by monad extensions.") .Bind(s => s + " And it's chainable...") .Value; This is considerably simpler but still retains the qualities of a monad. But it is still pointless. Let’s look at a more useful example, the state monad, which is basically a monad where the boxes have a label. It’s useful to perform operations on arbitrary objects that have been enriched with an attached state object. public class Stateful<TValue, TState> { public Stateful(TValue value, TState state) { Value = value; State = state; } public TValue Value { get; private set; } public TState State { get; set; } } public static class StateExtensions { public static Stateful<TValue, TState> ToStateful<TValue, TState>( this TValue value, TState state) { return new Stateful<TValue, TState>(value, state); } public static Stateful<TResult, TState> Execute<TValue, TState, TResult>( this Stateful<TValue, TState> argument, Func<TValue, TResult> operation) { return operation(argument.Value) .ToStateful(argument.State); } } You can get a stateful version of any object by calling the ToStateful extension method, passing the state object in. You can then execute ordinary operations on the values while retaining the state: var statefulInt = 3.ToStateful("This is the state"); var processedStatefulInt = statefulInt .Execute(i => ++i) .Execute(i => i * 10) .Execute(i => i + 2); Console.WriteLine("Value: {0}; state: {1}", processedStatefulInt.Value, processedStatefulInt.State); This monad differs from the identity by enriching the boxes. There is another way to give value to the monad, which is to enrich the processing. An example of that is the writer monad, which can be typically used to log the operations that are being performed by the monad. Of course, the richest monads enrich both the boxes and the processing. That’s all for today. I hope with this you won’t have to go through the same process that I did to understand monads and that you haven’t gone into concept overload like I did. Next time, we’ll examine some examples that you already know but we will shine the monadic light, hopefully illuminating them in a whole new way. Realizing that this pattern is actually in many places but mostly unnoticed is what will enable the truly casual “oh, yes, that’s a monad” comments. Here’s the code for this article: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/Monads.zip The Wikipedia article on monads: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monads_in_functional_programming This article was invaluable for me in understanding how to express the canonical monads in C# (interesting Linq stuff in there): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wesdyer/archive/2008/01/11/the-marvels-of-monads.aspx

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• OOP Design of items in a Point-of-Sale system

  - by Jonas

  I am implementing a Point-of-Sale system. In the system I represent an Item in three places, and I wounder how I should represent them in OOP. First I have the WarehouseItem, that contains price, purchase price, info about the supplier, suppliers price, info about the product and quantity in warehouse. Then I have CartItem, which contains the same fields as WarehouseItem, but adds NrOfItems and Discount. And finally I have ReceiptItem, thats contains an item where I have stripped of info about the supplier, and only contains the price that was payed. Are there any OOP-recommendations, best-practices or design patterns that I could apply for this? I don't really know if CartItem should contain (wrap) an WarehouseItem, or extend it, or if I just should copy the fields that I need. Maybe I should create an Item-class where I keep all common fields, and then extend it to WarehouseItem, CartItem and ReceiptItem. Sometimes I think that it is good to keep the field of the item and just display the information that is needed.

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• Cassandra/HBase or just MySQL: Potential problems doing the next thing

  - by alexeypro

  Say I have "user". It's the key. And I need to keep "user count". I am planning to have record with key "user" and value "0" to "9999+ ;-)" (as many as I'll have). What problems I will drive in if I use Cassandra, HBase or MySQL for that? Say, I have thousand of new updates to this "user" key, where I need to increment the value. Am I in trouble? Locked for writes? Any other way of doing that? Why this is done -- there will be a lot of "user"-like keys. Different other cases. But the idea is the same. Why keep it this way -- because I'll have more reads, so I can always get "counted value" very fast.

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• Storing and comparing biometric information

  - by Chathuranga Chandrasekara

  I am not sure whether this is the best place to post this. But this is strongly related with programming so decided to put this here. In general we use biometrics in computer applications say for authentication. Lets get 2 examples finger prints and facial recognition. In those cases how we keep the information for comparison. As an example we can't keep a image and process it every time. So what are the methodologies we use to store/determine the similarity in such cases? Are there any special algorithms that designed for that purposes.? (Ex : To return a approximately equal value for a finger print of a certain person every time)

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• Quick question regarding CSS sprites and memory usage

  - by Andy E

  Well, it's more to do with images and memory in general. If I use the same image multiple times on a page, will each image be consolidated in memory? Or will each image use a seperate amount of memory? I'm concerned about this because I'm building a skinning system for a Windows Desktop Gadget, and I'm looking at spriting the images in the default skin so that I can keep the file system looking clean. At the same time I want to try and keep the memory footprint to a minimum. If I end up with a single file containing 100 images and re-use that image 100 times across the gadget I don't want to have performance issues. Cheers.

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• Try a sample: Using the counter predicate for event sampling

  - by extended_events

  Extended Events offers a rich filtering mechanism, called predicates, that allows you to reduce the number of events you collect by specifying criteria that will be applied during event collection. (You can find more information about predicates in Using SQL Server 2008 Extended Events (by Jonathan Kehayias)) By evaluating predicates early in the event firing sequence we can reduce the performance impact of collecting events by stopping event collection when the criteria are not met. You can specify predicates on both event fields and on a special object called a predicate source. Predicate sources are similar to action in that they typically are related to some type of global information available from the server. You will find that many of the actions available in Extended Events have equivalent predicate sources, but actions and predicates sources are not the same thing. Applying predicates, whether on a field or predicate source, is very similar to what you are used to in T-SQL in terms of how they work; you pick some field/source and compare it to a value, for example, session_id = 52. There is one predicate source that merits special attention though, not just for its special use, but for how the order of predicate evaluation impacts the behavior you see. I’m referring to the counter predicate source. The counter predicate source gives you a way to sample a subset of events that otherwise meet the criteria of the predicate; for example you could collect every other event, or only every tenth event. Simple CountingThe counter predicate source works by creating an in memory counter that increments every time the predicate statement is evaluated. Here is a simple example with my favorite event, sql_statement_completed, that only collects the second statement that is run. (OK, that’s not much of a sample, but this is for demonstration purposes. Here is the session definition: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.counter = 2)ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS) You can find general information about the session DDL syntax in BOL and from Pedro’s post Introduction to Extended Events. The important part here is the WHERE statement that defines that I only what the event where package0.count = 2; in other words, only the second instance of the event. Notice that I need to provide the package name along with the predicate source. You don’t need to provide the package name if you’re using event fields, only for predicate sources. Let’s say I run the following test queries: -- Run three statements to test the sessionSELECT 'This is the first statement'GOSELECT 'This is the second statement'GOSELECT 'This is the third statement';GO Once you return the event data from the ring buffer and parse the XML (see my earlier post on reading event data) you should see something like this: event_name sql_text sql_statement_completed SELECT ‘This is the second statement’ You can see that only the second statement from the test was actually collected. (Feel free to try this yourself. Check out what happens if you remove the WHERE statement from your session. Go ahead, I’ll wait.) Percentage Sampling OK, so that wasn’t particularly interesting, but you can probably see that this could be interesting, for example, lets say I need a 25% sample of the statements executed on my server for some type of QA analysis, that might be more interesting than just the second statement. All comparisons of predicates are handled using an object called a predicate comparator; the simple comparisons such as equals, greater than, etc. are mapped to the common mathematical symbols you know and love (eg. = and >), but to do the less common comparisons you will need to use the predicate comparators directly. You would probably look to the MOD operation to do this type sampling; we would too, but we don’t call it MOD, we call it divides_by_uint64. This comparator evaluates whether one number is divisible by another with no remainder. The general syntax for using a predicate comparator is pred_comp(field, value), field is always first and value is always second. So lets take a look at how the session changes to answer our new question of 25% sampling: CREATE EVENT SESSION counter_test_25 ON SERVERADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed    (ACTION (sqlserver.sql_text)    WHERE package0.divides_by_uint64(package0.counter,4))ADD TARGET package0.ring_bufferWITH (MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY = 1 SECONDS)GO Here I’ve replaced the simple equivalency check with the divides_by_uint64 comparator to check if the counter is evenly divisible by 4, which gives us back every fourth record. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to test this session. Why order matters I indicated at the start of this post that order matters when it comes to the counter predicate – it does. Like most other predicate systems, Extended Events evaluates the predicate statement from left to right; as soon as the predicate statement is proven false we abandon evaluation of the remainder of the statement. The counter predicate source is only incremented when it is evaluated so whether or not the counter is incremented will depend on where it is in the predicate statement and whether a previous criteria made the predicate false or not. Here is a generic example: Pred1: (WHERE statement_1 AND package0.counter = 2)Pred2: (WHERE package0.counter = 2 AND statement_1) Let’s say I cause a number of events as follows and examine what happens to the counter predicate source. Iteration Statement Pred1 Counter Pred2 Counter A Not statement_1 0 1 B statement_1 1 2 C Not statement_1 1 3 D statement_1 2 4 As you can see, in the case of Pred1, statement_1 is evaluated first, when it fails (A & C) predicate evaluation is stopped and the counter is not incremented. With Pred2 the counter is evaluated first, so it is incremented on every iteration of the event and the remaining parts of the predicate are then evaluated. In this example, Pred1 would return an event for D while Pred2 would return an event for B. But wait, there is an interesting side-effect here; consider Pred2 if I had run my statements in the following order: Not statement_1 Not statement_1 statement_1 statement_1 In this case I would never get an event back from the system because the point at which counter=2, the rest of the predicate evaluates as false so the event is not returned. If you’re using the counter target for sampling and you’re not getting the expected events, or any events, check the order of the predicate criteria. As a general rule I’d suggest that the counter criteria should be the last element of your predicate statement since that will assure that your sampling rate will apply to the set of event records defined by the rest of your predicate. Aside: I’m interested in hearing about uses for putting the counter predicate criteria earlier in the predicate statement. If you have one, post it in a comment to share with the class. - Mike Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• How To Run integrational Tests

  - by Vladimir

  In our project we have a plenty of Unit Tests. They help to keep project rather well-tested. Besides them we have a set of tests which are unit tests, but depends on some kind of external resource. We call them external tests. They can access web-service sometimes or similar. While unit tests is easy to run the integrational tests couldn't pass sometimes - for example due to timeout error. Also these tests can take too much time to run. Currently we keep integration/external unit tests just to run them when developing corresponding functionality. For plain unit tests we use TeamCIty for continuous integration. How do you run the integration unit tests and when do you run them?

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• Style: Dot notation vs. message notation in Objective-C 2.0

  - by groundhog

  In Objective-C 2.0 we got the "dot" notation for properties. I've seen various back and forths about the merits of dot notation vs. message notation. To keep the responses untainted I'm not going to respond either way in the question. What is your thought about dot notation vs. message notation for property accessing? Please try to keep it focused on Objective-C - my one bias I'll put forth is that Objective-C is Objective-C, so your preference that it be like Java or JavaScript aren't valid. Valid commentary is to do with technical issues (operation ordering, cast precedence, performance, etc), clarity (structure vs. object nature, both pro and con!), succinctness, etc. Note, I'm of the school of rigorous quality and readability in code having worked on huge projects where code convention and quality is paramount (the write once read a thousand times paradigm).

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• Anything wrong with spamming GC.KeepAlive(KeyboardHookPointer)?

  - by Alex

  GC.KeepAlive() References the specified object, which makes it ineligible for garbage collection from the start of the current routine to the point where this method is called. Not really sure about what GC.KeepAlive does other than simply store a reference so the Garbage Collector doesn't collect the object. But does calling GC.KeepAlive() on an object permanently keep an object from being collected? Or do you have to re-call GC.KeepAlive() every so often (and if so, how often)? I want to keep my keyboard hook alive.

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• Diet for programmer [closed]

  - by phenevo

  Hi, Do you have any special diet to keep you mind clearly and productive ? (Something else that coffee :) )

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• Get Started using Build-Deploy-Test Workflow with TFS 2012

  - by Jakob Ehn

  TFS 2012 introduces a new type of Lab environment called Standard Environment. This allows you to setup a full Build Deploy Test (BDT) workflow that will build your application, deploy it to your target machine(s) and then run a set of tests on that server to verify the deployment. In TFS 2010, you had to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager and involve half of your IT department to get going. Now all you need is a server (virtual or physical) where you want to deploy and test your application. You don’t even have to install a test agent on the machine, TFS 2012 will do this for you! Although each step is rather simple, the entire process of setting it up consists of a bunch of steps. So I thought that it could be useful to run through a typical setup.I will also link to some good guidance from MSDN on each topic. High Level Steps Install and configure Visual Studio 2012 Test Controller on Target Server Create Standard Environment Create Test Plan with Test Case Run Test Case Create Coded UI Test from Test Case Associate Coded UI Test with Test Case Create Build Definition using LabDefaultTemplate 1. Install and Configure Visual Studio 2012 Test Controller on Target Server First of all, note that you do not have to have the Test Controller running on the target server. It can be running on another server, as long as the Test Agent can communicate with the test controller and the test controller can communicate with the TFS server. If you have several machines in your environment (web server, database server etc..), the test controller can be installed either on one of those machines or on a dedicated machine. To install the test controller, simply mount the Visual Studio Agents media on the server and browse to the vstf_controller.exe file located in the TestController folder. Run through the installation, you might need to reboot the server since it installs .NET 4.5. When the test controller is installed, the Test Controller configuration tool will launch automatically (if it doesn’t, you can start it from the Start menu). Here you will supply the credentials of the account running the test controller service. Note that this account will be given the necessary permissions in TFS during the configuration. Make sure that you have entered a valid account by pressing the Test link. Also, you have to register the test controller with the TFS collection where your test plan is located (and usually the code base of course) When you press Apply Settings, all the configuration will be done. You might get some warnings at the end, that might or might not cause a problem later. Be sure to read them carefully.   For more information about configuring your test controllers, see Setting Up Test Controllers and Test Agents to Manage Tests with Visual Studio 2. Create Standard Environment Now you need to create a Lab environment in Microsoft Test Manager. Since we are using an existing physical or virtual machine we will create a Standard Environment. Open MTM and go to Lab Center. Click New to create a new environment Enter a name for the environment. Since this environment will only contain one machine, we will use the machine name for the environment (TargetServer in this case) On the next page, click Add to add a machine to the environment. Enter the name of the machine (TargetServer.Domain.Com), and give it the Web Server role. The name must be reachable both from your machine during configuration and from the TFS app tier server. You also need to supply an account that is a local administration on the target server. This is needed in order to automatically install a test agent later on the machine. On the next page, you can add tags to the machine. This is not needed in this scenario so go to the next page. Here you will specify which test controller to use and that you want to run UI tests on this environment. This will in result in a Test Agent being automatically installed and configured on the target server. The name of the machine where you installed the test controller should be available on the drop down list (TargetServer in this sample). If you can’t see it, you might have selected a different TFS project collection. Press Next twice and then Verify to verify all the settings: Press finish. This will now create and prepare the environment, which means that it will remote install a test agent on the machine. As part of this installation, the remote server will be restarted. 3-5. Create Test Plan, Run Test Case, Create Coded UI Test I will not cover step 3-5 here, there are plenty of information on how you create test plans and test cases and automate them using Coded UI Tests. In this example I have a test plan called My Application and it contains among other things a test suite called Automated Tests where I plan to put test cases that should be automated and executed as part of the BDT workflow. For more information about Coded UI Tests, see Verifying Code by Using Coded User Interface Tests   6. Associate Coded UI Test with Test Case OK, so now we want to automate our Coded UI Test and have it run as part of the BDT workflow. You might think that you coded UI test already is automated, but the meaning of the term here is that you link your coded UI Test to an existing Test Case, thereby making the Test Case automated. And the test case should be part of the test suite that we will run during the BDT. Open the solution that contains the coded UI test method. Open the Test Case work item that you want to automate. Go to the Associated Automation tab and click on the “…” button. Select the coded UI test that you corresponds to the test case: Press OK and the save the test case For more information about associating an automated test case with a test case, see How to: Associate an Automated Test with a Test Case 7. Create Build Definition using LabDefaultTemplate Now we are ready to create a build definition that will implement the full BDT workflow. For this purpose we will use the LabDefaultTemplate.11.xaml that comes out of the box in TFS 2012. This build process template lets you take the output of another build and deploy it to each target machine. Since the deployment process will be running on the target server, you will have less problem with permissions and firewalls than if you were to remote deploy your solution. So, before creating a BDT workflow build definition, make sure that you have an existing build definition that produces a release build of your application. Go to the Builds hub in Team Explorer and select New Build Definition Give the build definition a meaningful name, here I called it MyApplication.Deploy Set the trigger to Manual Define a workspace for the build definition. Note that a BDT build doesn’t really need a workspace, since all it does is to launch another build definition and deploy the output of that build. But TFS doesn’t allow you to save a build definition without adding at least one mapping. On Build Defaults, select the build controller. Since this build actually won’t produce any output, you can select the “This build does not copy output files to a drop folder” option. On the process tab, select the LabDefaultTemplate.11.xaml. This is usually located at $/TeamProject/BuildProcessTemplates/LabDefaultTemplate.11.xaml. To configure it, press the … button on the Lab Process Settings property First, select the environment that you created before: Select which build that you want to deploy and test. The “Select an existing build” option is very useful when developing the BDT workflow, because you do not have to run through the target build every time, instead it will basically just run through the deployment and test steps which speeds up the process. Here I have selected to queue a new build of the MyApplication.Test build definition On the deploy tab, you need to specify how the application should be installed on the target server. You can supply a list of deployment scripts with arguments that will be executed on the target server. In this example I execute the generated web deploy command file to deploy the solution. If you for example have databases you can use sqlpackage.exe to deploy the database. If you are producing MSI installers in your build, you can run them using msiexec.exe and so on. A good practice is to create a batch file that contain the entire deployment that you can run both locally and on the target server. Then you would just execute the deployment batch file here in one single step. The workflow defines some variables that are useful when running the deployments. These variables are: $(BuildLocation) The full path to where your build files are located $(InternalComputerName_<VM Name>) The computer name for a virtual machine in a SCVMM environment $(ComputerName_<VM Name>) The fully qualified domain name of the virtual machine As you can see, I specify the path to the myapplication.deploy.cmd file using the $(BuildLocation) variable, which is the drop folder of the MyApplication.Test build. Note: The test agent account must have read permission in this drop location. You can find more information here on Building your Deployment Scripts On the last tab, we specify which tests to run after deployment. Here I select the test plan and the Automated Tests test suite that we saw before: Note that I also selected the automated test settings (called TargetServer in this case) that I have defined for my test plan. In here I define what data that should be collected as part of the test run. For more information about test settings, see Specifying Test Settings for Microsoft Test Manager Tests We are done! Queue your BDT build and wait for it to finish. If the build succeeds, your build summary should look something like this:

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• Is it possible to interop with Thunderbird using C#?

  - by Jurily

  Here's the latest hurdle in my ongoing quest to automate my job: All email in the company goes through 4 different email adresses, switching randomly back and forth (with a note attached in the global share: please set "keep email on server") All logic related to email is contained in a nice big Thunderbird profile, which gets copied back and forth to new machines; this includes sorting invoices into 5 different "folders", the list of VIP adresses to send notifications, and the VIP level of those customers I only need the contents of those folders (the attachments, anyway) The question: is there a way to ask Thunderbird for those attachments and lists from C#? Alternatively, can Outlook be set up to synchronize with Thunderbird? Where do I start reading? Ditching Thunderbird is not an option right now, I need to keep up with changes to the VIP list. P.S. I will set up a real email server right after Monkey saves me enough time to convince people about it.

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• GNU Flex, multiline rule

  - by Simone Margaritelli

  Hi there i have a flex rule inside my lexer definition : operators "[]"|"[]="|"[]<"|".."|"."|".="|"+"|"+="|"-"|"-="|"/"|"/="|"*"|"*="|"%"|"%="|"++"|"--"|"^"|"^="|"~"|"&"|"&="|"|"|"|="|"<<"|"<<="|">>"|"!"|"<"|">"|">="|"<="|"=="|"!="|"&&"|"||"|"~=" Is there any way to split this ruole on more lines to keep it clearer? I tried with \ just like macros but it does not seem to be accepted by flex :( PS: I don't want to split the rule in more sub-rules, but only split its regex in more lines to keep the code clearer.

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• Server removes all custom HTTP header fields

  - by MartinMoizard

  Hello, I've been trying to receive HTTP requests with custom fields in the headers but it seems like my server removes them... I printed the headers of the request when I arrive on my page.php. I see that : body uri http://url.com/oauth.php/request_token parameters headers Array ....*/* ....gzip, deflate ....en-us ....keep-alive ....s320650601.onlinehome.fr ....DearStranger/1.0 CFNetwork/485.12.7 Darwin/10.6.0 method POST when I should be seeing that (it is working on a local version) body uri http://localhost:8888/oauth.php/request_token parameters headers Array ....*/* ....gzip, deflate ....en-us ....OAuth realm="", oauth_consumer_key="582d95bd45d455fa2e5819f88fc0c5a104d2c7ff3", oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1", oauth_signature="7mKKzEw0Clv237nBHFzcTcA3SCE%3D", oauth_timestamp="1295267612", oauth_nonce="C546644E-8918-4FA3-A2A0-DAADCF7D1E5A", oauth_version="1.0" ....keep-alive ....0 ....localhost:8888 ....DearStranger/1.0 CFNetwork/485.12.7 Darwin/10.6.0 method POST I am using php 5.2.17 on the server. Do you have any idea to help my fix that issue? Thanks!

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• How mod_cache working with "must-revalidate" and "max-age"?

  - by Dmitriy Sosunov

  Quick question before I will explain my flow: ?an mod_cache perform revalidate with if-none-match only if max-age is expired in case if it configured in reverse proxy mode? My goal is to reduce a number of revalidation requests to our the origin server. For instance: The first request goes to the origin server and then mod_cache save a response in to the cache according to header cache-control: max-age. And only when max-age is expired then mod_cache will revalidate with if-none-match. Currently, mod_cache revalidate each request, regardless that max-age is defined or not. My configuration of Apache 2.4.3 (Windows), on linux I see the same behavior that I will show below. ServerName proxy.lo ProxyRequests Off ProxyPreserveHost Off Header set Vary "Accept, Content-Type, Content-Encoding, Accept-Language" RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Proto "http" # modify header for user agent's Header set Cache-Control "private, no-cache, no-store, no-transform" CacheQuickHandler off CacheDefaultExpire 300 # the origin server do not provide last-modified CacheIgnoreNoLastMod On CacheIgnoreCacheControl On # the origin server define cache-control: private, no-store only for user agents # Therefore, I would like ignore those headers on the proxy server. CacheStorePrivate On CacheStoreNoStore On CacheEnable disk / CacheRoot "C:/Apache.Cache" CacheDirLevels 5 CacheDirLength 4 CacheMinExpire 15 CacheDetailHeader on CacheHeader on KeepAlive Off ProxyPass / http://origin.lo/ ProxyPassReverse / http://origin.lo/ Also, I have turned on debug log level to see how mod_cache handles a content for caching: I provided this to show that mod_proxy always decides that a content isn't fresh. Why?I provided this to show that mod_proxy always decide that a content isn't fresh. Why? max-age was provided (see below). [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [cache:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] cache_storage.c(624): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00698: cache: Key for entity /testpage?(null) is http://proxy.lo/testpage? [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [cache_disk:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_cache_disk.c(569): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00709: Recalled cached URL info header http://proxy.lo/testpage? [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [cache_disk:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_cache_disk.c(865): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00720: Recalled headers for URL http://proxy.lo/testpage? [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [cache:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] cache_storage.c(320): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00695: Cached response for /testpage isn't fresh. Adding/replacing conditional request headers. [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [cache:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_cache.c(414): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00757: Adding CACHE_SAVE filter for /testpage [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [cache:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_cache.c(448): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00759: Adding CACHE_REMOVE_URL filter for /testpage [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [proxy:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_proxy.c(1068): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH01143: Running scheme http handler (attempt 0) [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [proxy:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] proxy_util.c(1976): AH00942: HTTP: has acquired connection for (origin.lo) [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.899890 2012] [proxy:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] proxy_util.c(2029): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00944: connecting http://origin.lo/testpage to origin.lo:80 [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.901890 2012] [proxy:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] proxy_util.c(2151): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00947: connected /testpage to origin.lo:80 [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.901890 2012] [proxy:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] proxy_util.c(2554): AH00962: HTTP: connection complete to 192.168.1.100:80 (origin.lo) [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.903890 2012] [proxy:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] proxy_util.c(1991): AH00943: http: has released connection for (origin.lo) [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.903890 2012] [headers:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_headers.c(800): AH01502: headers: ap_headers_output_filter() [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.903890 2012] [cache:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_cache.c(1190): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00769: cache: Caching url: /testpage [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.903890 2012] [cache:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_cache.c(1196): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00770: cache: Removing CACHE_REMOVE_URL filter. [Sun Nov 04 11:58:42.904890 2012] [cache_disk:debug] [pid 6492:tid 1400] mod_cache_disk.c(1318): [client 192.168.1.100:63741] AH00737: commit_entity: Headers and body for URL http://proxy.lo/testpage? cached. The first request to the origin server without mod_proxy to http://origin.lo/ GET http://origin.lo/testpage HTTP/1.1 Host: origin.lo Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.94 Safari/537.4 Accept: application/json Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 The first response from the origin without mod_proxy HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate, max-age=30 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 ETag: "7cf651e2-176f-4ac1-808e-0e0c17cfd0a2" Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:11:01 GMT Content-Length: 1877 So, I assumed that revalidation must be occur only in 30 seconds after the success response. Is't right? Let's check it:) Within 30 sec, the Google Chrome didn't perform any requests to the origin server to revalidate a request and has return the response from local cache. When max-age is expired, the Google Chrome perform a request to revalidate: GET http://origin.lo/testpage HTTP/1.1 Host: origin.lo Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.94 Safari/537.4 Accept: application/xml If-None-Match: "7cf651e2-176f-4ac1-808e-0e0c17cfd0a2" Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 and response: HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified Cache-Control: must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate, max-age=30 ETag: "7cf651e2-176f-4ac1-808e-0e0c17cfd0a2" Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:16:20 GMT As you can see, all works as expected. User agent revalidates request only when max-age is expired. Let's now try perform the folling flow though mod_proxy (see configuration above). The first request: GET http://proxy.lo/testpage HTTP/1.1 Host: proxy.lo Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.94 Safari/537.4 Accept: application/json Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 and the response was: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:23:36 GMT Server: Apache Cache-Control: private, no-cache, no-store, no-transform Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 ETag: "7cf651e2-176f-4ac1-808e-0e0c17cfd0a2" Content-Length: 1932 Vary: Accept,Content-Type,Content-Encoding,Accept-Language X-Cache: MISS from proxy.lo X-Cache-Detail: "cache miss: attempting entity save" from proxy.lo Connection: close Ok, let's see to the disk cache and try to see how request and response was stored. (I cut binary data) http://proxy.lo/testpage? Cache-Control: private, no-cache, no-store, no-transform Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 ETag: "7cf651e2-176f-4ac1-808e-0e0c17cfd0a2" Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:27:15 GMT Content-Length: 1932 Vary: Accept, Content-Type, Content-Encoding, Accept-Language Host: proxy.lo User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.94 Safari/537.4 Accept: application/json Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 X-Forwarded-Proto: http Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate X-Forwarded-For: 192.168.1.100 X-Forwarded-Host: proxy.lo X-Forwarded-Server: origin.lo Ok, what we see? We see that the first request was performed with max-age=300 & must-revalidate Ok, looks good, as for me, lets perform the next call: GET http://proxy.lo/testpage HTTP/1.1 Host: proxy.lo Connection: keep-alive User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.94 Safari/537.4 Accept: application/json Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 and the second response from mod_proxy: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:31:58 GMT Server: Apache Cache-Control: private, no-cache, no-store, no-transform ETag: "7cf651e2-176f-4ac1-808e-0e0c17cfd0a2" Content-Length: 1932 Vary: Accept,Content-Type,Content-Encoding,Accept-Language X-Cache: REVALIDATE from proxy.lo X-Cache-Detail: "conditional cache hit: entity refreshed" from proxy.lo Connection: close Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 SO, MY QUESTION IS: WHY mod_proxy perform revalidation on each request regardless that max-age is defined? N.B. Apache 2.4.3 Thanks, I would be grateful for any help.

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• best practices for setting development environment

  - by Sharique

  I use Linux as primary OS. I need some suggestions regarding how should I set up my desktop and development. I do work on mostly .Net and Drupal, but some time on other lamp products and C/C++, Qt. I'm also interested in mobile (android..) and embedded development. Currently I install everything on my main OS, even I use it a little. I use VMs a little. Should I use separate VM for each kind of development (like one for .Net/Mono, another C++, one for mobile and one for db only, one for xyz things etc) Keep primary development environment on main os and moveothers in VM. main os should be messed up keep things easy to organize (must) performance should be optimal

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• Does Test Driven Development (TDD) improve Quality and Correctness? (Part 1)

  - by David V. Corbin

  Since the dawn of the computer age, various methodologies have been introduced to improve quality and reduce cost. In this posting, I will by sharing my experiences with Test Driven Development; both its benefits and limitations. To start this topic, we need to agree on what TDD is. The first is to define each of the three words as used in this context. Test - An item or action which measures something in some quantifiable form. Driven - The primary motivation or focus of a series of activities (process) Development - All phases of a software project/product from concept through delivery. The above are very simple definitions that result in the following: "TDD is a process where the primary focus is on measuring and quantifying all aspects of the creation of a (software) product." There are many places where TDD is used outside of software development, even though it is not known by this name. Consider the (conventional) education process that most of us grew up on. The focus was to get the best grades as measured by different tests. Many of these tests measured rote memorization and not understanding of the subject matter. The result of this that many people graduated with high scores but without "quality and correctness" in their ability to utilize the subject matter (of course, the flip side is true where certain people DID understand the material but were not very good at taking this type of test). Returning to software development, let us look at some common scenarios. While these items are generally applicable regardless of platform, language and tools; the remainder of this post will utilize Microsoft Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) for examples. It should be realized that everyone does at least some aspect of TDD. At the most rudimentary level, getting a program to compile involves a "pass/fail" measurement (is the syntax valid) that drives their ability to proceed further (run the program). Other developers may create "Unit Tests" in the belief that having a test for every method/property of a class and good code coverage is the goal of TDD. These items may be helpful and even important, but really only address a small aspect of the overall effort. To see TDD in a bigger view, lets identify the various activities that are part of the Software Development LifeCycle. These are going to be presented in a Waterfall style for simplicity, but each item also occurs within Iterative methodologies such as Agile/Scrum. the key ones here are: Requirements Gathering Architecture Design Implementation Quality Assurance Can each of these items be subjected to a process which establishes metrics (quantified metrics) that reflect both the quality and correctness of each item? It should be clear that conventional Unit Tests do not apply to all of these items; at best they can verify that a local aspect (e.g. a Class/Method) of implementation matches the (test writers perspective of) the appropriate design document. So what can we do? For each of area, the goal is to create tests that are quantifiable and durable. The ability to quantify the measurements (beyond a simple pass/fail) is critical to tracking progress(eventually measuring the level of success that has been achieved) and for providing clear information on what items need to be addressed (along with the appropriate time to address them - in varying levels of detail) . Durability is important so that the test can be reapplied (ideally in an automated fashion) over the entire cycle. Returning for a moment back to our "education example", one must also be careful of how the tests are organized and how the measurements are taken. If a test is in a multiple choice format, there is a significant statistical probability that a correct answer might be the result of a random guess. Also, in many situations, having the student simply provide a final answer can obscure many important elements. For example, on a math test, having the student simply provide a numeric answer (rather than showing the methodology) may result in a complete mismatch between the process and the result. It is hard to determine which is worse: The student who makes a simple arithmetric error at one step of a long process (resulting in a wrong answer) or The student who (without providing the "workflow") uses a completely invalid approach, yet still comes up with the right number. The "Wrong Process"/"Right Answer" is probably the single biggest problem in software development. Even very simple items can suffer from this. As an example consider the following code for a "straight line" calculation....Is it correct? (for Integral Points)         int Solve(int m, int b, int x) { return m * x + b; }   Most people would respond "Yes". But let's take the question one step further... Is it correct for all possible values of m,b,x??? (no fair if you cheated by being focused on the bolded text!)  Without additional information regarding constrains on "the possible values of m,b,x" the answer must be NO, there is the risk of overflow/wraparound that will produce an incorrect result! To properly answer this question (i.e. Test the Code), one MUST be able to backtrack from the implementation through the design, and architecture all the way back to the requirements. And the requirement itself must be tested against the stakeholder(s). It is only when the bounding conditions are defined that it is possible to determine if the code is "Correct" and has "Quality". Yet, how many of us (myself included) have written such code without even thinking about it. In many canses we (think we) "know" what the bounds are, and that the code will be correct. As we all know, requirements change, "code reuse" causes implementations to be applied to different scenarios, etc. This leads directly to the types of system failures that plague so many projects. This approach to TDD is much more holistic than ones which start by focusing on the details. The fundamental concepts still apply: Each item should be tested. The test should be defined/implemented before (or concurrent with) the definition/implementation of the actual item. We also add concepts that expand the scope and alter the style by recognizing: There are many things beside "lines of code" that benefit from testing (measuring/evaluating in a formal way) Correctness and Quality can not be solely measured by "correct results" In the future parts, we will examine in greater detail some of the techniques that can be applied to each of these areas....

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• Use mod_rewrite to redirect from example.com/dir to www.example.com/dir

  - by kavoir.com

  Assume / is the document root of my domain example.com. /.htaccess RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^golfcoursesd\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.golfcoursesd.com/$1 [R=301,L] /dir/.htaccess <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /dir/index.php [L] </IfModule> I know how to redirect example.com/dir to www.example.com/dir, because /.htaccess does the very job. However, the trick here is that I have to keep /dir/.htaccess to serve up virtual directories (such as /dir/state/AK/35827/ which aren't actual directories) if you know what I mean. Problem is, if I keep /dir/.htaccess, a request of: http://example.com/dir/state/AK/35827/ DOES NOT redirect to: http://www.example.com/dir/state/AK/35827/ as would: http://example.com/ redirect to: http://www.example.com/ Not sure if I made it clear. Basically, how to make http://example.com/dir/state/AK/35827/ correctly redirect to http://www.example.com/dir/state/AK/35827/ AND I can serve virtual URLs?

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #034

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 UDF – User Defined Function to Strip HTML – Parse HTML – No Regular Expression The UDF used in the blog does fantastic task – it scans entire HTML text and removes all the HTML tags. It keeps only valid text data without HTML task. This is one of the quite commonly requested tasks many developers have to face everyday. De-fragmentation of Database at Operating System to Improve Performance Operating system skips MDF file while defragging the entire filesystem of the operating system. It is absolutely fine and there is no impact of the same on performance. Read the entire blog post for my conversation with our network engineers. Delay Function – WAITFOR clause – Delay Execution of Commands How do you delay execution of the commands in SQL Server – ofcourse by using WAITFOR keyword. In this blog post, I explain the same with the help of T-SQL script. Find Length of Text Field To measure the length of TEXT fields the function is DATALENGTH(textfield). Len will not work for text field. As of SQL Server 2005, developers should migrate all the text fields to VARCHAR(MAX) as that is the way forward. Retrieve Current Date Time in SQL Server CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} There are three ways to retrieve the current datetime in SQL SERVER. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} Explanation and Comparison of NULLIF and ISNULL An interesting observation is NULLIF returns null if it comparison is successful, whereas ISNULL returns not null if its comparison is successful. In one way they are opposite to each other. Here is my question to you - How to create infinite loop using NULLIF and ISNULL? If this is even possible? 2008 Introduction to SERVERPROPERTY and example SERVERPROPERTY is a very interesting system function. It returns many of the system values. I use it very frequently to get different server values like Server Collation, Server Name etc. SQL Server Start Time We can use DMV to find out what is the start time of SQL Server in 2008 and later version. In this blog you can see how you can do the same. Find Current Identity of Table Many times we need to know what is the current identity of the column. I have found one of my developers using aggregated function MAX () to find the current identity. However, I prefer following DBCC command to figure out current identity. Create Check Constraint on Column Some time we just need to create a simple constraint over the table but I have noticed that developers do many different things to make table column follow rules than just creating constraint. I suggest constraint is a very useful concept and every SQL Developer should pay good attention to this subject. 2009 List Schema Name and Table Name for Database This is one of the blog post where I straight forward display script. One of the kind of blog posts, which I still love to read and write. Clustered Index on Separate Drive From Table Location A table devoid of primary key index is called heap, and here data is not arranged in a particular order, which gives rise to issues that adversely affect performance. Data must be stored in some kind of order. If we put clustered index on it then the order will be forced by that index and the data will be stored in that particular order. Understanding Table Hints with Examples Hints are options and strong suggestions specified for enforcement by the SQL Server query processor on DML statements. The hints override any execution plan the query optimizer might select for a query. 2010 Data Pages in Buffer Pool – Data Stored in Memory Cache One of my earlier year article, which I still read it many times and point developers to read it again. It is clear from the Resultset that when more than one index is used, datapages related to both or all of the indexes are stored in Memory Cache separately. TRANSACTION, DML and Schema Locks Can you create a situation where you can see Schema Lock? Well, this is a very simple question, however during the interview I notice over 50 candidates failed to come up with the scenario. In this blog post, I have demonstrated the situation where we can see the schema lock in database. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not updated but are Created Once In this example I have created following situation: Create Table Insert 1000 Records Check the Statistics Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE Now I have requested two things in the example 1) Why this is happening? 2) How to fix this issue? Selecting Domain from Email Address This is a straight to script blog post where I explain how to select only domain name from entire email address. Solution – Generating Zero Without using Any Numbers in T-SQL How to get zero digit without using any digit? This is indeed a very interesting question and the answer is even interesting. Try to come up with answer in next 10 minutes and if you can’t come up with the answer the blog post read this post for solution. 2012 Simple Explanation and Puzzle with SOUNDEX Function and DIFFERENCE Function In simple words - SOUNDEX converts an alphanumeric string to a four-character code to find similar-sounding words or names. DIFFERENCE function returns an integer value. The  integer returned is the number of characters in the SOUNDEX values that are the same. Read Only Files and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I have come across a very interesting feature in SSMS related to “Read Only” files. I believe it is a little unknown feature as well so decided to write a blog about the same. Identifying Column Data Type of uniqueidentifier without Querying System Tables How do I know if any table has a uniqueidentifier column and what is its value without using any DMV or System Catalogues? Only information you know is the table name and you are allowed to return any kind of error if the table does not have uniqueidentifier column. Read the blog post to find the answer. Solution – User Not Able to See Any User Created Object in Tables – Security and Permissions Issue Interesting question – “When I try to connect to SQL Server, it lets me connect just fine as well let me open and explore the database. I noticed that I do not see any user created instances but when my colleague attempts to connect to the server, he is able to explore the database as well see all the user created tables and other objects. Can you help me fix it?” Importing CSV File Into Database – SQL in Sixty Seconds #018 – Video Here is interesting small 60 second video on how to import CSV file into Database. ColumnStore Index – Batch Mode vs Row Mode Here is the logic behind when Columnstore Index uses Batch Mode and when it uses Row Mode. A batch typically represents about 1000 rows of data. Batch mode processing also uses algorithms that are optimized for the multicore CPUs and increased memory throughput. Follow up – Usage of $rowguid and $IDENTITY This is an excellent follow up blog post of my earlier blog post where I explain where to use $rowguid and $identity.  If you do not know the difference between them, this is a blog with a script example. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Image animation over CGContextDrawPDFPage

  - by BittenApple

  I have a pdf page displayed with CGContextDrawPDFPage in QuartzDemo sample application. I want to keep this page shown and have an image slide in from top over this page, just as it can be seen in the iBooks application. It's a book, the sliding image is a bookmark that slides in when you are about to close the book. I added this code by DyingCactus (hint: im a newbie to obj c and iphone dev) as follows: In QuartzViewController.m, the animation starts to show but the view slides away before the animation is finished, in fact I think the animation goes on while the view is sliding away. -(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated { [self.quartzView setFrame:CGRectMake(150, -200, 100, 200)]; [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:1.0]; [self.quartzView setFrame:CGRectMake(150, 0, 100, 200)]; [UIView commitAnimations]; } How can I keep the view visible and finish the animation before view disappears?

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• Fraud Detection with the SQL Server Suite Part 1

  - by Dejan Sarka

  While working on different fraud detection projects, I developed my own approach to the solution for this problem. In my PASS Summit 2013 session I am introducing this approach. I also wrote a whitepaper on the same topic, which was generously reviewed by my friend Matija Lah. In order to spread this knowledge faster, I am starting a series of blog posts which will at the end make the whole whitepaper. Abstract With the massive usage of credit cards and web applications for banking and payment processing, the number of fraudulent transactions is growing rapidly and on a global scale. Several fraud detection algorithms are available within a variety of different products. In this paper, we focus on using the Microsoft SQL Server suite for this purpose. In addition, we will explain our original approach to solving the problem by introducing a continuous learning procedure. Our preferred type of service is mentoring; it allows us to perform the work and consulting together with transferring the knowledge onto the customer, thus making it possible for a customer to continue to learn independently. This paper is based on practical experience with different projects covering online banking and credit card usage. Introduction A fraud is a criminal or deceptive activity with the intention of achieving financial or some other gain. Fraud can appear in multiple business areas. You can find a detailed overview of the business domains where fraud can take place in Sahin Y., & Duman E. (2011), Detecting Credit Card Fraud by Decision Trees and Support Vector Machines, Proceedings of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2011 Vol 1. Hong Kong: IMECS. Dealing with frauds includes fraud prevention and fraud detection. Fraud prevention is a proactive mechanism, which tries to disable frauds by using previous knowledge. Fraud detection is a reactive mechanism with the goal of detecting suspicious behavior when a fraudster surpasses the fraud prevention mechanism. A fraud detection mechanism checks every transaction and assigns a weight in terms of probability between 0 and 1 that represents a score for evaluating whether a transaction is fraudulent or not. A fraud detection mechanism cannot detect frauds with a probability of 100%; therefore, manual transaction checking must also be available. With fraud detection, this manual part can focus on the most suspicious transactions. This way, an unchanged number of supervisors can detect significantly more frauds than could be achieved with traditional methods of selecting which transactions to check, for example with random sampling. There are two principal data mining techniques available both in general data mining as well as in specific fraud detection techniques: supervised or directed and unsupervised or undirected. Supervised techniques or data mining models use previous knowledge. Typically, existing transactions are marked with a flag denoting whether a particular transaction is fraudulent or not. Customers at some point in time do report frauds, and the transactional system should be capable of accepting such a flag. Supervised data mining algorithms try to explain the value of this flag by using different input variables. When the patterns and rules that lead to frauds are learned through the model training process, they can be used for prediction of the fraud flag on new incoming transactions. Unsupervised techniques analyze data without prior knowledge, without the fraud flag; they try to find transactions which do not resemble other transactions, i.e. outliers. In both cases, there should be more frauds in the data set selected for checking by using the data mining knowledge compared to selecting the data set with simpler methods; this is known as the lift of a model. Typically, we compare the lift with random sampling. The supervised methods typically give a much better lift than the unsupervised ones. However, we must use the unsupervised ones when we do not have any previous knowledge. Furthermore, unsupervised methods are useful for controlling whether the supervised models are still efficient. Accuracy of the predictions drops over time. Patterns of credit card usage, for example, change over time. In addition, fraudsters continuously learn as well. Therefore, it is important to check the efficiency of the predictive models with the undirected ones. When the difference between the lift of the supervised models and the lift of the unsupervised models drops, it is time to refine the supervised models. However, the unsupervised models can become obsolete as well. It is also important to measure the overall efficiency of both, supervised and unsupervised models, over time. We can compare the number of predicted frauds with the total number of frauds that include predicted and reported occurrences. For measuring behavior across time, specific analytical databases called data warehouses (DW) and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) systems can be employed. By controlling the supervised models with unsupervised ones and by using an OLAP system or DW reports to control both, a continuous learning infrastructure can be established. There are many difficulties in developing a fraud detection system. As has already been mentioned, fraudsters continuously learn, and the patterns change. The exchange of experiences and ideas can be very limited due to privacy concerns. In addition, both data sets and results might be censored, as the companies generally do not want to publically expose actual fraudulent behaviors. Therefore it can be quite difficult if not impossible to cross-evaluate the models using data from different companies and different business areas. This fact stresses the importance of continuous learning even more. Finally, the number of frauds in the total number of transactions is small, typically much less than 1% of transactions is fraudulent. Some predictive data mining algorithms do not give good results when the target state is represented with a very low frequency. Data preparation techniques like oversampling and undersampling can help overcome the shortcomings of many algorithms. SQL Server suite includes all of the software required to create, deploy any maintain a fraud detection infrastructure. The Database Engine is the relational database management system (RDBMS), which supports all activity needed for data preparation and for data warehouses. SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) supports OLAP and data mining (in version 2012, you need to install SSAS in multidimensional and data mining mode; this was the only mode in previous versions of SSAS, while SSAS 2012 also supports the tabular mode, which does not include data mining). Additional products from the suite can be useful as well. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a tool for developing extract transform–load (ETL) applications. SSIS is typically used for loading a DW, and in addition, it can use SSAS data mining models for building intelligent data flows. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is useful for presenting the results in a variety of reports. Data Quality Services (DQS) mitigate the occasional data cleansing process by maintaining a knowledge base. Master Data Services is an application that helps companies maintaining a central, authoritative source of their master data, i.e. the most important data to any organization. For an overview of the SQL Server business intelligence (BI) part of the suite that includes Database Engine, SSAS and SSRS, please refer to Veerman E., Lachev T., & Sarka D. (2009). MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-448): Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance. MS Press. For an overview of the enterprise information management (EIM) part that includes SSIS, DQS and MDS, please refer to Sarka D., Lah M., & Jerkic G. (2012). Training Kit (Exam 70-463): Implementing a Data Warehouse with Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012. O'Reilly. For details about SSAS data mining, please refer to MacLennan J., Tang Z., & Crivat B. (2009). Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Wiley. SQL Server Data Mining Add-ins for Office, a free download for Office versions 2007, 2010 and 2013, bring the power of data mining to Excel, enabling advanced analytics in Excel. Together with PowerPivot for Excel, which is also freely downloadable and can be used in Excel 2010, is already included in Excel 2013. It brings OLAP functionalities directly into Excel, making it possible for an advanced analyst to build a complete learning infrastructure using a familiar tool. This way, many more people, including employees in subsidiaries, can contribute to the learning process by examining local transactions and quickly identifying new patterns.

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• ASP.NET WebAPI Security 3: Extensible Authentication Framework

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  In my last post, I described the identity architecture of ASP.NET Web API. The short version was, that Web API (beta 1) does not really have an authentication system on its own, but inherits the client security context from its host. This is fine in many situations (e.g. AJAX style callbacks with an already established logon session). But there are many cases where you don’t use the containing web application for authentication, but need to do it yourself. Examples of that would be token based authentication and clients that don’t run in the context of the web application (e.g. desktop clients / mobile). Since Web API provides a nice extensibility model, it is easy to implement whatever security framework you want on top of it. My design goals were: Easy to use. Extensible. Claims-based. ..and of course, this should always behave the same, regardless of the hosting environment. In the rest of the post I am outlining some of the bits and pieces, So you know what you are dealing with, in case you want to try the code. At the very heart… is a so called message handler. This is a Web API extensibility point that gets to see (and modify if needed) all incoming and outgoing requests. Handlers run after the conversion from host to Web API, which means that handler code deals with HttpRequestMessage and HttpResponseMessage. See Pedro’s post for more information on the processing pipeline. This handler requires a configuration object for initialization. Currently this is very simple, it contains: Settings for the various authentication and credential types Settings for claims transformation Ability to block identity inheritance from host The most important part here is the credential type support, but I will come back to that later. The logic of the message handler is simple: Look at the incoming request. If the request contains an authorization header, try to authenticate the client. If this is successful, create a claims principal and populate the usual places. If not, return a 401 status code and set the Www-Authenticate header. Look at outgoing response, if the status code is 401, set the Www-Authenticate header. Credential type support Under the covers I use the WIF security token handler infrastructure to validate credentials and to turn security tokens into claims. The idea is simple: an authorization header consists of two pieces: the schema and the actual “token”. My configuration object allows to associate a security token handler with a scheme. This way you only need to implement support for a specific credential type, and map that to the incoming scheme value. The current version supports HTTP Basic Authentication as well as SAML and SWT tokens. (I needed to do some surgery on the standard security token handlers, since WIF does not directly support string-ified tokens. The next version of .NET will fix that, and the code should become simpler then). You can e.g. use this code to hook up a username/password handler to the Basic scheme (the default scheme name for Basic Authentication). config.Handler.AddBasicAuthenticationHandler( (username, password) => username == password); You simply have to provide a password validation function which could of course point back to your existing password library or e.g. membership. The following code maps a token handler for Simple Web Tokens (SWT) to the Bearer scheme (the currently favoured scheme name for OAuth2). You simply have to specify the issuer name, realm and shared signature key: config.Handler.AddSimpleWebTokenHandler(     "Bearer",     http://identity.thinktecture.com/trust,     Constants.Realm,     "Dc9Mpi3jaaaUpBQpa/4R7XtUsa3D/ALSjTVvK8IUZbg="); For certain integration scenarios it is very useful if your Web API can consume SAML tokens. This is also easily accomplishable. The following code uses the standard WIF API to configure the usual SAMLisms like issuer, audience, service certificate and certificate validation. Both SAML 1.1 and 2.0 are supported. var registry = new ConfigurationBasedIssuerNameRegistry(); registry.AddTrustedIssuer( "d1 c5 b1 25 97 d0 36 94 65 1c e2 64 fe 48 06 01 35 f7 bd db", "ADFS"); var adfsConfig = new SecurityTokenHandlerConfiguration(); adfsConfig.AudienceRestriction.AllowedAudienceUris.Add( new Uri(Constants.Realm)); adfsConfig.IssuerNameRegistry = registry; adfsConfig.CertificateValidator = X509CertificateValidator.None; // token decryption (read from configuration section) adfsConfig.ServiceTokenResolver = FederatedAuthentication.ServiceConfiguration.CreateAggregateTokenResolver(); config.Handler.AddSaml11SecurityTokenHandler("SAML", adfsConfig); Claims Transformation After successful authentication, if configured, the standard WIF ClaimsAuthenticationManager is called to run claims transformation and validation logic. This stage is used to transform the “technical” claims from the security token into application claims. You can either have a separate transformation logic, or share on e.g. with the containing web application. That’s just a matter of configuration. Adding the authentication handler to a Web API application In the spirit of Web API this is done in code, e.g. global.asax for web hosting: protected void Application_Start() {     AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();     ConfigureApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);     RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);     RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);     BundleTable.Bundles.RegisterTemplateBundles(); } private void ConfigureApis(HttpConfiguration configuration) {     configuration.MessageHandlers.Add( new AuthenticationHandler(ConfigureAuthentication())); } private AuthenticationConfiguration ConfigureAuthentication() {     var config = new AuthenticationConfiguration     {         // sample claims transformation for consultants sample, comment out to see raw claims         ClaimsAuthenticationManager = new ApiClaimsTransformer(),         // value of the www-authenticate header, // if not set, the first scheme added to the handler collection is used         DefaultAuthenticationScheme = "Basic"     };     // add token handlers - see above     return config; } You can find the full source code and some samples here. In the next post I will describe some of the samples in the download, and then move on to authorization. HTH

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• Grafting Scala 2.8 into a Netbeans NBAndroid Project...What steps am I missing?

  - by Michael Kohout

  Hi All; Due to Apple's recent T+C hijinks, I've become interested in developing for Android. Anyways, I'm trying to get a mixed-language Android 2.1 project going in Netbeans 6.8 (with the NBAndroid 0.10 plugin). The two languages being Java and Scala(2.8 head build). To give you a basic idea of what the app does right now, it's just a simple "Hello World" app. To get this to build, I've modified the projects's build.xml file: -- -injars ${scala-library}(!META-INF/MANIFEST.MF,!library.properties) -outjars "${build.classes.dir}/classes.min.jar" -libraryjars "${file.reference.android.jar}" -dontwarn -dontoptimize -dontobfuscate -keep public class * extends android.app.Activity -keep public class scala.xml.include.sax.Main** I've gotten the project so that it'll build, but it errors on startup in my Android Emulator(inside the emulator Android tells me my application has stopped unexpectedly). So my questions are: Does anyone see what I may be doing wrong? And is there any way to get access to the logs that the emulator must create? thanks Mike Kohout

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• ASP.net scriptmanager and AJAX control

  - by c11ada

  hey all, im making a username availability check in ASP.net using ajax updatepanel, but i keep getting the following error The control with ID 'UserNameUP' requires a ScriptManager on the page. The ScriptManager must appear before any controls that need it.] im using the create user wizard, to create a new user but i want to check if the user already exists, i have the following code in the aspx file <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" ID="UserNameUP"> <ContentTemplate> <asp:TextBox ID="UserName" runat="server" Width="200px" AutoPostBack="true" OnTextChanged="Username_Changed"></asp:TextBox></ContentTemplate> </asp:UpdatePanel><br /> but i keep getting that error, can any one help thanks

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