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Messages stuck in SMTP queue - Exchange 2003

- by Diav

I need your help people ;-) I have a problem with messages coming into our Exchange Server and ones going out through it. Basically, the messages are stuck in the SMTP queue. A message will come into the server, I can see it listed under "Exchange System Manager", but if you list the properties of the message queue it says something like 00:10 SMTP Message queued for local delivery 00:10 SMTP Message delivered locally to [email protected] 00:10 SMTP Message scheduled to retry local delivery 00:11 SMTP Message delivered locally to [email protected] 00:11 SMTP Message scheduled to retry local delivery etc etc For outgoing message list looks like this: 10:55 SMTP: Message Submitted to Advanced Queuing 10:55 SMTP: Started Message Submission to Advanced Queue 10:55 SMTP: Message Submitted to Categorizer 10:55 SMTP: Message Categorized and Queued for Routing 10:55 SMTP: Message Routed nad Queued for Remote Delivery And the end - since then status didn't change, message is in queue, I am forcing connection from time to time but without an effect. I checked connection with smarthost (used telnet for that) and everything seems to work correctly, so the problem is probably on exchange side. I am using Exchange Server 2003 running on Small Business Server 2003. I don't have any antivirus installed on server. Remaining free space on each partition is over 3Gb, on partition with data bases - it is over 12Gb. All was working good and without problems since 2005, problems started in half of this june - messages started going out and being stuck almost randomly (I don't see a pattern yet, some are going out, some are not, some are going after several hours). I don't know what to do, what to check more, so please, any ideas? Best regards, D. edit Priv1.edb has 14,5GB and priv1.stm 2,6GB - together those files have more than 16GB - can it be the reason? If yes, then what? Indeed, I haven't thought that it can have something in common with my problem, but several users reported recent problems with Outlook Web Access - they can log in, they see the list of their mails, but they can't see the content of their emails. Although when they are connecting with Outlook 2003/2007 - there is no such problem, only with OWA there is. edit2 So,.. It works now, and I have to admit that I am not really sure what the problem was (hope it won't come back). What have I done: Cleaned up some mailboxes to reduce size of them Dismounted Information Store Defragmentated data base files ( I used eseutil: c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin eseutil /d g:\data base\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb ) Mounted Information Store back ..and before I managed to do anything else - my queue started moving, elements which were kept there already for days - started moving and after few minutes everything was sent, both, outside and locally. But: priv1.edb is still big (13 884 203 008), priv1.stm as well (2 447 384 576), so this is probably not the issue of size of the file. And if not this, so what was that? And if that was issue of size of the file, then soon it will repeat - is there something I can do to avoid it ?

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IIS Strategies for Accessing Secured Network Resources

- by Emtucifor

Problem: A user connects to a service on a machine, such as an IIS web site or a SQL Server database. The site or the database need to gain access to network resources such as file shares (the most common) or a database on a different server. Permission is denied. This is because the user the service is running as doesn't have network permissions in the first place, or if it does, it doesn't have rights to access the remote resource. I keep running into this problem over and over again and am tired of not having a really solid way of handling it. Here are some workarounds I'm aware of: Run IIS as a custom-created domain user who is granted high permissions If permissions are granted one file share at a time, then every time I want to read from a new share, I would have to ask a network admin to add it for me. Eventually, with many web sites reading from many shares, it is going to get really complicated. If permissions are just opened up wide for the user to access any file shares in our domain, then this seems like an unnecessary security surface area to present. This also applies to all the sites running on IIS, rather than just the selected site or virtual directory that needs the access, a further surface area problem. Still use the IUSR account but give it network permissions and set up the same user name on the remote resource (not a domain user, a local user) This also has its problems. For example, there's a file share I am using that I have full rights to for sharing, but I can't log in to the machine. So I have to find the right admin and ask him to do it for me. Any time something has to change, it's another request to an admin. Allow IIS users to connect as anonymous, but set the account used for anonymous access to a high-privilege one This is even worse than giving the IIS IUSR full privileges, because it means my web site can't use any kind of security in the first place. Connect using Kerberos, then delegate This sounds good in principle but has all sorts of problems. First of all, if you're using virtual web sites where the domain name you connect to the site with is not the base machine name (as we do frequently), then you have to set up a Service Principal Name on the webserver using Microsoft's SetSPN utility. It's complicated and apparently prone to errors. Also, you have to ask your network/domain admin to change security policy for the web server so it is "trusted for delegation." If you don't get everything perfectly right, suddenly your intended Kerberos authentication is NTLM instead, and you can only impersonate rather than delegate, and thus no reaching out over the network as the user. Also, this method can be problematic because sometimes you need the web site or database to have permissions that the connecting user doesn't have. Create a service or COM+ application that fetches the resource for the web site Services and COM+ packages are run with their own set of credentials. Running as a high-privilege user is okay since they can do their own security and deny requests that are not legitimate, putting control in the hands of the application developer instead of the network admin. Problems: I am using a COM+ package that does exactly this on Windows Server 2000 to deliver highly sensitive images to a secured web application. I tried moving the web site to Windows Server 2003 and was suddenly denied permission to instantiate the COM+ object, very likely registry permissions. I trolled around quite a bit and did not solve the problem, partly because I was reluctant to give the IUSR account full registry permissions. That seems like the same bad practice as just running IIS as a high-privilege user. Note: This is actually really simple. In a programming language of your choice, you create a class with a function that returns an instance of the object you want (an ADODB.Connection, for example), and build a dll, which you register as a COM+ object. In your web server-side code, you create an instance of the class and use the function, and since it is running under a different security context, calls to network resources work. Map drive letters to shares This could theoretically work, but in my mind it's not really a good long-term strategy. Even though mappings can be created with specific credentials, and this can be done by others than a network admin, this also is going to mean that there are either way too many shared drives (small granularity) or too much permission is granted to entire file servers (large granularity). Also, I haven't figured out how to map a drive so that the IUSR gets the drives. Mapping a drive is for the current user, I don't know the IUSR account password to log in as it and create the mappings. Move the resources local to the web server/database There are times when I've done this, especially with Access databases. Does the database have to live out on the file share? Sometimes, it was just easiest to move the database to the web server or to the SQL database server (so the linked server to it would work). But I don't think this is a great all-around solution, either. And it won't work when the resource is a service rather than a file. Move the service to the final web server/database I suppose I could run a web server on my SQL Server database, so the web site can connect to it using impersonation and make me happy. But do we really want random extra web servers on our database servers just so this is possible? No. Virtual directories in IIS I know that virtual directories can help make remote resources look as though they are local, and this supports using custom credentials for each virtual directory. I haven't been able to come up with, yet, how this would solve the problem for system calls. Users could reach file shares directly, but this won't help, say, classic ASP code access resources. I could use a URL instead of a file path to read remote data files in a web page, but this isn't going to help me make a connection to an Access database, a SQL server database, or any other resource that uses a connection library rather than being able to just read all the bytes and work with them. I wish there was some kind of "service tunnel" that I could create. Think about how a VPN makes remote resources look like they are local. With a richer aliasing mechanism, perhaps code-based, why couldn't even database connections occur under a defined security context? Why not a special Windows component that lets you specify, per user, what resources are available and what alternate credentials are used for the connection? File shares, databases, web sites, you name it. I guess I'm almost talking about a specialized local proxy server. Anyway, so there's my list. I may update it if I think of more. Does anyone have any ideas for me? My current problem today is, yet again, I need a web site to connect to an Access database on a file share. Here we go again...

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PHP `virtual()` with Apache MultiViews not working after upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04

- by Izzy

I use PHP's virtual() directive quite a lot on one of my sites, including central elements. This worked fine for the last ~10 years -- but after upgrading (or rather moving, as it is on a new machine) to Ubuntu 12.04 it somehow got broken. Example setup (simplified) To make it easier to understand, I simplify some things (contents). So say I need a HTML fragment like <P>For further instructions, please look <A HREF='foobar'>here</P> in multiple pages. 10 years ago, I used SSI for that, so it is put into a file in a central place -- so if e.g. the targeted URL changes, I only need to update it in one place. To serve multiple languages, I have Apache's MultiViews enabled -- and at $DOCUMENT_ROOT/central/ there are the files: foobar.html (English variant, and the default) foobar.html.de (German variant). Now in the PHP code, I simply placed: <? virtual("/central/foobar"); ?> and let Apache take care to deliver the correct language variant. The problem As said, this worked fine for about 10 years: German visitors got the German variant, all others the English (depending on their preferred language). But after upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04, it no longer worked: Either nothing was delivered from the virtual() command, or (in connection with framesets) it even ended up in binary gibberish. Trying to figure out what happens, I played with a lot of things. I first thought MultiViews was (somehow) not available anymore -- but calling http://<server>/central/foobar showed the right variant, depending on the configured language preferences. This also proved there was nothing wrong with file permissions. The error.log gave no clues either (no error message thrown). Finally, just as a "last ressort", I changed the PHP command to <? virtual("central/foobar.html"); ?> -- and that very same file was in fact included. So PHP's virtual() function basically worked -- but the language dependend stuff obviously did no longer work together with it as it did before. Of course I tried to find some change (most likely in PHP's virtual() command), using Google a lot, and also searching the questions here -- unfortunately to no avail. Finally: The question Putting "design questions" aside (surely today I would design things differently -- but at least currently I miss the time to change that for a quite huge amount of pages): What can be done to make it work again? I surely missed something -- but I cannot figure out what...

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USB hard drive not recognized

- by user318772

Until recently I was using the portable USB hard drive in my win 7 laptop and ubuntu laptop. Suddenly now none of the laptops recognize it. This is the message i get by doing lsusb... Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1058:1010 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Elements External HDD Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0b97:7762 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 SmartCard Reader Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b97:7761 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 1.1 Hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp. Internal 2.0 Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub fdisk doesn't show the external hard drive Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0004a743 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 152111103 76054528 83 Linux /dev/sda2 152113150 156301311 2094081 5 Extended /dev/sda5 152113152 156301311 2094080 82 Linux swap / Solaris when i do testdisk TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013 Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]> http://www.cgsecurity.org TestDisk is free software, and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter): >Disk /dev/sda - 80 GB / 74 GiB - ST980825AS Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB testdisk-> Intel->analyse I get partition error Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB - CHS 2097152 64 32 Current partition structure: Partition Start End Size in sectors Partition: Read error Here is the output of dmesg [11948.549171] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.549177] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.549181] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 [11948.550489] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure [11948.550495] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550499] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [11948.550505] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550508] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] [11948.550514] Info fld=0x0 [11948.550519] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550525] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.550531] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.550534] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 [11948.551870] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure [11948.551876] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551880] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [11948.551885] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551888] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] [11948.551895] Info fld=0x0 [11948.551900] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551905] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.551911] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.551914] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 If possible i want to retrive at least some data from this hard drive. If thats not possible I would like to format it and use it. Any help will be greatly appreciated Thanks

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Windows 2008 RenderFarm Service: CreateProcessAsUser "Session 0 Isolation" and OpenGL

- by holtavolt

Hello, I have a legacy Windows server service and (spawned) application that works fine in XP-64 and W2K3, but fails on W2K8. I believe it is because of the new "Session 0 isolation " feature. (Note: As a StackOverflow newbie I'm being limited to one link in this post, so you'll need to scroll to bottom to lookup the links for '' items)* Consequently, I'm looking for code samples/security settings mojo that let you create a new process from a windows service for Windows 2008 Server such that I can restore (and possibly surpass) the previous behavior. I need a solution that: Creates the new process in a non-zero session to get around session-0 isolation restrictions (no access to graphics hardware from session 0) - the official MS line on this is: Because Session 0 is no longer a user session, services that are running in Session 0 do not have access to the video driver. This means that any attempt that a service makes to render graphics fails. Querying the display resolution and color depth in Session 0 reports the correct results for the system up to a maximum of 1920x1200 at 32 bits per pixel. The new process gets a windows station/desktop (e.g. winsta0/default) that can be used to create windows DCs. I've found a solution (that launches OK in an interactive session) for this here: *(Starting an Interactive Client Process in C++ - 2) The windows DC, when used as the basis for an *(OpenGL DescribePixelFormat enumeration - 3), is able to find and use the hardware-accelerated format (on a system appropriately equipped with OpenGL hardware.) Note that our current solution works OK on XP-64 and W2K3, except if a terminal services session is running (VNC works fine.) A solution that also allowed the process to work (i.e. run with OpenGL hardware acceleration even when a terminal services session is open) would be fanastic, although not required. I'm stuck at item #1 currently, and although there are some similar postings that discuss this (like *(this -4), and *(this - 5) - they are not suitable solutions, as there is no guarantee of a user session logged in already to "take" a session id from, nor am I running from a LocalSystem account (I'm running from a domain account for the service, for which I can adjust the privileges of, within reason, although I'd prefer to not have to escalate priorities to include SeTcbPrivileges.) For instance - here's a stub that I think should work, but always returns an error 1314 on the SetTokenInformation call (even though the AdjustTokenPrivileges returned no errors) I've used some alternate strategies involving "LogonUser" as well (instead of opening the existing process token), but I can't seem to swap out the session id. I'm also dubious about using the WTSActiveConsoleSessionId in all cases (for instance, if no interactive user is logged in) - although a quick test of the service running with no sessions logged in seemed to return a reasonable session value (1). I’ve removed error handling for ease of reading (still a bit messy - apologies) //Also tried using LogonUser(..) here OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_QUERY | TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_ADJUST_SESSIONID | TOKEN_ADJUST_DEFAULT | TOKEN_ASSIGN_PRIMARY | TOKEN_DUPLICATE, &hToken) GetTokenInformation( hToken, TokenSessionId, &logonSessionId, sizeof(DWORD), &dwTokenLength ) DWORD consoleSessionId = WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId(); /* Can't use this - requires very elevated privileges (LOCAL only, SeTcbPrivileges as well) if( !WTSQueryUserToken(consoleSessionId, &hToken)) ... */ DuplicateTokenEx(hToken, (TOKEN_QUERY | TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_ADJUST_SESSIONID | TOKEN_ADJUST_DEFAULT | TOKEN_ASSIGN_PRIMARY | TOKEN_DUPLICATE), NULL, SecurityIdentification, TokenPrimary, &hDupToken)) // Look up the LUID for the TCB Name privilege. LookupPrivilegeValue(NULL, SE_TCB_NAME, &tp.Privileges[0].Luid)) // Enable the TCB Name privilege in the token. tp.PrivilegeCount = 1; tp.Privileges[0].Attributes = SE_PRIVILEGE_ENABLED; if (!AdjustTokenPrivileges(hDupToken, FALSE, &tp, sizeof(TOKEN_PRIVILEGES), NULL, 0)) { DisplayError("AdjustTokenPrivileges"); ... } if (GetLastError() == ERROR_NOT_ALL_ASSIGNED) { DEBUG( "Token does not have the necessary privilege.\n"); } else { DEBUG( "No error reported from AdjustTokenPrivileges!\n"); } // Never errors here DEBUG(LM_INFO, "Attempting setting of sessionId to: %d\n", consoleSessionId ); if (!SetTokenInformation(hDupToken, TokenSessionId, &consoleSessionId, sizeof(DWORD))) *** ALWAYS FAILS WITH 1314 HERE *** All the debug output looks fine up until the SetTokenInformation call - I see session 0 is my current process session, and in my case, it's trying to set session 1 (the result of the WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId). (Note that I'm logged into the W2K8 box via VNC, not RDC) So - a the questions: Is this approach valid, or are all service-initiated processes restricted to session 0 intentionally? Is there a better approach (short of "Launch on logon" and auto-logon for the servers?) Is there something wrong with this code, or a different way to create a process token where I can swap out the session id to indicate I want to spawn the process in a new session? I did try using LogonUser instead of OpenProcessToken, but that didn't work either. (I don't care if all spawned processes share the same non-zero session or not at this point.) Any help much appreciated - thanks! (You need to replace the 'zttp' with 'http' - StackOverflow restriction on one link in my newbie post) 2: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa379608(VS.85).aspx 3: http://www.opengl.org/resources/faq/technical/mswindows.htm 4: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2237696/creating-a-process-in-a-non-zero-session-from-a-service-in-windows-2008-server 5: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1602996/how-can-i-lauch-a-process-which-has-a-ui-from-windows-service

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What strategy do you use for package naming in Java projects and why?

- by Tim Visher

I thought about this awhile ago and it recently resurfaced as my shop is doing its first real Java web app. As an intro, I see two main package naming strategies. (To be clear, I'm not referring to the whole 'domain.company.project' part of this, I'm talking about the package convention beneath that.) Anyway, the package naming conventions that I see are as follows: Functional: Naming your packages according to their function architecturally rather than their identity according to the business domain. Another term for this might be naming according to 'layer'. So, you'd have a *.ui package and a *.domain package and a *.orm package. Your packages are horizontal slices rather than vertical. This is much more common than logical naming. In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen or heard of a project that does this. This of course makes me leery (sort of like thinking that you've come up with a solution to an NP problem) as I'm not terribly smart and I assume everyone must have great reasons for doing it the way they do. On the other hand, I'm not opposed to people just missing the elephant in the room and I've never heard a an actual argument for doing package naming this way. It just seems to be the de facto standard. Logical: Naming your packages according to their business domain identity and putting every class that has to do with that vertical slice of functionality into that package. I have never seen or heard of this, as I mentioned before, but it makes a ton of sense to me. I tend to approach systems vertically rather than horizontally. I want to go in and develop the Order Processing system, not the data access layer. Obviously, there's a good chance that I'll touch the data access layer in the development of that system, but the point is that I don't think of it that way. What this means, of course, is that when I receive a change order or want to implement some new feature, it'd be nice to not have to go fishing around in a bunch of packages in order to find all the related classes. Instead, I just look in the X package because what I'm doing has to do with X. From a development standpoint, I see it as a major win to have your packages document your business domain rather than your architecture. I feel like the domain is almost always the part of the system that's harder to grok where as the system's architecture, especially at this point, is almost becoming mundane in its implementation. The fact that I can come to a system with this type of naming convention and instantly from the naming of the packages know that it deals with orders, customers, enterprises, products, etc. seems pretty darn handy. It seems like this would allow you to take much better advantage of Java's access modifiers. This allows you to much more cleanly define interfaces into subsystems rather than into layers of the system. So if you have an orders subsystem that you want to be transparently persistent, you could in theory just never let anything else know that it's persistent by not having to create public interfaces to its persistence classes in the dao layer and instead packaging the dao class in with only the classes it deals with. Obviously, if you wanted to expose this functionality, you could provide an interface for it or make it public. It just seems like you lose a lot of this by having a vertical slice of your system's features split across multiple packages. I suppose one disadvantage that I can see is that it does make ripping out layers a little bit more difficult. Instead of just deleting or renaming a package and then dropping a new one in place with an alternate technology, you have to go in and change all of the classes in all of the packages. However, I don't see this is a big deal. It may be from a lack of experience, but I have to imagine that the amount of times you swap out technologies pales in comparison to the amount of times you go in and edit vertical feature slices within your system. So I guess the question then would go out to you, how do you name your packages and why? Please understand that I don't necessarily think that I've stumbled onto the golden goose or something here. I'm pretty new to all this with mostly academic experience. However, I can't spot the holes in my reasoning so I'm hoping you all can so that I can move on. Thanks in advance!

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HTML/CSS - Website Help.

- by gabeaudick

I'm trying to build my first website from scratch. I mocked up the design in Photoshop, and have been trying to convert into code for a few hours. But I haven't got far. In fact, I'm stuck on the header's navigation bar. It looks right, but it doesn't work. I'm using an unordered-inline list, and trying to link different rectangles in the header. I can't click on anything in the header, though. The code for the html and css files, and a mockup of the header, are below. Any advice on why the header bar isn't working would be much appreciated. Here's a link to the image: http://rookery9.aviary.com.s3.amazonaws.com/3961000/3961027_eb89_625x625.jpg *Ideally, you would be able to click on either "". home.html: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head>  <title>I am Gabe Audick.</title>  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <meta name="Author" content="Gabe Audick" /> <meta name="Copyright" content="Gabe Audick" />  <link href="style.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />  <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="gabeaudick RSS" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/gabeaudick" /> </head> <body>  <div id="wrap"> <div id="header"> <ul> <li><a href="#">Previous</a></li> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li><a href="#">Next</a></li> </ul> </div> </div>   <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-5899101-4']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script>  </body> </html> style.css: * { margin: 0; padding: 0; } body { background-color: #fff; color: #000; font-size: 14px; font-family: 'Century Gothic', Helvetica, sans-serif; position: relative; } #wrap { background-color: #000; color: #fbead; height: 26px; width: 100%; } #header { background: url(./images/home.gif) center no-repeat #000; height: 26px; } #header ul li{ float:left; list-style-type:none; margin-right:12px; text-indent:-9999px; } #header li a:link, #header li a:visited{ outline:none; display:block; height:26px; text-indent:-9999px; }

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C question: Padding bits in unsigned integers and bitwise operations (C89)

- by Anonymous Question Guy

I have a lot of code that performs bitwise operations on unsigned integers. I wrote my code with the assumption that those operations were on integers of fixed width without any padding bits. For example an array of 32 bit unsigned integers of which all 32 bits available for each integer. I'm looking to make my code more portable and I'm focused on making sure I'm C89 compliant (in this case). One of the issues that I've come across is possible padded integers. Take this extreme example, taken from the GMP manual: However on Cray vector systems it may be noted that short and int are always stored in 8 bytes (and with sizeof indicating that) but use only 32 or 46 bits. The nails feature can account for this, by passing for instance 8*sizeof(int)-INT_BIT. I've also read about this type of padding in other places. I actually read of a post on SO last night (forgive me, I don't have the link and I'm going to cite something similar from memory) where if you have, say, a double with 60 usable bits the other 4 could be used for padding and those padding bits could serve some internal purpose so they cannot be modified. So let's say for example my code is compiled on a platform where an unsigned int type is sized at 4 bytes, each byte being 8 bits, however the most significant 2 bits are padding bits. Would UINT_MAX in that case be 0x3FFFFFFF (1073741823) ? #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> /* padding bits represented by underscores */ int main( int argc, char **argv ) { unsigned int a = 0x2AAAAAAA; /* __101010101010101010101010101010 */ unsigned int b = 0x15555555; /* __010101010101010101010101010101 */ unsigned int c = a ^ b; /* ?? __111111111111111111111111111111 */ unsigned int d = c << 5; /* ?? __111111111111111111111111100000 */ unsigned int e = d >> 5; /* ?? __000001111111111111111111111111 */ printf( "a: %X\nb: %X\nc: %X\nd: %X\ne: %X\n", a, b, c, d, e ); return 0; } is it safe to XOR two integers with padding bits? wouldn't I XOR whatever the padding bits are? I can't find this behavior covered in C89. furthermore is the c var guaranteed to be 0x3FFFFFFF or if for example the two padding bits were both on in a or b would c be 0xFFFFFFFF ? same question with d and e. am i manipulating the padding bits by shifting? I would expect to see this below, assuming 32 bits with the 2 most significant bits used for padding, but I want to know if something like this is guaranteed: a: 2AAAAAAA b: 15555555 c: 3FFFFFFF d: 3FFFFFE0 e: 01FFFFFF Also are padding bits always the most significant bits or could they be the least significant bits? Thanks guys EDIT 12/19/2010 5PM EST: Christoph has answered my question. Thanks! I had also asked (above) whether padding bits are always the most significant bits. This is cited in the rationale for the C99 standard, and the answer is no. I am playing it safe and assuming the same for C89. Here is specifically what the C99 rationale says for §6.2.6.2 (Representation of Integer Types): Padding bits are user-accessible in an unsigned integer type. For example, suppose a machine uses a pair of 16-bit shorts (each with its own sign bit) to make up a 32-bit int and the sign bit of the lower short is ignored when used in this 32-bit int. Then, as a 32-bit signed int, there is a padding bit (in the middle of the 32 bits) that is ignored in determining the value of the 32-bit signed int. But, if this 32-bit item is treated as a 32-bit unsigned int, then that padding bit is visible to the user’s program. The C committee was told that there is a machine that works this way, and that is one reason that padding bits were added to C99. Footnotes 44 and 45 mention that parity bits might be padding bits. The committee does not know of any machines with user-accessible parity bits within an integer. Therefore, the committee is not aware of any machines that treat parity bits as padding bits. EDIT 12/28/2010 3PM EST: I found an interesting discussion on comp.lang.c from a few months ago. Bitwise Operator Effects on Padding Bits (VelocityReviews reader) Bitwise Operator Effects on Padding Bits (Google Groups alternate link) One point made by Dietmar which I found interesting: Let's note that padding bits are not necessary for the existence of trap representations; combinations of value bits which do not represent a value of the object type would also do.

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Trouble with copying dictionaries and using deepcopy on an SQLAlchemy ORM object

- by Az

Hi there, I'm doing a Simulated Annealing algorithm to optimise a given allocation of students and projects. This is language-agnostic pseudocode from Wikipedia: s ? s0; e ? E(s) // Initial state, energy. sbest ? s; ebest ? e // Initial "best" solution k ? 0 // Energy evaluation count. while k < kmax and e > emax // While time left & not good enough: snew ? neighbour(s) // Pick some neighbour. enew ? E(snew) // Compute its energy. if enew < ebest then // Is this a new best? sbest ? snew; ebest ? enew // Save 'new neighbour' to 'best found'. if P(e, enew, temp(k/kmax)) > random() then // Should we move to it? s ? snew; e ? enew // Yes, change state. k ? k + 1 // One more evaluation done return sbest // Return the best solution found. The following is an adaptation of the technique. My supervisor said the idea is fine in theory. First I pick up some allocation (i.e. an entire dictionary of students and their allocated projects, including the ranks for the projects) from entire set of randomised allocations, copy it and pass it to my function. Let's call this allocation aOld (it is a dictionary). aOld has a weight related to it called wOld. The weighting is described below. The function does the following: Let this allocation, aOld be the best_node From all the students, pick a random number of students and stick in a list Strip (DEALLOCATE) them of their projects ++ reflect the changes for projects (allocated parameter is now False) and lecturers (free up slots if one or more of their projects are no longer allocated) Randomise that list Try assigning (REALLOCATE) everyone in that list projects again Calculate the weight (add up ranks, rank 1 = 1, rank 2 = 2... and no project rank = 101) For this new allocation aNew, if the weight wNew is smaller than the allocation weight wOld I picked up at the beginning, then this is the best_node (as defined by the Simulated Annealing algorithm above). Apply the algorithm to aNew and continue. If wOld < wNew, then apply the algorithm to aOld again and continue. The allocations/data-points are expressed as "nodes" such that a node = (weight, allocation_dict, projects_dict, lecturers_dict) Right now, I can only perform this algorithm once, but I'll need to try for a number N (denoted by kmax in the Wikipedia snippet) and make sure I always have with me, the previous node and the best_node. So that I don't modify my original dictionaries (which I might want to reset to), I've done a shallow copy of the dictionaries. From what I've read in the docs, it seems that it only copies the references and since my dictionaries contain objects, changing the copied dictionary ends up changing the objects anyway. So I tried to use copy.deepcopy().These dictionaries refer to objects that have been mapped with SQLA. Questions: I've been given some solutions to the problems faced but due to my über green-ness with using Python, they all sound rather cryptic to me. Deepcopy isn't playing nicely with SQLA. I've been told thatdeepcopy on ORM objects probably has issues that prevent it from working as you'd expect. Apparently I'd be better off "building copy constructors, i.e. def copy(self): return FooBar(....)." Can someone please explain what that means? I checked and found out that deepcopy has issues because SQLAlchemy places extra information on your objects, i.e. an _sa_instance_state attribute, that I wouldn't want in the copy but is necessary for the object to have. I've been told: "There are ways to manually blow away the old _sa_instance_state and put a new one on the object, but the most straightforward is to make a new object with __init__() and set up the attributes that are significant, instead of doing a full deep copy." What exactly does that mean? Do I create a new, unmapped class similar to the old, mapped one? An alternate solution is that I'd have to "implement __deepcopy__() on your objects and ensure that a new _sa_instance_state is set up, there are functions in sqlalchemy.orm.attributes which can help with that." Once again this is beyond me so could someone kindly explain what it means? A more general question: given the above information are there any suggestions on how I can maintain the information/state for the best_node (which must always persist through my while loop) and the previous_node, if my actual objects (referenced by the dictionaries, therefore the nodes) are changing due to the deallocation/reallocation taking place? That is, without using copy?

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MySQL Query - Alternation of WHERE IN

- by Sadiqur Rahman

I have a mySQL query which takes 3-4 minutes to be executed. It is a large database. This query uses WHERE IN to find the rows.. So, is there any alternate query/clause/statement for my this query? SELECT r.reg_id, r.first_name, r.last_name, r.email, r.country, e.headline, e.industry, pp.photo FROM basic_registration r LEFT JOIN exp_ind_reg e ON e.reg_id=r.reg_id LEFT JOIN profile_photo pp ON pp.reg_id=r.reg_id WHERE r.reg_id IN (23,228,497,593,761,1204,1491,1894,1895,2128,7,11,20,22,25,26,27,29,31, 32,33,34,37,41,45,47,50,52,53,54,55,62,63,69,75,79,80,82,85,87,88,89,93,96,99, 102,104,106,110,116,117,124,139,143,146,150,157,159,161,162,170,175,176,177, 181,183,197,210,213,215,217,220,226,227,233,240,250,252,255,262,263,268,274,280, 283,285,290,300,312,313,317,324,332,341,347,351,357,368,369,372,373,377, 381,383,398,408,414,416,418,419,422,432,441,446,450,451,453,463,466,469,473,486,511, 522,525,527,529,534,538,541,543,546,564,566,569,577,579,581,585,586,595,598,599,600, 606,611,613,614,621,640,649,654,656,660,667,668,674,682,686,689,693,699,705,720, 734,742,748,753,763,774,775,780,782,784,792,795,804,839,841,862,871,890,929, 930,943,951,965,994,1004,1017,1026,1034,1050,1051,1053,1054,1067,1082,1087,1109, 1119,1121,1124,1136,1147,1187,1197,1214,1224,1226,1230,1241,1255,1318,1323,1358,1361, 1383,1404,1415,1429,1440,1443,1452,1458,1473,1478,1484,1490,1496,1505,1508,1521, 1534,1544,1556,1575,1628,1640,1644,1660,1688,1725,1791,1802,1815,1819,1849,1850,1891, 1896,1897,1911,1917,1923,1924,1926,1927,1930,1956,1959,1961,1967,1983,2006,2016, 2028,2053,2059,2088,2089,2100,2136,2145,2164,2183,2190,2219,2243,2291,2301,2321, 2343,2345,2423,2438,2465,2478,2501,2507,2508,2551,2563,2572,2629,2636,2642,2650, 2670,2693,2695,2724,2732,2801,2803,2839,2847,2867,2899,3024,3061,3068,3071,3093, 3123,3126,3188,3240,3273,3307,3308,3332,3484,3493,3522,3552,3596,3632,3705,3769, 3845,3869,3966,3969,4046,4066,4074,4077,4108,4113,4140,4198,4213,4218,4266,4295, 4312,4345,4365,4369,4380,4425,4453,4485,4486,4488,4493,4494,4495,4500,4513,4515, 4517,4520,4533,4540,4542,4544,4548,4550,4551,4554,4555,4557,4566,4567,4568, 4570,4572,4575,4586,4587,4590,4593,4594,4595,4598,4599,4608,4640,4642,4647,4650, 4661,4664,4679,4681,4685,4686,4698,4707,4708,4709,4711,4712,4714,4715,4717,4719, 4720,4721,4722,4724,4725,4728,4729,4732,4734,4735,4736,4737,4739,4742,4744,4745, 4750,4752,4754,4755,4757,4759,4760,4761,4763,4764,4766,4768,4770,4772,4774,4776, 4777,4789,4790,4791,4793,4795,4796,4797,4799,4803,4804,4805,4806,4808,4809,4811, 4814,4815,4817,4818,4821,4825,4826,4828,4830,4831,4833,4835,4836,4837,4843,4844, 4847,4848,4852,4853,4854,4861,4865,4866,4871,4874,4875,4876,4879,4880,4886,4889, 4890,4891,4892,4893,4894,4896,4899,4900,4904,4908,4914,4915,4916,4917,4918,4922, 4925,4929,4930,4931,4932,4934,4935,4940,4943,4944,4945,4947,4948,4949,4952,4953, 4956,4961,4963,4964,4965,4973,4974,4976,4978,4980,4985,4988,4989,4990,4993,4996, 5001,5009,5014,5016,5017,5018,5019,5021,5023,5024,5025,5028,5032,5033,5041,5042, 5048,5055,5056,5058,5059,5062,5065,5066,5072,5073,5075,5078,5079,5083,5084,5085, 5086,5087,5088,5089,5090,5091,5092,5093,5094,5096,5103,5112,5115,5116,5117,5123, 5125,5126,5127,5128,5130,5131,5132,5133,5134,5137,5138,5139,5140,5141,5146,5148, 5150,5155,5156,5158,5161,5162,5163,5164,5166,5168,5172,5174,5176,5178,5179,5180, 5181,5183,5186,5191,5194,5199,5200,5201,5202,5206,5214,5215,5217,5218,5222,5225, 5226,5227,5235,5236,5237,5243,5245,5246,5248,5251,5252,5254,5255,5256,5257, 5259,5261,5262,5267,5270,5271,5275,5279,5281,5283,5284,5286,5288,5289,5292,5293, 5295,5307,5308,5310,5311,5313,5315,5321,5323,5324,5325,5327,5328,5339,5340,5345, 5351,5353,5355,5356,5357,5358,5359,5363,5364,5365,5366,5369,5370,5371,5372,5373, 5376,5377,5378,5379,5381,5382,5383,5384,5385,5386,5387,5388,5389,5390,5393,5395, 5405,5406,5407,5411,5413,5414,5415,5416,5417,5418,5420,5424,5425,5429,5430,5431, 5432,5433,5434,5435,5437,5441,5451,5460,5467,5473,5476,5506,5524,5528,5530,5534, 5535,5536,5550,5551,5552,5553,5554,5556,5557,5559,5564,5565,5567,5568,5574,5575, 5585,5586,5587,5597,5600,5601,5605,5606,5607,5613,5614,5615,5617,5618,5624,5626, 5627,5628,5640,5643,5644,5645,5647,5648,5649,5650,5660,5661,5670,5671,5673,5674, 5675,5681,5683,5685,5689,5690,5691,5692,5693,5694,5695,5696,5697,5702,5703,5704, 5705,5706,5708,5710,5711,5712,5713,5716,5717,5719,5730,5732,5737,5744,5745,5746, 5748,5749,5750,5752,5753,5754,5756,5757,5758,5759,5761,5762,5763,5764,5765,5767, 5769,5770,5776,5780,5782,5783,5784,5787,5788,5789,5790,5791,5792,5793,5794,5799, 5802,5803,5804,5805,5806,5808,5809,5810,5812,5813,5814,5816,5817,5818,5822,5823,5826, 5827,5829,5830,5831,5848,5849,5850,5851,5852,5854,5856,5858,5859,5863,5864,5865, 5866,5867,5873,5884,5885,5893,5898,5899,5904,5907,5908,5910,5911,5915,5916,5918, 5919,5922,5923,5924,5933,5934,5941,5944,5950,5954,5955,5956,5960,5961,5973,5978,5981, 5982,5983,5984,5985,5986,5987,5988,5989,5990,5998,5999,6000,6002,6003,6004,6006, 6007,6010,6093,6175,6177,6217,6236,6325,6327,6347,6398,6403,6447,6582,6586,6609, 6697,6904,6926,6933,7001,7003,7047,7081,7094,7111,7205,7207,7219,7220,7221,7222, 7224,7227,7228,7229,7230,7232,7237,7238,7241,7268,7274,7275,7276,7281,7300,7307, 7309,7315,7330,7333,7334,7339,7343,7348,7354,7360,7374,7377,7378,7390,7429,7434, 7445,7448,7449,7452,7532,7534,7539,7542,7546,7547,7555,7563,7565,7567,7572,7575, 7576,7577,7578,7579,7585,7611,7907,7926,8100,8134,8205,8324,8337,8339,8350,8351, 8362,8410,8568,8572,8618,8619,8651,8665,8666,8667,8668,9010,9068,9098,9100,9106, 9111,9115,9121,9123,9174,9177,9272,9302,9421,9570,9683,9684,9697,9704,9712,9715,9779, 9790,9792,9793,9795,9798,9814,9818,9856,9866,9876,9886,9891,9908,9912,9928,10508, 10825,11103,11729,12289,12377,12643,12656,12657,12668,12876,12926,12958,13291, 13300,13408,13472,13976,14477,14538,14833,15044,15108,15779,16039,16061,16549, 16556,16562,16564,16565,16571,16573,16574,16576,16577,16584,16589,16590,16591, 16592,16598,16604,16606,16607,16610,16620,16645,16648,16650,16654,16655,16661, 16662,16675,16680,16697,16699,16701,16702,16704,16705,16708,16714,16719,16723, 16724,16727,16729,16731,16732,16743,16750,16752,16755,16758,16772,16774,16782,16787, 16793,16794,16795,16797,16798,16802,16813,16814,16815,16824,16825,16829,16831, 16841,16843,16848,16850,16863,16864,16866,16870,16878,16881,16887,16893,16896,16897, 16900,16902,16909,16912,16936,16944,16948,16958,16960,16963,16974,16978,16993,17012, 17016,17020,17053,17061,17096,17120,17124,17125,17129,17135,17137,17140,17141,17142, 17145,17149,17150,17157,17164,17170,17172,17173,17178,17180,17184,17187,17188, 17192,17196,17197,17200,17201,17206,17207,17221,17223,17227,17236,17244,17246, 17273,17285,17289,17291,17297,17300,17305,17310,17311,17321,17326,17331,17335, 17352,17370,17414,17423,17424,17439,17479,17493,17495,17501,17519,17525,17541, 17571,17590,17614,17755,17838,17846,17848,17852,17853,17855,17858,17861,17871, 17876,17877,17891,17896,17899,17900,17905,17908,17910,17911,17916,17917,17938,17939, 17940,17949,17953,17955,17960,17972,17980,17982,17992,18055,18067,18069,18071,18077, 18108,18127,18134,18136,18140,18142,18143,18158,18162,18178,18192,18196,18206,18217, 18221,18242,18245,18249,18263,18271,18273,18275,18277,18278,18286,18291,18295,18300, 18301,18308,18325,18333,18338,18360,18373,18374,18387,18397,18411,18412,18420,18429, 18434,18455,18478,18484,18534,18779,18790,18804,18821,18851,18964,18965,18977,18990, 18991,19000,19006,19276,19291,19374,19395,19416,19432,19627,19917,19927,19971,19974, 19989,20007,2254,2549,2652,3077,3615,4483,4484,4611,4700,5714,5772,6252,6536,7051, 7102,7107,7591,8167,8286,8935,9937,11089,12344,15830,16343,16644,17359, 17994,18774) AND r.activation=1 ORDER BY r.first_name ASC LIMIT 0, 10;

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Blending the Sketchflow Action

- by GeekAgilistMercenary

Started a new Sketchflow Prototype in Expression Blend recently and documented each of the steps. This blog entry covers some of those steps, which are the basic elements of any prototype. I will have more information regarding design, prototype creation, and the process of the initial phases for development in the future. For now, I hope you enjoy this short walk through. Also, be sure to check out my last quick entry on Sketchflow. I started off with a Sketchflow Project, just like I did in my previous entry (more specifics in that entry about how to manipulate and build out the Sketchflow Map). Once I created the project I setup the following Sketchflow Map. The CoreNavigation is a ComponentScreen setup solely for the page navigation at the top of the screen. The XAML markup in case you want to create a Component Screen with the same design is included below. <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" xmlns:i="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Interactivity;assembly=System.Windows.Interactivity" xmlns:pb="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.Behavior;assembly=Microsoft.Expression.Prototyping.Interactivity" x:Class="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.CoreNavigation" d:DesignWidth="624" d:DesignHeight="49" Height="49" Width="624"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="307,3,0,0" Style="{StaticResource TitleCenter-Sketch}" Text="Aütøchart Scorecards" TextWrapping="Wrap"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="MouseLeftButtonDown"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </TextBlock> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="164,8,0,11" Style="{StaticResource Button-Sketch}" Width="144" Content="Scorecard"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="Click"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1_2"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Button> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,8,0,11" Style="{StaticResource Button-Sketch}" Width="152" Content="Standard Reports"> <i:Interaction.Triggers> <i:EventTrigger EventName="Click"> <pb:NavigateToScreenAction TargetScreen="RapidPrototypeSketchScreens.Screen_1_1"/> </i:EventTrigger> </i:Interaction.Triggers> </Button> </Grid> </UserControl> Now that the CoreNavigation Component Screen is done I built out each of the others. In each of those screens I included the CoreNavigation Screen (all those little green lines in the image) as the top navigation. In order to do that, as I created each of the pages I would hover over the CoreNavigation Object in the Sketchflow Map. When the utilities drawer (the small menu that pops down under a node when you hover over it) shows click on the third little icon and drag it onto the page node you want a navigation screen on. Once I created all the screens I setup the navigation by opening up each screen and right clicking on the objects that needed to point to somewhere else in the prototype. Once I was done with the main page, my Home Navigation Page, it looked something like this in the Expression Blend Designer. I fleshed out each of the additional screens. Once I was done I wanted to try out the deployment package. The way to deploy a Sketchflow Prototype is to merely click on File –> Package SketchFlow Project and a prompt will appear. In the prompt enter what you want the package to be called. I like to see the files generated afterwards too, so I checked the box to see that. When Expression Blend is done generating everything you’ll have a directory like the one shown below, with all the needed files for deployment. Now these files can be copied or moved to any location for viewing. One can even copy them (such as via FTP) to a server location to share with others. Once they are deployed and you run the "TestPage.html" the other features of the Sketchflow Package are available. In the image below I have tagged a few sections to show the Sketchflow Player Features. To the top left is the navigation, which provides a clearly defined area of movement in a list. To the center right is the actual prototype application. I have placed lists of things and made edits. On the left hand side is the highlight feature, which is available in the Feedback section of the lower left. On the right hand list I underlined the Autochart with an orange marker, and marked out two list items with a red marker. In the lower left hand side in the Feedback section is also an area to type in your feedback. This can be useful for time based feedback, when you post this somewhere and want people to provide subsequent follow up feedback. Overall lots of great features, that enable some fairly rapid prototyping with customers. Once one is familiar with the steps and parts of this Sketchflow Prototype Capabilities it is easy to step through an application without even stopping. It really is that easy. So get hold of Expression Blend 3 and get ramped up on Sketchflow, it will pay off in the design phases to do so! Original Entry

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Top things web developers should know about the Visual Studio 2013 release

- by Jon Galloway

ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release NotesASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release NotesSummary for lazy readers: Visual Studio 2013 is now available for download on the Visual Studio site and on MSDN subscriber downloads) Visual Studio 2013 installs side by side with Visual Studio 2012 and supports round-tripping between Visual Studio versions, so you can try it out without committing to a switch Visual Studio 2013 ships with the new version of ASP.NET, which includes ASP.NET MVC 5, ASP.NET Web API 2, Razor 3, Entity Framework 6 and SignalR 2.0 The new releases ASP.NET focuses on One ASP.NET, so core features and web tools work the same across the platform (e.g. adding ASP.NET MVC controllers to a Web Forms application) New core features include new templates based on Bootstrap, a new scaffolding system, and a new identity system Visual Studio 2013 is an incredible editor for web files, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Markdown, LESS, Coffeescript, Handlebars, Angular, Ember, Knockdown, etc. Top links: Visual Studio 2013 content on the ASP.NET site are in the standard new releases area: http://www.asp.net/vnext ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Release Notes Short intro videos on the new Visual Studio web editor features from Scott Hanselman and Mads Kristensen Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 post on the official .NET Web Development and Tools Blog Scott Guthrie's post: Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework Okay, for those of you who are still with me, let's dig in a bit. Quick web dev notes on downloading and installing Visual Studio 2013 I found Visual Studio 2013 to be a pretty fast install. According to Brian Harry's release post, installing over pre-release versions of Visual Studio is supported. I've installed the release version over pre-release versions, and it worked fine. If you're only going to be doing web development, you can speed up the install if you just select Web Developer tools. Of course, as a good Microsoft employee, I'll mention that you might also want to install some of those other features, like the Store apps for Windows 8 and the Windows Phone 8.0 SDK, but they do download and install a lot of other stuff (e.g. the Windows Phone SDK sets up Hyper-V and downloads several GB's of VM's). So if you're planning just to do web development for now, you can pick just the Web Developer Tools and install the other stuff later. If you've got a fast internet connection, I recommend using the web installer instead of downloading the ISO. The ISO includes all the features, whereas the web installer just downloads what you're installing. Visual Studio 2013 development settings and color theme When you start up Visual Studio, it'll prompt you to pick some defaults. These are totally up to you -whatever suits your development style - and you can change them later. As I said, these are completely up to you. I recommend either the Web Development or Web Development (Code Only) settings. The only real difference is that Code Only hides the toolbars, and you can switch between them using Tools / Import and Export Settings / Reset. Web Development settings Web Development (code only) settings Usually I've just gone with Web Development (code only) in the past because I just want to focus on the code, although the Standard toolbar does make it easier to switch default web browsers. More on that later. Color theme Sigh. Okay, everyone's got their favorite colors. I alternate between Light and Dark depending on my mood, and I personally like how the low contrast on the window chrome in those themes puts the emphasis on my code rather than the tabs and toolbars. I know some people got pretty worked up over that, though, and wanted the blue theme back. I personally don't like it - it reminds me of ancient versions of Visual Studio that I don't want to think about anymore. So here's the thing: if you install Visual Studio Ultimate, it defaults to Blue. The other versions default to Light. If you use Blue, I won't criticize you - out loud, that is. You can change themes really easily - either Tools / Options / Environment / General, or the smart way: ctrl+q for quick launch, then type Theme and hit enter. Signing in During the first run, you'll be prompted to sign in. You don't have to - you can click the "Not now, maybe later" link at the bottom of that dialog. I recommend signing in, though. It's not hooked in with licensing or tracking the kind of code you write to sell you components. It is doing good things, like syncing your Visual Studio settings between computers. More about that here. So, you don't have to, but I sure do. Overview of shiny new things in ASP.NET land There are a lot of good new things in ASP.NET. I'll list some of my favorite here, but you can read more on the ASP.NET site. One ASP.NET You've heard us talk about this for a while. The idea is that options are good, but choice can be a burden. When you start a new ASP.NET project, why should you have to make a tough decision - with long-term consequences - about how your application will work? If you want to use ASP.NET Web Forms, but have the option of adding in ASP.NET MVC later, why should that be hard? It's all ASP.NET, right? Ideally, you'd just decide that you want to use ASP.NET to build sites and services, and you could use the appropriate tools (the green blocks below) as you needed them. So, here it is. When you create a new ASP.NET application, you just create an ASP.NET application. Next, you can pick from some templates to get you started... but these are different. They're not "painful decision" templates, they're just some starting pieces. And, most importantly, you can mix and match. I can pick a "mostly" Web Forms template, but include MVC and Web API folders and core references. If you've tried to mix and match in the past, you're probably aware that it was possible, but not pleasant. ASP.NET MVC project files contained special project type GUIDs, so you'd only get controller scaffolding support in a Web Forms project if you manually edited the csproj file. Features in one stack didn't work in others. Project templates were painful choices. That's no longer the case. Hooray! I just did a demo in a presentation last week where I created a new Web Forms + MVC + Web API site, built a model, scaffolded MVC and Web API controllers with EF Code First, add data in the MVC view, viewed it in Web API, then added a GridView to the Web Forms Default.aspx page and bound it to the Model. In about 5 minutes. Sure, it's a simple example, but it's great to be able to share code and features across the whole ASP.NET family. Authentication In the past, authentication was built into the templates. So, for instance, there was an ASP.NET MVC 4 Intranet Project template which created a new ASP.NET MVC 4 application that was preconfigured for Windows Authentication. All of that authentication stuff was built into each template, so they varied between the stacks, and you couldn't reuse them. You didn't see a lot of changes to the authentication options, since they required big changes to a bunch of project templates. Now, the new project dialog includes a common authentication experience. When you hit the Change Authentication button, you get some common options that work the same way regardless of the template or reference settings you've made. These options work on all ASP.NET frameworks, and all hosting environments (IIS, IIS Express, or OWIN for self-host) The default is Individual User Accounts: This is the standard "create a local account, using username / password or OAuth" thing; however, it's all built on the new Identity system. More on that in a second. The one setting that has some configuration to it is Organizational Accounts, which lets you configure authentication using Active Directory, Windows Azure Active Directory, or Office 365. Identity There's a new identity system. We've taken the best parts of the previous ASP.NET Membership and Simple Identity systems, rolled in a lot of feedback and made big enhancements to support important developer concerns like unit testing and extensiblity. I've written long posts about ASP.NET identity, and I'll do it again. Soon. This is not that post. The short version is that I think we've finally got just the right Identity system. Some of my favorite features: There are simple, sensible defaults that work well - you can File / New / Run / Register / Login, and everything works. It supports standard username / password as well as external authentication (OAuth, etc.). It's easy to customize without having to re-implement an entire provider. It's built using pluggable pieces, rather than one large monolithic system. It's built using interfaces like IUser and IRole that allow for unit testing, dependency injection, etc. You can easily add user profile data (e.g. URL, twitter handle, birthday). You just add properties to your ApplicationUser model and they'll automatically be persisted. Complete control over how the identity data is persisted. By default, everything works with Entity Framework Code First, but it's built to support changes from small (modify the schema) to big (use another ORM, store your data in a document database or in the cloud or in XML or in the EXIF data of your desktop background or whatever). It's configured via OWIN. More on OWIN and Katana later, but the fact that it's built using OWIN means it's portable. You can find out more in the Authentication and Identity section of the ASP.NET site (and lots more content will be going up there soon). New Bootstrap based project templates The new project templates are built using Bootstrap 3. Bootstrap (formerly Twitter Bootstrap) is a front-end framework that brings a lot of nice benefits: It's responsive, so your projects will automatically scale to device width using CSS media queries. For example, menus are full size on a desktop browser, but on narrower screens you automatically get a mobile-friendly menu. The built-in Bootstrap styles make your standard page elements (headers, footers, buttons, form inputs, tables etc.) look nice and modern. Bootstrap is themeable, so you can reskin your whole site by dropping in a new Bootstrap theme. Since Bootstrap is pretty popular across the web development community, this gives you a large and rapidly growing variety of templates (free and paid) to choose from. Bootstrap also includes a lot of very useful things: components (like progress bars and badges), useful glyphicons, and some jQuery plugins for tooltips, dropdowns, carousels, etc.). Here's a look at how the responsive part works. When the page is full screen, the menu and header are optimized for a wide screen display: When I shrink the page down (this is all based on page width, not useragent sniffing) the menu turns into a nice mobile-friendly dropdown: For a quick example, I grabbed a new free theme off bootswatch.com. For simple themes, you just need to download the boostrap.css file and replace the /content/bootstrap.css file in your project. Now when I refresh the page, I've got a new theme: Scaffolding The big change in scaffolding is that it's one system that works across ASP.NET. You can create a new Empty Web project or Web Forms project and you'll get the Scaffold context menus. For release, we've got MVC 5 and Web API 2 controllers. We had a preview of Web Forms scaffolding in the preview releases, but they weren't fully baked for RTM. Look for them in a future update, expected pretty soon. This scaffolding system wasn't just changed to work across the ASP.NET frameworks, it's also built to enable future extensibility. That's not in this release, but should also hopefully be out soon. Project Readme page This is a small thing, but I really like it. When you create a new project, you get a Project_Readme.html page that's added to the root of your project and opens in the Visual Studio built-in browser. I love it. A long time ago, when you created a new project we just dumped it on you and left you scratching your head about what to do next. Not ideal. Then we started adding a bunch of Getting Started information to the new project templates. That told you what to do next, but you had to delete all of that stuff out of your website. It doesn't belong there. Not ideal. This is a simple HTML file that's not integrated into your project code at all. You can delete it if you want. But, it shows a lot of helpful links that are current for the project you just created. In the future, if we add new wacky project types, they can create readme docs with specific information on how to do appropriately wacky things. Side note: I really like that they used the internal browser in Visual Studio to show this content rather than popping open an HTML page in the default browser. I hate that. It's annoying. If you're doing that, I hope you'll stop. What if some unnamed person has 40 or 90 tabs saved in their browser session? When you pop open your "Thanks for installing my Visual Studio extension!" page, all eleventy billion tabs start up and I wish I'd never installed your thing. Be like these guys and pop stuff Visual Studio specific HTML docs in the Visual Studio browser. ASP.NET MVC 5 The biggest change with ASP.NET MVC 5 is that it's no longer a separate project type. It integrates well with the rest of ASP.NET. In addition to that and the other common features we've already looked at (Bootstrap templates, Identity, authentication), here's what's new for ASP.NET MVC. Attribute routing ASP.NET MVC now supports attribute routing, thanks to a contribution by Tim McCall, the author of http://attributerouting.net. With attribute routing you can specify your routes by annotating your actions and controllers. This supports some pretty complex, customized routing scenarios, and it allows you to keep your route information right with your controller actions if you'd like. Here's a controller that includes an action whose method name is Hiding, but I've used AttributeRouting to configure it to /spaghetti/with-nesting/where-is-waldo public class SampleController : Controller { [Route("spaghetti/with-nesting/where-is-waldo")] public string Hiding() { return "You found me!"; } } I enable that in my RouteConfig.cs, and I can use that in conjunction with my other MVC routes like this: public class RouteConfig { public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes(); routes.MapRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); } } You can read more about Attribute Routing in ASP.NET MVC 5 here. Filter enhancements There are two new additions to filters: Authentication Filters and Filter Overrides. Authentication filters are a new kind of filter in ASP.NET MVC that run prior to authorization filters in the ASP.NET MVC pipeline and allow you to specify authentication logic per-action, per-controller, or globally for all controllers. Authentication filters process credentials in the request and provide a corresponding principal. Authentication filters can also add authentication challenges in response to unauthorized requests. Override filters let you change which filters apply to a given action method or controller. Override filters specify a set of filter types that should not be run for a given scope (action or controller). This allows you to configure filters that apply globally but then exclude certain global filters from applying to specific actions or controllers. ASP.NET Web API 2 ASP.NET Web API 2 includes a lot of new features. Attribute Routing ASP.NET Web API supports the same attribute routing system that's in ASP.NET MVC 5. You can read more about the Attribute Routing features in Web API in this article. OAuth 2.0 ASP.NET Web API picks up OAuth 2.0 support, using security middleware running on OWIN (discussed below). This is great for features like authenticated Single Page Applications. OData Improvements ASP.NET Web API now has full OData support. That required adding in some of the most powerful operators: $select, $expand, $batch and $value. You can read more about OData operator support in this article by Mike Wasson. Lots more There's a huge list of other features, including CORS (cross-origin request sharing), IHttpActionResult, IHttpRequestContext, and more. I think the best overview is in the release notes. OWIN and Katana I've written about OWIN and Katana recently. I'm a big fan. OWIN is the Open Web Interfaces for .NET. It's a spec, like HTML or HTTP, so you can't install OWIN. The benefit of OWIN is that it's a community specification, so anyone who implements it can plug into the ASP.NET stack, either as middleware or as a host. Katana is the Microsoft implementation of OWIN. It leverages OWIN to wire up things like authentication, handlers, modules, IIS hosting, etc., so ASP.NET can host OWIN components and Katana components can run in someone else's OWIN implementation. Howard Dierking just wrote a cool article in MSDN magazine describing Katana in depth: Getting Started with the Katana Project. He had an interesting example showing an OWIN based pipeline which leveraged SignalR, ASP.NET Web API and NancyFx components in the same stack. If this kind of thing makes sense to you, that's great. If it doesn't, don't worry, but keep an eye on it. You're going to see some cool things happen as a result of ASP.NET becoming more and more pluggable. Visual Studio Web Tools Okay, this stuff's just crazy. Visual Studio has been adding some nice web dev features over the past few years, but they've really cranked it up for this release. Visual Studio is by far my favorite code editor for all web files: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and lots of popular libraries. Stop thinking of Visual Studio as a big editor that you only use to write back-end code. Stop editing HTML and CSS in Notepad (or Sublime, Notepad++, etc.). Visual Studio starts up in under 2 seconds on a modern computer with an SSD. Misspelling HTML attributes or your CSS classes or jQuery or Angular syntax is stupid. It doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a silly person who wastes time. Browser Link Browser Link is a real-time, two-way connection between Visual Studio and all connected browsers. It's only attached when you're running locally, in debug, but it applies to any and all connected browser, including emulators. You may have seen demos that showed the browsers refreshing based on changes in the editor, and I'll agree that's pretty cool. But it's really just the start. It's a two-way connection, and it's built for extensiblity. That means you can write extensions that push information from your running application (in IE, Chrome, a mobile emulator, etc.) back to Visual Studio. Mads and team have showed off some demonstrations where they enabled edit mode in the browser which updated the source HTML back on the browser. It's also possible to look at how the rendered HTML performs, check for compatibility issues, watch for unused CSS classes, the sky's the limit. New HTML editor The previous HTML editor had a lot of old code that didn't allow for improvements. The team rewrote the HTML editor to take advantage of the new(ish) extensibility features in Visual Studio, which then allowed them to add in all kinds of features - things like CSS Class and ID IntelliSense (so you type style="" and get a list of classes and ID's for your project), smart indent based on how your document is formatted, JavaScript reference auto-sync, etc. Here's a 3 minute tour from Mads Kristensen. The previous HTML editor had a lot of old code that didn't allow for improvements. The team rewrote the HTML editor to take advantage of the new(ish) extensibility features in Visual Studio, which then allowed them to add in all kinds of features - things like CSS Class and ID IntelliSense (so you type style="" and get a list of classes and ID's for your project), smart indent based on how your document is formatted, JavaScript reference auto-sync, etc. Lots more Visual Studio web dev features That's just a sampling - there's a ton of great features for JavaScript editing, CSS editing, publishing, and Page Inspector (which shows real-time rendering of your page inside Visual Studio). Here are some more short videos showing those features. Lots, lots more Okay, that's just a summary, and it's still quite a bit. Head on over to http://asp.net/vnext for more information, and download Visual Studio 2013 now to get started!

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Using Unity – Part 3

- by nmarun

The previous blog was about registering and invoking different types dynamically. In this one I’d like to show how Unity manages/disposes the instances – say hello to Lifetime Managers. When a type gets registered, either through the config file or when RegisterType method is explicitly called, the default behavior is that the container uses a transient lifetime manager. In other words, the unity container creates a new instance of the type when Resolve or ResolveAll method is called. Whereas, when you register an existing object using the RegisterInstance method, the container uses a container controlled lifetime manager - a singleton pattern. It does this by storing the reference of the object and that means so as long as the container is ‘alive’, your registered instance does not go out of scope and will be disposed only after the container either goes out of scope or when the code explicitly disposes the container. Let’s see how we can use these and test if something is a singleton or a transient instance. Continuing on the same solution used in the previous blogs, I have made the following changes: First is to add typeAlias elements for TransientLifetimeManager type: 1: <typeAlias alias="transient" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.TransientLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> You then need to tell what type(s) you want to be transient by nature: 1: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 2: <lifetime type="transient" /> 3: </type> 4:  The lifetime element’s type attribute matches with the alias attribute of the typeAlias element. Now since ‘transient’ is the default behavior, you can have a concise version of the same as line 4 shows. Also note that I’ve changed the mapTo attribute from ‘Product’ to ‘Product2’. I’ve done this to help understand the transient nature of the instance of the type Product2. By making this change, you are basically saying when a type of IProduct needs to be resolved, Unity should create an instance of Product2 by default. 1: public string WriteProductDetails() 2: { 3: return string.Format("Name: {0}<br/>Category: {1}<br/>Mfg Date: {2}<br/>Hash Code: {3}", 4: Name, Category, MfgDate.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt"), GetHashCode()); 5: } Again, the above change is purely for the purpose of making the example more clear to understand. The display will show the full date and also displays the hash code of the current instance. The GetHashCode() method returns an integer when an instance gets created – a new integer for every instance. When you run the application, you’ll see something like the below: Now when you click on the ‘Get Product2 Instance’ button, you’ll see that the Mfg Date (which is set in the constructor) and the Hash Code are different from the one created on page load. This proves to us that a new instance is created every single time. To make this a singleton, we need to add a type alias for the ContainerControlledLifetimeManager class and then change the type attribute of the lifetime element to singleton. 1: <typeAlias alias="singleton" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ContainerControlledLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="singleton" /> 5: </type> Running the application now gets me the following output: Click on the button below and you’ll see that the Mfg Date and the Hash code remain unchanged => the unity container is storing the reference the first time it is created and then returns the same instance every time the type needs to be resolved. Digging more deeper into this, Unity provides more than the two lifetime managers. ExternallyControlledLifetimeManager – maintains a weak reference to type mappings and instances. Unity returns the same instance as long as the some code is holding a strong reference to this instance. For this, you need: 1: <typeAlias alias="external" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ExternallyControlledLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="external" /> 5: </type> PerThreadLifetimeManager – Unity returns a unique instance of an object for each thread – so this effectively is a singleton behavior on a per-thread basis. 1: <typeAlias alias="perThread" type="Microsoft.Practices.Unity.PerThreadLifetimeManager, Microsoft.Practices.Unity"/> 2: ... 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2"> 4: <lifetime type="perThread" /> 5: </type> One thing to note about this is that if you use RegisterInstance method to register an existing object, this instance will be returned for every thread, making this a purely singleton behavior. Needless to say, this type of lifetime management is useful in multi-threaded applications (duh!!). I hope this blog provided some basics on lifetime management of objects resolved in Unity and in the next blog, I’ll talk about Injection. Please see the code used here.

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jQuery Time Entry with Time Navigation Keys

- by Rick Strahl

So, how do you display time values in your Web applications? Displaying date AND time values in applications is lot less standardized than date display only. While date input has become fairly universal with various date picker controls available, time entry continues to be a bit of a non-standardized. In my own applications I tend to use the jQuery UI DatePicker control for date entries and it works well for that. Here's an example: The date entry portion is well defined and it makes perfect sense to have a calendar pop up so you can pick a date from a rich UI when necessary. However, time values are much less obvious when it comes to displaying a UI or even just making time entries more useful. There are a slew of time picker controls available but other than adding some visual glitz, they are not really making time entry any easier. Part of the reason for this is that time entry is usually pretty simple. Clicking on a dropdown of any sort and selecting a value from a long scrolling list tends to take more user interaction than just typing 5 characters (7 if am/pm is used). Keystrokes can make Time Entry easier Time entry maybe pretty simple, but I find that adding a few hotkeys to handle date navigation can make it much easier. Specifically it'd be nice to have keys to: Jump to the current time (Now) Increase/decrease minutes Increase/decrease hours The timeKeys jQuery PlugIn Some time ago I created a small plugin to handle this scenario. It's non-visual other than tooltip that pops up when you press ? to display the hotkeys that are available: Try it Online The keys loosely follow the ancient Quicken convention of using the first and last letters of what you're increasing decreasing (ie. H to decrease, R to increase hours and + and - for the base unit or minutes here). All navigation happens via the keystrokes shown above, so it's all non-visual, which I think is the most efficient way to deal with dates. To hook up the plug-in, start with the textbox:<input type="text" id="txtTime" name="txtTime" value="12:05 pm" title="press ? for time options" /> Note the title which might be useful to alert people using the field that additional functionality is available. To hook up the plugin code is as simple as:$("#txtTime").timeKeys(); You essentially tie the plugin to any text box control. OptionsThe syntax for timeKeys allows for an options map parameter:$(selector).timeKeys(options); Options are passed as a parameter map object which can have the following properties: timeFormatYou can pass in a format string that allows you to format the date. The default is "hh:mm t" which is US time format that shows a 12 hour clock with am/pm. Alternately you can pass in "HH:mm" which uses 24 hour time. HH, hh, mm and t are translated in the format string - you can arrange the format as you see fit. callbackYou can also specify a callback function that is called when the date value has been set. This allows you to either re-format the date or perform post processing (such as displaying highlight if it's after a certain hour for example). Here's another example that uses both options:$("#txtTime").timeKeys({ timeFormat: "HH:mm", callback: function (time) { showStatus("new time is: " + time.toString() + " " + $(this).val() ); } }); The plugin code itself is fairly simple. It hooks the keydown event and checks for the various keys that affect time navigation which is straight forward. The bulk of the code however deals with parsing the time value and formatting the output using a Time class that implements parsing, formatting and time navigation methods. Here's the code for the timeKeys jQuery plug-in:/// <reference path="jquery.js" /> /// <reference path="ww.jquery.js" /> (function ($) { $.fn.timeKeys = function (options) { /// <summary> /// Attaches a set of hotkeys to time fields /// + Add minute - subtract minute /// H Subtract Hour R Add houR /// ? Show keys /// </summary> /// <param name="options" type="object"> /// Options: /// timeFormat: "hh:mm t" by default HH:mm alternate /// callback: callback handler after time assignment /// </param> /// <example> /// var proxy = new ServiceProxy("JsonStockService.svc/"); /// proxy.invoke("GetStockQuote",{symbol:"msft"},function(quote) { alert(result.LastPrice); },onPageError); ///</example> if (this.length < 1) return this; var opt = { timeFormat: "hh:mm t", callback: null } $.extend(opt, options); return this.keydown(function (e) { var $el = $(this); var time = new Time($el.val()); //alert($(this).val() + " " + time.toString() + " " + time.date.toString()); switch (e.keyCode) { case 78: // [N]ow time = new Time(new Date()); break; case 109: case 189: // - time.addMinutes(-1); break; case 107: case 187: // + time.addMinutes(1); break; case 72: //H time.addHours(-1); break; case 82: //R time.addHours(1); break; case 191: // ? if (e.shiftKey) $(this).tooltip("<b>N</b> Now<br/><b>+</b> add minute<br /><b>-</b> subtract minute<br /><b>H</b> Subtract Hour<br /><b>R</b> add hour", 4000, { isHtml: true }); return false; default: return true; } $el.val(time.toString(opt.timeFormat)); if (opt.callback) { // call async and set context in this element setTimeout(function () { opt.callback.call($el.get(0), time) }, 1); } return false; }); } Time = function (time, format) { /// <summary> /// Time object that can parse and format /// a time values. /// </summary> /// <param name="time" type="object"> /// A time value as a string (12:15pm or 23:01), a Date object /// or time value. /// /// </param> /// <param name="format" type="string"> /// Time format string: /// HH:mm (23:01) /// hh:mm t (11:01 pm) /// </param> /// <example> /// var time = new Time( new Date()); /// time.addHours(5); /// time.addMinutes(10); /// var s = time.toString(); /// /// var time2 = new Time(s); // parse with constructor /// var t = time2.parse("10:15 pm"); // parse with .parse() method /// alert( t.hours + " " + t.mins + " " + t.ampm + " " + t.hours25) ///</example> var _I = this; this.date = new Date(); this.timeFormat = "hh:mm t"; if (format) this.timeFormat = format; this.parse = function (time) { /// <summary> /// Parses time value from a Date object, or string in format of: /// 12:12pm or 23:01 /// </summary> /// <param name="time" type="any"> /// A time value as a string (12:15pm or 23:01), a Date object /// or time value. /// /// </param> if (!time) return null; // Date if (time.getDate) { var t = {}; var d = time; t.hours24 = d.getHours(); t.mins = d.getMinutes(); t.ampm = "am"; if (t.hours24 > 11) { t.ampm = "pm"; if (t.hours24 > 12) t.hours = t.hours24 - 12; } time = t; } if (typeof (time) == "string") { var parts = time.split(":"); if (parts < 2) return null; var time = {}; time.hours = parts[0] * 1; time.hours24 = time.hours; time.mins = parts[1].toLowerCase(); if (time.mins.indexOf("am") > -1) { time.ampm = "am"; time.mins = time.mins.replace("am", ""); if (time.hours == 12) time.hours24 = 0; } else if (time.mins.indexOf("pm") > -1) { time.ampm = "pm"; time.mins = time.mins.replace("pm", ""); if (time.hours < 12) time.hours24 = time.hours + 12; } time.mins = time.mins * 1; } _I.date.setMinutes(time.mins); _I.date.setHours(time.hours24); return time; }; this.addMinutes = function (mins) { /// <summary> /// adds minutes to the internally stored time value. /// </summary> /// <param name="mins" type="number"> /// number of minutes to add to the date /// </param> _I.date.setMinutes(_I.date.getMinutes() + mins); } this.addHours = function (hours) { /// <summary> /// adds hours the internally stored time value. /// </summary> /// <param name="hours" type="number"> /// number of hours to add to the date /// </param> _I.date.setHours(_I.date.getHours() + hours); } this.getTime = function () { /// <summary> /// returns a time structure from the currently /// stored time value. /// Properties: hours, hours24, mins, ampm /// </summary> return new Time(new Date()); h } this.toString = function (format) { /// <summary> /// returns a short time string for the internal date /// formats: 12:12 pm or 23:12 /// </summary> /// <param name="format" type="string"> /// optional format string for date /// HH:mm, hh:mm t /// </param> if (!format) format = _I.timeFormat; var hours = _I.date.getHours(); if (format.indexOf("t") > -1) { if (hours > 11) format = format.replace("t", "pm") else format = format.replace("t", "am") } if (format.indexOf("HH") > -1) format = format.replace("HH", hours.toString().padL(2, "0")); if (format.indexOf("hh") > -1) { if (hours > 12) hours -= 12; if (hours == 0) hours = 12; format = format.replace("hh", hours.toString().padL(2, "0")); } if (format.indexOf("mm") > -1) format = format.replace("mm", _I.date.getMinutes().toString().padL(2, "0")); return format; } // construction if (time) this.time = this.parse(time); } String.prototype.padL = function (width, pad) { if (!width || width < 1) return this; if (!pad) pad = " "; var length = width - this.length if (length < 1) return this.substr(0, width); return (String.repeat(pad, length) + this).substr(0, width); } String.repeat = function (chr, count) { var str = ""; for (var x = 0; x < count; x++) { str += chr }; return str; } })(jQuery); The plugin consists of the actual plugin and the Time class which handles parsing and formatting of the time value via the .parse() and .toString() methods. Code like this always ends up taking up more effort than the actual logic unfortunately. There are libraries out there that can handle this like datejs or even ww.jquery.js (which is what I use) but to keep the code self contained for this post the plugin doesn't rely on external code. There's one optional exception: The code as is has one dependency on ww.jquery.js for the tooltip plugin that provides the small popup for all the hotkeys available. You can replace that code with some other mechanism to display hotkeys or simply remove it since that behavior is optional. While we're at it: A jQuery dateKeys plugIn Although date entry tends to be much better served with drop down calendars to pick dates from, often it's also easier to pick dates using a few simple hotkeys. Navigation that uses + - for days and M and H for MontH navigation, Y and R for YeaR navigation are a quick way to enter dates without having to resort to using a mouse and clicking around to what you want to find. Note that this plugin does have a dependency on ww.jquery.js for the date formatting functionality.$.fn.dateKeys = function (options) { /// <summary> /// Attaches a set of hotkeys to date 'fields' /// + Add day - subtract day /// M Subtract Month H Add montH /// Y Subtract Year R Add yeaR /// ? Show keys /// </summary> /// <param name="options" type="object"> /// Options: /// dateFormat: "MM/dd/yyyy" by default "MMM dd, yyyy /// callback: callback handler after date assignment /// </param> /// <example> /// var proxy = new ServiceProxy("JsonStockService.svc/"); /// proxy.invoke("GetStockQuote",{symbol:"msft"},function(quote) { alert(result.LastPrice); },onPageError); ///</example> if (this.length < 1) return this; var opt = { dateFormat: "MM/dd/yyyy", callback: null }; $.extend(opt, options); return this.keydown(function (e) { var $el = $(this); var d = new Date($el.val()); if (!d) d = new Date(1900, 0, 1, 1, 1); var month = d.getMonth(); var year = d.getFullYear(); var day = d.getDate(); switch (e.keyCode) { case 84: // [T]oday d = new Date(); break; case 109: case 189: d = new Date(year, month, day - 1); break; case 107: case 187: d = new Date(year, month, day + 1); break; case 77: //M d = new Date(year, month - 1, day); break; case 72: //H d = new Date(year, month + 1, day); break; case 191: // ? if (e.shiftKey) $el.tooltip("<b>T</b> Today<br/><b>+</b> add day<br /><b>-</b> subtract day<br /><b>M</b> subtract Month<br /><b>H</b> add montH<br/><b>Y</b> subtract Year<br/><b>R</b> add yeaR", 5000, { isHtml: true }); return false; default: return true; } $el.val(d.formatDate(opt.dateFormat)); if (opt.callback) // call async setTimeout(function () { opt.callback.call($el.get(0),d); }, 10); return false; }); } The logic for this plugin is similar to the timeKeys plugin, but it's a little simpler as it tries to directly parse the date value from a string via new Date(inputString). As mentioned it also uses a helper function from ww.jquery.js to format dates which removes the logic to perform date formatting manually which again reduces the size of the code. And the Key is… I've been using both of these plugins in combination with the jQuery UI datepicker for datetime values and I've found that I rarely actually pop up the date picker any more. It's just so much more efficient to use the hotkeys to navigate dates. It's still nice to have the picker around though - it provides the expected behavior for date entry. For time values however I can't justify the UI overhead of a picker that doesn't make it any easier to pick a time. Most people know how to type in a time value and if they want shortcuts keystrokes easily beat out any pop up UI. Hopefully you'll find this as useful as I have found it for my code. Resources Online Sample Download Sample Project © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in jQuery HTML Tweet (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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UCM 11g is 4 days old!

- by kyle.hatlestad

Ok...so I missed posting a blog entry when UCM 11g and the entire ECM suite released on Tuesday. Hopefully you've already seen the announcements on any number of the Oracle ECM blogs out there such as ECM Alerts, Fusion ECM, bex huff, or C4. So I won't bore you with the same talking points like 179 million check-ins per day or 124 web site page hits per second. Instead, I thought I'd show some screenshots of the new features in UCM and URM 11g. WebLogic Server and Enterprise Manager So probably the biggest change in 11g is UCM and URM now run on top of the WebLogic Server application server. This is a huge step as ECM is now on a standard platform with the rest of Oracle Fusion Middleware which makes installation, configuration, and integration consistent among all the products. From a feature perspective, it's also beneficial because it's now integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Enterprise Manager provides a lot of provisioning control over servers as well as performance monitoring and access to logs and debugging information. Desktop Integration Suite Desktop Integration Suite got a complete overhaul for 11g. It exposes a lot more features within Windows Explorer such as saved searches, workflow queue, and checked-out items. It also now support metadata pop-up screens to let users fill in additional metadata when they drag-n-drop files in! And the integration within Office applications has changed significantly by introducing a dedicated UCM menu to do open, save, compare, etc. Site Studio for External Applications In UCM Site Studio 10gR4, a major architectural shift was introduced which brought several new objects such as elements, region definitions, region templates, and placeholder definitions. This truly separated the content from the display and from the definition. It also allowed separation of the content from needing to be rendered on a complete Site Studio page. Well, the new Site Studio for External Applications takes advantage of that architecture and introduces pre-built tags and plug-ins to JDeveloper to allow to go from simply adding a content area to your web application page to building an entire web site, just like you would have done in Site Studio Designer. In addition to these changes, enhancements to the core Site Studio have been added as well. One of the big ones is called Designer Mode which allows power-users to bypass the standard rules defined by the placeholder definition or template and perform any number of additional actions. This reduces the need to go back to Site Studio Designer or JDeveloper to make more advanced changes to the site. Dashboards As part of the updated records management functionality in both UCM and URM, users can now set a dashboard view on their home page to surface common functions in a single view. It has pre-built "portlets" users can choose from to display and organize they way they want. Behind the scenes, these dashboards are stored as Content Folios. So the dashboards themselves are content items that can be revisioned and shared between users. And new dashboard portlets can be easily added (like the User Profile one in the screenshots) by getting a copy of an existing one, modifying the display, and then checking it in as a new one to select from. URM Interface Enhancements URM includes several new UI and usability enhancements in 11g. There is a new view for physical records, a place to configure "favorite" items to quickly get to, and new placement of the records management menu. BI Publisher Reports Records management in UCM and URM now offer reports generated through embedded BI Publisher. Templates are controlled by rich text files checked directly into the repository, so they can be easily modified. Other Features A new Inbound Refinery conversion option is available that does native Microsoft Office HTML conversion. If your IBR is on Windows and you have the native applications loaded, the IBR can use them to produce HTML. A new GUI template editor for Dynamic Converter is available. It's written in Java so is available through all the supported browsers and platforms. The original ActiveX based editor is also still available. The Component Manager interface has changed to help provide an easier and more descriptive way to enable core components that are installed along with UCM. All of the supported components are immediately available to turn on and do not have to be installed separately as in previous versions. My Downloads is located in the My Content Server menu and provides for easy download of client installs including Desktop Integration Suite and Site Studio Designer. Well, hopefully that gives you a taste for some of the new things in 11g. We're all pretty excited here at Oracle about all the new changes and enhancements. Over the next few months I hope to highlight some of these features more in-depth, so keep your eye out for those posts.

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Silverlight 5 Hosting :: Features in Silverlight 5 and Release Date

- by mbridge

Silverlight 5 is finally announced in the Silverlight FireStarter Event on the 2nd December, 2010. This new version of Silverlight which was earlier labeled as 'Future of Microsoft Silverlight' has now come much closer to go live as the first Silverlight 5 Beta version is expected to be shipped during the early months of 2011. However for the full fledged and the final release of Silverlight 5, we have to wait many more months as the same is likely to be made available within the Q3 2011. As would have been usually expected, this latest edition would feature many new capabilities thereby extending the developer productivity to a whole new dimension of premium media experience and feature-rich business applications. It comes along with many new feature updates as well as the inclusion of new technologies to improve the standard of the Silverlight applications which are now fine-tuned to produce next generation business and media solutions that is capable to meet the requirements of the advanced web-based app development. The Silverlight 5 is all set to replace the previous fourth version which now includes more than forty new features while also dropping various deprecated elements that was prevalent earlier. It has brought around some major performance enhancements and also included better support for various other tools and technologies. Following are some of the changes that are registered to be available under the Silverlight 5 Beta edition which is scheduled to be launched during the Q1 2011. Silverlight 5 : Premium Media Experiences The media features of Silverlight 5 has seen some major enhancements with a lot of optimizations being made to deliver richer solutions. It's capability has now been extended to make things easier, faster and capable of performing the desired tasks in the most efficient manner. The Silverlight media solutions has already been a part of many companies in the recent days where various on-demand Silverlight services were featured but with the arrival of the next generation premium media solution of Silverlight 5, it is expected to register new heights of success and global user acclamation for using it with many esteemed web-based projects and media solutions. - The most happening element in the new Silverlight 5 will be its support for utilizing the GPU based hardware acceleration which is intended to lower down the CPU load to a significant extent and thereby allowing faster rendering of media contents without consuming much resources. This feature is believed to be particularly helpful for low configured machines to run full HD media content without any lagging caused due to processor load. It will hence be one great feature to revolutionize the new generation high quality media contents to be available within the web in a more efficient manner with its hardware decoded video playback capabilities. - With the inclusion of hardware video decoding to minimize the processor load, the Silverlight 5 also comes with another optimization enhancement to also reduce the power consumption level by making new methods to deal with the power-saver settings. With this optimization in effect, the computer would be automatically allowed to switch to sleep mode while no video playback is in progress and also to prevent any screensavers to popup and cause annoyances during any video playback. There would also be other power saver options which will be made available to best suit the users requirements and purpose. - The Silverlight trickplay feature is another great way to tweak any silverlight powered media content as is used for many video tutorial sites or for dealing with any sort of presentations. This feature enables the user to modify the playback speed to either slowdown or speedup during the playback durations based on the requirements without compromising on the quality of output. Normally such manipulations always makes the content's audio to go off-pitch, but the same will not be the case with TrickPlay and the audio would seamlessly progress with the video without skipping any of its part. - In addition to all of the above, the new Silverlight 5 will be featuring wireless control of all the media contents by making use of remote controllers. With the use of such remote devices, it will be easier to handle the various media playback controls thereby providing more freedom while experiencing the premium media services. Silverlight 5 : Business Application Development The application development standard has been extended with more possibilities by bringing forth new and useful technologies and also reviving the existing methods to work better than what it was used to. From the UI improvements to advanced technical aspects, the Silverlight 5 scores high on all grounds to produce great next generation business delivered applications by putting in more creativity and resourceful touch to all the apps being produced with it. - The WPF feature of Silverlight is made more effective by introducing new standards of Databinding which is intended to improve the productivity standards of the Silverlight application developer. It brings in a lot of convenience in debugging the databinding components or expressions and hence making things work in a flawless manner. Some additional features related to databinding includes that of Ancestor RelativeSource, Implicit DataTemplates and Model View ViewModel (MVVM) support with DataContextChanged event and many other new features relating it. - It now comes with a refined text and printing service which facilitates better clarity of the text rendering and also many positive changes which are being applied to the layout pattern. New supports has been added to include OpenType font, multi-column text, linked-text containers and character leading support to name a few among the available features.This also includes some important printing aspects like that of Postscript Vector Printing API which allows to program our printing tasks in a user defined way and Pivot functionality for visualization concerns of informations. - The Graphics support is the key improvements being incorporated which now enables to utilize three dimensional graphics pattern using GPU acceleration. It can manage to provide some really cool visualizations being curved to provide media contents within the business apps with also the support for full HD contents at 1080p quality. - Silverlight 5 includes the support for 64-bit operating systems and relevant browsers and is also optimized to provide better performance. It can support the background thread for the networking which can reduce the latency of the network to a considerable extent. The Out-of-Browser functionality adds the support for utilizing various libraries and also the Win32 API. It also comes with testing support with VS 2010 which is mostly an automated procedure and has also enabled increased security aspects of all the Silverlight 5 developed applications by using the improved version of group policy support.

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Feedback on "market manipulation", a peripheral game mechanic for a satirical MMO

- by BerndBrot

This question asks for feedback on a specific game-mechanic. Since there is not one right feedback on a game mechanic, I tried to provide enough context and guidelines to still make it possible for users to rate answers and to accept an answer as the best answer (following these criteria from Writer.SE's meta website). Please comment if you have any suggestions on how I could improve the question in that regard. So, let's begin with the game itself and some of its elements which are relevant for this question. Context I'm working on a satirical, text-based multiplayer adventure and role-playing game set in modern-day London. The game resolves around the concept of sin and features a myriad of (venomous) allusions to all the things that go wrong in this world. Players can choose between character classes like bullshit artist (consultant), bankster, lawyer, mobster, celebrity, politician, etc. In order to complete the game, the player has to live so sinfully with regard to any of the seven deadly sins that a demon is willing to offer them a contract of sponsorship. On their quest to live a sinful live, characters explore more and more locations of modern-day London (on a GoogleMap), fight "monsters" like insurance sales agents or Jehovah's Witnesses, and complete quests, like building a PowerPoint presentation out of marketing buzz words or keeping up a number of substance abuse effects in order to progress on the gluttony path. Battles are turn based with both combatants having a deck of cards, with which they try to make their enemy give in to temptations of all sorts. Tempted enemies sometimes become contacts (an item drop mechanic), which can be exploited for various benefits, depending on their area of influence (finance, underworld, bureaucracy, etc.), level of influence, and kind of sway that the player has over them (bribed, seduced, threatened, etc.) Once a contract has been exploited, the player loses that contact. Most actions require turns. Turns are limited, but refill each day. Criteria A number of peripheral game mechanics are supposed to represent real world abuses and mischief in a humorous way integrate real world data and events to strengthen the feeling of relevance of the game's humor with regard to real world problems add fun ways of interacting with other players add ways for players to express themselves through game-play Market manipulation is one such peripheral game mechanic and should fulfill all of these goals. Market manipulation This is my initial design of the mechanic: Players can enter the London Stock Exchange (LSE) (without paying a turn) LSE displays the stock prices of a number of companies in industries like weapons or tobacco as well as some derivatives based on wheat and corn. The stock prices are calculated based on the actual stock prices of these companies and derivatives (in real time) any market manipulations that were conducted by the players any market corrections of the system Players can buy and sell shares with cash, a resource in the game, at current in-game market value (without paying a turn). Players can manipulate the market, i.e. let the price of a share either rise or fall, by some amount, over a certain period of time. Manipulating the market requires 1 turn A contact in the financial sector (see above). The higher the level of influence of the contact, the stronger the effect of the manipulation on the stock price, and/or the shorter it takes for the manipulation to manifest itself. Market manipulation also adds a crime to the player's record. (There are a multitude of ways to take care of that, but it is still another "cost" of market manipulations.) The system continuously corrects market manipulations by letting the in-game prices converge towards their real world counterparts at a rate of 2% of the difference between the two per hour. Because of this market correction mechanism, pushing up prices (and screwing down prices) becomes increasingly difficult the higher (lower) the price already is. Whenever food prices reach a certain level, in-game stories are posted about hunger catastrophes happening somewhere far, far away (maybe with links to real world news stories). Whenever a player sells a certain number of shares with a sufficiently high margin, they are mentioned in that day's in-game financial news. Since the number of stock options is very limited, players will inevitably collide in their efforts to manipulate the market in their favor. Hopefully, it will also be a fun side-arena for guilds and covenants to fight each other. Question(s) What do you think of this mechanism given the criteria for peripheral game mechanics that I specified for my game? Do you have any ideas how the mechanic could be improved with regard to these criteria (or otherwise)? Could it be improved to allow for more expressive game-play, or involve an allusion to some other real world madness (like short selling, leveraging, or some other banking magic)? Are there any game-theoretic problems with this mechanic, like maybe certain dominant individual strategies that, collectively, lead to every player profiting and thus eliminating the idea of market manipulation PVP? Also, if you like (or dislike) this question, feel free to participate in the discussion on GDSE meta: "Should we be more lax with regard to SE's question/answer format to make game design questions possible?"

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ASP.NET MVC 3: Razor’s @: and <text> syntax

- by ScottGu

This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features: New @model keyword in Razor (Oct 19th) Layouts with Razor (Oct 22nd) Server-Side Comments with Razor (Nov 12th) Razor’s @: and <text> syntax (today) In today’s post I’m going to discuss two useful syntactical features of the new Razor view-engine – the @: and <text> syntax support. Fluid Coding with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to the existing .aspx view engine). You can learn more about Razor, why we are introducing it, and the syntax it supports from my Introducing Razor blog post. Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type. For example, the Razor snippet below can be used to iterate a list of products: When run, it generates output like: One of the techniques that Razor uses to implicitly identify when a code block ends is to look for tag/element content to denote the beginning of a content region. For example, in the code snippet above Razor automatically treated the inner <li></li> block within our foreach loop as an HTML content block because it saw the opening <li> tag sequence and knew that it couldn’t be valid C#. This particular technique – using tags to identify content blocks within code – is one of the key ingredients that makes Razor so clean and productive with scenarios involving HTML creation. Using @: to explicitly indicate the start of content Not all content container blocks start with a tag element tag, though, and there are scenarios where the Razor parser can’t implicitly detect a content block. Razor addresses this by enabling you to explicitly indicate the beginning of a line of content by using the @: character sequence within a code block. The @: sequence indicates that the line of content that follows should be treated as a content block: As a more practical example, the below snippet demonstrates how we could output a “(Out of Stock!)” message next to our product name if the product is out of stock: Because I am not wrapping the (Out of Stock!) message in an HTML tag element, Razor can’t implicitly determine that the content within the @if block is the start of a content block. We are using the @: character sequence to explicitly indicate that this line within our code block should be treated as content. Using Code Nuggets within @: content blocks In addition to outputting static content, you can also have code nuggets embedded within a content block that is initiated using a @: character sequence. For example, we have two @: sequences in the code snippet below: Notice how within the second @: sequence we are emitting the number of units left within the content block (e.g. - “(Only 3 left!”). We are doing this by embedding a @p.UnitsInStock code nugget within the line of content. Multiple Lines of Content Razor makes it easy to have multiple lines of content wrapped in an HTML element. For example, below the inner content of our @if container is wrapped in an HTML <p> element – which will cause Razor to treat it as content: For scenarios where the multiple lines of content are not wrapped by an outer HTML element, you can use multiple @: sequences: Alternatively, Razor also allows you to use a <text> element to explicitly identify content: The <text> tag is an element that is treated specially by Razor. It causes Razor to interpret the inner contents of the <text> block as content, and to not render the containing <text> tag element (meaning only the inner contents of the <text> element will be rendered – the tag itself will not). This makes it convenient when you want to render multi-line content blocks that are not wrapped by an HTML element. The <text> element can also optionally be used to denote single-lines of content, if you prefer it to the more concise @: sequence: The above code will render the same output as the @: version we looked at earlier. Razor will automatically omit the <text> wrapping element from the output and just render the content within it. Summary Razor enables a clean and concise templating syntax that enables a very fluid coding workflow. Razor’s smart detection of <tag> elements to identify the beginning of content regions is one of the reasons that the Razor approach works so well with HTML generation scenarios, and it enables you to avoid having to explicitly mark the beginning/ending of content regions in about 95% of if/else and foreach scenarios. Razor’s @: and <text> syntax can then be used for scenarios where you want to avoid using an HTML element within a code container block, and need to more explicitly denote a content region. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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ODI SDK: Retrieving Information From the Logs

- by Christophe Dupupet

It is fairly common to want to retrieve data from the ODI logs: statistics, execution status, even the generated code can be retrieved from the logs. The ODI SDK provides a robust set of APIs to parse the repository and retreve such information. To locate the information you are looking for, you have to keep in mind the structure of the logs: sessions contain steps; steps containt tasks. The session is the execution unit: basically, each time you execute something (interface, package, procedure, scenario) you create a new session. The steps are the individual entries found in a session: these will be the icons in your package for instance. Or if you are running an interface, you will have one single step: the interface itself. The tasks will represent the more atomic elements of the steps: the individual DDL, DML, scripts and so forth that are generated by ODI, along with all the detailed statistics for that task. All these details can be retrieved with the SDK. Because I had a question recently on the API ODIStepReport, I focus explicitly in this code on Scenario logs, but a lot more can be done with these APIs. Here is the code sample (you can just cut and paste that code in your ODI 11.1.1.6 Groovy console). Just save, adapt the code to your environment (in particular to connect to your repository) and hit "run" //Created by ODI Studioimport oracle.odi.core.OdiInstanceimport oracle.odi.core.config.OdiInstanceConfigimport oracle.odi.core.config.MasterRepositoryDbInfo import oracle.odi.core.config.WorkRepositoryDbInfo import oracle.odi.core.security.Authentication import oracle.odi.core.config.PoolingAttributes import oracle.odi.domain.runtime.scenario.finder.IOdiScenarioFinder import oracle.odi.domain.runtime.scenario.OdiScenario import java.util.Collection import java.io.* /* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simple sample code to list all executions of the last version of a scenario,along with detailed steps information----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- */ /* update the following parameters to match your environment => */def url = "jdbc:oracle:thin:@myserver:1521:orcl"def driver = "oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"def schema = "ODIM1116"def schemapwd = "ODIM1116PWD"def workrep = "WORKREP1116"def odiuser= "SUPERVISOR"def odiuserpwd = "SUNOPSIS" // Rather than hardcoding the project code and folder name, // a great improvement here would be to parse the entire repository def scenario_name = "LOAD_DWH" /*Scenario Name*/ /* <=End of the update section */ //--------------------------------------//Connection to the repository// Note for ODI 11.1.1.6: you could use predefined odiInstance variable if you are // running the script from a Studio that is already connected to the repository def masterInfo = new MasterRepositoryDbInfo(url, driver, schema, schemapwd.toCharArray(), new PoolingAttributes())def workInfo = new WorkRepositoryDbInfo(workrep, new PoolingAttributes())def odiInstance = OdiInstance.createInstance(new OdiInstanceConfig(masterInfo, workInfo)) //--------------------------------------// In all cases, we need to make sure we have authorized access to the repositorydef auth = odiInstance.getSecurityManager().createAuthentication(odiuser, odiuserpwd.toCharArray())odiInstance.getSecurityManager().setCurrentThreadAuthentication(auth) //--------------------------------------// Retrieve the scenario we are looking fordef odiScenario = ((IOdiScenarioFinder)odiInstance.getTransactionalEntityManager().getFinder(OdiScenario.class)).findLatestByName(scenario_name) if (odiScenario == null){ println("Error: cannot find scenario "+scenario_name); return} //--------------------------------------// Retrieve all reports for the scenario def OdiScenarioReportsList = odiScenario.getScenarioReports() println("*** Listing all reports for Scenario \""+scenario_name+"\" ") //--------------------------------------// For each report, print the folowing:// - start time// - duration// - status// - step reports: selection of details for (s in OdiScenarioReportsList){ println("\tStart time: " + s.getSessionStartTime()) println("\tDuration: " + s.getSessionDuration()) println("\tStatus: " + s.getSessionStatus()) def OdiScenarioStepReportsList = s.getStepReports() for (st in OdiScenarioStepReportsList){ println("\t\tStep Name: " + st.getStepName()) println("\t\tStep Resource Name: " + st.getStepResourceName()) println("\t\tStep Start time: " + st.getStepStartTime()) println("\t\tStep Duration: " + st.getStepDuration()) println("\t\tStep Status: " + st.getStepStatus()) println("\t\tStep # of inserts: " + st.getStepInsertCount()) println("\t\tStep # of updates: " + st.getStepUpdateCount()+'\n') } println("\t")}

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Customizing the processing of ListItems for asp:RadioButtonList with "Flow" layout and "Horizontal"

- by evovision

Hi, recently I was asked to add an ability to pad specific elements from each other to a certain distance in RadioButtonList control. Not quite common everyday task I would say :) Ok, let's get started! Prerequisites: ASP.NET Page having RadioButtonList control with RepeatLayout="Flow" RepeatDirection="Horizontal" properties set. Implementation: The underlying data was coming from another source, so the only fast way to add meta information about padding was the text value itself (yes, not very optimal solution): Id = 1, Name = "This is first element" and for padding we agreed to use <space/> meta tag: Id = 2, Name = "<space padcount="30px"/>This is second padded element" To handle items rendering in RadioButtonList control I've created custom class and subclassed from it: public class CustomRadioButtonList : RadioButtonList { private Action<ListItem, HtmlTextWriter> _preProcess; protected override void RenderItem(ListItemType itemType, int repeatIndex, RepeatInfo repeatInfo, HtmlTextWriter writer) { if (_preProcess != null) { _preProcess(this.Items[repeatIndex], writer); } base.RenderItem(itemType, repeatIndex, repeatInfo, writer); } public void SetPrePrenderItemFunction(Action<ListItem, HtmlTextWriter> func) { _preProcess = func; } } It is pretty straightforward approach, the key is to override RenderItem method. Class has SetPrePrenderItemFunction method which is used to pass custom processing function that takes 2 parameters: ListItem and HtmlTextWriter objects. Now update existing RadioButtonList control in Default.aspx: add this to beginning of the page: <%@ Register Namespace="Sample.Controls" TagPrefix="uc1" %> and update the control to: <uc1:CustomRadioButtonList ID="customRbl" runat="server" DataValueField="Id" DataTextField="Name" RepeatLayout="Flow" RepeatDirection="Horizontal"></uc1:CustomRadioButtonList> Now, from codebehind of the page: Add regular expression that will be used for parsing: private Regex _regex = new Regex(@"(?:[<]space padcount\s*?=\s*?(?:'|"")(?<padcount>\d+)(?:(?:\s+)?px)?(?:'|"")\s*?/>)(?<content>.*)?", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Compiled); and finally setup the processing function in Page_Load: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { customRbl.DataSource = DataObjects; customRbl.SetPrePrenderItemFunction((listItem, writer) => { Match match = _regex.Match(listItem.Text); if (match.Success) { writer.Write(string.Format(@"<span style=""padding-left:{0}"">Extreme values: </span>", match.Groups["padcount"].Value + "px")); // if you need to pad listitem use code below //x.Attributes.CssStyle.Add("padding-left", match.Groups["padcount"].Value + "px"); // remove meta tag from text listItem.Text = match.Groups["content"].Value; } }); customRbl.DataBind(); } That's it! :) Run the attached sample application: P.S.: of course several other approaches could have been used for that purpose including events and the functionality for processing could also be embedded inside control itself. Current solution suits slightly better due some other reasons for situation where it was used, in your case consider this as a kick start for your own implementation :) Source application: CustomRadioButtonList.zip

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jQuery 1.4 Opacity and IE Filters

- by Rick Strahl

Ran into a small problem today with my client side jQuery library after switching to jQuery 1.4. I ran into a problem with a shadow plugin that I use to provide drop shadows for absolute elements – for Mozilla WebKit browsers the –moz-box-shadow and –webkit-box-shadow CSS attributes are used but for IE a manual element is created to provide the shadow that underlays the original element along with a blur filter to provide the fuzziness in the shadow. Some of the key pieces are: var vis = el.is(":visible"); if (!vis) el.show(); // must be visible to get .position var pos = el.position(); if (typeof shEl.style.filter == "string") sh.css("filter", 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Blur(makeShadow=true, pixelradius=3, shadowOpacity=' + opt.opacity.toString() + ')'); sh.show() .css({ position: "absolute", width: el.outerWidth(), height: el.outerHeight(), opacity: opt.opacity, background: opt.color, left: pos.left + opt.offset, top: pos.top + opt.offset }); This has always worked in previous versions of jQuery, but with 1.4 the original filter no longer works. It appears that applying the opacity after the original filter wipes out the original filter. IOW, the opacity filter is not applied incrementally, but absolutely which is a real bummer. Luckily the workaround is relatively easy by just switching the order in which the opacity and filter are applied. If I apply the blur after the opacity I get my correct behavior back with both opacity: sh.show() .css({ position: "absolute", width: el.outerWidth(), height: el.outerHeight(), opacity: opt.opacity, background: opt.color, left: pos.left + opt.offset, top: pos.top + opt.offset }); if (typeof shEl.style.filter == "string") sh.css("filter", 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Blur(makeShadow=true, pixelradius=3, shadowOpacity=' + opt.opacity.toString() + ')'); While this works this still causes problems in other areas where opacity is implicitly set in code such as for fade operations or in the case of my shadow component the style/property watcher that keeps the shadow and main object linked. Both of these may set the opacity explicitly and that is still broken as it will effectively kill the blur filter. This seems like a really strange design decision by the jQuery team, since clearly the jquery css function does the right thing for setting filters. Internally however, the opacity setting doesn’t use .css instead hardcoding the filter which given jQuery’s usual flexibility and smart code seems really inappropriate. The following is from jQuery.js 1.4: var style = elem.style || elem, set = value !== undefined; // IE uses filters for opacity if ( !jQuery.support.opacity && name === "opacity" ) { if ( set ) { // IE has trouble with opacity if it does not have layout // Force it by setting the zoom level style.zoom = 1; // Set the alpha filter to set the opacity var opacity = parseInt( value, 10 ) + "" === "NaN" ? "" : "alpha(opacity=" + value * 100 + ")"; var filter = style.filter || jQuery.curCSS( elem, "filter" ) || ""; style.filter = ralpha.test(filter) ? filter.replace(ralpha, opacity) : opacity; } return style.filter && style.filter.indexOf("opacity=") >= 0 ? (parseFloat( ropacity.exec(style.filter)[1] ) / 100) + "": ""; } You can see here that the style is explicitly set in code rather than relying on $.css() to assign the value resulting in the old filter getting wiped out. jQuery 1.32 looks a little different: // IE uses filters for opacity if ( !jQuery.support.opacity && name == "opacity" ) { if ( set ) { // IE has trouble with opacity if it does not have layout // Force it by setting the zoom level elem.zoom = 1; // Set the alpha filter to set the opacity elem.filter = (elem.filter || "").replace( /alpha$[^)]*$/, "" ) + (parseInt( value ) + '' == "NaN" ? "" : "alpha(opacity=" + value * 100 + ")"); } return elem.filter && elem.filter.indexOf("opacity=") >= 0 ? (parseFloat( elem.filter.match(/opacity=([^)]*)/)[1] ) / 100) + '': ""; } Offhand I’m not sure why the latter works better since it too is assigning the filter. However, when checking with the IE script debugger I can see that there are actually a couple of filter tags assigned when using jQuery 1.32 but only one when I use jQuery 1.4. Note also that the jQuery 1.3 compatibility plugin for jQUery 1.4 doesn’t address this issue either. Resources ww.jquery.js (shadow plug-in $.fn.shadow) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery

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Surface development: it’s just like software development

- by Dennis Vroegop

Surface is magic. Everyone using it seems to think that way. And I have to be honest, after working for almost 2 years with the platform I still get that special feeling the moment I turn on the unit to do some more work. The whole user experience, the rich environment of the SDK, the touch, even the look and feel of the Surface environment is so much different from the stuff I’ve been working on all my career that I am still bewildered by it. But… and this is a big but.. in the end we’re still talking about a computer and that needs software to become useful. Deep down the magic of the Surface unit there is a PC somewhere, running Windows Vista and the .net framework 3.5. When you write that magic software that makes the platform come alive you’re still working with .net, WPF/XNA, C#, VB.Net and all those other tools and technologies you know so well. Sure, the whole user experience is different from what you’ve known. And the way of thinking about users, their interaction and the positioning of screen elements requires a whole new paradigm. And that takes time. It took me about half a year before I had the feeling I got it nailed down. But when that moment came (about 18 months ago…) I realized that everything I had learned so far on software development still is true when it comes to Surface. The last 6 months I have been working with some people with a different background to start a new company. The idea was that the new company would be focussing on Surface and Surface only. These people come from a marketing background and had some good ideas for some applications. And I have to admit: their ideas were good. Very good. Where it all fell down of course is that these ideas need to be implemented in a piece of software. And creating great software takes skilled developers and a lot of time and money. That’s where things went wrong: the marketing guys didn’t realize and didn’t want to realize that software development is a job that takes skill. You can’t just hire a bunch of developers and expect them to deliver the best sort of software, especially not when it comes to Surface. I tried to explain that yes, their User Interface in Photoshop looked great, but no: I couldn’t develop an application like that in a weeks time. Even worse: the while backend of the software (WCF for communications, SQL Server for the database, etc) would take a lot more time than the frontend. They didn’t understand. It took them a couple of days to drawn the UI in Photoshop so in Blend I should be able to build the software in about the same amount of time. Well, you and I know that it doesn’t work that way. Software is hard to write, and even harder to write well, and it takes skill and dedication. It’s not something you can do as fast as you can draw a mock up for a Surface application in Photohop. The same holds true for web applications of course. A lot of designers there fail to appreciate the hard work that goes into writing the plumbing for a good web app that can handle thousands of users. Although the UI is very important, it’s not all there is to it. And in Surface development this is the same. The UI should create the feeling of magic, but the software behind it is what makes it come alive. And that takes time. A lot of time. So brush of you skills and don’t throw them away if you start developing for Surface. Because projects (and colaborations) can fail there as hard as they can in any other area of software development. On a side note: we decided to stop the colaboration (something the other parties involved didn’t appreciate and were very angry about) and decided to hire a designer for the Surface projects. The focus is back where it belongs: on the software development we know so well and have been doing very well for 13 years. UI is just a part of the whole project and not the end product. So my company Detrio is still going strong when it comes to develivering Surface solutions but once again from a technological background, not a marketing background.

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What’s New for Oracle Commerce? Executive QA with John Andrews, VP Product Management, Oracle Commerce

- by Katrina Gosek

Oracle Commerce was for the fifth time positioned as a leader by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce. This inspired me to sit down with Oracle Commerce VP of Product Management, John Andrews to get his perspective on what continues to make Oracle a leader in the industry and what’s new for Oracle Commerce in 2013. Q: Why do you believe Oracle Commerce continues to be a leader in the industry? John: Oracle has a great acquisition strategy – it brings best-of-breed technologies into the product fold and then continues to grow and innovate them. This is particularly true with products unified into the Oracle Commerce brand. Oracle acquired ATG in late 2010 – and then Endeca in late 2011. This means that under the hood of Oracle Commerce you have market-leading technologies for cross-channel commerce and customer experience, both designed and developed in direct response to the unique challenges online businesses face. And we continue to innovate on capabilities core to what our customers need to be successful – contextual and personalized experience delivery, merchant-inspired tools, and architecture for performance and scalability. Q: It’s not a slow moving industry. What are you doing to keep the pace of innovation at Oracle Commerce? John: Oracle owes our customers the most innovative commerce capabilities. By unifying the core components of ATG and Endeca we are delivering on this promise. Oracle Commerce is continuing to innovate and redefine how commerce is done and in a way that drive business results and keeps customers coming back for experiences tailored just for them. Our January and May 2013 releases not only marked the seventh significant releases for the solution since the acquisitions of ATG and Endeca, we also continue to demonstrate rapid and significant progress on the unification of commerce and customer experience capabilities of the two commerce technologies. Q: Can you tell us what was notable about these latest releases under the Oracle Commerce umbrella? John: Specifically, our latest product innovations give businesses selling online the ability to get to market faster with more personalized commerce experiences in the following ways: Mobile: the latest Commerce Reference Application in this release offers a wider range of examples for online businesses to leverage for iOS development and specifically new iPad reference capabilities. This release marks the first release of the iOS Universal application that serves both the iPhone and iPad devices from a single download or binary. Business users can now drive page content management and layout of search results and category pages, as well as create additional storefront elements such as categories, facets / dimensions, and breadcrumbs through Experience Manager tools. Cross-Channel Commerce: key commerce platform capabilities have been added to support cross-channel commerce, including an expanded inventory model to maintain inventory for stores, pickup in stores and Web-based returns. Online businesses with in-store operations can now offer advanced shipping options on the web and make returns and exchange logic easily available on the web. Multi-Site Capabilities: significant enhancements to the Commerce Platform multi-site architecture that allows business users to quickly launch and manage multiple sites on the same cluster and share data, carts, and other components. First introduced in 2010, with this latest release business users can now partition or share customer profiles, control users’ site-based access, and manage personalization assets using site groups. Internationalization: continued language support and enhancements for business user tools as well and search and navigation. Guided Search now supports 35 total languages with 11 new languages (including Danish, Arabic, Norwegian, Serbian Cyrillic) added in this release. Commerce Platform tools now include localized support for 17 locales with 4 new languages (Danish, Portuguese (European), Finnish, and Thai). No development or customization is required in order for business users to use the applications in any of these supported languages. Business Tool Experience: valuable new Commerce Merchandising features include a new workflow for making emergency changes quickly and increased visibility into promotions rules and qualifications in preview mode. Oracle Commerce business tools continue to become more and more feature rich to provide intuitive, easy- to-use (yet powerful) capabilities to allow business users to manage content and the shopping experience. Commerce & Experience Unification: demonstrable unification of commerce and customer experience capabilities include – productized cartridges that provide supported integration between the Commerce Platform and Experience Management tools, cross-channel returns, Oracle Service Cloud integration, and integrated iPad application. The mission guiding our product development is to deliver differentiated, personalized user experiences across any device in a contextual manner – and to give the business the best tools to tune and optimize those user experiences to meet their business objectives. We also need to do this in a way that makes it operationally efficient for the business, keeping the overall total cost of ownership low – yet also allows the business to expand, whether it be to new business models, geographies or brands. To learn more about the latest Oracle Commerce releases and mission, visit the links below: • Hear more from John about the Oracle Commerce mission • Hear from Oracle Commerce customers • Documentation on the new releases • Listen to the Oracle ATG Commerce 10.2 Webcast • Listen to the Oracle Endeca Commerce 3.1.2 Webcast

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ComboBox Control using silverlight

- by Aamir Hasan

DropDown.zip (135.33 kb) LiveDemo Introduction In this article i am going to explore some of the features of the ComboBox.ComboBox makes the collection visible and allows users to pick an item from the collection.After its first initialization, no matter if you bind a new datasource with fewer or more elements, the dropdown persists its original height.One workaround is the following:1. store the Properties from the original ComboBox2. delete the ComboBox removing it from its container3. create a new ComboBox and place it in the container4. recover the stores Properties5. bind the new DataSource to the newly created combobox Creating Silverlight ProjectCreate a new Silverlight 3 Project in VS 2008. Name it as ComboBoxtSample. Simple Data BindingAdd System.Windows.Control.Data reference to the Silverlight project. Silverlight UserControl Add a new page to display Bus data using DataGrid. Following shows Bus column XAML snippet:The ComboBox element represents a ComboBox control in XAML. <ComboBox></ComboBox>ComboBox XAML <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical"> <ComboBox Width="120" Height="30" x:Name="DaysDropDownList" DisplayMemberPath="Name">  </ComboBox> </StackPanel> The following code below is an example implementation Combobox control support data binding 1 By setting the DisplayMemberPath property you can specify which data item in your data you want displayed in the ComboBox. 2 Setting the SelectedIndex allows you to specify which item in the ComboBox you want selected. Business Object public class Bus { public string Name { get; set; } public float Price { get; set; } } Data Binding private List populatedlistBus() { listBus = new List(); listBus.Add(new Bus() {Name = "Bus 1", Price = 55f }); listBus.Add(new Bus() { Name = "Bus 2", Price = 55.7f }); listBus.Add(new Bus() { Name = "Bus 3", Price = 2f }); listBus.Add(new Bus() { Name = "Bus 4", Price = 6f }); listBus.Add(new Bus() { Name = "Bus 5", Price = 9F }); listBus.Add(new Bus() { Name = "Bus 6", Price = 10.1f }); return listBus; } The following line of code sets the ItemsSource property of a ComboBox. DaysDropDownList.ItemsSource = populatedlistBus(); Output I hope you enjoyed this simple Silverlight example Conclusion In this article, we saw how data binding works in ComboBox.You learnt how to work with the ComboBox control in Silverlight.

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Dynamic Grouping and Columns

- by Tim Dexter

Some good collaboration between myself and Kan Nishida (Oracle BIP Consulting) over at bipconsulting on a question that came in yesterday to an internal mailing list. Is there a way to allow columns to be place into a template dynamically? This would be similar to the Answers Column selector. A customer has said Crystal can do this and I am trying to see how BI Pub can do the same. Example: Report has Regions as a dimension in a table, they want the user to select a parameter that will insert either Units or Dollars without having to create multiple templates. Now whether Crystal can actually do it or not is another question, can Publisher? Yes we can! Kan took the first stab. His approach, was to allow to swap out columns in a table in the report. Some quick steps: 1. Create a parameter from BIP server UI 2. Declare the parameter in RTF template You can check this post to see how you can declare the parameter from the server. http://bipconsulting.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-pass-user-input-values-to-report.html 3. Use the parameter value to condition if a particular column needs to be displayed or not. You can use <?if@column:.....?> syntax for Column level IF condition. The if@column is covered in user documentation. This would allow a developer to create a report with the parameter or multiple parameters to allow the user to pick a column to be included in the report. I took a slightly different tack, with the mention of the column selector in the Answers report I took that to mean that the user wanted to select more of a dimensional column and then have the report recalculate all its totals and subtotals based on that selected column. This is a little bit more involved and involves some smart XSL and XPATH expressions, but still very doable. The user can select a column as a parameter, that is passed to the template rather than the query. The parameter value that is actually passed is the element name that you want to regroup the data by. Inside the template we then reference that parameter value in our for-each-group loop. That's where we need the trixy XSL/XPATH code to get the regrouping to happen. At this juncture, I need to hat tip to Klaus, for his article on dynamic sorting that he wrote back in 2006. I basically took his sorting code and applied it to the for-each loop. You can follow both of Kan's first two steps above i.e. Create a parameter from BIP server UI - this just needs to be based on a 'list' type list of value with name/value pairs e.g. Department/DEPARTMENT_NAME, Job/JOB_TITLE, etc. The user picks the 'friendly' value and the server passes the element name to the template. Declare the parameter in RTF template - been here before lots of times right? <?param@begin:group1;'"DEPARTMENT_NAME"'?> I have used a default value so that I can test the funtionality inside the template builder (notice the single and double quotes.) Next step is to use the template builder to build a re-grouped report layout. It does not matter if its hard coded right now; we will add in the dynamic piece next. Once you have a functioning template that is re-grouping correctly. Open up the for-each-group field and modify it to use the parameter: <?for-each-group:ROW;./*[name(.) = $group1]?> 'group1' is my grouping parameter, declared above. We need the XPATH expression to find the column in the XML structure we want to group that matches the one passed by the parameter. Its essentially looking through the data tree for a match. We can show the actual grouping value in the report output with a similar XPATH expression <?./*[name(.) = $group1]?> In my example, I took things a little further so that I could have a dynamic label for the parameter value. For instance if I am using MANAGER as the parameter I want to show: Manager: Tim Dexter My XML elements are readable e.g. DEPARTMENT_NAME. Its a simple case of replacing the underscore with a space and then 'initcapping' the result: <?xdoxslt:init_cap(translate($group1,'_',' '))?> With this in place, the user can now select a grouping column in the BIP report viewer and the layout will re-group the data and any calculations based on that column. I built a group above report but you could equally build the group left version to truly mimic the Answers column selector. If you are interested you can get an example report, sample data and layout template here. Of course, you can combine Klaus' dynamic sorting, Kan's conditional column approach and this dynamic grouping to build a real kick ass report for users that will keep them happy for hours..

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