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  • How to print PCL Directly to the printer? Vb.net VS 2010

    - by Justin
    Good day, I've been trying to upgrade an old Print Program that prints raw pcl directly to the printer. The print program takes a PCL Mask and a PCL Batch Spool File (just pcl with page turn commands, I think) merges them and sends them off to the printer. I'm able to send to the Printer a file stream of PCL but I get mixed results and i do not understand why printing is so difficult under .net. I mean yes there is the PrintDocument class, but to print PCL... Let's just say I'm ready to detach my printer from the network and burn it a live. Here is my class PrintDirect (rather a hybrid class) Imports System Imports System.Text Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices <StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)> _ Public Structure DOCINFO <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)> _ Public pDocName As String <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)> _ Public pOutputFile As String <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)> _ Public pDataType As String End Structure 'DOCINFO Public Class PrintDirect <DllImport("winspool.drv", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling:=False, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _ Public Shared Function OpenPrinter(ByVal pPrinterName As String, ByRef phPrinter As IntPtr, ByVal pDefault As Integer) As Long End Function <DllImport("winspool.drv", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling:=False, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _ Public Shared Function StartDocPrinter(ByVal hPrinter As IntPtr, ByVal Level As Integer, ByRef pDocInfo As DOCINFO) As Long End Function <DllImport("winspool.drv", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling:=True, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _ Public Shared Function StartPagePrinter(ByVal hPrinter As IntPtr) As Long End Function <DllImport("winspool.drv", CharSet:=CharSet.Ansi, ExactSpelling:=True, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _ Public Shared Function WritePrinter(ByVal hPrinter As IntPtr, ByVal data As String, ByVal buf As Integer, ByRef pcWritten As Integer) As Long End Function <DllImport("winspool.drv", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling:=True, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _ Public Shared Function EndPagePrinter(ByVal hPrinter As IntPtr) As Long End Function <DllImport("winspool.drv", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling:=True, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _ Public Shared Function EndDocPrinter(ByVal hPrinter As IntPtr) As Long End Function <DllImport("winspool.drv", CharSet:=CharSet.Unicode, ExactSpelling:=True, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _ Public Shared Function ClosePrinter(ByVal hPrinter As IntPtr) As Long End Function 'Helps uses to work with the printer Public Class PrintJob ''' <summary> ''' The address of the printer to print to. ''' </summary> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public PrinterName As String = "" Dim lhPrinter As New System.IntPtr() ''' <summary> ''' The object deriving from the Win32 API, Winspool.drv. ''' Use this object to overide the settings defined in the PrintJob Class. ''' </summary> ''' <remarks>Only use this when absolutly nessacary.</remarks> Public OverideDocInfo As New DOCINFO() ''' <summary> ''' The PCL Control Character or the ascii escape character. \x1b ''' </summary> ''' <remarks>ChrW(27)</remarks> Public Const PCL_Control_Character As Char = ChrW(27) ''' <summary> ''' Opens a connection to a printer, if false the connection could not be established. ''' </summary> ''' <returns></returns> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public Function OpenPrint() As Boolean Dim rtn_val As Boolean = False PrintDirect.OpenPrinter(PrinterName, lhPrinter, 0) If Not lhPrinter = 0 Then rtn_val = True End If Return rtn_val End Function ''' <summary> ''' The name of the Print Document. ''' </summary> ''' <value></value> ''' <returns></returns> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public Property DocumentName As String Get Return OverideDocInfo.pDocName End Get Set(ByVal value As String) OverideDocInfo.pDocName = value End Set End Property ''' <summary> ''' The type of Data that will be sent to the printer. ''' </summary> ''' <value>Send the print data type, usually "RAW" or "LPR". To overide use the OverideDocInfo Object</value> ''' <returns>The DataType as it was provided, if it is not part of the enumeration it is set to "UNKNOWN".</returns> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public Property DocumentDataType As PrintDataType Get Select Case OverideDocInfo.pDataType.ToUpper Case "RAW" Return PrintDataType.RAW Case "LPR" Return PrintDataType.LPR Case Else Return PrintDataType.UNKOWN End Select End Get Set(ByVal value As PrintDataType) OverideDocInfo.pDataType = [Enum].GetName(GetType(PrintDataType), value) End Set End Property Public Property DocumentOutputFile As String Get Return OverideDocInfo.pOutputFile End Get Set(ByVal value As String) OverideDocInfo.pOutputFile = value End Set End Property Enum PrintDataType UNKOWN = 0 RAW = 1 LPR = 2 End Enum ''' <summary> ''' Initializes the printing matrix ''' </summary> ''' <param name="PrintLevel">I have no idea what the hack this is...</param> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public Sub OpenDocument(Optional ByVal PrintLevel As Integer = 1) PrintDirect.StartDocPrinter(lhPrinter, PrintLevel, OverideDocInfo) End Sub ''' <summary> ''' Starts the next page. ''' </summary> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public Sub StartPage() PrintDirect.StartPagePrinter(lhPrinter) End Sub ''' <summary> ''' Writes a string to the printer, can be used to write out a section of the document at a time. ''' </summary> ''' <param name="data">The String to Send out to the Printer.</param> ''' <returns>The pcWritten as an integer, 0 may mean the writter did not write out anything.</returns> ''' <remarks>Warning the buffer is automatically created by the lenegth of the string.</remarks> Public Function WriteToPrinter(ByVal data As String) As Integer Dim pcWritten As Integer = 0 PrintDirect.WritePrinter(lhPrinter, data, data.Length - 1, pcWritten) Return pcWritten End Function Public Sub EndPage() PrintDirect.EndPagePrinter(lhPrinter) End Sub Public Sub CloseDocument() PrintDirect.EndDocPrinter(lhPrinter) End Sub Public Sub ClosePrint() PrintDirect.ClosePrinter(lhPrinter) End Sub ''' <summary> ''' Opens a connection to a printer and starts a new document. ''' </summary> ''' <returns>If false the connection could not be established. </returns> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public Function Open() As Boolean Dim rtn_val As Boolean = False rtn_val = OpenPrint() If rtn_val Then OpenDocument() End If Return rtn_val End Function ''' <summary> ''' Closes the document and closes the connection to the printer. ''' </summary> ''' <remarks></remarks> Public Sub Close() CloseDocument() ClosePrint() End Sub End Class End Class 'PrintDirect Here is how I print my file. I'm simple printing the PCL Masks, to show proof of concept. But I can't even do that. I can effectively create PCL and send it the printer without reading the file and it works fine... Plus I get mixed results with different stream reader text encoding as well. Dim pJob As New PrintDirect.PrintJob pJob.DocumentName = " test doc" pJob.DocumentDataType = PrintDirect.PrintJob.PrintDataType.RAW pJob.PrinterName = sPrinter.GetDevicePath '//This is where you'd stick your device name, sPrinter stands for Selected Printer from a dropdown (combobox). 'pJob.DocumentOutputFile = "C:\temp\test-spool.txt" If Not pJob.OpenPrint() Then MsgBox("Unable to connect to " & pJob.PrinterName, MsgBoxStyle.OkOnly, "Print Error") Exit Sub End If pJob.OpenDocument() pJob.StartPage() Dim sr As New IO.StreamReader(Me.txtFile.Text, Text.Encoding.ASCII) '//I've got best results with ASCII before, but only mized. Dim line As String = sr.ReadLine 'Fix for fly code on first run 'If line = 27 Then line = PrintDirect.PrintJob.PCL_Control_Character Do While (Not line Is Nothing) pJob.WriteToPrinter(line) line = sr.ReadLine Loop 'pJob.WriteToPrinter(ControlChars.FormFeed) pJob.EndPage() pJob.CloseDocument() sr.Close() sr.Dispose() sr = Nothing pJob.Close() I was able to get to print the mask, in the morning... now I'm getting strange printer characters scattered through 5 pages... I'm totally clueless. I must have changed something or the printer is at fault. You can access my test Check Mask, here http://kscserver.com/so/chk_mask.zip .

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  • Spring & hibernate configuration (using maven): java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.hibernate.cfg.

    - by Marcos Carceles
    Hi, I am trying to include spring and hibernate in an application running on a Weblogic 10.3 server. When I run the application in the server, while accessing an TestServlet to check my configuration I get the following exception: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'mySessionFactory' defined in class path resource [spring-config/HorizonModelPeopleConnectionsSpringContext.xml]: Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Could not instantiate bean class [org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean]: Constructor threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:448) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:251) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:156) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:248) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:160) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:284) at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:352) at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:91) at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:75) at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:65) at view.com.horizon.test.SpringHibernateServlet.doGet(SpringHibernateServlet.java:27) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:707) at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:820) at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:227) at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper.invokeServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:125) at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:292) at weblogic.servlet.internal.TailFilter.doFilter(TailFilter.java:26) at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:56) at oracle.security.wls.filter.SSOSessionSynchronizationFilter.doFilter(SSOSessionSynchronizationFilter.java:279) at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:56) at oracle.dms.wls.DMSServletFilter.doFilter(DMSServletFilter.java:326) at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:56) at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestEventsFilter.doFilter(RequestEventsFilter.java:27) at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:56) at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.run(WebAppServletContext.java:3592) at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321) at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:121) at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.securedExecute(WebAppServletContext.java:2202) at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.execute(WebAppServletContext.java:2108) at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.run(ServletRequestImpl.java:1432) at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:201) at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:173) Caused by: org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Could not instantiate bean class [org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean]: Constructor threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration at org.springframework.beans.BeanUtils.instantiateClass(BeanUtils.java:100) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.SimpleInstantiationStrategy.instantiate(SimpleInstantiationStrategy.java:61) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.instantiateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:756) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBeanInstance(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:721) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:384) ... 31 more Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration at org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean.class$(LocalSessionFactoryBean.java:158) at org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean.(LocalSessionFactoryBean.java:158) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27) at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513) at org.springframework.beans.BeanUtils.instantiateClass(BeanUtils.java:85) ... 35 more I have checked my application and the hibernate jar file is included and it contains the class it says its missing: org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration. The application is built with maven. These are the dependencies of the JAR file using spring and hibernate: <!-- Frameworks --> <!-- Hibernate framework --> <dependency> <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId> <artifactId>hibernate</artifactId> <version>3.2.7.ga</version> </dependency> <!-- Hibernate uses slf4j for logging, for our purposes here use the simple backend --> <dependency> <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId> <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId> <version>1.5.2</version> </dependency> <!-- Hibernate gives you a choice of bytecode providers between cglib and javassist --> <dependency> <groupId>javassist</groupId> <artifactId>javassist</artifactId> <version>3.4.GA</version> </dependency> <!-- Spring framework --> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework</groupId> <artifactId>spring-orm</artifactId> <version>2.5.6</version> </dependency> At first I thought it could be an issue with the versions in the spring and hibernate libraries, so I have tried with different ones, but still I couldn't find anywhere where it says which library versions are compatible,. just got that Spring 2.5.x needs hibernate =3.1 And this is my Spring config file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd"> <bean id="myDataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean"> <property name="jndiName"> <value>jdbc/WebCenterDS</value> </property> <!--property name="resourceRef"> <value>true</value> </property> <property name="jndiEnvironment"> <props> <prop key="java.naming.factory.initial">weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory</prop> <prop key="java.naming.provider.url">t3://localhost:7001</prop> </props> </property--> </bean> <bean id="mySessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean"> <property name="dataSource" ref="myDataSource"/> <property name="configLocation"> <value>classpath:hibernate-config/hibernate.cfg.xml</value> </property> <property name="mappingResources"> <list> <value>classpath:com/horizon/model/peopleconnections/profile/internal/bean/CustomAttribute.hbm.xml</value> </list> </property> <property name="hibernateProperties"> <value>hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect</value> </property> </bean> <bean id="profileExtensionDAO" class="com.horizon.model.peopleconnections.profile.internal.dao.ProfileExtensionDAOImpl"> <property name="sessionFactory" ref="mySessionFactory"/> </bean> </beans> The WAR structure I get is the following: J2EETestApplication ¦ springhibernate.jsp ¦ +---WEB-INF ¦ faces-config.xml ¦ web.xml ¦ weblogic.xml ¦ +---classes ¦ +---view ¦ +---com ¦ +---horizon ¦ +---test ¦ SpringHibernateServlet.class ¦ +---lib activation-1.1.jar antlr-2.7.6.jar aopalliance-1.0.jar asm-1.5.3.jar asm-attrs-1.5.3.jar cglib-2.1_3.jar commons-codec-1.3.jar commons-collections-2.1.1.jar commons-logging-1.1.1.jar dom4j-1.6.1.jar ehcache-1.2.3.jar hibernate-3.2.7.ga.jar horizon-model-commons-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar horizon-model-peopleconnections-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar horizon-shared-commons-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar horizon-shared-logging-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar horizon-shared-util-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar horizon-shared-webcenter-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar horizon-shared-webcenter.jar httpclient-4.0.1.jar httpcore-4.0.1.jar javassist-3.4.GA.jar jta-1.0.1B.jar log4j-1.2.14.jar mail-1.4.1.jar peopleconnections-profile-model-11.1.1.2.0.jar saxon-9.1.0.8.jar serviceframework-11.1.1.2.0.jar slf4j-api-1.5.2.jar slf4j-log4j12-1.5.2.jar spring-beans-2.5.6.jar spring-context-2.5.6.jar spring-core-2.5.6.jar spring-orm-2.5.6.jar spring-tx-2.5.6.jar Is there any dependency or configuration I am missing? If I use hibernate without spring I don't get the ClassDefNotFoundException.

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  • Silverlight for Windows Embedded tutorial (step 4)

    - by Valter Minute
    I’m back with my Silverlight for Windows Embedded tutorial. Sorry for the long delay between step 3 and step 4, the MVP summit and some work related issue prevented me from working on the tutorial during the last weeks. In our first,  second and third tutorial steps we implemented some very simple applications, just to understand the basic structure of a Silverlight for Windows Embedded application, learn how to handle events and how to operate on images. In this third step our sample application will be slightly more complicated, to introduce two new topics: list boxes and custom control. We will also learn how to create controls at runtime. I choose to explain those topics together and provide a sample a bit more complicated than usual just to start to give the feeling of how a “real” Silverlight for Windows Embedded application is organized. As usual we can start using Expression Blend to define our main page. In this case we will have a listbox and a textblock. Here’s the XAML code: <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="ListDemo.Page" Width="640" Height="480" x:Name="ListPage" xmlns:ListDemo="clr-namespace:ListDemo">   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <ListBox Margin="19,57,19,66" x:Name="FileList" SelectionChanged="Filelist_SelectionChanged"/> <TextBlock Height="35" Margin="19,8,19,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" TextWrapping="Wrap" x:Name="CurrentDir" Text="TextBlock" FontSize="20"/> </Grid> </UserControl> In our listbox we will load a list of directories, starting from the filesystem root (there are no drives in Windows CE, the filesystem has a single root named “\”). When the user clicks on an item inside the list, the corresponding directory path will be displayed in the TextBlock object and the subdirectories of the selected branch will be shown inside the list. As you can see we declared an event handler for the SelectionChanged event of our listbox. We also used a different font size for the TextBlock, to make it more readable. XAML and Expression Blend allow you to customize your UI pretty heavily, experiment with the tools and discover how you can completely change the aspect of your application without changing a single line of code! Inside our ListBox we want to insert the directory presenting a nice icon and their name, just like you are used to see them inside Windows 7 file explorer, for example. To get this we will define a user control. This is a custom object that will behave like “regular” Silverlight for Windows Embedded objects inside our application. First of all we have to define the look of our custom control, named DirectoryItem, using XAML: <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" x:Class="ListDemo.DirectoryItem" Width="500" Height="80">   <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot" Orientation="Horizontal"> <Canvas Width="31.6667" Height="45.9583" Margin="10,10,10,10" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5"> <Canvas.RenderTransform> <TransformGroup> <ScaleTransform/> <SkewTransform/> <RotateTransform Angle="-31.27"/> <TranslateTransform/> </TransformGroup> </Canvas.RenderTransform> <Rectangle Width="31.6667" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="0" Canvas.Top="0.116943" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FF7B6802" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFF3D42C" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.569519" Canvas.Top="1.05249" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142632,0.753441" EndPoint="1.01886,0.753441"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142632" CenterY="0.753441" AngleX="19.3127" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142632" CenterY="0.753441" Angle="-35.3437"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.455627" Canvas.Top="2.28036" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.455627" Canvas.Top="1.34485" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="26.4269" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="0.227798" Canvas.Top="0" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3127" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FF7B6802" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFF3D42C" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="1.25301" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="1.70862" Canvas.Top="0.116943" Stretch="Fill" Fill="#FFEBFF07"/> </Canvas> <TextBlock Height="80" x:Name="Name" Width="448" TextWrapping="Wrap" VerticalAlignment="Center" FontSize="24" Text="Directory"/> </StackPanel> </UserControl> As you can see, this XAML contains many graphic elements. Those elements are used to design the folder icon. The original drawing has been designed in Expression Design and then exported as XAML. In Silverlight for Windows Embedded you can use vector images. This means that your images will look good even when scaled or rotated. In our DirectoryItem custom control we have a TextBlock named Name, that will be used to display….(suspense)…. the directory name (I’m too lazy to invent fancy names for controls, and using “boring” intuitive names will make code more readable, I hope!). Now that we have some XAML code, we may execute XAML2CPP to generate part of the aplication code for us. We should then add references to our XAML2CPP generated resource file and include in our code and add a reference to the XAML runtime library to our sources file (you can follow the instruction of the first tutorial step to do that), To generate the code used in this tutorial you need XAML2CPP ver 1.0.1.0, that is downloadable here: http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2010/03/08/xaml2cpp-1.0.1.0.aspx We can now create our usual simple Win32 application inside Platform Builder, using the same step described in the first chapter of this tutorial (http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2009/10/01/silverlight-for-embedded-tutorial.aspx). We can declare a class for our main page, deriving it from the template that XAML2CPP generated for us: class ListPage : public TListPage<ListPage> { ... } We will see the ListPage class code in a short time, but before we will see the code of our DirectoryItem user control. This object will be used to populate our list, one item for each directory. To declare a user control things are a bit more complicated (but also in this case XAML2CPP will write most of the “boilerplate” code for use. To interact with a user control you should declare an interface. An interface defines the functions of a user control that can be called inside the application code. Our custom control is currently quite simple and we just need some member functions to store and retrieve a full pathname inside our control. The control will display just the last part of the path inside the control. An interface is declared as a C++ class that has only abstract virtual members. It should also have an UUID associated with it. UUID means Universal Unique IDentifier and it’s a 128 bit number that will identify our interface without the need of specifying its fully qualified name. UUIDs are used to identify COM interfaces and, as we discovered in chapter one, Silverlight for Windows Embedded is based on COM or, at least, provides a COM-like Application Programming Interface (API). Here’s the declaration of the DirectoryItem interface: class __declspec(novtable,uuid("{D38C66E5-2725-4111-B422-D75B32AA8702}")) IDirectoryItem : public IXRCustomUserControl { public:   virtual HRESULT SetFullPath(BSTR fullpath) = 0; virtual HRESULT GetFullPath(BSTR* retval) = 0; }; The interface is derived from IXRCustomControl, this will allow us to add our object to a XAML tree. It declares the two functions needed to set and get the full path, but don’t implement them. Implementation will be done inside the control class. The interface only defines the functions of our control class that are accessible from the outside. It’s a sort of “contract” between our control and the applications that will use it. We must support what’s inside the contract and the application code should know nothing else about our own control. To reference our interface we will use the UUID, to make code more readable we can declare a #define in this way: #define IID_IDirectoryItem __uuidof(IDirectoryItem) Silverlight for Windows Embedded objects (like COM objects) use a reference counting mechanism to handle object destruction. Every time you store a pointer to an object you should call its AddRef function and every time you no longer need that pointer you should call Release. The object keeps an internal counter, incremented for each AddRef and decremented on Release. When the counter reaches 0, the object is destroyed. Managing reference counting in our code can be quite complicated and, since we are lazy (I am, at least!), we will use a great feature of Silverlight for Windows Embedded: smart pointers.A smart pointer can be connected to a Silverlight for Windows Embedded object and manages its reference counting. To declare a smart pointer we must use the XRPtr template: typedef XRPtr<IDirectoryItem> IDirectoryItemPtr; Now that we have defined our interface, it’s time to implement our user control class. XAML2CPP has implemented a class for us, and we have only to derive our class from it, defining the main class and interface of our new custom control: class DirectoryItem : public DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<DirectoryItem,IDirectoryItem> { ... } XAML2CPP has generated some code for us to support the user control, we don’t have to mind too much about that code, since it will be generated (or written by hand, if you like) always in the same way, for every user control. But knowing how does this works “under the hood” is still useful to understand the architecture of Silverlight for Windows Embedded. Our base class declaration is a bit more complex than the one we used for a simple page in the previous chapters: template <class A,class B> class DirectoryItemUserControlRegister : public XRCustomUserControlImpl<A,B>,public TDirectoryItem<A,XAML2CPPUserControl> { ... } This class derives from the XAML2CPP generated template class, like the ListPage class, but it uses XAML2CPPUserControl for the implementation of some features. This class shares the same ancestor of XAML2CPPPage (base class for “regular” XAML pages), XAML2CPPBase, implements binding of member variables and event handlers but, instead of loading and creating its own XAML tree, it attaches to an existing one. The XAML tree (and UI) of our custom control is created and loaded by the XRCustomUserControlImpl class. This class is part of the Silverlight for Windows Embedded framework and implements most of the functions needed to build-up a custom control in Silverlight (the guys that developed Silverlight for Windows Embedded seem to care about lazy programmers!). We have just to initialize it, providing our class (DirectoryItem) and interface (IDirectoryItem). Our user control class has also a static member: protected:   static HINSTANCE hInstance; This is used to store the HINSTANCE of the modules that contain our user control class. I don’t like this implementation, but I can’t find a better one, so if somebody has good ideas about how to handle the HINSTANCE object, I’ll be happy to hear suggestions! It also implements two static members required by XRCustomUserControlImpl. The first one is used to load the XAML UI of our custom control: static HRESULT GetXamlSource(XRXamlSource* pXamlSource) { pXamlSource->SetResource(hInstance,TEXT("XAML"),IDR_XAML_DirectoryItem); return S_OK; }   It initializes a XRXamlSource object, connecting it to the XAML resource that XAML2CPP has included in our resource script. The other method is used to register our custom control, allowing Silverlight for Windows Embedded to create it when it load some XAML or when an application creates a new control at runtime (more about this later): static HRESULT Register() { return XRCustomUserControlImpl<A,B>::Register(__uuidof(B), L"DirectoryItem", L"clr-namespace:DirectoryItemNamespace"); } To register our control we should provide its interface UUID, the name of the corresponding element in the XAML tree and its current namespace (namespaces compatible with Silverlight must use the “clr-namespace” prefix. We may also register additional properties for our objects, allowing them to be loaded and saved inside XAML. In this case we have no permanent properties and the Register method will just register our control. An additional static method is implemented to allow easy registration of our custom control inside our application WinMain function: static HRESULT RegisterUserControl(HINSTANCE hInstance) { DirectoryItemUserControlRegister::hInstance=hInstance; return DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<A,B>::Register(); } Now our control is registered and we will be able to create it using the Silverlight for Windows Embedded runtime functions. But we need to bind our members and event handlers to have them available like we are used to do for other XAML2CPP generated objects. To bind events and members we need to implement the On_Loaded function: virtual HRESULT OnLoaded(__in IXRDependencyObject* pRoot) { HRESULT retcode; IXRApplicationPtr app; if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return retcode; return ((A*)this)->Init(pRoot,hInstance,app); } This function will call the XAML2CPPUserControl::Init member that will connect the “root” member with the XAML sub tree that has been created for our control and then calls BindObjects and BindEvents to bind members and events to our code. Now we can go back to our application code (the code that you’ll have to actually write) to see the contents of our DirectoryItem class: class DirectoryItem : public DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<DirectoryItem,IDirectoryItem> { protected:   WCHAR fullpath[_MAX_PATH+1];   public:   DirectoryItem() { *fullpath=0; }   virtual HRESULT SetFullPath(BSTR fullpath) { wcscpy_s(this->fullpath,fullpath);   WCHAR* p=fullpath;   for(WCHAR*q=wcsstr(p,L"\\");q;p=q+1,q=wcsstr(p,L"\\")) ;   Name->SetText(p); return S_OK; }   virtual HRESULT GetFullPath(BSTR* retval) { *retval=SysAllocString(fullpath); return S_OK; } }; It’s pretty easy and contains a fullpath member (used to store that path of the directory connected with the user control) and the implementation of the two interface members that can be used to set and retrieve the path. The SetFullPath member parses the full path and displays just the last branch directory name inside the “Name” TextBlock object. As you can see, implementing a user control in Silverlight for Windows Embedded is not too complex and using XAML also for the UI of the control allows us to re-use the same mechanisms that we learnt and used in the previous steps of our tutorial. Now let’s see how the main page is managed by the ListPage class. class ListPage : public TListPage<ListPage> { protected:   // current path TCHAR curpath[_MAX_PATH+1]; It has a member named “curpath” that is used to store the current directory. It’s initialized inside the constructor: ListPage() { *curpath=0; } And it’s value is displayed inside the “CurrentDir” TextBlock inside the initialization function: virtual HRESULT Init(HINSTANCE hInstance,IXRApplication* app) { HRESULT retcode;   if (FAILED(retcode=TListPage<ListPage>::Init(hInstance,app))) return retcode;   CurrentDir->SetText(L"\\"); return S_OK; } The FillFileList function is used to enumerate subdirectories of the current dir and add entries for each one inside the list box that fills most of the client area of our main page: HRESULT FillFileList() { HRESULT retcode; IXRItemCollectionPtr items; IXRApplicationPtr app;   if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return retcode; // retrieves the items contained in the listbox if (FAILED(retcode=FileList->GetItems(&items))) return retcode;   // clears the list if (FAILED(retcode=items->Clear())) return retcode;   // enumerates files and directory in the current path WCHAR filemask[_MAX_PATH+1];   wcscpy_s(filemask,curpath); wcscat_s(filemask,L"\\*.*");   WIN32_FIND_DATA finddata; HANDLE findhandle;   findhandle=FindFirstFile(filemask,&finddata);   // the directory is empty? if (findhandle==INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) return S_OK;   do { if (finddata.dwFileAttributes&=FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) { IXRListBoxItemPtr listboxitem;   // add a new item to the listbox if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IXRListBoxItem,&listboxitem))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   if (FAILED(retcode=items->Add(listboxitem,NULL))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   IDirectoryItemPtr directoryitem;   if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IDirectoryItem,&directoryitem))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   WCHAR fullpath[_MAX_PATH+1];   wcscpy_s(fullpath,curpath); wcscat_s(fullpath,L"\\"); wcscat_s(fullpath,finddata.cFileName);   if (FAILED(retcode=directoryitem->SetFullPath(fullpath))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   XAML2CPPXRValue value((IXRDependencyObject*)directoryitem);   if (FAILED(retcode=listboxitem->SetContent(&value))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; } } } while (FindNextFile(findhandle,&finddata));   FindClose(findhandle); return S_OK; } This functions retrieve a pointer to the collection of the items contained in the directory listbox. The IXRItemCollection interface is used by listboxes and comboboxes and allow you to clear the list (using Clear(), as our function does at the beginning) and change its contents by adding and removing elements. This function uses the FindFirstFile/FindNextFile functions to enumerate all the objects inside our current directory and for each subdirectory creates a IXRListBoxItem object. You can insert any kind of control inside a list box, you don’t need a IXRListBoxItem, but using it will allow you to handle the selected state of an item, highlighting it inside the list. The function creates a list box item using the CreateObject function of XRApplication. The same function is then used to create an instance of our custom control. The function returns a pointer to the control IDirectoryItem interface and we can use it to store the directory full path inside the object and add it as content of the IXRListBox item object, adding it to the listbox contents. The listbox generates an event (SelectionChanged) each time the user clicks on one of the items contained in the listbox. We implement an event handler for that event and use it to change our current directory and repopulate the listbox. The current directory full path will be displayed in the TextBlock: HRESULT Filelist_SelectionChanged(IXRDependencyObject* source,XRSelectionChangedEventArgs* args) { HRESULT retcode;   IXRListBoxItemPtr listboxitem;   if (!args->pAddedItem) return S_OK;   if (FAILED(retcode=args->pAddedItem->QueryInterface(IID_IXRListBoxItem,(void**)&listboxitem))) return retcode;   XRValue content; if (FAILED(retcode=listboxitem->GetContent(&content))) return retcode;   if (content.vType!=VTYPE_OBJECT) return E_FAIL;   IDirectoryItemPtr directoryitem;   if (FAILED(retcode=content.pObjectVal->QueryInterface(IID_IDirectoryItem,(void**)&directoryitem))) return retcode;   content.pObjectVal->Release(); content.pObjectVal=NULL;   BSTR fullpath=NULL;   if (FAILED(retcode=directoryitem->GetFullPath(&fullpath))) return retcode;   CurrentDir->SetText(fullpath);   wcscpy_s(curpath,fullpath); FillFileList(); SysFreeString(fullpath);     return S_OK; } }; The function uses the pAddedItem member of the XRSelectionChangedEventArgs object to retrieve the currently selected item, converts it to a IXRListBoxItem interface using QueryInterface, and then retrives its contents (IDirectoryItem object). Using the GetFullPath method we can get the full path of our selected directory and assing it to the curdir member. A call to FillFileList will update the listbox contents, displaying the list of subdirectories of the selected folder. To build our sample we just need to add code to our WinMain function: int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPTSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { if (!XamlRuntimeInitialize()) return -1;   HRESULT retcode;   IXRApplicationPtr app; if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return -1;   if (FAILED(retcode=DirectoryItem::RegisterUserControl(hInstance))) return retcode;   ListPage page;   if (FAILED(page.Init(hInstance,app))) return -1;   page.FillFileList();   UINT exitcode;   if (FAILED(page.GetVisualHost()->StartDialog(&exitcode))) return -1;   return 0; } This code is very similar to the one of the WinMains of our previous samples. The main differences are that we register our custom control (you should do that as soon as you have initialized the XAML runtime) and call FillFileList after the initialization of our ListPage object to load the contents of the root folder of our device inside the listbox. As usual you can download the full sample source code from here: http://cid-9b7b0aefe3514dc5.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/ListBoxTest.zip

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  • Why should you choose Oracle WebLogic 12c instead of JBoss EAP 6?

    - by Ricardo Ferreira
    In this post, I will cover some technical differences between Oracle WebLogic 12c and JBoss EAP 6, which was released a couple days ago from Red Hat. This article claims to help you in the evaluation of key points that you should consider when choosing for an Java EE application server. In the following sections, I will present to you some important aspects that most customers ask us when they are seriously evaluating for an middleware infrastructure, specially if you are considering JBoss for some reason. I would suggest that you keep the following question in mind while you are reading the points: "Why should I choose JBoss instead of WebLogic?" 1) Multi Datacenter Deployment and Clustering - D/R ("Disaster & Recovery") architecture support is embedded on the WebLogic Server 12c product. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct D/R support included, Red Hat relies on third-part tools with higher prices. When you consider a middleware solution to host your business critical application, you should worry with every architectural aspect that are related with the solution. Fail-over support is one little aspect of a truly reliable solution. If you do not worry about D/R, your solution will not be reliable. Having said that, with Red Hat and JBoss EAP 6, you have this extra cost that will increase considerably the total cost of ownership of the solution. As we commonly hear from analysts, open-source are not so cheaper when you start seeing the big picture. - WebLogic Server 12c supports advanced LAN clustering, detection of death servers and have a common alert framework. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has limited LAN clustering support with no server death detection. They do not generate any alerts when servers goes down (only if you buy JBoss ON which is a separated technology, but until now does not support JBoss EAP 6) and manual intervention are required when servers goes down. In most cases, admin people must rely on "kill -9", "tail -f someFile.log" and "ps ax | grep java" commands to manage failures and clustering anomalies. - WebLogic Server 12c supports the concept of Node Manager, which is a separated process that runs on the physical | virtual servers that allows extend the administration of the cluster to WebLogic managed servers that are often distributed across multiple machines and geographic locations. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no equivalent technology. Whole server instances must be managed individually. - WebLogic Server 12c Node Manager supports Coherence to boost performance when managing servers. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no similar technology. There is no way to coordinate JBoss and infiniband instances provided by JBoss using high throughput and low latency protocols like InfiniBand. The Node Manager feature also allows another very important feature that JBoss EAP lacks: secure the administration. When using WebLogic Node Manager, all the administration tasks are sent to the managed servers in a secure tunel protected by a certificate, which means that the transport layer that separates the WebLogic administration console from the managed servers are secured by SSL. - WebLogic Server 12c are now integrated with OTD ("Oracle Traffic Director") which is a web server technology derived from the former Sun iPlanet Web Server. This software complements the web server support offered by OHS ("Oracle HTTP Server"). Using OTD, WebLogic instances are load-balanced by a high powerful software that knows how to handle SDP ("Socket Direct Protocol") over InfiniBand, which boost performance when used with engineered systems technologies like Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand only offers support to Apache Web Server with custom modules created to deal with JBoss clusters, but only across standard TCP/IP networks.  2) Application and Runtime Diagnostics - WebLogic Server 12c have diagnostics capabilities embedded on the server called WLDF ("WebLogic Diagnostic Framework") so there is no need to rely on third-part tools. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no diagnostics capabilities. Their only diagnostics tool is the log generated by the application server. Admin people are encouraged to analyse thousands of log lines to find out what is going on. - WebLogic Server 12c complement WLDF with JRockit MC ("Mission Control"), which provides to administrators and developers a complete insight about the JVM performance, behavior and possible bottlenecks. WebLogic Server 12c also have an classloader analysis tool embedded, and even a log analyzer tool that enables administrators and developers to view logs of multiple servers at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand relies on third-part tools to do something similar. Again, only log searching are offered to find out whats going on. - WebLogic Server 12c offers end-to-end traceability and monitoring available through Oracle EM ("Enterprise Manager"), including monitoring of business transactions that flows through web servers, ESBs, application servers and database servers, all of this with high deep JVM analysis and diagnostics. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand, even using JBoss ON ("Operations Network"), which is a separated technology, does not support those features. Red Hat relies on third-part tools to provide direct Oracle database traceability across JVMs. One of those tools are Oracle EM for non-Oracle middleware that manage JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere and IIS transparently. - WebLogic Server 12c with their JRockit support offers a tool called JRockit Flight Recorder, which can give developers a complete visibility of a certain period of application production monitoring with zero extra overhead. This automatic recording allows you to deep analyse threads latency, memory leaks, thread contention, resource utilization, stack overflow damages and GC ("Garbage Collection") cycles, to observe in real time stop-the-world phenomenons, generational, reference count and parallel collects and mutator threads analysis. JBoss EAP 6 don't even dream to support something similar, even because they don't have their own JVM. 3) Application Server Administration - WebLogic Server 12c offers a complete administration console complemented with scripting and macro-like recording capabilities. A single WebLogic console can managed up to hundreds of WebLogic servers belonging to the same domain. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited console and provides a XML centric administration. JBoss, after ten years, started the development of a rudimentary centralized administration that still leave a lot of administration tasks aside, so admin people and developers must touch scripts and XML configuration files for most advanced and even simple administration tasks. This lead applications to error prone and risky deployments. Even using JBoss ON, JBoss EAP are not able to offer decent administration features for admin people which must be high skilled in JBoss internal architecture and its managing capabilities. - Oracle EM is available to manage multiple domains, databases, application servers, operating systems and virtualization, with a complete end-to-end visibility. JBoss ON does not provide management capabilities across the complete architecture, only basic monitoring. Even deployment must be done aside JBoss ON which does no integrate well with others softwares than JBoss. Until now, JBoss ON does not supports JBoss EAP 6, so even their minimal support for JBoss are not available for JBoss EAP 6 leaving customers uncovered and subject to high skilled JBoss admin people. - WebLogic Server 12c has the same administration model whatever is the topology selected by the customer. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand differentiates between two operational models: standalone-mode and domain-mode, that are not consistent with each other. Depending on the mode used, the administration skill is different. - WebLogic Server 12c has no point-of-failures processes, and it does not need to define any specialized server. Domain model in WebLogic is available for years (at least ten years or more) and is production proven. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand needs special processes to garantee JBoss integrity, the PC ("Process-Controller") and the HC ("Host-Controller"). Different from WebLogic, the domain model in JBoss is quite new (one year at tops) of maturity, and need to mature considerably until start doing things like WebLogic domain model does. - WebLogic Server 12c supports parallel deployment model which enables some artifacts being deployed at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have any similar feature. Every deployment are done atomically in the containers. This means that if you have a huge EAR (an EAR of 120 MB of size for instance) and deploy onto JBoss EAP 6, this EAR will take some minutes in order to starting accept thread requests. The same EAR deployed onto WebLogic Server 12c will reduce the deployment time at least in 2X compared to JBoss. 4) Support and Upgrades - WebLogic Server 12c has patch management available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no patch management available, each JBoss EAP instance should be patched manually. To achieve such feature, you need to buy a separated technology called JBoss ON ("Operations Network") that manage this type of stuff. But until now, JBoss ON does not support JBoss EAP 6 so, in practice, JBoss EAP 6 does not have this feature. - WebLogic Server 12c supports previuous WebLogic domains without any reconfiguration since its kernel is robust and mature since its creation in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a proven lack of supportability between JBoss AS 4, 5, 6 and 7. Different kernels and messaging engines were implemented in JBoss stack in the last five years reveling their incapacity to create a well architected and proven middleware technology. - WebLogic Server 12c has patch prescription based on customer configuration. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such capability. People need to create ticket supports and have their installations revised by Red Hat support guys to gain some patch prescription from them. - Oracle WebLogic Server independent of the version has 8 years of support of new patches and has lifetime release of existing patches beyond that. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand provides patches for a specific application server version up to 5 years after the release date. JBoss EAP 4 and previous versions had only 4 years. A good question that Red Hat will argue to answer is: "what happens when you find issues after year 5"?  5) RAC ("Real Application Clusters") Support - WebLogic Server 12c ships with a specific JDBC driver to leverage Oracle RAC clustering capabilities (Fast-Application-Notification, Transaction Affinity, Fast-Connection-Failover, etc). Oracle JDBC thin driver are also available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand ships only the standard Oracle JDBC thin driver. Load balancing with Oracle RAC are not supported. Manual intervention in case of planned or unplanned RAC downtime are necessary. In JBoss EAP 6, situation does not reestablish automatically after downtime. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called Active GridLink for Oracle RAC which provides up to 3X performance on OLTP applications. This seamless integration between WebLogic and Oracle database enable more value added to critical business applications leveraging their investments in Oracle database technology and Oracle middleware. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no performance gains at all, even when admin people implement some kind of connection-pooling tuning. - WebLogic Server 12c also supports transaction and web session affinity to the Oracle RAC, which provides aditional gains of performance. This is particularly interesting if you are creating a reliable solution that are distributed not only in an LAN cluster, but into a different data center. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. 6) Standards and Technology Support - WebLogic Server 12c is fully Java EE 6 compatible and production ready since december of 2011. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand became fully compatible with Java EE 6 only in the community version after three months, and production ready only in a few days considering that this article was written in June of 2012. Red Hat says that they are the masters of innovation and technology proliferation, but compared with Oracle and even other proprietary vendors like IBM, they historically speaking are lazy to deliver the most newest technologies and standards adherence. - Oracle is the steward of Java, driving innovation into the platform from commercial and open-source vendors. Red Hat on the other hand does not have its own JVM and relies on third-part JVMs to complete their application server offer. 95% of Red Hat customers are using Oracle HotSpot as JVM, which means that without Oracle involvement, their support are limited exclusively to the application server layer and we all know that most problems are happens in the JVM layer. - WebLogic Server 12c supports natively JDK 7, which empower developers to explore the maximum of the Java platform productivity when writing code. This feature differentiate WebLogic from others application servers (except GlassFish that are also managed by Oracle) because the usage of JDK 7 introduce such remarkable productivity features like the "try-with-resources" enhancement, catching multiple exceptions with one try block, Strings in the switch statements, JVM improvements in terms of JDBC, I/O, networking, security, concurrency and of course, the most important feature of Java 7: native support for multiple non-Java languages. More features regarding JDK 7 can be found here. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not support JDK 7 officially, they comment in their community version that "Java SE 7 can be used with JBoss 7" which does not gives you any guarantees of enterprise support for JDK 7. - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c supports integration with Spring framework allowing Spring applications to use WebLogic special transaction manager, exposing bean interfaces to WebLogic MBeans to take advantage of all WebLogic monitoring and administration advantages. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no special integration with Spring. In fact, Red Hat offers a suspicious package called "JBoss Web Platform" that in theory supports Spring, but in practice this package does not offers any special integration. It is just a facility for Red Hat customers to have support from both JBoss and Spring technology using the same customer support. 7) Lightweight Development - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle GlassFish are completely integrated and can share applications without any modifications. Starting with the 12c version, WebLogic now understands natively GlassFish deployment descriptors and specific configurations in order to offer you a truly and reliable migration path from a community Java EE application server to a enterprise middleware product like WebLogic. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no support to natively reuse an existing (or still in development) application from JBoss AS community server. Users of JBoss suffer of critical issues during deployment time that includes: changing the libraries and dependencies of the application, patching the DTD or XSD deployment descriptors, refactoring of the application layers due classloading issues and anomalies, rebuilding of persistence, business and web layers due issues with "usage of the certified version of an certain dependency" or "frameworks that Red Hat potentially does not recommend" etc. If you have the culture or enterprise IT directive of developing Java EE applications using community middleware to in a certain future, transition to enterprise (supported by a vendor) middleware, Oracle WebLogic plus Oracle GlassFish offers you a more sustainable solution. - WebLogic Server 12c has a very light ZIP distribution (less than 165 MB). JBoss EAP 6 ZIP size is around 130 MB, together with JBoss ON you have more 100 MB resulting in a higher download footprint. This is particularly interesting if you plan to use automated setup of application server instances (for example, to rapidly setup a development or staging environment) using Maven or Hudson. - WebLogic Server 12c has a complete integration with Maven allowing developers to setup WebLogic domains with few commands. Tasks like downloading WebLogic, installation, domain creation, data sources deployment are completely integrated. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited offer integration with those tools.  - WebLogic Server 12c has a startup mode called WLX that turns-off EJB, JMS and JCA containers leaving enabled only the web container with Java EE 6 web profile. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such feature, you need to disable manually the containers that you do not want to use. - WebLogic Server 12c supports fastswap, which enables you to change classes without redeployment. This is particularly interesting if you are developing patches for the application that is already deployed and you do not want to redeploy the entire application. This is the same behavior that most application servers offers to JSP pages, but with WebLogic Server 12c, you have the same feature for Java classes in general. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. Even JBoss EAP 5 does not support this until now. 8) JMS and Messaging - WebLogic Server 12c has a proven and high scalable JMS implementation since its initial release in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a still immature technology called HornetQ, which was introduced in JBoss EAP 5 replacing everything that was implemented in the previous versions. Red Hat loves to introduce new technologies across JBoss versions, playing around with customers and their investments. And when they are asked about why they have changed the implementation and caused such a mess, their answer is always: "the previous implementation was inadequate and not aligned with the community strategy so we are creating a new a improved one". This Red Hat practice leads to uncomfortable investments that in a near future (sometimes less than a year) will be affected in someway. - WebLogic Server 12c has troubleshooting and monitoring features included on the WebLogic console and WLDF. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct monitoring on the console, activity is reflected only on the logs, no debug logs available in case of JMS issues. - WebLogic Server 12c has extremely good performance and scalability. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a JMS storage mechanism relying on Oracle database or MySQL. This means that if an issue in production happens and Red Hat affirms that an performance issue is happening due to database problems, they will not support you on the performance issue. They will orient you to call Oracle instead. - WebLogic Server 12c supports messaging enterprise features like SAF ("Store and Forward"), Distributed Queues/Topics and Foreign JMS providers support that leverage JMS implementations without compromise developer code making things completely transparent. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand do not even dream to support such features. 9) Caching and Grid - Coherence, which is the leading and most mature data grid technology from Oracle, is available since early 2000 and was integrated with WebLogic in 2009. Coherence and WebLogic clusters can be both managed from WebLogic administrative console. Even Node Manager supports Coherence. JBoss on the other hand discontinued JBoss Cache, which was their caching implementation just like they did with the messaging implementation (JBossMQ) which was a issue for long term customers. JBoss EAP 6 ships InfiniSpan version 1.0 which is immature and lack a proven record of successful cases and reliability. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called ActiveCache which uses Coherence to, without any code changes, replicate HTTP sessions from both WebLogic and other application servers like JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere, GlassFish and even Microsoft IIS. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does have such support and even when they do in the future, they probably will support only their own application server. - Coherence can be used to manage both L1 and L2 cache levels, providing support to Oracle TopLink and others JPA compliant implementations, even Hibernate. JBoss EAP 6 and Infinispan on the other hand supports only Hibernate. And most important of all: Infinispan does not have any successful case of L1 or L2 caching level support using Hibernate, which lead us to reflect about its viability. 10) Performance - WebLogic Server 12c is certified with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and can run unchanged applications at this engineered system. This approach can benefit customers from Exalogic optimization's of both kernel and JVM layers to boost performance in terms of 10X for web, OLTP, JMS and grid applications. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no investment on engineered systems: customers do not have the choice to deploy on a Java ultra fast system if their project becomes relevant and performance issues are detected. - WebLogic Server 12c maintains a performance gain across each new release: starting on WebLogic 5.1, the overall performance gain has been close to 4X, which close to a 20% gain release by release. JBoss on the other hand does not provide SPECJAppServer or SPECJEnterprise performance benchmarks. Their so called "performance gains" remains hidden in their customer environments, which lead us to think if it is true or not since we will never get access to those environments. - WebLogic Server 12c has industry performance benchmarks with submissions across platforms and configurations leading SPECJ. Oracle WebLogic leads SPECJAppServer performance in multiple categories, fitting all customer topologies like: dual-node, single-node, multi-node and multi-node with RAC. JBoss... again, does not provide any SPECJAppServer performance benchmarks. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called work manager which allows your application to embrace new performance levels based on critical resource utilization of the CPUs usage. Work managers prioritizes work and allocates threads based on an execution model that takes into account administrator-defined parameters and actual run-time performance and throughput. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no compared feature and probably they never will. Not supporting such feature like work managers, JBoss EAP 6 forces admin people and specially developers to uncover performance gains in a intrusive way, rewriting the code and doing performance refactorings. 11) Professional Services Support - WebLogic Server 12c and any other technology sold by Oracle give customers the possibility of hire OCS ("Oracle Consulting Services") to manage critical scenarios, deployment assistance of new applications, high skilled consultancy of architecture, best practices and people allocation together with customer teams. All OCS services are available without any restrictions, having the customer bought software from Oracle or just starting their implementation before any acquisition. JBoss EAP 6 or Red Hat to be more specifically, only offers professional services if you buy subscriptions from them. If you are developing a new critical application for your business and need the help of Red Hat for a serious issue or architecture decision, they will probably say: "OK... I can help you but after you buy subscriptions from me". Red Hat also does not allows their professional services consultants to manage environments that uses community based software. They will probably force you to first buy a subscription, download their "enterprise" version and them, optionally hire their consultants. - Oracle provides you our university to educate your team into our technologies, including of course specialized trainings of WebLogic application server. At any time and location, you can hire Oracle to train your team so you get trustful knowledge according to your specific needs. Certifications for the products are also available if your technical people desire to differentiate themselves as professionals. Red Hat on the other hand have a limited pool of resources to train your team in their technologies. Basically they are selling training and certification for RHEL ("Red Hat Enterprise Linux") but if you demand more specialized training in JBoss middleware, they will probably connect you to some "certified" partner localized training since they are apparently discontinuing their education center, at least here in Brazil. They were not able to reproduce their success with RHEL education to their middleware division since they need first sell the subscriptions to after gives you specialized training. And again, they only offer you specialized training based on their enterprise version (EAP in the case of JBoss) which means that the courses will be a quite outdated. There are reports of developers that took official training's from Red Hat at this year (2012) and in a certain JBoss advanced course, Red Hat supposedly covered JBossMQ as the messaging subsystem, and even the printed material provided was based on JBossMQ since the training was created for JBoss EAP 4.3. 12) Encouraging Transparency without Ulterior Motives - WebLogic Server 12c like any other software from Oracle can be downloaded any time from anywhere, you should only possess an OTN ("Oracle Technology Network") credential and you can download any enterprise software how many times you want. And is not some kind of "trial" version. It is the official binaries that will be running for ever in your data center. Oracle does not encourages the usage of "specific versions" of our software. The binaries you buy from Oracle are the same binaries anyone in the world could download and use for testing and personal education. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand are not available for download unless you buy a subscription and get access to the Red Hat enterprise repositories. If you need to test, learn or just start creating your application using Red Hat's middleware software, you should download it from the community website. You are not allowed to download the enterprise version that, according to Red Hat are more secure, reliable and robust. But no one of us want to start the development of a software with an unsecured, unreliable and not scalable middleware right? So what you do? You are "invited" by Red Hat to buy subscriptions from them to get access to the "cool" version of the software. - WebLogic Server 12c prices are publicly available in the Oracle website. If you want to know right now how much WebLogic will cost to your organization, just click here and get access to our price list. In the case of WebLogic, check out the "US Oracle Technology Commercial Price List". Oracle also encourages you to get in touch with a sales representative to discuss discounts that would make possible the investment into our technology. But you are not required to do this, only if you are interested in buying our technology or maybe you want to discuss some discount scenarios. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have its cost publicly available in Red Hat's website or in any other media, at least is not so easy to get such information. The only link you will possibly find in their website is a "Contact a Sales Representative" link. This is not a very good relationship between an customer and an vendor. This is not an example of transparency, mainly when the software are sold as open. In this situations, customers expects to see the software prices publicly available, so they can have the chance to decide, based on the existing features of the software, if the cost is fair or not. Conclusion Oracle WebLogic is the most mature, secure, reliable and scalable Java EE application server of the market, and have a proven record of success around the globe to prove it's majority. Don't lose the chance to discover today how WebLogic could fit your needs and sustain your global IT middleware strategy, no matter if your strategy are completely based on the Cloud or not.

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  • C# serial port driver wrapper class code and concept quality

    - by Ruben Trancoso
    Hi folks, Would like to know from all you guys what you think about my Serial Wrapper class. Had be a while I've beem working with serial port but never shared the code what somekind make closed to my very own vision. Would like to know if it's a good/bad approach, if the interface is enough and what more you see on it. I know that Stackoverflow is for question but at the same time there's a lot of very good skilled people here and share code and opinion can also bennefit everybody, it's why I decided to post it anyway. thanks! using System.Text; using System.IO; using System.IO.Ports; using System; namespace Driver { class SerialSingleton { // The singleton instance reference private static SerialSingleton instance = null; // System's serial port interface private SerialPort serial; // Current com port identifier private string comPort = null; // Configuration parameters private int confBaudRate; private int confDataBits; private StopBits confStopBits; private Parity confParityControl; ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding(); // ================================================================================== // Constructors public static SerialSingleton getInstance() { if (instance == null) { instance = new SerialSingleton(); } return instance; } private SerialSingleton() { serial = new SerialPort(); } // =================================================================================== // Setup Methods public string ComPort { get { return comPort; } set { if (value == null) { throw new SerialException("Serial port name canot be null."); } if (nameIsComm(value)) { close(); comPort = value; } else { throw new SerialException("Serial Port '" + value + "' is not a valid com port."); } } } public void setSerial(string baudRate, int dataBits, StopBits stopBits, Parity parityControl) { if (baudRate == null) { throw new SerialException("Baud rate cannot be null"); } string[] baudRateRef = { "300", "600", "1200", "1800", "2400", "3600", "4800", "7200", "9600", "14400", "19200", "28800", "38400", "57600", "115200" }; int confBaudRate; if (findString(baudRateRef, baudRate) != -1) { confBaudRate = System.Convert.ToInt32(baudRate); } else { throw new SerialException("Baurate parameter invalid."); } int confDataBits; switch (dataBits) { case 5: confDataBits = 5; break; case 6: confDataBits = 6; break; case 7: confDataBits = 7; break; case 8: confDataBits = 8; break; default: throw new SerialException("Databits parameter invalid"); } if (stopBits == StopBits.None) { throw new SerialException("StopBits parameter cannot be NONE"); } this.confBaudRate = confBaudRate; this.confDataBits = confDataBits; this.confStopBits = stopBits; this.confParityControl = parityControl; } // ================================================================================== public string[] PortList { get { return SerialPort.GetPortNames(); } } public int PortCount { get { return SerialPort.GetPortNames().Length; } } // ================================================================================== // Open/Close Methods public void open() { open(comPort); } private void open(string comPort) { if (isOpen()) { throw new SerialException("Serial Port is Already open"); } else { if (comPort == null) { throw new SerialException("Serial Port not defined. Cannot open"); } bool found = false; if (nameIsComm(comPort)) { string portId; string[] portList = SerialPort.GetPortNames(); for (int i = 0; i < portList.Length; i++) { portId = (portList[i]); if (portId.Equals(comPort)) { found = true; break; } } } else { throw new SerialException("The com port identifier '" + comPort + "' is not a valid serial port identifier"); } if (!found) { throw new SerialException("Serial port '" + comPort + "' not found"); } serial.PortName = comPort; try { serial.Open(); } catch (UnauthorizedAccessException uaex) { throw new SerialException("Cannot open a serial port in use by another application", uaex); } try { serial.BaudRate = confBaudRate; serial.DataBits = confDataBits; serial.Parity = confParityControl; serial.StopBits = confStopBits; } catch (Exception e) { throw new SerialException("Serial port parameter invalid for '" + comPort + "'.\n" + e.Message, e); } } } public void close() { if (serial.IsOpen) { serial.Close(); } } // =================================================================================== // Auxiliary private Methods private int findString(string[] set, string search) { if (set != null) { for (int i = 0; i < set.Length; i++) { if (set[i].Equals(search)) { return i; } } } return -1; } private bool nameIsComm(string name) { int comNumber; int.TryParse(name.Substring(3), out comNumber); if (name.Substring(0, 3).Equals("COM")) { if (comNumber > -1 && comNumber < 256) { return true; } } return false; } // ================================================================================= // Device state Methods public bool isOpen() { return serial.IsOpen; } public bool hasData() { int amount = serial.BytesToRead; if (amount > 0) { return true; } else { return false; } } // ================================================================================== // Input Methods public char getChar() { int data = serial.ReadByte(); return (char)data; } public int getBytes(ref byte[] b) { int size = b.Length; char c; int counter = 0; for (counter = 0; counter < size; counter++) { if (tryGetChar(out c)) { b[counter] = (byte)c; } else { break; } } return counter; } public string getStringUntil(char x) { char c; string response = ""; while (tryGetChar(out c)) { response = response + c; if (c == x) { break; } } return response; } public bool tryGetChar(out char c) { c = (char)0x00; byte[] b = new byte[1]; long to = 10; long ft = System.Environment.TickCount + to; while (System.Environment.TickCount < ft) { if (hasData()) { int data = serial.ReadByte(); c = (char)data; return true; } } return false; } // ================================================================================ // Output Methods public void sendString(string data) { byte[] bytes = encoding.GetBytes(data); serial.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length); } public void sendChar(char c) { char[] data = new char[1]; data[0] = c; serial.Write(data, 0, 1); } public void sendBytes(byte[] data) { serial.Write(data, 0, data.Length); } public void clearBuffer() { if (serial.IsOpen) { serial.DiscardInBuffer(); serial.DiscardOutBuffer(); } } } }

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  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • WPF: ContentPresenter changing Foreground unexpectedly depending on where styles are located

    - by VLTII
    Hi, I'm having an issue with the ContentPresenter behaving unexpectedly based on whether the styles are located in the Window.Resources or in a ResourceDictionary. Specifically, I'm setting the Foreground of the default TextBlock to Black, then setting the Foreground value in my default button style to White. If the styles exits on the page like this, they work fine: <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Microsoft_Windows_Themes="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Aero" x:Class="TestBed.MainWindow" x:Name="Window" Title="MainWindow" Width="640" Height="480"> <Window.Resources> <Style TargetType="{x:Type TextBlock}"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="Black" /> </Style> <Style x:Key="ButtonFocusVisual"> <Setter Property="Control.Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate> <Rectangle Stroke="Black" StrokeDashArray="1 2" StrokeThickness="1" Margin="2" SnapsToDevicePixels="true"/> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBackground" EndPoint="0,1" StartPoint="0,0"> <GradientStop Color="#F3F3F3" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#EBEBEB" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#DDDDDD" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#CDCDCD" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush> <SolidColorBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBorder" Color="#FF707070"/> <Style TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Setter Property="FocusVisualStyle" Value="{StaticResource ButtonFocusVisual}"/> <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBackground}"/> <Setter Property="BorderBrush" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBorder}"/> <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="White"/> <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="VerticalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="Padding" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome x:Name="Chrome" SnapsToDevicePixels="true" Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" RenderDefaulted="{TemplateBinding IsDefaulted}" RenderMouseOver="{TemplateBinding IsMouseOver}" RenderPressed="{TemplateBinding IsPressed}"> <ContentPresenter HorizontalAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalContentAlignment}" Margin="{TemplateBinding Padding}" VerticalAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalContentAlignment}" SnapsToDevicePixels="{TemplateBinding SnapsToDevicePixels}" RecognizesAccessKey="True"/> </Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome> <ControlTemplate.Triggers> <Trigger Property="IsKeyboardFocused" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderDefaulted" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="ToggleButton.IsChecked" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderPressed" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="IsEnabled" Value="false"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="#ADADAD"/> </Trigger> </ControlTemplate.Triggers> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> </Window.Resources> <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <Button Content="Button" /> </StackPanel> </Window> But if I move those same styles over to a ResourceDictionary, the Foreground of the button switches to black. Updated MainWindow: <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Microsoft_Windows_Themes="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Aero" x:Class="TestBed.MainWindow" x:Name="Window" Title="MainWindow" Width="640" Height="480"> <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <Button Content="Button" /> </StackPanel> </Window> ResourceDictionary: <ResourceDictionary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Microsoft_Windows_Themes="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Aero" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d"> <Style TargetType="{x:Type TextBlock}"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="Black" /> </Style> <Style x:Key="ButtonFocusVisual"> <Setter Property="Control.Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate> <Rectangle Stroke="Black" StrokeDashArray="1 2" StrokeThickness="1" Margin="2" SnapsToDevicePixels="true"/> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBackground" EndPoint="0,1" StartPoint="0,0"> <GradientStop Color="#F3F3F3" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#EBEBEB" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#DDDDDD" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#CDCDCD" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush> <SolidColorBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBorder" Color="#FF707070"/> <Style TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Setter Property="FocusVisualStyle" Value="{StaticResource ButtonFocusVisual}"/> <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBackground}"/> <Setter Property="BorderBrush" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBorder}"/> <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="White"/> <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="VerticalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="Padding" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome x:Name="Chrome" SnapsToDevicePixels="true" Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" RenderDefaulted="{TemplateBinding IsDefaulted}" RenderMouseOver="{TemplateBinding IsMouseOver}" RenderPressed="{TemplateBinding IsPressed}"> <ContentPresenter HorizontalAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalContentAlignment}" Margin="{TemplateBinding Padding}" VerticalAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalContentAlignment}" SnapsToDevicePixels="{TemplateBinding SnapsToDevicePixels}" RecognizesAccessKey="True"/> </Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome> <ControlTemplate.Triggers> <Trigger Property="IsKeyboardFocused" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderDefaulted" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="ToggleButton.IsChecked" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderPressed" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="IsEnabled" Value="false"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="#ADADAD"/> </Trigger> </ControlTemplate.Triggers> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> </ResourceDictionary> And my App.xaml because someone will ask for it: <Application xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="TestBed.App" StartupUri="MainWindow.xaml"> <Application.Resources> <!-- Resources scoped at the Application level should be defined here. --> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="ResourceDictionary.xaml"/> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary> </Application.Resources> </Application> Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

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  • Converting a WPFToolkit DataGrid from 1D list to 2D matrix

    - by user61073
    Hello - I am wondering if anyone has attempted the following or has an idea as to how to do it. I have a WPFToolkit DataGrid which is bound to an ObservableCollection of items. As such, the DataGrid is shown with as many rows in the ObservableCollection, and as many columns as I have defined in for the DataGrid. That all is good. What I now need is to provide another view of the same data, only, instead, the DataGrid is shown with as many cells in the ObservableCollection. So let's say, my ObservableCollection has 100 items in it. The original scenario showed the DataGrid with 100 rows and 1 column. In the modified scenario, I need to show it with 10 rows and 10 columns, where each cell shows the value that was in the original representation. In other words, I need to transform my 1D ObservableCollection to a 2D ObservableCollection and display it in the DataGrid. I know how to do that programmatically in the code behind, but can it be done in XAML? Let me simplify the problem a little, in case anybody can have a crack at this. The XAML below does the following: * Defines an XmlDataProvider just for dummy data * Creates a DataGrid with 10 columns o each column is a DataGridTemplateColumn using the same CellTemplate * The CellTemplate is a simple TextBlock bound to an XML element If you run the XAML below, you will find that the DataGrid ends up with 5 rows, one for each book, and 10 columns that have identical content (all showing the book titles). However, what I am trying to accomplish, albeit with a different data set, is that in this case, I would end up with one row, with each book title appearing in a single cell in row 1, occupying cells 0-4, and nothing in cells 5-9. Then, if I added more data and had 12 books in my XML data source, I would get row 1 completely filled (cells covering the first 10 titles) and row 2 would get the first 2 cells filled. Can my scenario be accomplished primarily in XAML, or should I resign myself to working in the code behind? Any guidance would greatly be appreciated. Thanks so much! <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" xmlns:custom="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wpf/2008/toolkit" mc:Ignorable="d" x:Name="UserControl" d:DesignWidth="600" d:DesignHeight="400" > <UserControl.Resources> <XmlDataProvider x:Key="InventoryData" XPath="Inventory/Books"> <x:XData> <Inventory xmlns=""> <Books> <Book ISBN="0-7356-0562-9" Stock="in" Number="9"> <Title>XML in Action</Title> <Summary>XML Web Technology</Summary> </Book> <Book ISBN="0-7356-1370-2" Stock="in" Number="8"> <Title>Programming Microsoft Windows With C#</Title> <Summary>C# Programming using the .NET Framework</Summary> </Book> <Book ISBN="0-7356-1288-9" Stock="out" Number="7"> <Title>Inside C#</Title> <Summary>C# Language Programming</Summary> </Book> <Book ISBN="0-7356-1377-X" Stock="in" Number="5"> <Title>Introducing Microsoft .NET</Title> <Summary>Overview of .NET Technology</Summary> </Book> <Book ISBN="0-7356-1448-2" Stock="out" Number="4"> <Title>Microsoft C# Language Specifications</Title> <Summary>The C# language definition</Summary> </Book> </Books> <CDs> <CD Stock="in" Number="3"> <Title>Classical Collection</Title> <Summary>Classical Music</Summary> </CD> <CD Stock="out" Number="9"> <Title>Jazz Collection</Title> <Summary>Jazz Music</Summary> </CD> </CDs> </Inventory> </x:XData> </XmlDataProvider> <DataTemplate x:Key="GridCellTemplate"> <TextBlock> <TextBlock.Text> <Binding XPath="Title"/> </TextBlock.Text> </TextBlock> </DataTemplate> </UserControl.Resources> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <custom:DataGrid HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True" Background="{DynamicResource WindowBackgroundBrush}" HeadersVisibility="All" RowDetailsVisibilityMode="Collapsed" SelectionUnit="CellOrRowHeader" CanUserResizeRows="False" GridLinesVisibility="None" RowHeaderWidth="35" AutoGenerateColumns="False" CanUserReorderColumns="False" CanUserSortColumns="False"> <custom:DataGrid.Columns> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="01" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="02" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="03" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="04" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="05" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="06" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="07" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="08" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="09" /> <custom:DataGridTemplateColumn CellTemplate="{StaticResource GridCellTemplate}" Header="10" /> </custom:DataGrid.Columns> <custom:DataGrid.ItemsSource> <Binding Source="{StaticResource InventoryData}" XPath="Book"/> </custom:DataGrid.ItemsSource> </custom:DataGrid> </Grid>

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  • actionscript3: reflect-class applied on rotationY

    - by algro
    Hi, I'm using a class which applies a visual reflection-effect to defined movieclips. I use a reflection-class from here: link to source. It works like a charm except when I apply a rotation to the movieclip. In my case the reflection is still visible but only a part of it. What am I doing wrong? How could I pass/include the rotation to the Reflection-Class ? Thanks in advance! This is how you apply the Reflection Class to your movieclip: var ref_mc:MovieClip = new MoviClip(); addChild(ref_mc); var r1:Reflect = new Reflect({mc:ref_mc, alpha:50, ratio:50,distance:0, updateTime:0,reflectionDropoff:1}); Now I apply a rotation to my movieclip: ref_mc.rotationY = 30; And Here the Reflect-Class: package com.pixelfumes.reflect{ import flash.display.MovieClip; import flash.display.DisplayObject; import flash.display.BitmapData; import flash.display.Bitmap; import flash.geom.Matrix; import flash.display.GradientType; import flash.display.SpreadMethod; import flash.utils.setInterval; import flash.utils.clearInterval; public class Reflect extends MovieClip{ //Created By Ben Pritchard of Pixelfumes 2007 //Thanks to Mim, Jasper, Jason Merrill and all the others who //have contributed to the improvement of this class //static var for the version of this class private static var VERSION:String = "4.0"; //reference to the movie clip we are reflecting private var mc:MovieClip; //the BitmapData object that will hold a visual copy of the mc private var mcBMP:BitmapData; //the BitmapData object that will hold the reflected image private var reflectionBMP:Bitmap; //the clip that will act as out gradient mask private var gradientMask_mc:MovieClip; //how often the reflection should update (if it is video or animated) private var updateInt:Number; //the size the reflection is allowed to reflect within private var bounds:Object; //the distance the reflection is vertically from the mc private var distance:Number = 0; function Reflect(args:Object){ /*the args object passes in the following variables /we set the values of our internal vars to math the args*/ //the clip being reflected mc = args.mc; //the alpha level of the reflection clip var alpha:Number = args.alpha/100; //the ratio opaque color used in the gradient mask var ratio:Number = args.ratio; //update time interval var updateTime:Number = args.updateTime; //the distance at which the reflection visually drops off at var reflectionDropoff:Number = args.reflectionDropoff; //the distance the reflection starts from the bottom of the mc var distance:Number = args.distance; //store width and height of the clip var mcHeight = mc.height; var mcWidth = mc.width; //store the bounds of the reflection bounds = new Object(); bounds.width = mcWidth; bounds.height = mcHeight; //create the BitmapData that will hold a snapshot of the movie clip mcBMP = new BitmapData(bounds.width, bounds.height, true, 0xFFFFFF); mcBMP.draw(mc); //create the BitmapData the will hold the reflection reflectionBMP = new Bitmap(mcBMP); //flip the reflection upside down reflectionBMP.scaleY = -1; //move the reflection to the bottom of the movie clip reflectionBMP.y = (bounds.height*2) + distance; //add the reflection to the movie clip's Display Stack var reflectionBMPRef:DisplayObject = mc.addChild(reflectionBMP); reflectionBMPRef.name = "reflectionBMP"; //add a blank movie clip to hold our gradient mask var gradientMaskRef:DisplayObject = mc.addChild(new MovieClip()); gradientMaskRef.name = "gradientMask_mc"; //get a reference to the movie clip - cast the DisplayObject that is returned as a MovieClip gradientMask_mc = mc.getChildByName("gradientMask_mc") as MovieClip; //set the values for the gradient fill var fillType:String = GradientType.LINEAR; var colors:Array = [0xFFFFFF, 0xFFFFFF]; var alphas:Array = [alpha, 0]; var ratios:Array = [0, ratio]; var spreadMethod:String = SpreadMethod.PAD; //create the Matrix and create the gradient box var matr:Matrix = new Matrix(); //set the height of the Matrix used for the gradient mask var matrixHeight:Number; if (reflectionDropoff<=0) { matrixHeight = bounds.height; } else { matrixHeight = bounds.height/reflectionDropoff; } matr.createGradientBox(bounds.width, matrixHeight, (90/180)*Math.PI, 0, 0); //create the gradient fill gradientMask_mc.graphics.beginGradientFill(fillType, colors, alphas, ratios, matr, spreadMethod); gradientMask_mc.graphics.drawRect(0,0,bounds.width,bounds.height); //position the mask over the reflection clip gradientMask_mc.y = mc.getChildByName("reflectionBMP").y - mc.getChildByName("reflectionBMP").height; //cache clip as a bitmap so that the gradient mask will function gradientMask_mc.cacheAsBitmap = true; mc.getChildByName("reflectionBMP").cacheAsBitmap = true; //set the mask for the reflection as the gradient mask mc.getChildByName("reflectionBMP").mask = gradientMask_mc; //if we are updating the reflection for a video or animation do so here if(updateTime > -1){ updateInt = setInterval(update, updateTime, mc); } } public function setBounds(w:Number,h:Number):void{ //allows the user to set the area that the reflection is allowed //this is useful for clips that move within themselves bounds.width = w; bounds.height = h; gradientMask_mc.width = bounds.width; redrawBMP(mc); } public function redrawBMP(mc:MovieClip):void { // redraws the bitmap reflection - Mim Gamiet [2006] mcBMP.dispose(); mcBMP = new BitmapData(bounds.width, bounds.height, true, 0xFFFFFF); mcBMP.draw(mc); } private function update(mc):void { //updates the reflection to visually match the movie clip mcBMP = new BitmapData(bounds.width, bounds.height, true, 0xFFFFFF); mcBMP.draw(mc); reflectionBMP.bitmapData = mcBMP; } public function destroy():void{ //provides a method to remove the reflection mc.removeChild(mc.getChildByName("reflectionBMP")); reflectionBMP = null; mcBMP.dispose(); clearInterval(updateInt); mc.removeChild(mc.getChildByName("gradientMask_mc")); } } }

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  • Asset Pipeline acting up

    - by Abram
    Ok, so my asset pipeline has suddenly started acting up on my development machine. JS functions that previously worked are now throwing "not a function" errors.. I know I must be doing something wrong. A minute ago the datatables jquery function was working, then it was throwing an error, then it was working, and now it's not working or throwing an error. Here is my application.js //= require jquery //= require jquery-ui //= require jquery_ujs //= require_self //= require_tree . //= require dataTables/jquery.dataTables //= require dataTables/jquery.dataTables.bootstrap //= require bootstrap //= require bootstrap-tooltip //= require bootstrap-popover //= require bootstrap-tab //= require bootstrap-modal //= require bootstrap-alert //= require bootstrap-dropdown //= require jquery.ui.addresspicker //= require raty //= require jquery.alphanumeric //= require jquery.formrestrict //= require select2 //= require chosen/chosen.jquery //= require highcharts //= require jquery.lazyload Here is some of my layout header: <%= stylesheet_link_tag "application", media: "all" %> <%= yield(:scripthead) %> <%= javascript_include_tag "application" %> <%= csrf_meta_tags %> <%= yield(:head) %> Above I am using the yield to load up online scripts from google as they're only needed on some pages, and generally slow down the site if included in the application layout. I tried removing the yield but things were still broken, even after clearing the browser cache and running rake assets:clean (just to be on the safe side). Here's what shows up between CSS and metatags (for a page with nothin in the yield scripthead): <script src="/assets/jquery.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery-ui.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery_ujs.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/application.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/aidmodels.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/audio.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-alert.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-dropdown.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-modal.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-popover.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-tab.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-tooltip.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/branches.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/charts.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/chosen/backup_chosen.jquery.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/chosen/chosen.jquery.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/consumers.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/dispensers.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/favorites.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/features.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/generic_styles.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.base.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.bing.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.googlemaps.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.mapquest.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.openlayers.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/highcharts.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery-ui-1.8.18.custom.min.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.alphanumeric.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.formrestrict.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.lazyload.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.ui.addresspicker.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/likes.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/messages.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/overalls.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/pages.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/questions.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/raty.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/reviews.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/sessions.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/styles.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/tickets.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/universities.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/users.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/dataTables/jquery.dataTables.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/dataTables/jquery.dataTables.bootstrap.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-transition.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-affix.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-button.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-carousel.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-collapse.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-scrollspy.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-typeahead.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/select2.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> From application.rb: config.assets.initialize_on_precompile = false # Enable the asset pipeline config.assets.enabled = true config.action_controller.assets_dir = "#{File.dirname(File.dirname(__FILE__))}/public" # Version of your assets, change this if you want to expire all your assets config.assets.version = '1.0' I'm sorry, I'm not sure what else to include to help with this puzzle, but any advise would be appreciated. I was having no problems before I started trying to upload to heroku and now everything's gone haywire. EDIT: In the console at the moment I'm seeing Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'Constructor' of undefined bootstrap-popover.js:33 Uncaught ReferenceError: google is not defined jquery.ui.addresspicker.js:25 Uncaught TypeError: Object [object Object] has no method 'popover' overall:476

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  • Java Cloud Service Integration to REST Service

    - by Jani Rautiainen
    Service (JCS) provides a platform to develop and deploy business applications in the cloud. In Fusion Applications Cloud deployments customers do not have the option to deploy custom applications developed with JDeveloper to ensure the integrity and supportability of the hosted application service. Instead the custom applications can be deployed to the JCS and integrated to the Fusion Application Cloud instance. This series of articles will go through the features of JCS, provide end-to-end examples on how to develop and deploy applications on JCS and how to integrate them with the Fusion Applications instance. In this article a custom application integrating with REST service will be implemented. We will use REST services provided by Taleo as an example; however the same approach will work with any REST service. In this example the data from the REST service is used to populate a dynamic table. Pre-requisites Access to Cloud instance In order to deploy the application access to a JCS instance is needed, a free trial JCS instance can be obtained from Oracle Cloud site. To register you will need a credit card even if the credit card will not be charged. To register simply click "Try it" and choose the "Java" option. The confirmation email will contain the connection details. See this video for example of the registration.Once the request is processed you will be assigned 2 service instances; Java and Database. Applications deployed to the JCS must use Oracle Database Cloud Service as their underlying database. So when JCS instance is created a database instance is associated with it using a JDBC data source.The cloud services can be monitored and managed through the web UI. For details refer to Getting Started with Oracle Cloud. JDeveloper JDeveloper contains Cloud specific features related to e.g. connection and deployment. To use these features download the JDeveloper from JDeveloper download site by clicking the "Download JDeveloper 11.1.1.7.1 for ADF deployment on Oracle Cloud" link, this version of JDeveloper will have the JCS integration features that will be used in this article. For versions that do not include the Cloud integration features the Oracle Java Cloud Service SDK or the JCS Java Console can be used for deployment. For details on installing and configuring the JDeveloper refer to the installation guideFor details on SDK refer to Using the Command-Line Interface to Monitor Oracle Java Cloud Service and Using the Command-Line Interface to Manage Oracle Java Cloud Service. Access to a local database The database associated with the JCS instance cannot be connected to with JDBC.  Since creating ADFbc business component requires a JDBC connection we will need access to a local database. 3rd party libraries This example will use some 3rd party libraries for implementing the REST service call and processing the input / output content. Other libraries may also be used, however these are tested to work. Jersey 1.x Jersey library will be used as a client to make the call to the REST service. JCS documentation for supported specifications states: Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) 1.1 So Jersey 1.x will be used. Download the single-JAR Jersey bundle; in this example Jersey 1.18 JAR bundle is used. Json-simple Jjson-simple library will be used to process the json objects. Download the  JAR file; in this example json-simple-1.1.1.jar is used. Accessing data in Taleo Before implementing the application it is beneficial to familiarize oneself with the data in Taleo. Easiest way to do this is by using a RESTClient on your browser. Once added to the browser you can access the UI: The client can be used to call the REST services to test the URLs and data before adding them into the application. First derive the base URL for the service this can be done with: Method: GET URL: https://tbe.taleo.net/MANAGER/dispatcher/api/v1/serviceUrl/<company name> The response will contain the base URL to be used for the service calls for the company. Next obtain authentication token with: Method: POST URL: https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/api/v1/login?orgCode=<company>&userName=<user name>&password=<password> The response includes an authentication token that can be used for few hours to authenticate with the service: {   "response": {     "authToken": "webapi26419680747505890557"   },   "status": {     "detail": {},     "success": true   } } To authenticate the service calls navigate to "Headers -> Custom Header": And add a new request header with: Name: Cookie Value: authToken=webapi26419680747505890557 Once authentication token is defined the tool can be used to invoke REST services; for example: Method: GET URL: https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/api/v1/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 This data will be used on the application to be created. For details on the Taleo REST services refer to the Taleo Business Edition REST API Guide. Create Application First Fusion Web Application is created and configured. Start JDeveloper and click "New Application": Application Name: JcsRestDemo Application Package Prefix: oracle.apps.jcs.test Application Template: Fusion Web Application (ADF) Configure Local Cloud Connection Follow the steps documented in the "Java Cloud Service ADF Web Application" article to configure a local database connection needed to create the ADFbc objects. Configure Libraries Add the 3rd party libraries into the class path. Create the following directory and copy the jar files into it: <JDEV_USER_HOME>/JcsRestDemo/lib  Select the "Model" project, navigate "Application -> Project Properties -> Libraries and Classpath -> Add JAR / Directory" and add the 2 3rd party libraries: Accessing Data from Taleo To access data from Taleo using the REST service the 3rd party libraries will be used. 2 Java classes are implemented, one representing the Candidate object and another for accessing the Taleo repository Candidate Candidate object is a POJO object used to represent the candidate data obtained from the Taleo repository. The data obtained will be used to populate the ADFbc object used to display the data on the UI. The candidate object contains simply the variables we obtain using the REST services and the getters / setters for them: Navigate "New -> General -> Java -> Java Class", enter "Candidate" as the name and create it in the package "oracle.apps.jcs.test.model".  Copy / paste the following as the content: import oracle.jbo.domain.Number; public class Candidate { private Number candId; private String firstName; private String lastName; public Candidate() { super(); } public Candidate(Number candId, String firstName, String lastName) { super(); this.candId = candId; this.firstName = firstName; this.lastName = lastName; } public void setCandId(Number candId) { this.candId = candId; } public Number getCandId() { return candId; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } } Taleo Repository Taleo repository class will interact with the Taleo REST services. The logic will query data from Taleo and populate Candidate objects with the data. The Candidate object will then be used to populate the ADFbc object used to display data on the UI. Navigate "New -> General -> Java -> Java Class", enter "TaleoRepository" as the name and create it in the package "oracle.apps.jcs.test.model".  Copy / paste the following as the content (for details of the implementation refer to the documentation in the code): import com.sun.jersey.api.client.Client; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.ClientResponse; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.WebResource; import com.sun.jersey.core.util.MultivaluedMapImpl; import java.io.StringReader; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Iterator; import java.util.List; import java.util.Map; import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType; import javax.ws.rs.core.MultivaluedMap; import oracle.jbo.domain.Number; import org.json.simple.JSONArray; import org.json.simple.JSONObject; import org.json.simple.parser.JSONParser; /** * This class interacts with the Taleo REST services */ public class TaleoRepository { /** * Connection information needed to access the Taleo services */ String _company = null; String _userName = null; String _password = null; /** * Jersey client used to access the REST services */ Client _client = null; /** * Parser for processing the JSON objects used as * input / output for the services */ JSONParser _parser = null; /** * The base url for constructing the REST URLs. This is obtained * from Taleo with a service call */ String _baseUrl = null; /** * Authentication token obtained from Taleo using a service call. * The token can be used to authenticate on subsequent * service calls. The token will expire in 4 hours */ String _authToken = null; /** * Static url that can be used to obtain the url used to construct * service calls for a given company */ private static String _taleoUrl = "https://tbe.taleo.net/MANAGER/dispatcher/api/v1/serviceUrl/"; /** * Default constructor for the repository * Authentication details are passed as parameters and used to generate * authentication token. Note that each service call will * generate its own token. This is done to avoid dealing with the expiry * of the token. Also only 20 tokens are allowed per user simultaneously. * So instead for each call there is login / logout. * * @param company the company for which the service calls are made * @param userName the user name to authenticate with * @param password the password to authenticate with. */ public TaleoRepository(String company, String userName, String password) { super(); _company = company; _userName = userName; _password = password; _client = Client.create(); _parser = new JSONParser(); _baseUrl = getBaseUrl(); } /** * This obtains the base url for a company to be used * to construct the urls for service calls * @return base url for the service calls */ private String getBaseUrl() { String result = null; if (null != _baseUrl) { result = _baseUrl; } else { try { String company = _company; WebResource resource = _client.resource(_taleoUrl + company); ClientResponse response = resource.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE).get(ClientResponse.class); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); JSONObject jsonResponse = (JSONObject)jsonObject.get("response"); result = (String)jsonResponse.get("URL"); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } } return result; } /** * Generates authentication token, that can be used to authenticate on * subsequent service calls. Note that each service call will * generate its own token. This is done to avoid dealing with the expiry * of the token. Also only 20 tokens are allowed per user simultaneously. * So instead for each call there is login / logout. * @return authentication token that can be used to authenticate on * subsequent service calls */ private String login() { String result = null; try { MultivaluedMap<String, String> formData = new MultivaluedMapImpl(); formData.add("orgCode", _company); formData.add("userName", _userName); formData.add("password", _password); WebResource resource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + "login"); ClientResponse response = resource.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE).post(ClientResponse.class, formData); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); JSONObject jsonResponse = (JSONObject)jsonObject.get("response"); result = (String)jsonResponse.get("authToken"); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to login ", ex); } if (null == result) throw new RuntimeException("Unable to login "); return result; } /** * Releases a authentication token. Each call to login must be followed * by call to logout after the processing is done. This is required as * the tokens are limited to 20 per user and if not released the tokens * will only expire after 4 hours. * @param authToken */ private void logout(String authToken) { WebResource resource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + "logout"); resource.header("cookie", "authToken=" + authToken).post(ClientResponse.class); } /** * This method is used to obtain a list of candidates using a REST * service call. At this example the query is hard coded to query * based on status. The url constructed to access the service is: * <_baseUrl>/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 * @return List of candidates obtained with the service call */ public List<Candidate> getCandidates() { List<Candidate> result = new ArrayList<Candidate>(); try { // First login, note that in finally block we must have logout _authToken = "authToken=" + login(); /** * Construct the URL, the resulting url will be: * <_baseUrl>/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 */ MultivaluedMap<String, String> formData = new MultivaluedMapImpl(); formData.add("status", "16"); JSONArray searchResults = (JSONArray)getTaleoResource("object/candidate/search", "searchResults", formData); /** * Process the results, the resulting JSON object is something like * this (simplified for readability): * * { * "response": * { * "searchResults": * [ * { * "candidate": * { * "candId": 211, * "firstName": "Mary", * "lastName": "Stochi", * logic here will find the candidate object(s), obtain the desired * data from them, construct a Candidate object based on the data * and add it to the results. */ for (Object object : searchResults) { JSONObject temp = (JSONObject)object; JSONObject candidate = (JSONObject)findObject(temp, "candidate"); Long candIdTemp = (Long)candidate.get("candId"); Number candId = (null == candIdTemp ? null : new Number(candIdTemp)); String firstName = (String)candidate.get("firstName"); String lastName = (String)candidate.get("lastName"); result.add(new Candidate(candId, firstName, lastName)); } } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } finally { if (null != _authToken) logout(_authToken); } return result; } /** * Convenience method to construct url for the service call, invoke the * service and obtain a resource from the response * @param path the path for the service to be invoked. This is combined * with the base url to construct a url for the service * @param resource the key for the object in the response that will be * obtained * @param parameters any parameters used for the service call. The call * is slightly different depending whether parameters exist or not. * @return the resource from the response for the service call */ private Object getTaleoResource(String path, String resource, MultivaluedMap<String, String> parameters) { Object result = null; try { WebResource webResource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + path); ClientResponse response = null; if (null == parameters) response = webResource.header("cookie", _authToken).get(ClientResponse.class); else response = webResource.queryParams(parameters).header("cookie", _authToken).get(ClientResponse.class); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); result = findObject(jsonObject, resource); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } return result; } /** * Convenience method to recursively find a object with an key * traversing down from a given root object. This will traverse a * JSONObject / JSONArray recursively to find a matching key, if found * the object with the key is returned. * @param root root object which contains the key searched for * @param key the key for the object to search for * @return the object matching the key */ private Object findObject(Object root, String key) { Object result = null; if (root instanceof JSONObject) { JSONObject rootJSON = (JSONObject)root; if (rootJSON.containsKey(key)) { result = rootJSON.get(key); } else { Iterator children = rootJSON.entrySet().iterator(); while (children.hasNext()) { Map.Entry entry = (Map.Entry)children.next(); Object child = entry.getValue(); if (child instanceof JSONObject || child instanceof JSONArray) { result = findObject(child, key); if (null != result) break; } } } } else if (root instanceof JSONArray) { JSONArray rootJSON = (JSONArray)root; for (Object child : rootJSON) { if (child instanceof JSONObject || child instanceof JSONArray) { result = findObject(child, key); if (null != result) break; } } } return result; } }   Creating Business Objects While JCS application can be created without a local database, the local database is required when using ADFbc objects even if database objects are not referred. For this example we will create a "Transient" view object that will be programmatically populated based the data obtained from Taleo REST services. Creating ADFbc objects Choose the "Model" project and navigate "New -> Business Tier : ADF Business Components : View Object". On the "Initialize Business Components Project" choose the local database connection created in previous step. On Step 1 enter "JcsRestDemoVO" on the "Name" and choose "Rows populated programmatically, not based on query": On step 2 create the following attributes: CandId Type: Number Updatable: Always Key Attribute: checked Name Type: String Updatable: Always On steps 3 and 4 accept defaults and click "Next".  On step 5 check the "Application Module" checkbox and enter "JcsRestDemoAM" as the name: Click "Finish" to generate the objects. Populating the VO To display the data on the UI the "transient VO" is populated programmatically based on the data obtained from the Taleo REST services. Open the "JcsRestDemoVOImpl.java". Copy / paste the following as the content (for details of the implementation refer to the documentation in the code): import java.sql.ResultSet; import java.util.List; import java.util.ListIterator; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewObjectImpl; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewRowImpl; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewRowSetImpl; // --------------------------------------------------------------------- // --- File generated by Oracle ADF Business Components Design Time. // --- Tue Feb 18 09:40:25 PST 2014 // --- Custom code may be added to this class. // --- Warning: Do not modify method signatures of generated methods. // --------------------------------------------------------------------- public class JcsRestDemoVOImpl extends ViewObjectImpl { /** * This is the default constructor (do not remove). */ public JcsRestDemoVOImpl() { } @Override public void executeQuery() { /** * For some reason we need to reset everything, otherwise * 2nd entry to the UI screen may fail with * "java.util.NoSuchElementException" in createRowFromResultSet * call to "candidates.next()". I am not sure why this is happening * as the Iterator is new and "hasNext" is true at the point * of the execution. My theory is that since the iterator object is * exactly the same the VO cache somehow reuses the iterator including * the pointer that has already exhausted the iterable elements on the * previous run. Working around the issue * here by cleaning out everything on the VO every time before query * is executed on the VO. */ getViewDef().setQuery(null); getViewDef().setSelectClause(null); setQuery(null); this.reset(); this.clearCache(); super.executeQuery(); } /** * executeQueryForCollection - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected void executeQueryForCollection(Object qc, Object[] params, int noUserParams) { /** * Integrate with the Taleo REST services using TaleoRepository class. * A list of candidates matching a hard coded query is obtained. */ TaleoRepository repository = new TaleoRepository(<company>, <username>, <password>); List<Candidate> candidates = repository.getCandidates(); /** * Store iterator for the candidates as user data on the collection. * This will be used in createRowFromResultSet to create rows based on * the custom iterator. */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidatescIterator = candidates.listIterator(); setUserDataForCollection(qc, candidatescIterator); super.executeQueryForCollection(qc, params, noUserParams); } /** * hasNextForCollection - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected boolean hasNextForCollection(Object qc) { boolean result = false; /** * Determines whether there are candidates for which to create a row */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidates = (ListIterator<Candidate>)getUserDataForCollection(qc); result = candidates.hasNext(); /** * If all candidates to be created indicate that processing is done */ if (!result) { setFetchCompleteForCollection(qc, true); } return result; } /** * createRowFromResultSet - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected ViewRowImpl createRowFromResultSet(Object qc, ResultSet resultSet) { /** * Obtain the next candidate from the collection and create a row * for it. */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidates = (ListIterator<Candidate>)getUserDataForCollection(qc); ViewRowImpl row = createNewRowForCollection(qc); try { Candidate candidate = candidates.next(); row.setAttribute("CandId", candidate.getCandId()); row.setAttribute("Name", candidate.getFirstName() + " " + candidate.getLastName()); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return row; } /** * getQueryHitCount - overridden for custom java data source support. */ public long getQueryHitCount(ViewRowSetImpl viewRowSet) { /** * For this example this is not implemented rather we always return 0. */ return 0; } } Creating UI Choose the "ViewController" project and navigate "New -> Web Tier : JSF : JSF Page". On the "Create JSF Page" enter "JcsRestDemo" as name and ensure that the "Create as XML document (*.jspx)" is checked.  Open "JcsRestDemo.jspx" and navigate to "Data Controls -> JcsRestDemoAMDataControl -> JcsRestDemoVO1" and drag & drop the VO to the "<af:form> " as a "ADF Read-only Table": Accept the defaults in "Edit Table Columns". To execute the query navigate to to "Data Controls -> JcsRestDemoAMDataControl -> JcsRestDemoVO1 -> Operations -> Execute" and drag & drop the operation to the "<af:form> " as a "Button": Deploying to JCS Follow the same steps as documented in previous article"Java Cloud Service ADF Web Application". Once deployed the application can be accessed with URL: https://java-[identity domain].java.[data center].oraclecloudapps.com/JcsRestDemo-ViewController-context-root/faces/JcsRestDemo.jspx The UI displays a list of candidates obtained from the Taleo REST Services: Summary In this article we learned how to integrate with REST services using Jersey library in JCS. In future articles various other integration techniques will be covered.

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  • 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles, Windows Kinect and a 90's Text-Based Ray-Tracer

    - by Alan Smith
    For a couple of years I have been demoing a simple render farm hosted in Windows Azure using worker roles and the Azure Storage service. At the start of the presentation I deploy an Azure application that uses 16 worker roles to render a 1,500 frame 3D ray-traced animation. At the end of the presentation, when the animation was complete, I would play the animation delete the Azure deployment. The standing joke with the audience was that it was that it was a “$2 demo”, as the compute charges for running the 16 instances for an hour was $1.92, factor in the bandwidth charges and it’s a couple of dollars. The point of the demo is that it highlights one of the great benefits of cloud computing, you pay for what you use, and if you need massive compute power for a short period of time using Windows Azure can work out very cost effective. The “$2 demo” was great for presenting at user groups and conferences in that it could be deployed to Azure, used to render an animation, and then removed in a one hour session. I have always had the idea of doing something a bit more impressive with the demo, and scaling it from a “$2 demo” to a “$30 demo”. The challenge was to create a visually appealing animation in high definition format and keep the demo time down to one hour.  This article will take a run through how I achieved this. Ray Tracing Ray tracing, a technique for generating high quality photorealistic images, gained popularity in the 90’s with companies like Pixar creating feature length computer animations, and also the emergence of shareware text-based ray tracers that could run on a home PC. In order to render a ray traced image, the ray of light that would pass from the view point must be tracked until it intersects with an object. At the intersection, the color, reflectiveness, transparency, and refractive index of the object are used to calculate if the ray will be reflected or refracted. Each pixel may require thousands of calculations to determine what color it will be in the rendered image. Pin-Board Toys Having very little artistic talent and a basic understanding of maths I decided to focus on an animation that could be modeled fairly easily and would look visually impressive. I’ve always liked the pin-board desktop toys that become popular in the 80’s and when I was working as a 3D animator back in the 90’s I always had the idea of creating a 3D ray-traced animation of a pin-board, but never found the energy to do it. Even if I had a go at it, the render time to produce an animation that would look respectable on a 486 would have been measured in months. PolyRay Back in 1995 I landed my first real job, after spending three years being a beach-ski-climbing-paragliding-bum, and was employed to create 3D ray-traced animations for a CD-ROM that school kids would use to learn physics. I had got into the strange and wonderful world of text-based ray tracing, and was using a shareware ray-tracer called PolyRay. PolyRay takes a text file describing a scene as input and, after a few hours processing on a 486, produced a high quality ray-traced image. The following is an example of a basic PolyRay scene file. background Midnight_Blue   static define matte surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.7 } define matte_white texture { matte { color white } } define matte_black texture { matte { color dark_slate_gray } } define position_cylindrical 3 define lookup_sawtooth 1 define light_wood <0.6, 0.24, 0.1> define median_wood <0.3, 0.12, 0.03> define dark_wood <0.05, 0.01, 0.005>     define wooden texture { noise surface { ambient 0.2  diffuse 0.7  specular white, 0.5 microfacet Reitz 10 position_fn position_cylindrical position_scale 1  lookup_fn lookup_sawtooth octaves 1 turbulence 1 color_map( [0.0, 0.2, light_wood, light_wood] [0.2, 0.3, light_wood, median_wood] [0.3, 0.4, median_wood, light_wood] [0.4, 0.7, light_wood, light_wood] [0.7, 0.8, light_wood, median_wood] [0.8, 0.9, median_wood, light_wood] [0.9, 1.0, light_wood, dark_wood]) } } define glass texture { surface { ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.2 reflection white, 0.1 transmission white, 1, 1.5 }} define shiny surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.6 specular white, 0.6 microfacet Phong 7  } define steely_blue texture { shiny { color black } } define chrome texture { surface { color white ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.2 specular 0.4 microfacet Phong 10 reflection 0.8 } }   viewpoint {     from <4.000, -1.000, 1.000> at <0.000, 0.000, 0.000> up <0, 1, 0> angle 60     resolution 640, 480 aspect 1.6 image_format 0 }       light <-10, 30, 20> light <-10, 30, -20>   object { disc <0, -2, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, 30 wooden }   object { sphere <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, 1.00 chrome } object { cylinder <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, <0.000, 0.000, -4.000>, 0.50 chrome }   After setting up the background and defining colors and textures, the viewpoint is specified. The “camera” is located at a point in 3D space, and it looks towards another point. The angle, image resolution, and aspect ratio are specified. Two lights are present in the image at defined coordinates. The three objects in the image are a wooden disc to represent a table top, and a sphere and cylinder that intersect to form a pin that will be used for the pin board toy in the final animation. When the image is rendered, the following image is produced. The pins are modeled with a chrome surface, so they reflect the environment around them. Note that the scale of the pin shaft is not correct, this will be fixed later. Modeling the Pin Board The frame of the pin-board is made up of three boxes, and six cylinders, the front box is modeled using a clear, slightly reflective solid, with the same refractive index of glass. The other shapes are modeled as metal. object { box <-5.5, -1.5, 1>, <5.5, 5.5, 1.2> glass } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.04>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.09> steely_blue } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.52>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.59> steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, -1.2, 1.4>, <0, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, 5.2, 1.4>, <0, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue }   In order to create the matrix of pins that make up the pin board I used a basic console application with a few nested loops to create two intersecting matrixes of pins, which models the layout used in the pin boards. The resulting image is shown below. The pin board contains 11,481 pins, with the scene file containing 23,709 lines of code. For the complete animation 2,000 scene files will be created, which is over 47 million lines of code. Each pin in the pin-board will slide out a specific distance when an object is pressed into the back of the board. This is easily modeled by setting the Z coordinate of the pin to a specific value. In order to set all of the pins in the pin-board to the correct position, a bitmap image can be used. The position of the pin can be set based on the color of the pixel at the appropriate position in the image. When the Windows Azure logo is used to set the Z coordinate of the pins, the following image is generated. The challenge now was to make a cool animation. The Azure Logo is fine, but it is static. Using a normal video to animate the pins would not work; the colors in the video would not be the same as the depth of the objects from the camera. In order to simulate the pin board accurately a series of frames from a depth camera could be used. Windows Kinect The Kenect controllers for the X-Box 360 and Windows feature a depth camera. The Kinect SDK for Windows provides a programming interface for Kenect, providing easy access for .NET developers to the Kinect sensors. The Kinect Explorer provided with the Kinect SDK is a great starting point for exploring Kinect from a developers perspective. Both the X-Box 360 Kinect and the Windows Kinect will work with the Kinect SDK, the Windows Kinect is required for commercial applications, but the X-Box Kinect can be used for hobby projects. The Windows Kinect has the advantage of providing a mode to allow depth capture with objects closer to the camera, which makes for a more accurate depth image for setting the pin positions. Creating a Depth Field Animation The depth field animation used to set the positions of the pin in the pin board was created using a modified version of the Kinect Explorer sample application. In order to simulate the pin board accurately, a small section of the depth range from the depth sensor will be used. Any part of the object in front of the depth range will result in a white pixel; anything behind the depth range will be black. Within the depth range the pixels in the image will be set to RGB values from 0,0,0 to 255,255,255. A screen shot of the modified Kinect Explorer application is shown below. The Kinect Explorer sample application was modified to include slider controls that are used to set the depth range that forms the image from the depth stream. This allows the fine tuning of the depth image that is required for simulating the position of the pins in the pin board. The Kinect Explorer was also modified to record a series of images from the depth camera and save them as a sequence JPEG files that will be used to animate the pins in the animation the Start and Stop buttons are used to start and stop the image recording. En example of one of the depth images is shown below. Once a series of 2,000 depth images has been captured, the task of creating the animation can begin. Rendering a Test Frame In order to test the creation of frames and get an approximation of the time required to render each frame a test frame was rendered on-premise using PolyRay. The output of the rendering process is shown below. The test frame contained 23,629 primitive shapes, most of which are the spheres and cylinders that are used for the 11,800 or so pins in the pin board. The 1280x720 image contains 921,600 pixels, but as anti-aliasing was used the number of rays that were calculated was 4,235,777, with 3,478,754,073 object boundaries checked. The test frame of the pin board with the depth field image applied is shown below. The tracing time for the test frame was 4 minutes 27 seconds, which means rendering the2,000 frames in the animation would take over 148 hours, or a little over 6 days. Although this is much faster that an old 486, waiting almost a week to see the results of an animation would make it challenging for animators to create, view, and refine their animations. It would be much better if the animation could be rendered in less than one hour. Windows Azure Worker Roles The cost of creating an on-premise render farm to render animations increases in proportion to the number of servers. The table below shows the cost of servers for creating a render farm, assuming a cost of $500 per server. Number of Servers Cost 1 $500 16 $8,000 256 $128,000   As well as the cost of the servers, there would be additional costs for networking, racks etc. Hosting an environment of 256 servers on-premise would require a server room with cooling, and some pretty hefty power cabling. The Windows Azure compute services provide worker roles, which are ideal for performing processor intensive compute tasks. With the scalability available in Windows Azure a job that takes 256 hours to complete could be perfumed using different numbers of worker roles. The time and cost of using 1, 16 or 256 worker roles is shown below. Number of Worker Roles Render Time Cost 1 256 hours $30.72 16 16 hours $30.72 256 1 hour $30.72   Using worker roles in Windows Azure provides the same cost for the 256 hour job, irrespective of the number of worker roles used. Provided the compute task can be broken down into many small units, and the worker role compute power can be used effectively, it makes sense to scale the application so that the task is completed quickly, making the results available in a timely fashion. The task of rendering 2,000 frames in an animation is one that can easily be broken down into 2,000 individual pieces, which can be performed by a number of worker roles. Creating a Render Farm in Windows Azure The architecture of the render farm is shown in the following diagram. The render farm is a hybrid application with the following components: ·         On-Premise o   Windows Kinect – Used combined with the Kinect Explorer to create a stream of depth images. o   Animation Creator – This application uses the depth images from the Kinect sensor to create scene description files for PolyRay. These files are then uploaded to the jobs blob container, and job messages added to the jobs queue. o   Process Monitor – This application queries the role instance lifecycle table and displays statistics about the render farm environment and render process. o   Image Downloader – This application polls the image queue and downloads the rendered animation files once they are complete. ·         Windows Azure o   Azure Storage – Queues and blobs are used for the scene description files and completed frames. A table is used to store the statistics about the rendering environment.   The architecture of each worker role is shown below.   The worker role is configured to use local storage, which provides file storage on the worker role instance that can be use by the applications to render the image and transform the format of the image. The service definition for the worker role with the local storage configuration highlighted is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="CloudRay" >   <WorkerRole name="CloudRayWorkerRole" vmsize="Small">     <Imports>     </Imports>     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString" />     </ConfigurationSettings>     <LocalResources>       <LocalStorage name="RayFolder" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />     </LocalResources>   </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>     The two executable programs, PolyRay.exe and DTA.exe are included in the Azure project, with Copy Always set as the property. PolyRay will take the scene description file and render it to a Truevision TGA file. As the TGA format has not seen much use since the mid 90’s it is converted to a JPG image using Dave's Targa Animator, another shareware application from the 90’s. Each worker roll will use the following process to render the animation frames. 1.       The worker process polls the job queue, if a job is available the scene description file is downloaded from blob storage to local storage. 2.       PolyRay.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments to render the image as a TGA file. 3.       DTA.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments convert the TGA file to a JPG file. 4.       The JPG file is uploaded from local storage to the images blob container. 5.       A message is placed on the images queue to indicate a new image is available for download. 6.       The job message is deleted from the job queue. 7.       The role instance lifecycle table is updated with statistics on the number of frames rendered by the worker role instance, and the CPU time used. The code for this is shown below. public override void Run() {     // Set environment variables     string polyRayPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), PolyRayLocation);     string dtaPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), DTALocation);       LocalResource rayStorage = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("RayFolder");     string localStorageRootPath = rayStorage.RootPath;       JobQueue jobQueue = new JobQueue("renderjobs");     JobQueue downloadQueue = new JobQueue("renderimagedownloadjobs");     CloudRayBlob sceneBlob = new CloudRayBlob("scenes");     CloudRayBlob imageBlob = new CloudRayBlob("images");     RoleLifecycleDataSource roleLifecycleDataSource = new RoleLifecycleDataSource();       Frames = 0;       while (true)     {         // Get the render job from the queue         CloudQueueMessage jobMsg = jobQueue.Get();           if (jobMsg != null)         {             // Get the file details             string sceneFile = jobMsg.AsString;             string tgaFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".tga");             string jpgFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".jpg");               string sceneFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, sceneFile);             string tgaFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, tgaFile);             string jpgFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, jpgFile);               // Copy the scene file to local storage             sceneBlob.DownloadFile(sceneFilePath);               // Run the ray tracer.             string polyrayArguments =                 string.Format("\"{0}\" -o \"{1}\" -a 2", sceneFilePath, tgaFilePath);             Process polyRayProcess = new Process();             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), polyRayPath);             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = polyrayArguments;             polyRayProcess.Start();             polyRayProcess.WaitForExit();               // Convert the image             string dtaArguments =                 string.Format(" {0} /FJ /P{1}", tgaFilePath, Path.GetDirectoryName (jpgFilePath));             Process dtaProcess = new Process();             dtaProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), dtaPath);             dtaProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = dtaArguments;             dtaProcess.Start();             dtaProcess.WaitForExit();               // Upload the image to blob storage             imageBlob.UploadFile(jpgFilePath);               // Add a download job.             downloadQueue.Add(jpgFile);               // Delete the render job message             jobQueue.Delete(jobMsg);               Frames++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }           // Log the worker role activity.         roleLifecycleDataSource.Alive             ("CloudRayWorker", RoleLifecycleDataSource.RoleLifecycleId, Frames);     } }     Monitoring Worker Role Instance Lifecycle In order to get more accurate statistics about the lifecycle of the worker role instances used to render the animation data was tracked in an Azure storage table. The following class was used to track the worker role lifecycles in Azure storage.   public class RoleLifecycle : TableServiceEntity {     public string ServerName { get; set; }     public string Status { get; set; }     public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }     public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }     public long SecondsRunning { get; set; }     public DateTime LastActiveTime { get; set; }     public int Frames { get; set; }     public string Comment { get; set; }       public RoleLifecycle()     {     }       public RoleLifecycle(string roleName)     {         PartitionKey = roleName;         RowKey = Utils.GetAscendingRowKey();         Status = "Started";         StartTime = DateTime.UtcNow;         LastActiveTime = StartTime;         EndTime = StartTime;         SecondsRunning = 0;         Frames = 0;     } }     A new instance of this class is created and added to the storage table when the role starts. It is then updated each time the worker renders a frame to record the total number of frames rendered and the total processing time. These statistics are used be the monitoring application to determine the effectiveness of use of resources in the render farm. Rendering the Animation The Azure solution was deployed to Windows Azure with the service configuration set to 16 worker role instances. This allows for the application to be tested in the cloud environment, and the performance of the application determined. When I demo the application at conferences and user groups I often start with 16 instances, and then scale up the application to the full 256 instances. The configuration to run 16 instances is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="16" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     About six minutes after deploying the application the first worker roles become active and start to render the first frames of the animation. The CloudRay Monitor application displays an icon for each worker role instance, with a number indicating the number of frames that the worker role has rendered. The statistics on the left show the number of active worker roles and statistics about the render process. The render time is the time since the first worker role became active; the CPU time is the total amount of processing time used by all worker role instances to render the frames.   Five minutes after the first worker role became active the last of the 16 worker roles activated. By this time the first seven worker roles had each rendered one frame of the animation.   With 16 worker roles u and running it can be seen that one hour and 45 minutes CPU time has been used to render 32 frames with a render time of just under 10 minutes.     At this rate it would take over 10 hours to render the 2,000 frames of the full animation. In order to complete the animation in under an hour more processing power will be required. Scaling the render farm from 16 instances to 256 instances is easy using the new management portal. The slider is set to 256 instances, and the configuration saved. We do not need to re-deploy the application, and the 16 instances that are up and running will not be affected. Alternatively, the configuration file for the Azure service could be modified to specify 256 instances.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="256" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     Six minutes after the new configuration has been applied 75 new worker roles have activated and are processing their first frames.   Five minutes later the full configuration of 256 worker roles is up and running. We can see that the average rate of frame rendering has increased from 3 to 12 frames per minute, and that over 17 hours of CPU time has been utilized in 23 minutes. In this test the time to provision 140 worker roles was about 11 minutes, which works out at about one every five seconds.   We are now half way through the rendering, with 1,000 frames complete. This has utilized just under three days of CPU time in a little over 35 minutes.   The animation is now complete, with 2,000 frames rendered in a little over 52 minutes. The CPU time used by the 256 worker roles is 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes with an average frame rate of 38 frames per minute. The rendering of the last 1,000 frames took 16 minutes 27 seconds, which works out at a rendering rate of 60 frames per minute. The frame counts in the server instances indicate that the use of a queue to distribute the workload has been very effective in distributing the load across the 256 worker role instances. The first 16 instances that were deployed first have rendered between 11 and 13 frames each, whilst the 240 instances that were added when the application was scaled have rendered between 6 and 9 frames each.   Completed Animation I’ve uploaded the completed animation to YouTube, a low resolution preview is shown below. Pin Board Animation Created using Windows Kinect and 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles   The animation can be viewed in 1280x720 resolution at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jy6bvSxWc Effective Use of Resources According to the CloudRay monitor statistics the animation took 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes CPU to render, this works out at 152 hours of compute time, rounded up to the nearest hour. As the usage for the worker role instances are billed for the full hour, it may have been possible to render the animation using fewer than 256 worker roles. When deciding the optimal usage of resources, the time required to provision and start the worker roles must also be considered. In the demo I started with 16 worker roles, and then scaled the application to 256 worker roles. It would have been more optimal to start the application with maybe 200 worker roles, and utilized the full hour that I was being billed for. This would, however, have prevented showing the ease of scalability of the application. The new management portal displays the CPU usage across the worker roles in the deployment. The average CPU usage across all instances is 93.27%, with over 99% used when all the instances are up and running. This shows that the worker role resources are being used very effectively. Grid Computing Scenarios Although I am using this scenario for a hobby project, there are many scenarios where a large amount of compute power is required for a short period of time. Windows Azure provides a great platform for developing these types of grid computing applications, and can work out very cost effective. ·         Windows Azure can provide massive compute power, on demand, in a matter of minutes. ·         The use of queues to manage the load balancing of jobs between role instances is a simple and effective solution. ·         Using a cloud-computing platform like Windows Azure allows proof-of-concept scenarios to be tested and evaluated on a very low budget. ·         No charges for inbound data transfer makes the uploading of large data sets to Windows Azure Storage services cost effective. (Transaction charges still apply.) Tips for using Windows Azure for Grid Computing Scenarios I found the implementation of a render farm using Windows Azure a fairly simple scenario to implement. I was impressed by ease of scalability that Azure provides, and by the short time that the application took to scale from 16 to 256 worker role instances. In this case it was around 13 minutes, in other tests it took between 10 and 20 minutes. The following tips may be useful when implementing a grid computing project in Windows Azure. ·         Using an Azure Storage queue to load-balance the units of work across multiple worker roles is simple and very effective. The design I have used in this scenario could easily scale to many thousands of worker role instances. ·         Windows Azure accounts are typically limited to 20 cores. If you need to use more than this, a call to support and a credit card check will be required. ·         Be aware of how the billing model works. You will be charged for worker role instances for the full clock our in which the instance is deployed. Schedule the workload to start just after the clock hour has started. ·         Monitor the utilization of the resources you are provisioning, ensure that you are not paying for worker roles that are idle. ·         If you are deploying third party applications to worker roles, you may well run into licensing issues. Purchasing software licenses on a per-processor basis when using hundreds of processors for a short time period would not be cost effective. ·         Third party software may also require installation onto the worker roles, which can be accomplished using start-up tasks. Bear in mind that adding a startup task and possible re-boot will add to the time required for the worker role instance to start and activate. An alternative may be to use a prepared VM and use VM roles. ·         Consider using the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) to autoscale the worker roles in your application. When using a large number of worker roles, the utilization must be carefully monitored, if the scaling algorithms are not optimal it could get very expensive!

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  • iPhone SDK vs Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Challenge, Part 1: Hello World!

    In this series, I will be taking sample applications from the iPhone SDK and implementing them on Windows Phone 7 Series.  My goal is to do as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as I can.  This series will be written to not only compare and contrast how easy or difficult it is to complete tasks on either platform, how many lines of code, etc., but Id also like it to be a way for iPhone developers to either get started on Windows Phone 7 Series development, or for developers in general to learn the platform. Heres my methodology: Run the iPhone SDK app in the iPhone Simulator to get a feel for what it does and how it works, without looking at the implementation Implement the equivalent functionality on Windows Phone 7 Series using Silverlight. Compare the two implementations based on complexity, functionality, lines of code, number of files, etc. Add some functionality to the Windows Phone 7 Series app that shows off a way to make the scenario more interesting or leverages an aspect of the platform, or uses a better design pattern to implement the functionality. You can download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP here, and the Expression Blend 4 Beta here. Hello World! Of course no first post would be allowed if it didnt focus on the hello world scenario.  The iPhone SDK follows that tradition with the Your First iPhone Application walkthrough.  I will say that the developer documentation for iPhone is pretty good.  There are plenty of walkthoughs and they break things down into nicely sized steps and do a good job of bringing the user along.  As expected, this application is quite simple.  It comprises of a text box, a label, and a button.  When you push the button, the label changes to Hello plus the  word you typed into the text box.  Makes perfect sense for a starter application.  Theres not much to this but it covers a few basic elements: Laying out basic UI Handling user input Hooking up events Formatting text     So, lets get started building a similar app for Windows Phone 7 Series! Implementing the UI: UI in Silverlight (and therefore Windows Phone 7) is defined in XAML, which is a declarative XML language also used by WPF on the desktop.  For anyone thats familiar with similar types of markup, its relatively straightforward to learn, but has a lot of power in it once you get it figured out.  Well talk more about that. This UI is very simple.  When I look at this, I note a couple of things: Elements are arranged vertically They are all centered So, lets create our Application and then start with the UI.  Once you have the the VS 2010 Express for Windows Phone tool running, create a new Windows Phone Project, and call it Hello World: Once created, youll see the designer on one side and your XAML on the other: Now, we can create our UI in one of three ways: Use the designer in Visual Studio to drag and drop the components Use the designer in Expression Blend 4 to drag and drop the components Enter the XAML by hand in either of the above Well start with (1), then kind of move to (3) just for instructional value. To develop this UI in the designer: First, delete all of the markup between inside of the Grid element (LayoutRoot).  You should be left with just this XAML for your MainPage.xaml (i shortened all the xmlns declarations below for brevity): 1: <phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationPage 2: x:Class="HelloWorld.MainPage" 3: xmlns="...[snip]" 4: FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}" 5: FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}" 6: Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}"> 7:   8: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}"> 9:   10: </Grid> 11:   12: </phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationPage> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   Well be adding XAML at line 9, so thats the important part. Now, Click on the center area of the phone surface Open the Toolbox and double click StackPanel Double click TextBox Double click TextBlock Double click Button That will create the necessary UI elements but they wont be arranged quite right.  Well fix it in a second.    Heres the XAML that we end up with: 1: <StackPanel Height="100" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,10,0,0" Name="stackPanel1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="200"> 2: <TextBox Height="32" Name="textBox1" Text="TextBox" Width="100" /> 3: <TextBlock Height="23" Name="textBlock1" Text="TextBlock" /> 4: <Button Content="Button" Height="70" Name="button1" Width="160" /> 5: </StackPanel> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The designer does its best at guessing what we want, but in this case we want things to be a bit simpler. So well just clean it up a bit.  We want the items to be centered and we want them to have a little bit of a margin on either side, so heres what we end up with.  Ive also made it match the values and style from the iPhone app: 1: <StackPanel Margin="10"> 2: <TextBox Name="textBox1" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Text="You" TextAlignment="Center"/> 3: <TextBlock Name="textBlock1" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="0,100,0,0" Text="Hello You!" /> 4: <Button Name="button1" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="0,150,0,0" Content="Hello"/> 5: </StackPanel> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now lets take a look at what weve done there. Line 1: We removed all of the formatting from the StackPanel, except for Margin, as thats all we need.  Since our parent element is a Grid, by default the StackPanel will be sized to fit in that space.  The Margin says that we want to reserve 10 pixels on each side of the StackPanel. Line 2: Weve set the HorizontalAlignment of the TextBox to Stretch, which says that it should fill its parents size horizontally.  We want to do this so the TextBox is always full-width.  We also set TextAlignment to Center, to center the text. Line 3: In contrast to the TextBox above, we dont care how wide the TextBlock is, just so long as it is big enough for its text.  Thatll happen automatically, so we just set its Horizontal alignment to Center.  We also set a Margin above the TextBlock of 100 pixels to bump it down a bit, per the iPhone UI. Line 4: We do the same things here as in Line 3. Heres how the UI looks in the designer: Believe it or not, were almost done! Implementing the App Logic Now, we want the TextBlock to change its text when the Button is clicked.  In the designer, double click the Button to be taken to the Event Handler for the Buttons Click event.  In that event handler, we take the Text property from the TextBox, and format it into a string, then set it into the TextBlock.  Thats it! 1: private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: string name = textBox1.Text; 4:   5: // if there isn't a name set, just use "World" 6: if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(name)) 7: { 8: name = "World"; 9: } 10:   11: // set the value into the TextBlock 12: textBlock1.Text = String.Format("Hello {0}!", name); 13:   14: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } We use the String.Format() method to handle the formatting for us.    Now all thats left is to test the app in the Windows Phone Emulator and verify it does what we think it does! And it does! Comparing against the iPhone Looking at the iPhone example, there are basically three things that you have to touch as the developer: 1) The UI in the Nib file 2) The app delegate 3) The view controller Counting lines is a bit tricky here, but to try to keep this even, Im going to only count lines of code that I could not have (or would not have) generated with the tooling.  Meaning, Im not counting XAML and Im not counting operations that happen in the Nib file with the XCode designer tool.  So in the case of the above, even though I modified the XAML, I could have done all of those operations using the visual designer tool.  And normally I would have, but the XAML is more instructive (and less steps!).  Im interested in things that I, as the developer have to figure out in code.  Im also not counting lines that just have a curly brace on them, or lines that are generated for me (e.g. method names that are generated for me when I make a connection, etc.) So, by that count, heres what I get from the code listing for the iPhone app found here: HelloWorldAppDelegate.h: 6 HelloWorldAppDelegate.m: 12 MyViewController.h: 8 MyViewController.m: 18 Which gives me a grand total of about 44 lines of code on iPhone.  I really do recommend looking at the iPhone code for a comparison to the above. Now, for the Windows Phone 7 Series application, the only code I typed was in the event handler above Main.Xaml.cs: 4 So a total of 4 lines of code on Windows Phone 7.  And more importantly, the process is just A LOT simpler.  For example, I was surprised that the User Interface Designer in XCode doesnt automatically create instance variables for me and wire them up to the corresponding elements.  I assumed I wouldnt have to write this code myself (and risk getting it wrong!).  I dont need to worry about view controllers or anything.  I just write my code.  This blog post up to this point has covered almost every aspect of this apps development in a few pages.  The iPhone tutorial has 5 top level steps with 2-3 sub sections of each. Now, its worth pointing out that the iPhone development model uses the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern, which is a very flexible and powerful pattern that enforces proper separation of concerns.  But its fairly complex and difficult to understand when you first walk up to it.  Here at Microsoft weve dabbled in MVC a bit, with frameworks like MFC on Visual C++ and with the ASP.NET MVC framework now.  Both are very powerful frameworks.  But one of the reasons weve stayed away from MVC with client UI frameworks is that its difficult to tool.  We havent seen the type of value that beats double click, write code! for the broad set of scenarios. Another thing to think about is how many of those lines of code were focused on my apps functionality?.  Or, the converse of How many lines of code were boilerplate plumbing?  In both examples, the actual number of functional code lines is similar.  I count most of them in MyViewController.m, in the changeGreeting method.  Its about 7 lines of code that do the work of taking the value from the TextBox and putting it into the label.  Versus 4 on the Windows Phone 7 side.  But, unfortunately, on iPhone I still have to write that other 37 lines of code, just to get there. 10% of the code, 1 file instead of 4, its just much simpler. Making Some Tweaks It turns out, I can actually do this application with ZERO  lines of code, if Im willing to change the spec a bit. The data binding functionality in Silverlight is incredibly powerful.  And what I can do is databind the TextBoxs value directly to the TextBlock.  Take some time looking at this XAML below.  Youll see that I have added another nested StackPanel and two more TextBlocks.  Why?  Because thats how I build that string, and the nested StackPanel will lay things out Horizontally for me, as specified by the Orientation property. 1: <StackPanel Margin="10"> 2: <TextBox Name="textBox1" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Text="You" TextAlignment="Center"/> 3: <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="0,100,0,0" > 4: <TextBlock Text="Hello " /> 5: <TextBlock Name="textBlock1" Text="{Binding ElementName=textBox1, Path=Text}" /> 6: <TextBlock Text="!" /> 7: </StackPanel> 8: <Button Name="button1" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="0,150,0,0" Content="Hello" Click="button1_Click" /> 9: </StackPanel> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now, the real action is there in the bolded TextBlock.Text property: Text="{Binding ElementName=textBox1, Path=Text}" .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } That does all the heavy lifting.  It sets up a databinding between the TextBox.Text property on textBox1 and the TextBlock.Text property on textBlock1. As I change the text of the TextBox, the label updates automatically. In fact, I dont even need the button any more, so I could get rid of that altogether.  And no button means no event handler.  No event handler means no C# code at all.  Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Compass - Lucene Full text search. Structure and Best Practice.

    - by Rob
    Hi, I have played about with the tutorial and Compass itself for a bit now. I have just started to ramp up the use of it and have found that the performance slows drastically. I am certain that this is due to my mappings and the relationships that I have between entities and was looking for suggestions about how this should be best done. Also as a side question I wanted to know if a variable is in an @searchableComponent but is not defined as @searchable when the component object is pulled out of Compass results will you be able to access that variable? I have 3 main classes that I want to search on - Provider, Location and Activity. They are all inter-related - a Provider can have many locations and activites and has an address; A Location has 1 provider, many activities and an address; An activity has 1 provider and many locations. I have a join table between activity and Location called ActivityLocation that can later provider additional information about the relationship. My classes are mapped to compass as shown below for provider location activity and address. This works but gives a huge index and searches on it are comparatively slow, any advice would be great. Cheers, Rob @Searchable public class AbstractActivity extends LightEntity implements Serializable { /** * Serialisation ID */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 3445339493203407152L; @SearchableId (name="actID") private Integer activityId =-1; @SearchableComponent() private Provider provider; @SearchableComponent(prefix = "activity") private Category category; private String status; @SearchableProperty (name = "activityName") @SearchableMetaData (name = "activityshortactivityName") private String activityName; @SearchableProperty (name = "shortDescription") @SearchableMetaData (name = "activityshortDescription") private String shortDescription; @SearchableProperty (name = "abRating") @SearchableMetaData (name = "activityabRating") private Integer abRating; private String contactName; private String phoneNumber; private String faxNumber; private String email; private String url; @SearchableProperty (name = "completed") @SearchableMetaData (name = "activitycompleted") private Boolean completed= false; @SearchableProperty (name = "isprivate") @SearchableMetaData (name = "activityisprivate") private Boolean isprivate= false; private Boolean subs= false; private Boolean newsfeed= true; private Set news = new HashSet(0); private Set ActivitySession = new HashSet(0); private Set payments = new HashSet(0); private Set userclub = new HashSet(0); private Set ActivityOpeningTimes = new HashSet(0); private Set Events = new HashSet(0); private User creator; private Set userInterested = new HashSet(0); boolean freeEdit = false; private Integer activityType =0; @SearchableComponent (maxDepth=2) private Set activityLocations = new HashSet(0); private Double userRating = -1.00; Getters and Setters .... @Searchable public class AbstractLocation extends LightEntity implements Serializable { /** * Serialisation ID */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 3445339493203407152L; @SearchableId (name="locationID") private Integer locationId; @SearchableComponent (prefix = "location") private Category category; @SearchableComponent (maxDepth=1) private Provider provider; @SearchableProperty (name = "status") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationstatus") private String status; @SearchableProperty private String locationName; @SearchableProperty (name = "shortDescription") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationshortDescription") private String shortDescription; @SearchableProperty (name = "abRating") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationabRating") private Integer abRating; private Integer boolUseProviderDetails; @SearchableProperty (name = "contactName") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationcontactName") private String contactName; @SearchableComponent private Address address; @SearchableProperty (name = "phoneNumber") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationphoneNumber") private String phoneNumber; @SearchableProperty (name = "faxNumber") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationfaxNumber") private String faxNumber; @SearchableProperty (name = "email") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationemail") private String email; @SearchableProperty (name = "url") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationurl") private String url; @SearchableProperty (name = "completed") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationcompleted") private Boolean completed= false; @SearchableProperty (name = "isprivate") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationisprivate") private Boolean isprivate= false; @SearchableComponent private Set activityLocations = new HashSet(0); private Set LocationOpeningTimes = new HashSet(0); private Set events = new HashSet(0); @SearchableProperty (name = "adult_cost") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationadult_cost") private String adult_cost =""; @SearchableProperty (name = "child_cost") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationchild_cost") private String child_cost =""; @SearchableProperty (name = "family_cost") @SearchableMetaData (name = "locationfamily_cost") private String family_cost =""; private Double userRating = -1.00; private Set costs = new HashSet(0); private String cost_caveats =""; Getters and Setters .... @Searchable public class AbstractActivitylocations implements java.io.Serializable { /** * */ private static final long serialVersionUID = 1365110541466870626L; @SearchableId (name="id") private Integer id; @SearchableComponent private Activity activity; @SearchableComponent private Location location; Getters and Setters..... @Searchable public class AbstractProvider extends LightEntity implements Serializable { private static final long serialVersionUID = 3060354043429663058L; @SearchableId private Integer providerId = -1; @SearchableComponent (prefix = "provider") private Category category; @SearchableProperty (name = "businessName") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providerbusinessName") private String businessName; @SearchableProperty (name = "contactName") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providercontactName") private String contactName; @SearchableComponent private Address address; @SearchableProperty (name = "phoneNumber") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providerphoneNumber") private String phoneNumber; @SearchableProperty (name = "faxNumber") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providerfaxNumber") private String faxNumber; @SearchableProperty (name = "email") @SearchableMetaData (name = "provideremail") private String email; @SearchableProperty (name = "url") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providerurl") private String url; @SearchableProperty (name = "status") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providerstatus") private String status; @SearchableProperty (name = "notes") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providernotes") private String notes; @SearchableProperty (name = "shortDescription") @SearchableMetaData (name = "providershortDescription") private String shortDescription; private Boolean completed = false; private Boolean isprivate = false; private Double userRating = -1.00; private Integer ABRating = 1; @SearchableComponent private Set locations = new HashSet(0); @SearchableComponent private Set activities = new HashSet(0); private Set ProviderOpeningTimes = new HashSet(0); private User creator; boolean freeEdit = false; Getters and Setters... Thanks for reading!! Rob

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  • How to implement Survey page using ASP.NET MVC?

    - by Aleks
    I need to implement the survey page using ASP.NET MVC (v.4) That functionality has already been implemented in our project using ASP.NET WebForms. (I really searched a lot for real examples of similar functionality implemented via MVC, but failed) Goal: staying on the same page (in webforms -'Survey.aspx') each time user clicks 'Next Page', load next bunch of questions (controls) which user is going to answer. Type of controls in questions are defined only in run-time (retrieved from Data Base). To explain better the question I manually created (rather simple) mark-up below of 'two' pages (two loads of controls): <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Survey.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebSite.Survey" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div><h2>Internal Survey</h2></div> <div><h3>Page 1</h3></div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>Did you have internet disconnections during last week?</b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Yes</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>No</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>Which days of the week suit you best for meeting up ?</b></div> <asp:CheckBoxList ID="CheckBoxList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Monday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Tuesday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Wednesday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Thursday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Friday</asp:ListItem> </asp:CheckBoxList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <div><b>How satisfied are you with your job? </b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList2" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Very Good</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Good</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Bad</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Very Bad</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <div><b>How satisfied are you with your direct supervisor ? </b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList3" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Not Satisfied</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Somewhat Satisfied</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Neutral</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Satisfied</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Very Satisfied</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Next Page" onclick="Button1_Click" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> PAGE 2 <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Survey.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebSite.Survey" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div><h2>Internal Survey</h2></div> <div><h3>Page 2</h3></div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>Did admininstators fix your internet connection in time ?</b></div> <asp:RadioButtonList ID="RadioButtonList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Yes</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>No</asp:ListItem> </asp:RadioButtonList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"><div><b>What's your overal impression about the job ?</b></div> <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" Height="88px" Width="322px"></asp:TextBox> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <div><b>Select day which best suits you for admin support ? </b></div> <asp:DropDownList ID="DropDownList1" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem>Select day</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Monday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Wednesday</asp:ListItem> <asp:ListItem>Friday</asp:ListItem> </asp:DropDownList> </div> <div style="padding-bottom: 10px"> <asp:Button ID="Button1" runat="server" Text="Next Page" onclick="Button1_Click" /> </div> </form> </body> </html>

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  • Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

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  • Spring @Transactional not creating required transaction

    - by Steve
    Ok, so I've finally bowed to peer pressure and started using Spring in my web app :-)... So I'm trying to get the transaction handling stuff to work, and I just can't seem to get it. My Spring configuration looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd"> <bean id="groupDao" class="mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao" lazy-init="true"> <property name="entityManagerFactory" ><ref bean="entityManagerFactory"/></property> </bean> <!-- enables interpretation of the @Required annotation to ensure that dependency injection actually occures --> <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor"/> <!-- enables interpretation of the @PersistenceUnit/@PersistenceContext annotations providing convenient access to EntityManagerFactory/EntityManager --> <bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor"/> <!-- uses the persistence unit defined in the META-INF/persistence.xml JPA configuration file --> <bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean"> <property name="persistenceUnitName" value="CONOPS_PU" /> </bean> <!-- transaction manager for use with a single JPA EntityManagerFactory for transactional data access to a single datasource --> <bean id="jpaTransactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager"> <property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory"/> </bean> <!-- enables interpretation of the @Transactional annotation for declerative transaction managment using the specified JpaTransactionManager --> <tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="jpaTransactionManager" proxy-target-class="true"/> </beans> persistence.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <persistence version="1.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd"> <persistence-unit name="CONOPS_PU" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL"> <provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider> ... Class mappings removed for brevity... <properties> <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect"/> <property name="hibernate.connection.autocommit" value="false"/> <property name="hibernate.connection.username" value="****"/> <property name="hibernate.connection.password" value="*****"/> <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class" value="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"/> <property name="hibernate.connection.url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@*****:1521:*****"/> <property name="hibernate.cache.provider_class" value="org.hibernate.cache.NoCacheProvider"/> <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="create"/> <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true"/> <property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true"/> </properties> </persistence-unit> </persistence> The DAO method to save my domain object looks like this: @Transactional(propagation=Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW) protected final T saveOrUpdate (T model) { EntityManager em = emf.createEntityManager ( ); EntityTransaction trans = em.getTransaction ( ); System.err.println ("Transaction isActive () == " + trans.isActive ( )); if (em != null) { try { if (model.getId ( ) != null) { em.persist (model); em.flush (); } else { em.merge (model); em.flush (); } } finally { em.close (); } } return (model); } So I try to save a copy of my Group object using the following code in my test case: context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(configs); dao = (GroupDao)context.getBean("groupDao"); dao.saveOrUpdate (new Group ()); This bombs with the following exception: javax.persistence.TransactionRequiredException: no transaction is in progress at org.hibernate.ejb.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.flush(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:301) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:48) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:37) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:600) at org.springframework.orm.jpa.ExtendedEntityManagerCreator$ExtendedEntityManagerInvocationHandler.invoke(ExtendedEntityManagerCreator.java:341) at $Proxy26.flush(Unknown Source) at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GenericJPADao.saveOrUpdate(GenericJPADao.java:646) at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao.save(GroupDao.java:641) at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao$$FastClassByCGLIB$$50343b9b.invoke() at net.sf.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invoke(MethodProxy.java:149) at org.springframework.aop.framework.Cglib2AopProxy$DynamicAdvisedInterceptor.intercept(Cglib2AopProxy.java:622) at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$7359ba58.save() at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDaoTest.testGroupDaoSave(GroupDaoTest.java:91) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:48) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:37) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:600) at junit.framework.TestCase.runTest(TestCase.java:164) at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:130) at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:106) at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:124) at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:109) at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:120) at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:230) at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:225) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.junit3.JUnit3TestReference.run(JUnit3TestReference.java:130) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.TestExecution.run(TestExecution.java:38) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:460) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:673) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:386) at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:196) In addition, I get the following warnings when Spring first starts. Since these reference the entityManagerFactory and the transactionManager, they probably have some bearing on the problem, but I've no been able to decipher them enough to know what: Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization INFO: Bean 'entityManagerFactory' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying) Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization INFO: Bean 'entityManagerFactory' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying) Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization INFO: Bean 'jpaTransactionManager' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying) Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization INFO: Bean '(inner bean)' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying) Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization INFO: Bean '(inner bean)' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying) Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization INFO: Bean 'org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying) Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization INFO: Bean 'org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying) Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory preInstantiateSingletons INFO: Pre-instantiating singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@37003700: defining beans [groupDao,org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor,org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor,entityManagerFactory,jpaTransactionManager,org.springframework.aop.config.internalAutoProxyCreator,org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor]; root of factory hierarchy Does anyone have any idea what I'm missing? I'm totally stumped... Thanks

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  • Flex Canvas child Randomly resizes

    - by BS_C3
    Hi! I have an application with a viewstack that contains all the components that need to be displayed. The navigation is defined in the main application. All the components are based on canvas. The main application looks like that: <mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" xmlns:components="components.*"> <mx:VBox width="1024" height="100%" horizontalCenter="0" verticalGap="0" backgroundColor="#FFFFFF"> <mx:Image id="header" verticalAlign="top" /> <mx:ViewStack id="body" horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" width="100%" height="100%"> <components:HomePage id="hp" width="100%"/> <components:CollectionSelection id="cs" width="100%"/> <components:SearchEngine id="se" width="100%"/> <components:SearchResult id="sr" width="100%"/> <components:Tray id="tr" width="100%"/> <components:Order id="or" width="100%"/> </mx:ViewStack> <mx:Image id="footer" verticalAlign="bottom" maintainAspectRatio="false" width="100%"/> </mx:VBox> </mx:Application> I'm getting a strange behaviour from the TRAY component. Here's the code for component Tray (I've only left the display info): <mx:Canvas xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml"> <mx:Image id="bg" horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" width="100%" height="100%" maintainAspectRatio="false"/> <mx:HBox width="100%"> <mx:Button x="20" y="20" label="BACK"/> <mx:Spacer width="100%"/> <mx:LinkBar itemClick="linkbar_itemClick(event)" styleName="GLBLinkBTN" separatorColor="#FFFFFF" separatorWidth="1" > <mx:dataProvider> <mx:Object label="CLEAR"/> <mx:Object label="LOGOUT"/> </mx:dataProvider> </mx:LinkBar> </mx:HBox> <mx:VBox id="mainBox" horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" verticalGap="0"> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="50" backgroundColor="#60524D" verticalAlign="bottom" paddingBottom="5"> <mx:Label styleName="TRTitle" paddingLeft="15"/> <mx:Spacer width="100%"/> <mx:Label styleName="TRItems" paddingRight="15"/> </mx:HBox> <mx:HorizontalList id="hlist" dataProvider="{TrayData.instance.itemsCollection}" columnCount="{TrayData.instance.hlistColumns}" rowCount="1" itemRenderer="components.TrayItem" horizontalScrollPolicy="off" rollOverColor="#FFFFFF" selectionColor="#FFFFFF" horizontalCenter="0" verticalCenter="0" borderStyle="none" horizontalScrollPosition="{TrayData.instance.hsPosition}" /> <mx:HBox width="100%" backgroundColor="#E7DDDB" height="40" verticalAlign="middle" paddingLeft="20" paddingRight="20"> <mx:Box width="25" verticalAlign="middle" horizontalAlign="left"> <mx:Button id="leftBtn" /> </mx:Box> <mx:Spacer width="100%"/> <mx:Box width="25" verticalAlign="middle" horizontalAlign="right"> <mx:Button id="rightBtn" /> </mx:Box> </mx:HBox> </mx:VBox> </mx:Canvas> All the components are displaying properly. However, sometimes, randomly, the vbox "mainBox" in the tray component is not displaying as it should: the horizontallist shrinks and instead of fully displaying its items, I get horizontal and vertical scrollbars for each item... I'm currently trying to reproduce this behaviour (to get a print screen) but right know, it's working fine... -_-' As soon as I get it work as it shouldn't, I'll upload an image. Here's the code for the itemRenderer (just in case...): <mx:VBox xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" > <mx:HBox width="100%" paddingTop="0" paddingBottom="0" paddingRight="3"> <mx:Spacer width="100%"/> <mx:Box width="14" height="14" verticalAlign="middle" horizontalAlign="center"> <mx:Button width="8" height="8"/> </mx:Box> </mx:HBox> <mx:VBox paddingLeft="20" paddingRight="20" verticalGap="15" paddingBottom="15"> <mx:Canvas id="thumbnail"> <mx:Image id="thumbnailBG" /> <mx:Image id="thumbnailIM" /> </mx:Canvas > <mx:VBox width="100%" verticalGap="7"> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74" opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label paddingBottom="5"/> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74" opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label /> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74" opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label /> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74"opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label /> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74" opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label /> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74" opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label /> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74" opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label /> </mx:HBox> <mx:HBox width="100%" height="13"> <mx:Label width="74" opaqueBackground="#ECE5E2"/> <mx:Label /> </mx:HBox> </mx:VBox> <mx:Button /> </mx:VBox> </mx:VBox> Your help would really be appreciated. Regards, BS_C3

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  • PHP session not working with JQuery Ajax?

    - by Bolt_Head
    Update, Solved: After all this I found out that I was calling an old version of my code in the update ajax. 'boardControl.php' instead of 'boardUpdate.php' These are the kinds of mistakes that make programing fun. I'm writing a browser gomoku game. I have the ajax statement that allows the player to play a piece. $(document).ready(function() { $("td").live('click',function(){ var value = $(this).attr('id'); $.get('includes/boardControl.php',{play: value, bid: bid}); }); }); value = board square location bid = board ID Before creating a user login for player identification, the server side php had a temporary solution. It would rotate the piece state for the squares when clicked instead of knowing what player to create them for. After creating login stuff I set a session variable for the player's ID. I was hoping to read the session ID from the php during the ajax request and figure out what player they are from there. session_start(); ... $playerId = $_SESSION['char']; $Query=("SELECT p1, p2 FROM board WHERE bid=$bid"); $Result=mysql_query($Query); $p1 = mysql_result($Result,0,"p1"); $p2 = mysql_result($Result,0,"p2"); $newPiece = 0; //*default no player if($playerId == $p1) $newPiece = 1; if($playerId == $p2) $newPiece = 2; For some reason when I run the full web app, the pieces still cycle though, even after I deleted the code to make them cycle. Furthermore, after logging in If i manually load the php page in the browser, it modifies the database correctly (where it only plays pieces belonging to that player) and outputs the correct results. It seems to me that the session is not being carried over when used with Ajax. Yet Google searches tell me that, sessions do work with Ajax. Update: I'm trying to provide more information. Logging in works correctly. My ID is recognized and I printed it out next to the board to ensure that I was retrieving it correctly. The ajax request does update the board. The values passed are correct and confirmed with firebug's console. However instead of placing pieces only for the player they belong to it cycles though the piece states (0,1,2). When manually browsing to boardUpdate.php and putting in the same values sent from the Ajax the results seen in the echo'ed response indicates that the corresponding piece is played each time as intended. Same results on my laptop after fresh load of firefox. Manually browsing to boardUpdate.php without logging in before hand leave the board unchanged (as intended when no user is found in the session). I've double checked the that session_start() is on the php files and double checked the session ID variables. Hope this extra information helps, i'm running out of ideas what to tell you. Should I load up the full code? Update 2: After checking the Ajax responce in fire-bug I realized that the 'play' request does not get a result, and the board is not updated till the next 'update'. I'm still looking into this but I'll post it here for you guys too. boardUpdate.php Notable places are: Refresh Board(line6) Place Piece(line20) function boardUpdate($turnCount) (line63) <?php session_start(); require '../../omok/dbConnect.php'; //*** Refresh Board *** if(isset($_GET['update'])) { $bid = $_GET['bid']; $Query=("SELECT turn FROM board WHERE bid=$bid"); $Result=mysql_query($Query); $turnCount=mysql_result($Result,0,"turn"); if($_GET['turnCount'] < $turnCount) //** Turn increased { boardUpdate($turnCount); } } //*** Place Piece *** if(isset($_GET['play'])) // turn order? player detect? { $squareID = $_GET['play']; $bid = $_GET['bid']; $Query=("SELECT turn, boardstate FROM board WHERE bid=$bid"); $Result=mysql_query($Query); $turnCount=mysql_result($Result,0,"turn"); $boardState=mysql_result($Result,0,"boardstate"); $turnCount++; $playerId = $_SESSION['char']; $Query=("SELECT p1, p2 FROM board WHERE bid=$bid"); $Result=mysql_query($Query); $p1 = mysql_result($Result,0,"p1"); $p2 = mysql_result($Result,0,"p2"); $newPiece = 0; //*default no player if($playerId == $p1) $newPiece = 1; if($playerId == $p2) $newPiece = 2; // if($newPiece != 0) // { $oldPiece = getBoardSpot($squareID, $bid); $oldLetter = $boardState{floor($squareID/3)}; $slot = $squareID%3; //***function updateCode($old, $new, $current, $slot)*** $newLetter = updateCode($oldPiece, $newPiece, $oldLetter, $slot); $newLetter = value2Letter($newLetter); $newBoard = substr_replace($boardState, $newLetter, floor($squareID/3), 1); //** Update Query for boardstate & turn $Query=("UPDATE board SET boardState = '$newBoard', turn = '$turnCount' WHERE bid = '$bid'"); mysql_query($Query); // } boardUpdate($turnCount); } function boardUpdate($turnCount) { $json = '{"turnCount":"'.$turnCount.'",'; //** turnCount ** $bid = $_GET['bid']; $Query=("SELECT boardstate FROM board WHERE bid='$bid'"); $Result=mysql_query($Query); $Board=mysql_result($Result,0,"boardstate"); $json.= '"boardState":"'.$Board.'"'; //** boardState ** $json.= '}'; echo $json; } function letter2Value($input) { if(ord($input) >= 48 && ord($input) <= 57) return ord($input) - 48; else return ord($input) - 87; } function value2Letter($input) { if($input >= 10) return chr($input += 87); else return chr($input += 48); } //*** UPDATE CODE *** updates an letter with a new peice change and returns result letter. //***** $old : peice value before update //***** $new : peice value after update //***** $current : letterValue of code before update. //***** $slot : which of the 3 sqaures the change needs to take place in. function updateCode($old, $new, $current, $slot) { if($slot == 0) {// echo $current,"+((",$new,"-",$old,")*9)"; return letter2Value($current)+(($new-$old)*9); } else if($slot == 1) {// echo $current,"+((",$new,"-",$old,")*3)"; return letter2Value($current)+(($new-$old)*3); } else //slot == 2 {// echo $current,"+((",$new,"-",$old,")"; return letter2Value($current)+($new-$old); } }//updateCode() //**** GETBOARDSPOT *** Returns the peice value at defined location on the board. //****** 0 is first sqaure increment +1 in reading order (0-254). function getBoardSpot($squareID, $bid) { $Query=("SELECT boardstate FROM board WHERE bid='$bid'"); $Result=mysql_query($Query); $Board=mysql_result($Result,0,"boardstate"); if($squareID %3 == 2) //**3rd spot** { if( letter2Value($Board{floor($squareID/3)} ) % 3 == 0) return 0; else if( letter2Value($Board{floor($squareID/3)} ) % 3 == 1) return 1; else return 2; } else if($squareID %3 == 0) //**1st spot** { if(letter2Value($Board{floor($squareID/3)} ) <= 8) return 0; else if(letter2Value($Board{floor($squareID/3)} ) >= 18) return 2; else return 1; } else //**2nd spot** { return floor(letter2Value($Board{floor($squareID/3)}))/3%3; } }//end getBoardSpot() ?> Please help, I'd be glad to provide more information if needed. Thanks in advance =)

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  • Getting java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.servlet.ServletContext in junit

    - by coder
    I'm using spring mvc in my application and I'm writing junit test cases for a DAO. But when I run the test, I get an error java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.servlet.ServletContext. In the stacktrace, I see that this error is caused during getApplicationContext. In my applicationContext, I havent defined any servlet. Servlet mapping is done only in web.xml so I dont understand why I'm getting this error. Here is my applicationContext.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-2.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-2.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"> <bean id="dataSource" class="com.mchange.v2.c3p0.ComboPooledDataSource" destroy-method="close"> <property name="driverClass" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/> <property name="jdbcUrl" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/testdb"/> <property name="user" value="username"/> </bean> <bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean"> <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/> <property name="hibernateProperties"> <props> <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop> <prop key="hibernate.connection.driver_class">com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</prop> <prop key="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/myWorld_test</prop> <prop key="hibernate.connection.username">username</prop> </props> </property> <property name="packagesToScan"> <list> <value>com.myprojects.pojos</value> </list> </property> </bean> <bean id="hibernateTemplate" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTemplate"> <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/> </bean> <tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager"/> <bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager"> <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" /> </bean> <context:component-scan base-package="com.myprojects"/> <context:annotation-config/> <mvc:annotation-driven/> </beans> Here is the stacktrace: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/ServletContext at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method) at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2521) at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods(Class.java:1845) at org.springframework.core.type.StandardAnnotationMetadata.hasAnnotatedMethods(StandardAnnotationMetadata.java:161) at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassUtils.isLiteConfigurationCandidate(ConfigurationClassUtils.java:106) at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassUtils.checkConfigurationClassCandidate(ConfigurationClassUtils.java:88) at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.processConfigBeanDefinitions(ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java:253) at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.postProcessBeanDefinitionRegistry(ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java:223) at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.invokeBeanFactoryPostProcessors(AbstractApplicationContext.java:630) at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:461) at org.springframework.test.context.support.AbstractGenericContextLoader.loadContext(AbstractGenericContextLoader.java:120) at org.springframework.test.context.support.AbstractGenericContextLoader.loadContext(AbstractGenericContextLoader.java:60) at org.springframework.test.context.support.AbstractDelegatingSmartContextLoader.delegateLoading(AbstractDelegatingSmartContextLoader.java:100) at org.springframework.test.context.support.AbstractDelegatingSmartContextLoader.loadContext(AbstractDelegatingSmartContextLoader.java:248) at org.springframework.test.context.CacheAwareContextLoaderDelegate.loadContextInternal(CacheAwareContextLoaderDelegate.java:64) at org.springframework.test.context.CacheAwareContextLoaderDelegate.loadContext(CacheAwareContextLoaderDelegate.java:91) at org.springframework.test.context.TestContext.getApplicationContext(TestContext.java:122) at org.springframework.test.context.support.DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.injectDependencies(DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.java:109) at org.springframework.test.context.support.DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.prepareTestInstance(DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.java:75) at org.springframework.test.context.TestContextManager.prepareTestInstance(TestContextManager.java:312) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.createTest(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:211) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner$1.runReflectiveCall(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:288) at org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:12) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.methodBlock(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:284) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:231) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:88) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$3.run(ParentRunner.java:238) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$1.schedule(ParentRunner.java:63) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runChildren(ParentRunner.java:236) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.access$000(ParentRunner.java:53) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$2.evaluate(ParentRunner.java:229) at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunBefores.evaluate(RunBefores.java:26) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.RunBeforeTestClassCallbacks.evaluate(RunBeforeTestClassCallbacks.java:61) at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.RunAfters.evaluate(RunAfters.java:27) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.RunAfterTestClassCallbacks.evaluate(RunAfterTestClassCallbacks.java:71) at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.run(ParentRunner.java:309) at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.run(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:174) at org.gradle.api.internal.tasks.testing.junit.JUnitTestClassExecuter.runTestClass(JUnitTestClassExecuter.java:80) at org.gradle.api.internal.tasks.testing.junit.JUnitTestClassExecuter.execute(JUnitTestClassExecuter.java:47) at org.gradle.api.internal.tasks.testing.junit.JUnitTestClassProcessor.processTestClass(JUnitTestClassProcessor.java:69) at org.gradle.api.internal.tasks.testing.SuiteTestClassProcessor.processTestClass(SuiteTestClassProcessor.java:49) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606) at org.gradle.messaging.dispatch.ReflectionDispatch.dispatch(ReflectionDispatch.java:35) at org.gradle.messaging.dispatch.ReflectionDispatch.dispatch(ReflectionDispatch.java:24) at org.gradle.messaging.dispatch.ContextClassLoaderDispatch.dispatch(ContextClassLoaderDispatch.java:32) at org.gradle.messaging.dispatch.ProxyDispatchAdapter$DispatchingInvocationHandler.invoke(ProxyDispatchAdapter.java:93) at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy2.processTestClass(Unknown Source) at org.gradle.api.internal.tasks.testing.worker.TestWorker.processTestClass(TestWorker.java:103) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606) at org.gradle.messaging.dispatch.ReflectionDispatch.dispatch(ReflectionDispatch.java:35) at org.gradle.messaging.dispatch.ReflectionDispatch.dispatch(ReflectionDispatch.java:24) at org.gradle.messaging.remote.internal.hub.MessageHub$Handler.run(MessageHub.java:355) at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.DefaultExecutorFactory$StoppableExecutorImpl$1.run(DefaultExecutorFactory.java:66) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:724) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.servlet.ServletContext at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:366) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357) ... 62 more Test class: import org.junit.After; import org.junit.AfterClass; import org.junit.Before; import org.junit.BeforeClass; import org.junit.Test; import static org.junit.Assert.*; import org.junit.runner.RunWith; import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired; import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration; import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner; @RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class) @ContextConfiguration(locations = {"classpath:applicationContext.xml"}) public class UserServiceTest { @Autowired private UserService service; public UserServiceTest() { } @BeforeClass public static void setUpClass() { } @AfterClass public static void tearDownClass() { } @Before public void setUp() { } @After public void tearDown() { } } Even before writing any test method, I got this error. Any idea why this error?

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  • Casting an object using 'as' returns null: myObject = newObject as MyObject; // null

    - by John Russell
    I am trying to create a custom object in AS3 to pass information to and from a server, which in this case will be Red5. In the below screenshots you will see that I am able to send a request for an object from as3, and receive it successfully from the java server. However, when I try to cast the received object to my defined objectType using 'as', it takes the value of null. It is my understanding that that when using "as" your checking to see if your variable is a member of the specified data type. If the variable is not, then null will be returned. This screenshot illustrates that I am have successfully received my object 'o' from red5 and I am just about to cast it to the (supposedly) identical datatype testObject of LobbyData: However, when testObject = o as LobbyData; runs, it returns null. :( Below you will see my specifications both on the java server and the as3 client. I am confident that both objects are identical in every way, but for some reason flash does not think so. I have been pulling my hair out for a long time, does anyone have any thoughts? AS3 Object: import flash.utils.IDataInput; import flash.utils.IDataOutput; import flash.utils.IExternalizable; import flash.net.registerClassAlias; [Bindable] [RemoteClass(alias = "myLobbyData.LobbyData")] public class LobbyData implements IExternalizable { private var sent:int; // java sentinel private var u:String; // red5 username private var sen:int; // another sentinel? private var ui:int; // fb uid private var fn:String; // fb name private var pic:String; // fb pic private var inb:Boolean; // is in the table? private var t:int; // table number private var s:int; // seat number public function setSent(sent:int):void { this.sent = sent; } public function getSent():int { return sent; } public function setU(u:String):void { this.u = u; } public function getU():String { return u; } public function setSen(sen:int):void { this.sen = sen; } public function getSen():int { return sen; } public function setUi(ui:int):void { this.ui = ui; } public function getUi():int { return ui; } public function setFn(fn:String):void { this.fn = fn; } public function getFn():String { return fn; } public function setPic(pic:String):void { this.pic = pic; } public function getPic():String { return pic; } public function setInb(inb:Boolean):void { this.inb = inb; } public function getInb():Boolean { return inb; } public function setT(t:int):void { this.t = t; } public function getT():int { return t; } public function setS(s:int):void { this.s = s; } public function getS():int { return s; } public function readExternal(input:IDataInput):void { sent = input.readInt(); u = input.readUTF(); sen = input.readInt(); ui = input.readInt(); fn = input.readUTF(); pic = input.readUTF(); inb = input.readBoolean(); t = input.readInt(); s = input.readInt(); } public function writeExternal(output:IDataOutput):void { output.writeInt(sent); output.writeUTF(u); output.writeInt(sen); output.writeInt(ui); output.writeUTF(fn); output.writeUTF(pic); output.writeBoolean(inb); output.writeInt(t); output.writeInt(s); } } Java Object: package myLobbyData; import org.red5.io.amf3.IDataInput; import org.red5.io.amf3.IDataOutput; import org.red5.io.amf3.IExternalizable; public class LobbyData implements IExternalizable { private static final long serialVersionUID = 115280920; private int sent; // java sentinel private String u; // red5 username private int sen; // another sentinel? private int ui; // fb uid private String fn; // fb name private String pic; // fb pic private Boolean inb; // is in the table? private int t; // table number private int s; // seat number public void setSent(int sent) { this.sent = sent; } public int getSent() { return sent; } public void setU(String u) { this.u = u; } public String getU() { return u; } public void setSen(int sen) { this.sen = sen; } public int getSen() { return sen; } public void setUi(int ui) { this.ui = ui; } public int getUi() { return ui; } public void setFn(String fn) { this.fn = fn; } public String getFn() { return fn; } public void setPic(String pic) { this.pic = pic; } public String getPic() { return pic; } public void setInb(Boolean inb) { this.inb = inb; } public Boolean getInb() { return inb; } public void setT(int t) { this.t = t; } public int getT() { return t; } public void setS(int s) { this.s = s; } public int getS() { return s; } @Override public void readExternal(IDataInput input) { sent = input.readInt(); u = input.readUTF(); sen = input.readInt(); ui = input.readInt(); fn = input.readUTF(); pic = input.readUTF(); inb = input.readBoolean(); t = input.readInt(); s = input.readInt(); } @Override public void writeExternal(IDataOutput output) { output.writeInt(sent); output.writeUTF(u); output.writeInt(sen); output.writeInt(ui); output.writeUTF(fn); output.writeUTF(pic); output.writeBoolean(inb); output.writeInt(t); output.writeInt(s); } } AS3 Client: public function refreshRoom(event:Event) { var resp:Responder=new Responder(handleResp,null); ncLobby.call("getLobbyData", resp, null); } public function handleResp(o:Object):void { var testObject:LobbyData=new LobbyData; testObject = o as LobbyData; trace(testObject); } Java Client public LobbyData getLobbyData(String param) { LobbyData lobbyData1 = new LobbyData(); lobbyData1.setSent(5); lobbyData1.setU("lawlcats"); lobbyData1.setSen(5); lobbyData1.setUi(5); lobbyData1.setFn("lulz"); lobbyData1.setPic("lulzagain"); lobbyData1.setInb(true); lobbyData1.setT(5); lobbyData1.setS(5); return lobbyData1; }

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  • Different behavior of functors (copies, assignments) in VS2010 (compared with VS2005)

    - by Patrick
    When moving from VS2005 to VS2010 we noticed a performance decrease, which seemed to be caused by additional copies of a functor. The following code illustrates the problem. It is essential to have a map where the value itself is a set. On both the map and the set we defined a comparison functor (which is templated in the example). #include <iostream> #include <map> #include <set> class A { public: A(int i, char c) : m_i(i), m_c(c) { std::cout << "Construct object " << m_c << m_i << std::endl; } A(const A &a) : m_i(a.m_i), m_c(a.m_c) { std::cout << "Copy object " << m_c << m_i << std::endl; } ~A() { std::cout << "Destruct object " << m_c << m_i << std::endl; } void operator= (const A &a) { m_i = a.m_i; m_c = a.m_c; std::cout << "Assign object " << m_c << m_i << std::endl; } int m_i; char m_c; }; class B : public A { public: B(int i) : A(i, 'B') { } static const char s_c = 'B'; }; class C : public A { public: C(int i) : A(i, 'C') { } static const char s_c = 'C'; }; template <class X> class compareA { public: compareA() : m_i(999) { std::cout << "Construct functor " << X::s_c << m_i << std::endl; } compareA(const compareA &a) : m_i(a.m_i) { std::cout << "Copy functor " << X::s_c << m_i << std::endl; } ~compareA() { std::cout << "Destruct functor " << X::s_c << m_i << std::endl; } void operator= (const compareA &a) { m_i = a.m_i; std::cout << "Assign functor " << X::s_c << m_i << std::endl; } bool operator() (const X &x1, const X &x2) const { std::cout << "Comparing object " << x1.m_i << " with " << x2.m_i << std::endl; return x1.m_i < x2.m_i; } private: int m_i; }; typedef std::set<C, compareA<C> > SetTest; typedef std::map<B, SetTest, compareA<B> > MapTest; int main() { int i = 0; std::cout << "--- " << i++ << std::endl; MapTest mapTest; std::cout << "--- " << i++ << std::endl; SetTest &setTest = mapTest[0]; std::cout << "--- " << i++ << std::endl; } If I compile this code with VS2005 I get the following output: --- 0 Construct functor B999 Copy functor B999 Copy functor B999 Destruct functor B999 Destruct functor B999 --- 1 Construct object B0 Construct functor C999 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Copy object B0 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Copy object B0 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct object B0 Destruct functor C999 Destruct object B0 --- 2 If I compile this with VS2010, I get the following output: --- 0 Construct functor B999 Copy functor B999 Copy functor B999 Destruct functor B999 Destruct functor B999 --- 1 Construct object B0 Construct functor C999 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Copy object B0 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Copy functor C999 Assign functor C999 Assign functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Copy object B0 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Copy functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Copy functor C999 Assign functor C999 Assign functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct functor C999 Destruct object B0 Destruct functor C999 Destruct object B0 --- 2 The output for the first statement (constructing the map) is identical. The output for the second statement (creating the first element in the map and getting a reference to it), is much bigger in the VS2010 case: Copy constructor of functor: 10 times vs 8 times Assignment of functor: 2 times vs. 0 times Destructor of functor: 10 times vs 8 times My questions are: Why does the STL copy a functor? Isn't it enough to construct it once for every instantiation of the set? Why is the functor constructed more in the VS2010 case than in the VS2005 case? (didn't check VS2008) And why is it assigned two times in VS2010 and not in VS2005? Are there any tricks to avoid the copy of functors? I saw a similar question at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2216041/prevent-unnecessary-copies-of-c-functor-objects but I'm not sure that's the same question. Thanks in advance, Patrick

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  • ContentPresenter changing Foreground unexpectedly depending on where styles are located

    - by VLTII
    Hi, I'm having an issue with the ContentPresenter behaving unexpectedly based on whether the styles are located in the Window.Resources or in a ResourceDictionary. Specifically, I'm setting the Foreground of the default TextBlock to Black, then setting the Foreground value in my default button style to White. If the styles exits on the page like this, they work fine: <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Microsoft_Windows_Themes="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Aero" x:Class="TestBed.MainWindow" x:Name="Window" Title="MainWindow" Width="640" Height="480"> <Window.Resources> <Style TargetType="{x:Type TextBlock}"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="Black" /> </Style> <Style x:Key="ButtonFocusVisual"> <Setter Property="Control.Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate> <Rectangle Stroke="Black" StrokeDashArray="1 2" StrokeThickness="1" Margin="2" SnapsToDevicePixels="true"/> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBackground" EndPoint="0,1" StartPoint="0,0"> <GradientStop Color="#F3F3F3" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#EBEBEB" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#DDDDDD" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#CDCDCD" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush> <SolidColorBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBorder" Color="#FF707070"/> <Style TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Setter Property="FocusVisualStyle" Value="{StaticResource ButtonFocusVisual}"/> <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBackground}"/> <Setter Property="BorderBrush" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBorder}"/> <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="White"/> <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="VerticalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="Padding" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome x:Name="Chrome" SnapsToDevicePixels="true" Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" RenderDefaulted="{TemplateBinding IsDefaulted}" RenderMouseOver="{TemplateBinding IsMouseOver}" RenderPressed="{TemplateBinding IsPressed}"> <ContentPresenter HorizontalAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalContentAlignment}" Margin="{TemplateBinding Padding}" VerticalAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalContentAlignment}" SnapsToDevicePixels="{TemplateBinding SnapsToDevicePixels}" RecognizesAccessKey="True"/> </Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome> <ControlTemplate.Triggers> <Trigger Property="IsKeyboardFocused" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderDefaulted" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="ToggleButton.IsChecked" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderPressed" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="IsEnabled" Value="false"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="#ADADAD"/> </Trigger> </ControlTemplate.Triggers> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> </Window.Resources> <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <Button Content="Button" /> </StackPanel> </Window> But if I move those same styles over to a ResourceDictionary, the Foreground of the button switches to black. Updated MainWindow: <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Microsoft_Windows_Themes="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Aero" x:Class="TestBed.MainWindow" x:Name="Window" Title="MainWindow" Width="640" Height="480"> <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <Button Content="Button" /> </StackPanel> </Window> ResourceDictionary: <ResourceDictionary xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Microsoft_Windows_Themes="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Themes;assembly=PresentationFramework.Aero" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d"> <Style TargetType="{x:Type TextBlock}"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="Black" /> </Style> <Style x:Key="ButtonFocusVisual"> <Setter Property="Control.Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate> <Rectangle Stroke="Black" StrokeDashArray="1 2" StrokeThickness="1" Margin="2" SnapsToDevicePixels="true"/> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> <LinearGradientBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBackground" EndPoint="0,1" StartPoint="0,0"> <GradientStop Color="#F3F3F3" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#EBEBEB" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#DDDDDD" Offset="0.5"/> <GradientStop Color="#CDCDCD" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush> <SolidColorBrush x:Key="ButtonNormalBorder" Color="#FF707070"/> <Style TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Setter Property="FocusVisualStyle" Value="{StaticResource ButtonFocusVisual}"/> <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBackground}"/> <Setter Property="BorderBrush" Value="{StaticResource ButtonNormalBorder}"/> <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="White"/> <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="VerticalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="Padding" Value="1"/> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type Button}"> <Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome x:Name="Chrome" SnapsToDevicePixels="true" Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" RenderDefaulted="{TemplateBinding IsDefaulted}" RenderMouseOver="{TemplateBinding IsMouseOver}" RenderPressed="{TemplateBinding IsPressed}"> <ContentPresenter HorizontalAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalContentAlignment}" Margin="{TemplateBinding Padding}" VerticalAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalContentAlignment}" SnapsToDevicePixels="{TemplateBinding SnapsToDevicePixels}" RecognizesAccessKey="True"/> </Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ButtonChrome> <ControlTemplate.Triggers> <Trigger Property="IsKeyboardFocused" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderDefaulted" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="ToggleButton.IsChecked" Value="true"> <Setter Property="RenderPressed" TargetName="Chrome" Value="true"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="IsEnabled" Value="false"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="#ADADAD"/> </Trigger> </ControlTemplate.Triggers> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> </ResourceDictionary> And my App.xaml because someone will ask for it: <Application xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="TestBed.App" StartupUri="MainWindow.xaml"> <Application.Resources> <!-- Resources scoped at the Application level should be defined here. --> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="ResourceDictionary.xaml"/> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary> </Application.Resources> </Application> Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

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  • IOException: Unable To Delete Images Due To File Lock

    - by Arslan Pervaiz
    I am Unable To Delete Image File From My Server Path It Gaves Error That The Process Cannot Access The File "FileName" Because it is being Used By Another Process. I Tried Many Methods But Still All In Vain. Please Help me Out in This Issue. Here is My Code Snippet. using System; using System.Data; using System.Web; using System.Data.SqlClient; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; using System.Globalization; using System.Web.Security; using System.Text; using System.DirectoryServices; using System.Collections; using System.IO; using System.Drawing; using System.Drawing.Imaging; using System.Drawing.Drawing2D; //============ Main Block ================= byte[] data = (byte[])ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][0]; MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(data); Image returnImage = Image.FromStream(ms); returnImage.Save(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\SavedImage.jpg"), System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg); returnImage.Dispose(); \\ I Tried this Dispose Method To Unlock The File But Nothing Done. ms.Close(); \\ I Tried The Memory Stream Close Method Also But Its Also Not Worked For Me. watermark(); \\ Here is My Water Mark Method That Print Water Mark Image on My Saved Image (Image That is Converted From Byte Array) DeleteImages(); \\ Here is My Delete Method That I Call To Delete The Images //===== ==== My Delete Method To Delete Files================== public void DeleteImages() { try { File.Delete(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\WaterMark.jpg")); \\This Image Deleted Fine. File.Delete(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\SavedImage.jpg")); \\ Exception Thrown On Deleting of This Image. } catch (Exception ex) { LogManager.LogException(ex, "Error in Deleting Images."); Master.ShowMessage(ex.Message, true); } } \ ==== Method Declartion That Make Watermark of One Image On Another Image.======= public void watermark() { //create a image object containing the photograph to watermark Image imgPhoto = Image.FromFile(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\SavedImage.jpg")); int phWidth = imgPhoto.Width; int phHeight = imgPhoto.Height; //create a Bitmap the Size of the original photograph Bitmap bmPhoto = new Bitmap(phWidth, phHeight, PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb); bmPhoto.SetResolution(imgPhoto.HorizontalResolution, imgPhoto.VerticalResolution); //load the Bitmap into a Graphics object Graphics grPhoto = Graphics.FromImage(bmPhoto); //create a image object containing the watermark Image imgWatermark = new Bitmap(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\PrintasWatermark.jpg")); int wmWidth = imgWatermark.Width; int wmHeight = imgWatermark.Height; //Set the rendering quality for this Graphics object grPhoto.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias; //Draws the photo Image object at original size to the graphics object. grPhoto.DrawImage( imgPhoto, // Photo Image object new Rectangle(0, 0, phWidth, phHeight), // Rectangle structure 0, // x-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. 0, // y-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. phWidth, // Width of the portion of the source image to draw. phHeight, // Height of the portion of the source image to draw. GraphicsUnit.Pixel); // Units of measure //------------------------------------------------------- //to maximize the size of the Copyright message we will //test multiple Font sizes to determine the largest posible //font we can use for the width of the Photograph //define an array of point sizes you would like to consider as possiblities //------------------------------------------------------- //Define the text layout by setting the text alignment to centered StringFormat StrFormat = new StringFormat(); StrFormat.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center; //define a Brush which is semi trasparent black (Alpha set to 153) SolidBrush semiTransBrush2 = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(153, 0, 0, 0)); //define a Brush which is semi trasparent white (Alpha set to 153) SolidBrush semiTransBrush = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(153, 255, 255, 255)); //------------------------------------------------------------ //Step #2 - Insert Watermark image //------------------------------------------------------------ //Create a Bitmap based on the previously modified photograph Bitmap Bitmap bmWatermark = new Bitmap(bmPhoto); bmWatermark.SetResolution(imgPhoto.HorizontalResolution, imgPhoto.VerticalResolution); //Load this Bitmap into a new Graphic Object Graphics grWatermark = Graphics.FromImage(bmWatermark); //To achieve a transulcent watermark we will apply (2) color //manipulations by defineing a ImageAttributes object and //seting (2) of its properties. ImageAttributes imageAttributes = new ImageAttributes(); //The first step in manipulating the watermark image is to replace //the background color with one that is trasparent (Alpha=0, R=0, G=0, B=0) //to do this we will use a Colormap and use this to define a RemapTable ColorMap colorMap = new ColorMap(); //My watermark was defined with a background of 100% Green this will //be the color we search for and replace with transparency colorMap.OldColor = Color.FromArgb(255, 0, 255, 0); colorMap.NewColor = Color.FromArgb(0, 0, 0, 0); ColorMap[] remapTable = { colorMap }; imageAttributes.SetRemapTable(remapTable, ColorAdjustType.Bitmap); //The second color manipulation is used to change the opacity of the //watermark. This is done by applying a 5x5 matrix that contains the //coordinates for the RGBA space. By setting the 3rd row and 3rd column //to 0.3f we achive a level of opacity float[][] colorMatrixElements = { new float[] {1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.3f, 0.0f}, new float[] {0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f}}; ColorMatrix wmColorMatrix = new ColorMatrix(colorMatrixElements); imageAttributes.SetColorMatrix(wmColorMatrix, ColorMatrixFlag.Default, ColorAdjustType.Bitmap); //For this example we will place the watermark in the upper right //hand corner of the photograph. offset down 10 pixels and to the //left 10 pixles int xPosOfWm = ((phWidth - wmWidth) - 10); int yPosOfWm = 10; grWatermark.DrawImage(imgWatermark, new Rectangle(xPosOfWm, yPosOfWm, wmWidth, wmHeight), //Set the detination Position 0, // x-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. 0, // y-coordinate of the portion of the source image to draw. wmWidth, // Watermark Width wmHeight, // Watermark Height GraphicsUnit.Pixel, // Unit of measurment imageAttributes); //ImageAttributes Object //Replace the original photgraphs bitmap with the new Bitmap imgPhoto = bmWatermark; grPhoto.Dispose(); grWatermark.Dispose(); //save new image to file system. imgPhoto.Save(Server.MapPath(".\\TmpImages\\WaterMark.jpg"), ImageFormat.Jpeg); imgPhoto.Dispose(); imgWatermark.Dispose(); }

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  • Ideas for multiplatform encrypted java mobile storage system

    - by Fernando Miguélez
    Objective I am currently designing the API for a multiplatform storage system that would offer same interface and capabilities accross following supported mobile Java Platforms: J2ME. Minimum configuration/profile CLDC 1.1/MIDP 2.0 with support for some necessary JSRs (JSR-75 for file storage). Android. No minimum platform version decided yet, but rather likely could be API level 7. Blackberry. It would use the same base source of J2ME but taking advantage of some advaced capabilities of the platform. No minimum configuration decided yet (maybe 4.6 because of 64 KB limitation for RMS on 4.5). Basically the API would sport three kind of stores: Files. These would allow standard directory/file manipulation (read/write through streams, create, mkdir, etc.). Preferences. It is a special store that handles properties accessed through keys (Similar to plain old java properties file but supporting some improvements such as different value data types such as SharedPreferences on Android platform) Local Message Queues. This store would offer basic message queue functionality. Considerations Inspired on JSR-75, all types of stores would be accessed in an uniform way by means of an URL following RFC 1738 conventions, but with custom defined prefixes (i.e. "file://" for files, "prefs://" for preferences or "queue://" for message queues). The address would refer to a virtual location that would be mapped to a physical storage object by each mobile platform implementation. Only files would allow hierarchical storage (folders) and access to external extorage memory cards (by means of a unit name, the same way as in JSR-75, but that would not change regardless of underlying platform). The other types would only support flat storage. The system should also support a secure version of all basic types. The user would indicate it by prefixing "s" to the URL (i.e. "sfile://" instead of "file://"). The API would only require one PIN (introduced only once) to access any kind of secure object types. Implementation issues For the implementation of both plaintext and encrypted stores, I would use the functionality available on the underlying platforms: Files. These are available on all platforms (J2ME only with JSR-75, but it is mandatory for our needs). The abstract File to actual File mapping is straight except for addressing issues. RMS. This type of store available on J2ME (and Blackberry) platforms is convenient for Preferences and maybe Message Queues (though depending on performance or size requirements these could be implemented by means of normal files). SharedPreferences. This type of storage, only available on Android, would match Preferences needs. SQLite databases. This could be used for message queues on Android (and maybe Blackberry). When it comes to encryption some requirements should be met: To ease the implementation it will be carried out on read/write operations basis on streams (for files), RMS Records, SharedPreferences key-value pairs, SQLite database columns. Every underlying storage object should use the same encryption key. Handling of encrypted stores should be the same as the unencrypted counterpart. The only difference (from the user point of view) accessing an encrypted store would be the addressing. The user PIN provides access to any secure storage object, but the change of it would not require to decrypt/re-encrypt all the encrypted data. Cryptographic capabilities of underlying platform should be used whenever it is possible, so we would use: J2ME: SATSA-CRYPTO if it is available (not mandatory) or lightweight BoncyCastle cryptographic framework for J2ME. Blackberry: RIM Cryptographic API or BouncyCastle Android: JCE with integraced cryptographic provider (BouncyCastle?) Doubts Having reached this point I was struck by some doubts about what solution would be more convenient, taking into account the limitation of the plataforms. These are some of my doubts: Encryption Algorithm for data. Would AES-128 be strong and fast enough? What alternatives for such scenario would you suggest? Encryption Mode. I have read about the weakness of ECB encryption versus CBC, but in this case the first would have the advantage of random access to blocks, which is interesting for seek functionality on files. What type of encryption mode would you choose instead? Is stream encryption suitable for this case? Key generation. There could be one key generated for each storage object (file, RMS RecordStore, etc.) or just use one for all the objects of the same type. The first seems "safer", though it would require some extra space on device. In your opinion what would the trade-offs of each? Key storage. For this case using a standard JKS (or PKCS#12) KeyStore file could be suited to store encryption keys, but I could also define a smaller structure (encryption-transformation / key data / checksum) that could be attached to each storage store (i.e. using addition files with the same name and special extension for plain files or embedded inside other types of objects such as RMS Record Stores). What approach would you prefer? And when it comes to using a standard KeyStore with multiple-key generation (given this is your preference), would it be better to use a record-store per storage object or just a global KeyStore keeping all keys (i.e. using the URL identifier of abstract storage object as alias)? Master key. The use of a master key seems obvious. This key should be protected by user PIN (introduced only once) and would allow access to the rest of encryption keys (they would be encrypted by means of this master key). Changing the PIN would only require to reencrypt this key and not all the encrypted data. Where would you keep it taking into account that if this got lost all data would be no further accesible? What further considerations should I take into account? Platform cryptography support. Do SATSA-CRYPTO-enabled J2ME phones really take advantage of some dedicated hardware acceleration (or other advantage I have not foreseen) and would this approach be prefered (whenever possible) over just BouncyCastle implementation? For the same reason is RIM Cryptographic API worth the license cost over BouncyCastle? Any comments, critics, further considerations or different approaches are welcome.

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