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• configuration required for HIVE to be installed on a node

  - by ????? ????????

  I went through the process of manually installing ambari (not through SSH, because I couldnt get keyless to work) and everything installed OK, except for HIVE and GANGLIA. I got this message: stderr: None stdout: warning: Unrecognised escape sequence ‘\;’ in file /var/lib/ambari-agent/puppet/modules/hdp-hive/manifests/hive/service_check.pp at line 32 warning: Dynamic lookup of $configuration is deprecated. Support will be removed in Puppet 2.8. Use a fully-qualified variable name (e.g., $classname::variable) or parameterized classes. notice: /Stage[1]/Hdp::Snappy::Package/Hdp::Snappy::Package::Ln[32]/Hdp::Exec[hdp::snappy::package::ln 32]/Exec[hdp::snappy::package::ln 32]/returns: executed successfully notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hive::Hive::Service_check/File[/tmp/hiveserver2Smoke.sh]/ensure: defined content as ‘{md5}7f1d24221266a2330ec55ba620c015a9' notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hive::Hive::Service_check/File[/tmp/hiveserver2.sql]/ensure: defined content as ‘{md5}0c429dc9ae0867b5af74ef85b5530d84' notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hcat::Hcat::Service_check/File[/tmp/hcatSmoke.sh]/ensure: defined content as ‘{md5}bae7742f7083db968cb6b2bd208874cb’ notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hcat::Hcat::Service_check/Exec[hcatSmoke.sh prepare]/returns: 13/06/25 03:11:56 WARN conf.HiveConf: DEPRECATED: Configuration property hive.metastore.local no longer has any effect. Make sure to provide a valid value for hive.metastore.uris if you are connecting to a remote metastore. notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hcat::Hcat::Service_check/Exec[hcatSmoke.sh prepare]/returns: FAILED: SemanticException org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.SemanticException: org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.metadata.HiveException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to instantiate org.apache.hadoop.hive.metastore.HiveMetaStoreClient notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hcat::Hcat::Service_check/Exec[hcatSmoke.sh prepare]/returns: 13/06/25 03:12:06 WARN conf.HiveConf: DEPRECATED: Configuration property hive.metastore.local no longer has any effect. Make sure to provide a valid value for hive.metastore.uris if you are connecting to a remote metastore. notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hcat::Hcat::Service_check/Exec[hcatSmoke.sh prepare]/returns: FAILED: SemanticException [Error 10001]: Table not found hcatsmokeida8c07401_date102513 notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hcat::Hcat::Service_check/Exec[hcatSmoke.sh prepare]/returns: 13/06/25 03:12:15 WARN conf.HiveConf: DEPRECATED: Configuration property hive.metastore.local no longer has any effect. Make sure to provide a valid value for hive.metastore.uris if you are connecting to a remote metastore. notice: /Stage[2]/Hdp-hcat::Hcat::Service_check/Exec[hcatSmoke.sh prepare]/returns: FAILED: SemanticException o When i go to the alerts and health checks i’m getting this: ive Metastore status check CRIT for 42 minutes CRITICAL: Error accessing hive-metaserver status [13/06/25 03:44:06 WARN conf.HiveConf: DEPRECATED: Configuration property hive.metastore.local no longer has any effect. What am I doing wrong? I have already tried to do ambari-server reset on the the database without results.

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• JNDI Datasource definition in Tomcat 6.0

  - by romaintaz

  I want to define a DataSource to an Oracle database on my Tomcat 6.0. So, in conf/server.xml (yes, I know that this DataSource will be available for all the webapps in Tomcat, but it's not a problem here), I've set this Resource: <GlobalNamingResources> <Resource name="hibernate/HibernateDS" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@myserver:1542:foo" username="foo" password="bar" driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver" maxActive="50" maxIdle="10" validationQuery="select 1 from dual"/> Then, in the web.xml of my application, I set a resource-ref element: <resource-ref> <description>Hibernate Datasource</description> <res-ref-name>hibernate/HibernateDS</res-ref-name> <res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type> <res-auth>Container</res-auth> </resource-ref> Finally, as Hibernate is used to manage the database connection, I have a webapps/mywebapp/WEB-INF/classes/hibernate.cfg.xml that creates a session-factory using the JNDI DataSource: <hibernate-configuration> <session-factory> <property name="connection.datasource">java:comp/env/hibernate/HibernateDS</property> ... However, when I start my Tomcat server, I get an error that says it could not create the INFO [net.sf.hibernate.util.NamingHelper] JNDI InitialContext properties:{} INFO [net.sf.hibernate.connection.DatasourceConnectionProvider] Using datasource: java:comp/env/hibernate/HibernateDS INFO [net.sf.hibernate.transaction.TransactionFactoryFactory] Transaction strategy: net.sf.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory INFO [net.sf.hibernate.transaction.TransactionManagerLookupFactory] No TransactionManagerLookup configured (in JTA environment, use of process level read-write cache is not recommended) WARN [net.sf.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory] Could not obtain connection metadata org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL 'null' at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createDataSource(BasicDataSource.java:1150) at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.getConnection(BasicDataSource.java:880) at net.sf.hibernate.connection.DatasourceConnectionProvider.getConnection(DatasourceConnectionProvider.java:59) at net.sf.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory.buildSettings(SettingsFactory.java:84) at net.sf.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSettings(Configuration.java:1172) ... Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver.getProtocol(JdbcOdbcDriver.java:507) at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver.knownURL(JdbcOdbcDriver.java:476) at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver.acceptsURL(JdbcOdbcDriver.java:307) at java.sql.DriverManager.getDriver(DriverManager.java:253) at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createDataSource(BasicDataSource.java:1143) ... 11 more Do you have any idea why Hibernate is not able to construct the session-factory? What is wrong in my configuration?

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• JNDI Datasource definition in Tomcat 6.0

  - by romaintaz

  Hi all, I want to define a DataSource to an Oracle database on my Tomcat 6.0. So, in conf/server.xml (yes, I know that this DataSource will be available for all the webapps in Tomcat, but it's not a problem here), I've set this Resource: <GlobalNamingResources> <Resource name="hibernate/HibernateDS" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@myserver:1542:foo" username="foo" password="bar" driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver" maxActive="50" maxIdle="10" validationQuery="select 1 from dual"/> Then, in the web.xml of my application, I set a resource-ref element: <resource-ref> <description>Hibernate Datasource</description> <res-ref-name>hibernate/HibernateDS</res-ref-name> <res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type> <res-auth>Container</res-auth> </resource-ref> Finally, as Hibernate is used to manage the database connection, I have a webapps/mywebapp/WEB-INF/classes/hibernate.cfg.xml that creates a session-factory using the JNDI DataSource: <hibernate-configuration> <session-factory> <property name="connection.datasource">java:comp/env/hibernate/HibernateDS</property> ... However, when I start my Tomcat server, I get an error that says it could not create the INFO [net.sf.hibernate.util.NamingHelper] JNDI InitialContext properties:{} INFO [net.sf.hibernate.connection.DatasourceConnectionProvider] Using datasource: java:comp/env/hibernate/HibernateDS INFO [net.sf.hibernate.transaction.TransactionFactoryFactory] Transaction strategy: net.sf.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory INFO [net.sf.hibernate.transaction.TransactionManagerLookupFactory] No TransactionManagerLookup configured (in JTA environment, use of process level read-write cache is not recommended) WARN [net.sf.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory] Could not obtain connection metadata org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL 'null' at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createDataSource(BasicDataSource.java:1150) at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.getConnection(BasicDataSource.java:880) at net.sf.hibernate.connection.DatasourceConnectionProvider.getConnection(DatasourceConnectionProvider.java:59) at net.sf.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory.buildSettings(SettingsFactory.java:84) at net.sf.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSettings(Configuration.java:1172) ... Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver.getProtocol(JdbcOdbcDriver.java:507) at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver.knownURL(JdbcOdbcDriver.java:476) at sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver.acceptsURL(JdbcOdbcDriver.java:307) at java.sql.DriverManager.getDriver(DriverManager.java:253) at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createDataSource(BasicDataSource.java:1143) ... 11 more Do you have any idea why Hibernate is not able to construct the session-factory? What is wrong in my configuration?

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• How to generate build no with SVN revision no & Maven buildNumber plugin

  - by Binit jha

  I am using mvn buildNumber plugin to generate build no with latest svn revision no. But, our version is not resolve to ${buildNumber} in the duration of installing in .m2 local reposotry. here is the our pom details: <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>com.hp.cloudprint</groupId> <artifactId>testutils</artifactId> <name>testutils</name> <version>6.3.rel.${buildNumber}</version> <description>This jar contains some helper classes which can simplify the writing of JUnit test cases.</description> <dependencies> <plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> <artifactId>buildnumber-maven-plugin</artifactId> <executions> <execution> <id>useLastCommittedRevision</id> <phase>validate</phase> <goals> <goal>create</goal> </goals> </execution> </executions> <configuration> <doCheck>false</doCheck> <doUpdate>true</doUpdate> <getRevisionOnlyOnce>true</getRevisionOnlyOnce> </configuration> </plugin> <scm> <connection>scm:svn:https://acn-platform</connection> <developerConnection>scm:svn:https://abc-platform/trunk</developerConnection> </scm>. </project> Building jar: C:\Documents and Settings\hpadmin\workspace\testutils\target\testutils-6.3.rel.2930.jar [INFO] [install:install] [INFO] Installing C:\Documents and Settings\hpadmin\workspace\testutils\target\testutils-6.3.rel.2930.jar to C:\Documents and Settings\jhab.m2*\repository\com\hp\cloudprint\testutils\6.3.rel.${buildNumber}\testutils-6.3.rel.${buildNumber}.jar** [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL Target generated correct jar. testutil-6.3.rel.2297.jar* Thanks in advance Binit

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• How to generate build no with SVN revision no & Maven buildNumber plugin.

  - by Binit jha

  Hi, I am using mvn buildNumber plugin to generate build no with latest svn revision no. But, our version is not resolve to ${buildNumber} in the duration of installing in .m2 local reposotry. here is the our pom details: <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion> <groupId>com.hp.cloudprint</groupId> <artifactId>testutils</artifactId> <name>testutils</name> <version>6.3.rel.${buildNumber}</version> <description>This jar contains some helper classes which can simplify the writing of JUnit test cases.</description> <dependencies> <plugin> <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId> <artifactId>buildnumber-maven-plugin</artifactId> <executions> <execution> <id>useLastCommittedRevision</id> <phase>validate</phase> <goals> <goal>create</goal> </goals> </execution> </executions> <configuration> <doCheck>false</doCheck> <doUpdate>true</doUpdate> <getRevisionOnlyOnce>true</getRevisionOnlyOnce> </configuration> </plugin> <scm> <connection>scm:svn:https://acn-platform</connection> <developerConnection>scm:svn:https://abc-platform/trunk</developerConnection> </scm>. </project> Building jar: C:\Documents and Settings\hpadmin\workspace\testutils\target\testutils-6.3.rel.2930.jar [INFO] [install:install] [INFO] Installing C:\Documents and Settings\hpadmin\workspace\testutils\target\testutils-6.3.rel.2930.jar to C:\Documents and Settings\jhab.m2*\repository\com\hp\cloudprint\testutils\6.3.rel.${buildNumber}\testutils-6.3.rel.${buildNumber}.jar** [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL Target generated correct jar. testutil-6.3.rel.2297.jar* Thanks in advance Binit

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• Cobbler 2.2.2 problems

  - by Peter

  I have setup a dedicated LAN for Cobbler tests. My setup is: Cobbler server: openSUSE 12.3, cobbler 2.2.2 (from openSUSE repos) Imported distros: Centos 6.5, Red Hat 6.5, Red Hat 7.0, openSUSE 13.1 Target Machine: VMs in a Windows 7 Virtualbox Systems provisioning works OK, but I have some problems. The first one is that cobbler does not honor the "pxe_just_once: 1" setting. When the setup of the target OS is finished, after the reboot the target systems continues to PXE boot! The second problem is that the target server is not correctly configured! See my setup: cobbler system report --name=test Name : test TFTP Boot Files : {} Comment : Fetchable Files : {} Gateway : 192.168.0.1 Hostname : testcob1.example.com Image : IPv6 Autoconfiguration : False IPv6 Default Device : Kernel Options : {} Kernel Options (Post Install) : {} Kickstart : <<inherit>> Kickstart Metadata : {} LDAP Enabled : False LDAP Management Type : authconfig Management Classes : [] Management Parameters : <<inherit>> Monit Enabled : False Name Servers : ['192.168.0.1', '8.8.8.8'] Name Servers Search Path : [] Netboot Enabled : False Owners : ['admin'] Power Management Address : Power ID : Power Password : Power Management Type : ipmitool Power Username : Profile : RHEL-6.5-x86_64 Proxy : <<inherit>> Red Hat Management Key : <<inherit>> Red Hat Management Server : <<inherit>> Repos Enabled : False Server Override : <<inherit>> Status : testing Template Files : {} Virt Auto Boot : <<inherit>> Virt CPUs : <<inherit>> Virt Disk Driver Type : <<inherit>> Virt File Size(GB) : <<inherit>> Virt Path : <<inherit>> Virt RAM (MB) : <<inherit>> Virt Type : <<inherit>> Interface ===== : eth0 Bonding Opts : Bridge Opts : DHCP Tag : DNS Name : Master Interface : Interface Type : IP Address : 192.168.0.200 IPv6 Address : IPv6 Default Gateway : IPv6 MTU : IPv6 Secondaries : [] IPv6 Static Routes : [] MAC Address : Management Interface : True MTU : Subnet Mask : 255.255.255.0 Static : True Static Routes : [] Virt Bridge : So, although I have setup the hostname and the network interface of the target system, after the setup, the hostname is set to localhost.localdomain and eth0 is configured as a DHCP not static! How can I find the problem and fix it? Note that I have synced and restarted cobbler a couple of times, but the problems persists.

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• Installing and configuring Zend Framework 2 server-wide [Ubuntu] and test driving ZendSkeletonApplication

  - by kinologik

  I'm trying to have ZF2 installed for all my subdomains at once (Ubuntu 12.04). ZF2 just launched its first stable version, so I wanted to install it on my development server and finally get my hands dirty with it. I downloaded ZF2 and unzipped the files in /var/ZF2/ (which now contains Zend/[all components]). I then edited /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and added the path to the ZF2 files: include_path = ".:/var/ZF2" I then downloaded the ZendSkeletonApplication and unzipped it in /var/www/skeleton. I know it is suggested to composer.phar to install ZF2 application, but: I don't want to make a local installation of ZF2... I want to make a server-wide installation be able to use my Zend components on all my domains/subdomains on my development server. Before using any automatic installation process, I'd really like to understand that process by doing it manually at first. Obviously, something goes wrong when I fire ZendSkeletonApplication, and I get the following when hit the following URL: http://www.myDevServer.com/skeleton/public/ Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'RuntimeException' with message 'Unable to load ZF2. Run `php composer.phar install` or define a ZF2_PATH environment variable.' in /var/www/skeleton/init_autoloader.php:48 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/skeleton/public/index.php(9): include() #1 {main} thrown in /var/www/skeleton/init_autoloader.php on line 48 I have skimmed through the docs, tutorials and the like, but there are no straight forward answer to this kind of configuration. In the official doc, in the (very short) installation chapter, I see a reference to adding an include path in PHP. But no example... http://zf2.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ref/installation.html Once you have a copy of Zend Framework available, your application needs to be able to access the framework classes found in the library folder. Though there are several ways to achieve this, your PHP include_path needs to contain the path to Zend Framework’s library. But then, when I get to the "Getting Started" chapter, it's all composer.phar and nothing else... http://zf2.readthedocs.org/en/latest/user-guide/skeleton-application.html I'm no sysAdmin, just a Zend enthusiast. I'm pretty sure this PEBKAC problem might be obvious for those who already got in ZF2 previous betas. Thanks for helping my out. EDIT: Problem was resolved, thanks to Daniel M. Just setting up ZF2_PATH in httpd.conf was all that was needed. SetEnv ZF2_PATH /var/ZF2 I also removed the include_path reference in php.ini and everything works just fine. So I have no idea why Zend suggested to include it there in their official docs.

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• Group traffic shaping with traffic control?

  - by mmcbro

  I'm trying to limit the output bandwidth generated by an application with linux tc. This application sends me the source port of the request that I use has a filter to limit each user at a given downloadspeed. I feel that my setup could be managed way better if I had a better knowledge of linux tc. At the application level users are categorized as members of a group, each group have a limited bandwidth. Example : Members of group A : 512kbit/s Members of group B : 1Mbit/s Members of group C : 2Mbit/s When a user connects to the application, it retrieves the source port to the origin of the request from the user and sends me the source port and the bandwidth at which the user must be limited depending on group to which it belongs. With these informations I must add the appropriate rules so that the user (the source port in reality) is limited to the right bandwidth. If the user that connect isn't a member of any group it should be limited at a default bandwidth speed. I'm actually managing this by using a self made daemon that add or remove rules from when it receive a request from the application. With my little knowledge of tc I'm not able to limit other users (ones that aren't in a group, all others in fact) at a default speed and my configuration seems awful to me. Here is the base of my tc qdisc and classes : tc qdisc add dev eth0 root handle 1: htb tc class add dev eth0 parent 1: classid 1:1 htb rate 100mbps ceil 125mbps To classify a user at a given speed I have to add one subclass and then associate one filter to it : # a member of group A tc class add dev eth0 parent 1:1 classid 1:11 htb rate 512kbps ceil 512kbps # tts associated filter to match his source port tc filter add dev eth0 protocol ip parent 1:0 prio 1 u32 match ip sport 50001 flowid 1:11 # a member of group A again tc class add dev eth0 parent 1:1 classid 1:12 htb rate 512kbps ceil 512kbps # tts associated filter to match his source port tc filter add dev eth0 protocol ip parent 1:0 prio 1 u32 match ip sport 61524 flowid 1:12 # a member of group B again tc class add dev eth0 parent 1:1 classid 1:13 htb rate 1000kbps ceil 1000kbps # tts associated filter to match his source port tc filter add dev eth0 protocol ip parent 1:0 prio 1 u32 match ip sport 57200 flowid 1:13 I already know that a source port could be the same if its coming from a different IP address the thing is the application is behind a proxy so I don't have to manage any IP address in that situation. I would like to know how to manage the fact that for all other users (request/source port, whatever you name it) could be limited at a given speed each. I mean that each connection should be able to use at max 100kbit/s for example, not a shared 100kbit/s. I also would like to know if there is a way to simplify my rules. I don't know if it is possible to use only one class per group and associate multiple filters to the same class so each users could be handled by one class and not one class per user. I appreciate any advice, thanks.

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• OEM sound card with no drivers or support

  - by randy

  I thought my sound card was going out so I bought a sound card online. Everything seemed to work ok, I do have sound. But after a few months, I noticed the extra software that downloaded with the sound card drivers didn't work. I ended up contacting creative and after a month of e-mail support, they asked for the serial number and/or model number. Their reply back was I had purchased an OEM sound card and they could not provide support for that, and informed me that that is why their drivers and software didn't work. They informed me that I had to contact the company that distributed the sound card and install their software. Is there anything I can do to find out who distributed this sound card, or is there anything I can do to get other features to work? I have 4 speakers and a sub but only 2 speakers produce sound. The only control I have is the volume. Creative's driver update program will find my sound card, download updates and even added software, but if I try to click on a downloaded program like Creative's Toolbox or Media Center, I get an error that it cannot find the devise. That is why I contacted creative in the first place. EDIT Thanks for the responses everyone. Here's an update. I thought I'd go thru my old computer stuff for my classes at school. I have a lot of old stuff saved, boxes and cables and stuff. I found the box the sound card came in. It looks like a box you'd buy at the store, like Best Buy or CompUSA. I worked with creative for such a long time, it went past the point of being able to return it to the junk online store this shipped from. The box did have an install CD, so I thought I'd start over to reinstall the drivers and software that shipped with the card. I noticed that the install would uninstall a program, then reinstall it. so I thought things were working out. But no good. Everything still works but the programs were still bad. I'd get an error trying to load them - not found. I'll look on the card the next time I get a chance and see if I can spot any kind of name on it.

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• SharePoint 2010 – Central Admin tooling to create host header site collections

  - by eJugnoo

  Just like SharePoint 2007, you can create host-header based site collections in SharePoint 2010 as well. It means, that you do not necessarily need to create a site-collection under a managed path like /sites/, you can create multiple root-level site collections on same web-application/port by using host-header site collections. All you need to do is point your domain or sub-domain to your web-application and create a matching site-collection that you want. But, just like in 2007, it is something that you do by using STSADM, and is not available on Central Admin UI in 2010 as well. Yeah, though you can now also use PowerShell to create one: C:\PS>$w = Get-SPWebApplication http://sitename   C:\PS>New-SPSite http://www.contoso.com -OwnerAlias "DOMAIN\jdoe" -HostHeaderWebApplication $w -Title "Contoso" -Template "STS#0"   This example creates a host header site collection. Because the template is provided, the root Web of this site collection will be created. .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; } I’ve been playing with WCM in SharePoint 2010 more and more, and for that I preferred creating hosts file entries for desired domains and create site-collections by those headers – in my dev environment. I used PowerShell initially, but then got interested to build my own UI on Central Admin instead. Developed with Visual Studio 2010 So I used new Visual Studio 2010 tooling to create an empty SharePoint 2010 project. Added an application page (there is no option to add _Admin page item in VS 2010 RC), that got created in Layouts “mapped” folder. Created a new Admin mapped folder for 14-“hive”, and moved my new page there instead. Yes, I didn’t change the base class for page, its just that it runs under _admin, but it is indeed a LayoutsPageBase inherited page. To introduce a action-link in Central Admin console, I created following element: 1: <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> 2: <CustomAction 3: Id="CreateSiteByHeader" 4: Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.Applications" 5: Title="Create site collections by host header" 6: GroupId="SiteCollections" 7: Sequence="15" 8: RequiredAdmin="Delegated" 9: Description="Create a new top-level web site, by host header" > 10: <UrlAction Url="/_admin/OfficeToolbox/CreateSiteByHeader.aspx" /> 11: </CustomAction> 12: </Elements> .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; } Used Reflector to understand any special code behind createpage.aspx, and created a new for our purpose – CreateSiteByHeader.aspx. From there I quickly created a similar code behind, without all the fancy of Farm Config Wizard handling and dealt with alternate implementations of sealed classes! Goal was to create a professional looking and OOB-type experience. I also added Regex validation to ensure user types a valid domain name as header value. Below is the result…   Release @ Codeplex I’ve released to WSP on OfficeToolbox @ Codeplex, and you can download from here. Hope you find it useful… -- Sharad

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• C#: System.Lazy&lt;T&gt; and the Singleton Design Pattern

  - by James Michael Hare

  So we've all coded a Singleton at one time or another.  It's a really simple pattern and can be a slightly more elegant alternative to global variables.  Make no mistake, Singletons can be abused and are often over-used -- but occasionally you find a Singleton is the most elegant solution. For those of you not familiar with a Singleton, the basic Design Pattern is that a Singleton class is one where there is only ever one instance of the class created.  This means that constructors must be private to avoid users creating their own instances, and a static property (or method in languages without properties) is defined that returns a single static instance. 1: public class Singleton 2: { 3: // the single instance is defined in a static field 4: private static readonly Singleton _instance = new Singleton(); 5:  6: // constructor private so users can't instantiate on their own 7: private Singleton() 8: { 9: } 10:  11: // read-only property that returns the static field 12: public static Singleton Instance 13: { 14: get 15: { 16: return _instance; 17: } 18: } 19: } This is the most basic singleton, notice the key features: Static readonly field that contains the one and only instance. Constructor is private so it can only be called by the class itself. Static property that returns the single instance. Looks like it satisfies, right?  There's just one (potential) problem.  C# gives you no guarantee of when the static field _instance will be created.  This is because the C# standard simply states that classes (which are marked in the IL as BeforeFieldInit) can have their static fields initialized any time before the field is accessed.  This means that they may be initialized on first use, they may be initialized at some other time before, you can't be sure when. So what if you want to guarantee your instance is truly lazy.  That is, that it is only created on first call to Instance?  Well, there's a few ways to do this.  First we'll show the old ways, and then talk about how .Net 4.0's new System.Lazy<T> type can help make the lazy-Singleton cleaner. Obviously, we could take on the lazy construction ourselves, but being that our Singleton may be accessed by many different threads, we'd need to lock it down. 1: public class LazySingleton1 2: { 3: // lock for thread-safety laziness 4: private static readonly object _mutex = new object(); 5:  6: // static field to hold single instance 7: private static LazySingleton1 _instance = null; 8:  9: // property that does some locking and then creates on first call 10: public static LazySingleton1 Instance 11: { 12: get 13: { 14: if (_instance == null) 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: if (_instance == null) 19: { 20: _instance = new LazySingleton1(); 21: } 22: } 23: } 24:  25: return _instance; 26: } 27: } 28:  29: private LazySingleton1() 30: { 31: } 32: } This is a standard double-check algorithm so that you don't lock if the instance has already been created.  However, because it's possible two threads can go through the first if at the same time the first time back in, you need to check again after the lock is acquired to avoid creating two instances. Pretty straightforward, but ugly as all heck.  Well, you could also take advantage of the C# standard's BeforeFieldInit and define your class with a static constructor.  It need not have a body, just the presence of the static constructor will remove the BeforeFieldInit attribute on the class and guarantee that no fields are initialized until the first static field, property, or method is called.   1: public class LazySingleton2 2: { 3: // because of the static constructor, this won't get created until first use 4: private static readonly LazySingleton2 _instance = new LazySingleton2(); 5:  6: // Returns the singleton instance using lazy-instantiation 7: public static LazySingleton2 Instance 8: { 9: get { return _instance; } 10: } 11:  12: // private to prevent direct instantiation 13: private LazySingleton2() 14: { 15: } 16:  17: // removes BeforeFieldInit on class so static fields not 18: // initialized before they are used 19: static LazySingleton2() 20: { 21: } 22: } Now, while this works perfectly, I hate it.  Why?  Because it's relying on a non-obvious trick of the IL to guarantee laziness.  Just looking at this code, you'd have no idea that it's doing what it's doing.  Worse yet, you may decide that the empty static constructor serves no purpose and delete it (which removes your lazy guarantee).  Worse-worse yet, they may alter the rules around BeforeFieldInit in the future which could change this. So, what do I propose instead?  .Net 4.0 adds the System.Lazy type which guarantees thread-safe lazy-construction.  Using System.Lazy<T>, we get: 1: public class LazySingleton3 2: { 3: // static holder for instance, need to use lambda to construct since constructor private 4: private static readonly Lazy<LazySingleton3> _instance 5: = new Lazy<LazySingleton3>(() => new LazySingleton3()); 6:  7: // private to prevent direct instantiation. 8: private LazySingleton3() 9: { 10: } 11:  12: // accessor for instance 13: public static LazySingleton3 Instance 14: { 15: get 16: { 17: return _instance.Value; 18: } 19: } 20: } Note, you need your lambda to call the private constructor as Lazy's default constructor can only call public constructors of the type passed in (which we can't have by definition of a Singleton).  But, because the lambda is defined inside our type, it has access to the private members so it's perfect. Note how the Lazy<T> makes it obvious what you're doing (lazy construction), instead of relying on an IL generation side-effect.  This way, it's more maintainable.  Lazy<T> has many other uses as well, obviously, but I really love how elegant and readable it makes the lazy Singleton.

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 1, Decomposition

  - by Reed

  The first step in designing any parallelized system is Decomposition.  Decomposition is nothing more than taking a problem space and breaking it into discrete parts.  When we want to work in parallel, we need to have at least two separate things that we are trying to run.  We do this by taking our problem and decomposing it into parts. There are two common abstractions that are useful when discussing parallel decomposition: Data Decomposition and Task Decomposition.  These two abstractions allow us to think about our problem in a way that helps leads us to correct decision making in terms of the algorithms we’ll use to parallelize our routine. To start, I will make a couple of minor points. I’d like to stress that Decomposition has nothing to do with specific algorithms or techniques.  It’s about how you approach and think about the problem, not how you solve the problem using a specific tool, technique, or library.  Decomposing the problem is about constructing the appropriate mental model: once this is done, you can choose the appropriate design and tools, which is a subject for future posts. Decomposition, being unrelated to tools or specific techniques, is not specific to .NET in any way.  This should be the first step to parallelizing a problem, and is valid using any framework, language, or toolset.  However, this gives us a starting point – without a proper understanding of decomposition, it is difficult to understand the proper usage of specific classes and tools within the .NET framework. Data Decomposition is often the simpler abstraction to use when trying to parallelize a routine.  In order to decompose our problem domain by data, we take our entire set of data and break it into smaller, discrete portions, or chunks.  We then work on each chunk in the data set in parallel. This is particularly useful if we can process each element of data independently of the rest of the data.  In a situation like this, there are some wonderfully simple techniques we can use to take advantage of our data.  By decomposing our domain by data, we can very simply parallelize our routines.  In general, we, as developers, should be always searching for data that can be decomposed. Finding data to decompose if fairly simple, in many instances.  Data decomposition is typically used with collections of data.  Any time you have a collection of items, and you’re going to perform work on or with each of the items, you potentially have a situation where parallelism can be exploited.  This is fairly easy to do in practice: look for iteration statements in your code, such as for and foreach. Granted, every for loop is not a candidate to be parallelized.  If the collection is being modified as it’s iterated, or the processing of elements depends on other elements, the iteration block may need to be processed in serial.  However, if this is not the case, data decomposition may be possible. Let’s look at one example of how we might use data decomposition.  Suppose we were working with an image, and we were applying a simple contrast stretching filter.  When we go to apply the filter, once we know the minimum and maximum values, we can apply this to each pixel independently of the other pixels.  This means that we can easily decompose this problem based off data – we will do the same operation, in parallel, on individual chunks of data (each pixel). Task Decomposition, on the other hand, is focused on the individual tasks that need to be performed instead of focusing on the data.  In order to decompose our problem domain by tasks, we need to think about our algorithm in terms of discrete operations, or tasks, which can then later be parallelized. Task decomposition, in practice, can be a bit more tricky than data decomposition.  Here, we need to look at what our algorithm actually does, and how it performs its actions.  Once we have all of the basic steps taken into account, we can try to analyze them and determine whether there are any constraints in terms of shared data or ordering.  There are no simple things to look for in terms of finding tasks we can decompose for parallelism; every algorithm is unique in terms of its tasks, so every algorithm will have unique opportunities for task decomposition. For example, say we want our software to perform some customized actions on startup, prior to showing our main screen.  Perhaps we want to check for proper licensing, notify the user if the license is not valid, and also check for updates to the program.  Once we verify the license, and that there are no updates, we’ll start normally.  In this case, we can decompose this problem into tasks – we have a few tasks, but there are at least two discrete, independent tasks (check licensing, check for updates) which we can perform in parallel.  Once those are completed, we will continue on with our other tasks. One final note – Data Decomposition and Task Decomposition are not mutually exclusive.  Often, you’ll mix the two approaches while trying to parallelize a single routine.  It’s possible to decompose your problem based off data, then further decompose the processing of each element of data based on tasks.  This just provides a framework for thinking about our algorithms, and for discussing the problem.

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• Developer Training – Various Options for Maximum Benefit – Part 4

  - by pinaldave

  Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 If you have been reading this series, by now you are aware of all the pros and cons that can come along with training.  We’ve asked and answered hard questions, and investigated them “whys” and “hows” of training.  Now it is time to talk about all the different kinds of training that are out there! On Job Training The most common type of training is on the job training.  Everyone receives this kind of education – even experts who come in to consult have to be taught where the printer, pens, and copy machines are.  If you are thinking about more concrete topics, though, on the job training can be some of the easiest to come across.  Picture this: someone in the company whom you really admire is hard at work on a project.  You come up to them and ask to help them out – if they are a busy developer, the odds are that they will say “yes, please!”   If you phrase your question as an offer of help, you can receive training without ever putting someone in the awkward position of acting as a mentor.  However, some people may want the task of being a mentor.  It can never hurt to ask.  Most people will be more than willing to pass their knowledge along. Extreme Programming If your company and coworkers are willing, you can even investigate Extreme Programming.  This is a type of programming that allows small teams to quickly develop code and products that are released with almost immediate user feedback.  You can find more information at http://www.extremeprogramming.org/.  If this is something your company could use, suggest it to your supervisor.  Even if they say no, it will make it clear that you are a go-getter who is interested in new and exciting projects.  If the answer is yes, then you have the opportunity to get some of the best on the job training around. In Person Training Click on Image to Enlarge When you say the word “training,” most people’s minds go back to the classroom, an image they are familiar with.  While training doesn’t always have to be in a traditional setting, because it is so familiar it can also be the most valuable type of training.  There are many ways to get training through a live instructor.  Some companies may be willing to send a representative to you, where employees will get training, sometimes food and coffee, and a live instructor who can answer questions immediately.  Sometimes these trainers are also able to do consultations at the same time, which can invaluable to a company.  If you are the one to asks your supervisor for a training session that can also be turned into a consultation, you may stick in their minds as an incredibly dedicated employee.  If you can’t find a representative, local colleges can also be a good resource for free or cheap classes – or they may have representatives coming who are willing to take on a few more students. Benefits of On Demand Developer Training Of course, you can often get the best of all these types of training with online or On Demand training.  You can get the benefit of a live instructor who is willing to answer questions (although in this case, usually through e-mail or other online venues), there are often real-world examples to follow along – like on the job training – and best of all you can learn whenever you have the time or need.  Did a problem with your server come up at midnight when all your supervisors are safe at home and probably in bed?  No problem!  On Demand training is especially useful if you need to slow down, pause, or rewind a training session.  Not even a real-life instructor can do that! When I was writing this blog post, I felt that each of the subject, which I have covered can be blog posts of itself. However, I wanted to keep the the blog post concise and so touch based on three major training aspects 1) On Job Training 2) In Person Training and 3) Online training. Here is the question for you – is there any other kind of training methods available, which are effective and one should consider it? If yes, what are those, I may write a follow up blog post on the same subject next week. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Windows Phone 7 development: Using isolated storage

  - by DigiMortal

  In my previous posting about Windows Phone 7 development I showed how to use WebBrowser control in Windows Phone 7. In this posting I make some other improvements to my blog reader application and I will show you how to use isolated storage to store information to phone. Why isolated storage? Isolated storage is place where your application can save its data and settings. The image on right (that I stole from MSDN library) shows you how application data store is organized. You have no other options to keep your files besides isolated storage because Windows Phone 7 does not allow you to save data directly to other file system locations. From MSDN: “Isolated storage enables managed applications to create and maintain local storage. The mobile architecture is similar to the Silverlight-based applications on Windows. All I/O operations are restricted to isolated storage and do not have direct access to the underlying operating system file system. Ultimately, this helps to provide security and prevents unauthorized access and data corruption.” Saving files from web to isolated storage I updated my RSS-reader so it reads RSS from web only if there in no local file with RSS. User can update RSS-file by clicking a button. Also file is created when application starts and there is no RSS-file. Why I am doing this? I want my application to be able to work also offline. As my code needs some more refactoring I provide it with some next postings about Windows Phone 7. If you want it sooner then please leave me a comment here. Here is the code for my RSS-downloader that downloads RSS-feed and saves it to isolated storage file calles rss.xml. public class RssDownloader {     private string _url;     private string _fileName;       public delegate void DownloadCompleteDelegate();     public event DownloadCompleteDelegate DownloadComplete;       public RssDownloader(string url, string fileName)     {         _url = url;         _fileName = fileName;     }       public void Download()     {         var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(_url);         var result = (IAsyncResult)request.BeginGetResponse(ResponseCallback, request);            }       private void ResponseCallback(IAsyncResult result)     {         var request = (HttpWebRequest)result.AsyncState;         var response = request.EndGetResponse(result);           using(var stream = response.GetResponseStream())         using(var reader = new StreamReader(stream))         using(var appStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication())         using(var file = appStorage.OpenFile("rss.xml", FileMode.OpenOrCreate))         using(var writer = new StreamWriter(file))         {             writer.Write(reader.ReadToEnd());         }           if (DownloadComplete != null)             DownloadComplete();     } } Of course I modified RSS-source for my application to use rss.xml file from isolated storage. As isolated storage files also base on streams we can use them everywhere where streams are expected. Reading isolated storage files As isolated storage files are opened as streams you can read them like usual files in your usual applications. The next code fragment shows you how to open file from isolated storage and how to read it using XmlReader. Previously I used response stream in same place. using(var appStorage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication()) using(var file = appStorage.OpenFile("rss.xml", FileMode.Open)) {     var reader = XmlReader.Create(file);                      // more code } As you can see there is nothing complex. If you have worked with System.IO namespace objects then you will find isolated storage classes and methods to be very similar to these. Also mention that application storage and isolated storage files must be disposed after you are not using them anymore.

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• Form, function and complexity in rule processing

  - by Charles Young

  Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding of our different positions. I don't particularly want to promote further argument of that kind, but I do want to take the opportunity of offering a different perspective on rule-processing and an explanation of my comments. For me, the ‘red rag’ lay in Tim’s claim that “...rules alone are highly inefficient for most classes of (not simple) problems” and a later paragraph that appears to equate the simplicity of form (‘IF-THEN-ELSE’) with simplicity of function.   It is not the first time Tim has expressed these views and not the first time I have responded to his assertions.   Indeed, Tim has a long history of commenting on the subject of complex event processing (CEP) and, less often, rule processing in ‘robust’ terms, often asserting that very many other people’s opinions on this subject are mistaken.   In turn, I am of the opinion that, certainly in terms of rule processing, which is an area in which I have a specific interest and knowledge, he is often mistaken. There is no simple answer to the fundamental question ‘what is a rule?’ We use the word in a very fluid fashion in English. Likewise, the term ‘rule processing’, as used widely in IT, is equally difficult to define simplistically. The best way to envisage the term is as a ‘centre of gravity’ within a wider domain. That domain contains many other ‘centres of gravity’, including CEP, statistical analytics, neural networks, natural language processing and so much more. Whole communities tend to gravitate towards and build themselves around some of these centres. The term 'rule processing' is associated with many different technology types, various software products, different architectural patterns, the functional capability of many applications and services, etc. There is considerable variation amongst these different technologies, techniques and products. Very broadly, a common theme is their ability to manage certain types of processing and problem solving through declarative, or semi-declarative, statements of propositional logic bound to action-based consequences. It is generally important to be able to decouple these statements from other parts of an overall system or architecture so that they can be managed and deployed independently.  As a centre of gravity, ‘rule processing’ is no island. It exists in the context of a domain of discourse that is, itself, highly interconnected and continuous.   Rule processing does not, for example, exist in splendid isolation to natural language processing.   On the contrary, an on-going theme of rule processing is to find better ways to express rules in natural language and map these to executable forms.   Rule processing does not exist in splendid isolation to CEP.   On the contrary, an event processing agent can reasonably be considered as a rule engine (a theme in ‘Power of Events’ by David Luckham).   Rule processing does not live in splendid isolation to statistical approaches such as Bayesian analytics. On the contrary, rule processing and statistical analytics are highly synergistic.   Rule processing does not even live in splendid isolation to neural networks. For example, significant research has centred on finding ways to translate trained nets into explicit rule sets in order to support forms of validation and facilitate insight into the knowledge stored in those nets. What about simplicity of form?   Many rule processing technologies do indeed use a very simple form (‘If...Then’, ‘When...Do’, etc.)   However, it is a fundamental mistake to equate simplicity of form with simplicity of function.   It is absolutely mistaken to suggest that simplicity of form is a barrier to the efficient handling of complexity.   There are countless real-world examples which serve to disprove that notion.   Indeed, simplicity of form is often the key to handling complexity. Does rule processing offer a ‘one size fits all’. No, of course not.   No serious commentator suggests it does.   Does the design and management of large knowledge bases, expressed as rules, become difficult?   Yes, it can do, but that is true of any large knowledge base, regardless of the form in which knowledge is expressed.   The measure of complexity is not a function of rule set size or rule form.  It tends to be correlated more strongly with the size of the ‘problem space’ (‘search space’) which is something quite different.   Analysis of the problem space and the algorithms we use to search through that space are, of course, the very things we use to derive objective measures of the complexity of a given problem. This is basic computer science and common practice. Sailing a Dreadnaught through the sea of information technology and lobbing shells at some of the islands we encounter along the way does no one any good.   Building bridges and causeways between islands so that the inhabitants can collaborate in open discourse offers hope of real progress.

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

  - by BerndBrot

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

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• WebLogic Server Performance and Tuning: Part I - Tuning JVM

  - by Gokhan Gungor

  Each WebLogic Server instance runs in its own dedicated Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which is their runtime environment. Every Admin Server in any domain executes within a JVM. The same also applies for Managed Servers. WebLogic Server can be used for a wide variety of applications and services which uses the same runtime environment and resources. Oracle WebLogic ships with 2 different JVM, HotSpot and JRocket but you can choose which JVM you want to use. JVM is designed to optimize itself however it also provides some startup options to make small changes. There are default values for its memory and garbage collection. In real world, you will not want to stick with the default values provided by the JVM rather want to customize these values based on your applications which can produce large gains in performance by making small changes with the JVM parameters. We can tell the garbage collector how to delete garbage and we can also tell JVM how much space to allocate for each generation (of java Objects) or for heap. Remember during the garbage collection no other process is executed within the JVM or runtime, which is called STOP THE WORLD which can affect the overall throughput. Each JVM has its own memory segment called Heap Memory which is the storage for java Objects. These objects can be grouped based on their age like young generation (recently created objects) or old generation (surviving objects that have lived to some extent), etc. A java object is considered garbage when it can no longer be reached from anywhere in the running program. Each generation has its own memory segment within the heap. When this segment gets full, garbage collector deletes all the objects that are marked as garbage to create space. When the old generation space gets full, the JVM performs a major collection to remove the unused objects and reclaim their space. A major garbage collect takes a significant amount of time and can affect system performance. When we create a managed server either on the same machine or on remote machine it gets its initial startup parameters from $DOMAIN_HOME/bin/setDomainEnv.sh/cmd file. By default two parameters are set:     Xms: The initial heapsize     Xmx: The max heapsize Try to set equal initial and max heapsize. The startup time can be a little longer but for long running applications it will provide a better performance. When we set -Xms512m -Xmx1024m, the physical heap size will be 512m. This means that there are pages of memory (in the state of the 512m) that the JVM does not explicitly control. It will be controlled by OS which could be reserve for the other tasks. In this case, it is an advantage if the JVM claims the entire memory at once and try not to spend time to extend when more memory is needed. Also you can use -XX:MaxPermSize (Maximum size of the permanent generation) option for Sun JVM. You should adjust the size accordingly if your application dynamically load and unload a lot of classes in order to optimize the performance. You can set the JVM options/heap size from the following places:     Through the Admin console, in the Server start tab     In the startManagedWeblogic script for the managed servers     $DOMAIN_HOME/bin/startManagedWebLogic.sh/cmd     JAVA_OPTIONS="-Xms1024m -Xmx1024m" ${JAVA_OPTIONS}     In the setDomainEnv script for the managed servers and admin server (domain wide)     USER_MEM_ARGS="-Xms1024m -Xmx1024m" When there is free memory available in the heap but it is too fragmented and not contiguously located to store the object or when there is actually insufficient memory we can get java.lang.OutOfMemoryError. We should create Thread Dump and analyze if that is possible in case of such error. The second option we can use to produce higher throughput is to garbage collection. We can roughly divide GC algorithms into 2 categories: parallel and concurrent. Parallel GC stops the execution of all the application and performs the full GC, this generally provides better throughput but also high latency using all the CPU resources during GC. Concurrent GC on the other hand, produces low latency but also low throughput since it performs GC while application executes. The JRockit JVM provides some useful command-line parameters that to control of its GC scheme like -XgcPrio command-line parameter which takes the following options; XgcPrio:pausetime (To minimize latency, parallel GC) XgcPrio:throughput (To minimize throughput, concurrent GC ) XgcPrio:deterministic (To guarantee maximum pause time, for real time systems) Sun JVM has similar parameters (like  -XX:UseParallelGC or -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC) to control its GC scheme. We can add -verbosegc -XX:+PrintGCDetails to monitor indications of a problem with garbage collection. Try configuring JVM’s of all managed servers to execute in -server mode to ensure that it is optimized for a server-side production environment.

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• SSAS Compare: an intern’s journey

  - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team

  About a month ago, David mentioned an intern working in the BI Tools Team. That intern happens to be me! In five weeks’ time, I’ll start my second year of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge and be a full-time student again, but for the past eight weeks, I’ve been living a completely different life. As Jon mentioned before, the teams here at Red Gate are small and everyone (including the interns!) is responsible for the product as a whole. I’ve attended planning sessions, UX tests, daily meetings, and everything else a full-time member of the team would; I had as much say in where we would go next with the product as anyone; I was able to see that what I was doing was an important part of the product from the feedback we got in the UX tests. All these things almost made me forget that this is just an internship and not my full-time job. First steps at Red Gate Being based in Cambridge, Red Gate has many Cambridge university graduates working for them. They also hire some Cambridge undergraduates for internships each summer. With its popularity with university graduates and its great working environment, Red Gate has managed to build up a great reputation. When I thought of doing an internship here in Cambridge, Red Gate just seemed to be the obvious choice for my first real work experience. On my first day at Red Gate, David, the lead developer for SSAS Compare, helped me settle in and explained what I’d be doing. My task was to improve the user experience of displaying differences between MDX scripts by syntax highlighting, script formatting, and improving the difference identification in the first place. David suggested how I should approach the problem, but left all the details and design decisions to me. That was when I realised how much independence and responsibility I’d have. What I’ve done If you launch the latest version of SSAS Compare and drill down to an MDX script difference, you can see the changes that have been made. In earlier versions, you could only see the scripts in plain text on both sides — either in black or grey, depending on whether they were the same or not. However, you couldn’t see exactly where the scripts were different, which was especially annoying when the two scripts were large – as they often are. Furthermore, if parts of the two scripts were formatted differently, they seemed to be different but were actually the same, which caused even more confusion and made it difficult to see where the differences were. All these issues have been fixed now. The two scripts are automatically formatted by the tool so that if two things are syntactically equivalent, they look the same – including case differences in keywords! The actual difference is highlighted in grey, which makes them easy to spot. The difference identification has been improved as well, so two scripts aren’t identified as different if there’s just a difference in meaningless whitespace characters, or when you have “select” on one side and “SELECT” on the other. We also have syntax highlighting, which makes it easier to read the scripts. How I did it In order to do the formatting properly, we decided to parse the MDX scripts. After some investigation into parser builders, I decided to go with the GOLD Parser builder and the bsn-goldparser .NET engine. GOLD Parser builder provides a fairly nice GUI to write, build, and test grammar in. We also liked the idea of separating the grammar building from parsing a text. The bsn-goldparser is one of many .NET engines for GOLD, and although it doesn’t support the newest features of GOLD Parser, it has “the ability to map semantic action classes to terminals or reduction rules, so that a completely functional semantic AST can be created directly without intermediate token AST representation, and without the need for glue code.” That makes it much easier for us to change the implementation in our program when we change the grammar. As bsn-goldparser is open source, and I wanted some more features in it, I contributed two new features which have now been merged to the project. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an MDX grammar written for GOLD already, so I had to write it myself. I was referencing MSDN to get the formal grammar specification, but the specification was all over the place, so it wasn’t that easy to implement and find. We’re aware that we don’t yet fully support all valid MDX, so sometimes you’ll just see the MDX script difference displayed the old way. In that case, there is some grammar construct we don’t yet recognise. If you come across something SSAS Compare doesn’t recognise, we’d love to hear about it so we can add it to our grammar. When some MDX script gets parsed, a tree is produced. That tree can then be processed into a list of inlines which deal with the correct formatting and can be outputted to the screen. Doing all this has led me to many new technologies and projects I haven’t worked with before. This was my first experience with C# and Visual Studio, although I have done things in Java before. I have learnt how to unit test with NUnit, how to do dependency injection with Ninject, how to source-control code with SVN and Mercurial, how to build with TeamCity, how to use GOLD, and many other things. What’s coming next Sadly, my internship comes to an end this week, so there will be less development on MDX difference view for a while. But the team is going to work on marking the differences better and making it consistent with difference indication in the top part of comparison window, and will keep adding support for more MDX grammar so you can see the differences easily in every comparison you make. So long! And maybe I’ll see you next summer!

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• Trace File Source Adapter

  The Trace File Source adapter is a useful addition to your SSIS toolbox.  It allows you to read 2005 and 2008 profiler traces stored as .trc files and read them into the Data Flow.  From there you can perform filtering and analysis using the power of SSIS. There is no need for a SQL Server connection this just uses the trace file. Example Usages Cache warming for SQL Server Analysis Services Reading the flight recorder Find out the longest running queries on a server Analyze statements for CPU, memory by user or some other criteria you choose Properties The Trace File Source adapter has two properties, both of which combine to control the source trace file that is read at runtime. SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 trace files are supported for both the Database Engine (SQL Server) and Analysis Services. The properties are managed by the Editor form or can be set directly from the Properties Grid in Visual Studio. Property Type Description AccessMode Enumeration This property determines how the Filename property is interpreted. The values available are: DirectInput Variable Filename String This property holds the path for trace file to load (*.trc). The value is either a full path, or the name of a variable which contains the full path to the trace file, depending on the AccessMode property. Trace Column Definition Hopefully the majority of you can skip this section entirely, but if you encounter some problems processing a trace file this may explain it and allow you to fix the problem. The component is built upon the trace management API provided by Microsoft. Unfortunately API methods that expose the schema of a trace file have known issues and are unreliable, put simply the data often differs from what was specified. To overcome these limitations the component uses  some simple XML files. These files enable the trace column data types and sizing attributes to be overridden. For example SQL Server Profiler or TMO generated structures define EventClass as an integer, but the real value is a string. TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml  - SQL Server Database Engine Trace Columns TraceDataColumnsAS.xml    - SQL Server Analysis Services Trace Columns The files can be found in the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents folder, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml" If at runtime the component encounters a type conversion or sizing error it is most likely due to a discrepancy between the column definition as reported by the API and the actual value encountered. Whilst most common issues have already been fixed through these files we have implemented specific exception traps to direct you to the files to enable you to fix any further issues due to different usage or data scenarios that we have not tested. An example error that you can fix through these files is shown below. Buffer exception writing value to column 'Column Name'. The string value is 999 characters in length, the column is only 111. Columns can be overridden by the TraceDataColumns XML files in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml". Installation The component is provided as an MSI file which you can download and run to install it. This simply places the files on disk in the correct locations and also installs the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache as per Microsoft’s recommendations. You may need to restart the SQL Server Integration Services service, as this caches information about what components are installed, as well as restarting any open instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. Finally you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Trace File Source transformation in the Choose Toolbox Items window. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component? We recommend you follow best practice and apply the current Microsoft SQL Server Service pack to your SQL Server servers and workstations. Please note that the Microsoft Trace classes used in the component are not supported on 64-bit platforms. To use the Trace File Source on a 64-bit host you need to ensure you have the 32-bit (x86) tools available, and the way you execute your package is setup to use them, please see the help topic 64-bit Considerations for Integration Services for more details. Downloads Trace Sources for SQL Server 2005 -- Trace Sources for SQL Server 2008 Version History SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.382 - SQL Sever 2008 public release. (9 Apr 2009) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.321 - SQL Server 2005 public release. (18 Nov 2008) -- Screenshots

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• ViewBag dynamic in ASP.NET MVC 3 - RC 2

  - by hajan

  Earlier today Scott Guthrie announced the ASP.NET MVC 3 - Release Candidate 2. I installed the new version right after the announcement since I was eager to see the new features. Among other cool features included in this release candidate, there is a new ViewBag dynamic which can be used to pass data from Controllers to Views same as you use ViewData[] dictionary. What is great and nice about ViewBag (despite the name) is that its a dynamic type which means you can dynamically get/set values and add any number of additional fields without need of strongly-typed classes. In order to see the difference, please take a look at the following examples. Example - Using ViewData Controller public ActionResult Index() {     List<string> colors = new List<string>();     colors.Add("red");     colors.Add("green");     colors.Add("blue");                 ViewData["listColors"] = colors;     ViewData["dateNow"] = DateTime.Now;     ViewData["name"] = "Hajan";     ViewData["age"] = 25;     return View(); } View (ASPX View Engine) <p>     My name is     <b><%: ViewData["name"] %></b>,     <b><%: ViewData["age"] %></b> years old.     <br />         I like the following colors: </p> <ul id="colors"> <% foreach (var color in ViewData["listColors"] as List<string>){ %>     <li>        <font color="<%: color %>"><%: color %></font>    </li> <% } %> </ul> <p>     <%: ViewData["dateNow"] %> </p> (I know the code might look cleaner with Razor View engine, but it doesn’t matter right? ;) ) Example - Using ViewBag Controller public ActionResult Index() {     List<string> colors = new List<string>();     colors.Add("red");     colors.Add("green");     colors.Add("blue");     ViewBag.ListColors = colors; //colors is List     ViewBag.DateNow = DateTime.Now;     ViewBag.Name = "Hajan";     ViewBag.Age = 25;     return View(); } You see the difference? View (ASPX View Engine) <p>     My name is     <b><%: ViewBag.Name %></b>,     <b><%: ViewBag.Age %></b> years old.     <br />         I like the following colors: </p> <ul id="colors"> <% foreach (var color in ViewBag.ListColors) { %>     <li>         <font color="<%: color %>"><%: color %></font>     </li> <% } %> </ul> <p>     <%: ViewBag.DateNow %> </p> In my example now I don’t need to cast ViewBag.ListColors as List<string> since ViewBag is dynamic type! On the other hand the ViewData[“key”] is object.I would like to note that if you use ViewData["ListColors"] = colors; in your Controller, you can retrieve it in the View by using ViewBag.ListColors. And the result in both cases is Hope you like it! Regards, Hajan

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• Book Review: Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide

  - by Frank Nimphius

  Recently PACKT Publishing published "Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide" by Jobinesh Purushothaman, a product manager in our team. Though already the sixth book dedicated to Oracle ADF, it has a lot of great information in it that none of the previous books covered, making it a safe buy even for those who own the other books published by Oracle Press (McGrwHill) and PACKT Publishing. More than the half of the "Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide" book is dedicated to Oracle ADF Business Components in a depth and clarity that allows you to feel the expertise that Jobinesh gained in this area. If you enjoy Jobinesh blog (http://jobinesh.blogspot.co.uk/) about Oracle ADF, then, no matter what expert you are in Oracle ADF, this book makes you happy as it provides you with detail information you always wished to have. If you are new to Oracle ADF, then this book alone doesn't get you flying, but, if you have some Java background, accelerates your learning big, big, big times. Chapter 1 is an introduction to Oracle ADF and not only explains the layers but also how it compares to plain Java EE solutions (page 13). If you are new to Oracle JDeveloper and ADF, then at the end of this chapter you know how to start JDeveloper and begin your ADF development Chapter 2 starts with what Jobinesh really is good at: ADF Business Components. In this chapter you learn about the architecture ingredients of ADF Business Components: View Objects, View Links, Associations, Entities, Row Sets, Query Collections and Application Modules. This chapter also provides a introduction to ADFBC SDO services, as well as sequence diagrams for what happens when you execute queries or commit updates. Chapter 3 is dedicated to entity objects and  is one of many chapters in this book you will enjoy and never want to miss. Jobinesh explains the artifacts that make up an entity object, how to work with entities and resource bundles, and many advanced topics, including inheritance, change history tracking, custom properties, validation and cursor handling.  Chapter 4 - you guessed it - is all about View objects. Comparable to entities, you learn about the XM files and classes that make a view object, as well as how to define and work with queries. List-of-values, inheritance, polymorphism, bind variables and data filtering are interesting - and important topics that follow. Again the chapter provides helpful sequence diagrams for you to understand what happens internally within a view object. Chapter 5 focuses on advanced view object and entity object topics, like lifecycle callback methods and when you want to override them. This chapter is a good digest of Jobinesh's blog entries (which most ADF developers have in their bookmark list). Really worth reading ! Chapter 6 then is bout Application Modules. Beside of what application modules are, this chapter covers important topics like properties, passivation, activation, application module pooling, how and where to write custom logic. In addition you learn about the AM lifecycle and request sequence. Chapter 7 is about the ADF binding layer. If you are new to Oracle ADF and got lost in the more advanced ADF Business Components chapters, then this chapter is where you get back into the game. In very easy terms, Jobinesh explains what the ADF binding is, how it fits into the JSF request lifecycle and what are the metadata file involved. Chapter 8 then goes into building data bound web user interfaces. In this chapter you get the basics of JavaServer Faces (e.g. managed beans) and learn about the interaction between the JSF UI and the ADF binding layer. Later this chapter provides advanced solutions for working with tree components and list of values. Chapter 9 introduces bounded task flows and ADF controller. This is a chapter you want to read if you are new to ADF of have started. Experts don't find anything new here, which doesn't mean that it is not worth reading it (I for example, enjoyed the controller talk very much) Chapter 10 is an advanced coverage of bounded task flow and talks about contextual events  Chapter 11 is another highlight and explains error handling, trains, transactions and more. I can only recommend you read this chapter. I am aware of many documents that cover exception handling in Oracle ADF (and my Oracle Magazine article for January/February 2013 does the same), but none that covers it in such a great depth. Chapter 12 covers ADF best practices, which is a great round-up of all the tips provided in this book (without Jobinesh to repeat himself). Its all cool stuff that helps you with your ADF projects. In summary, "Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide" by Jobinesh Purushothaman is a great book and addition for all Oracle ADF developers and those who want to become one. Frank

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• New .NET Library for Accessing the Survey Monkey API

  - by Ben Emmett

  I’ve used Survey Monkey’s API for a while, and though it’s pretty powerful, there’s a lot of boilerplate each time it’s used in a new project, and the json it returns needs a bunch of processing to be able to use the raw information. So I’ve finally got around to releasing a .NET library you can use to consume the API more easily. The main advantages are: Only ever deal with strongly-typed .NET objects, making everything much more robust and a lot faster to get going Automatically handles things like rate-limiting and paging through results Uses combinations of endpoints to get all relevant data for you, and processes raw response data to map responses to questions To start, either install it using NuGet with PM> Install-Package SurveyMonkeyApi (easier option), or grab the source from https://github.com/bcemmett/SurveyMonkeyApi if you prefer to build it yourself. You’ll also need to have signed up for a developer account with Survey Monkey, and have both your API key and an OAuth token. A simple usage would be something like: string apiKey = "KEY"; string token = "TOKEN"; var sm = new SurveyMonkeyApi(apiKey, token); List<Survey> surveys = sm.GetSurveyList(); The surveys object is now a list of surveys with all the information available from the /surveys/get_survey_list API endpoint, including the title, id, date it was created and last modified, language, number of questions / responses, and relevant urls. If there are more than 1000 surveys in your account, the library pages through the results for you, making multiple requests to get a complete list of surveys. All the filtering available in the API can be controlled using .NET objects. For example you might only want surveys created in the last year and containing “pineapple” in the title: var settings = new GetSurveyListSettings { Title = "pineapple", StartDate = DateTime.Now.AddYears(-1) }; List<Survey> surveys = sm.GetSurveyList(settings); By default, whenever optional fields can be requested with a response, they will all be fetched for you. You can change this behaviour if for some reason you explicitly don’t want the information, using var settings = new GetSurveyListSettings { OptionalData = new GetSurveyListSettingsOptionalData { DateCreated = false, AnalysisUrl = false } }; Survey Monkey’s 7 read-only endpoints are supported, and the other 4 which make modifications to data might be supported in the future. The endpoints are: Endpoint Method Object returned /surveys/get_survey_list GetSurveyList() List<Survey> /surveys/get_survey_details GetSurveyDetails() Survey /surveys/get_collector_list GetCollectorList() List<Collector> /surveys/get_respondent_list GetRespondentList() List<Respondent> /surveys/get_responses GetResponses() List<Response> /surveys/get_response_counts GetResponseCounts() Collector /user/get_user_details GetUserDetails() UserDetails /batch/create_flow Not supported Not supported /batch/send_flow Not supported Not supported /templates/get_template_list Not supported Not supported /collectors/create_collector Not supported Not supported The hierarchy of objects the library can return is Survey List<Page> List<Question> QuestionType List<Answer> List<Item> List<Collector> List<Response> Respondent List<ResponseQuestion> List<ResponseAnswer> Each of these classes has properties which map directly to the names of properties returned by the API itself (though using PascalCasing which is more natural for .NET, rather than the snake_casing used by SurveyMonkey). For most users, Survey Monkey imposes a rate limit of 2 requests per second, so by default the library leaves at least 500ms between requests. You can request higher limits from them, so if you want to change the delay between requests just use a different constructor: var sm = new SurveyMonkeyApi(apiKey, token, 200); //200ms delay = 5 reqs per sec There’s a separate cap of 1000 requests per day for each API key, which the library doesn’t currently enforce, so if you think you’ll be in danger of exceeding that you’ll need to handle it yourself for now.  To help, you can see how many requests the current instance of the SurveyMonkeyApi object has made by reading its RequestsMade property. If the library encounters any errors, including communicating with the API, it will throw a SurveyMonkeyException, so be sure to handle that sensibly any time you use it to make calls. Finally, if you have a survey (or list of surveys) obtained using GetSurveyList(), the library can automatically fill in all available information using sm.FillMissingSurveyInformation(surveys); For each survey in the list, it uses the other endpoints to fill in the missing information about the survey’s question structure, respondents, and responses. This results in at least 5 API calls being made per survey, so be careful before passing it a large list. It also joins up the raw response information to the survey’s question structure, so that for each question in a respondent’s set of replies, you can access a ProcessedAnswer object. For example, a response to a dropdown question (from the /surveys/get_responses endpoint) might be represented in json as { "answers": [ { "row": "9384627365", } ], "question_id": "615487516" } Separately, the question’s structure (from the /surveys/get_survey_details endpoint) might have several possible answers, one of which might look like { "text": "Fourth item in dropdown list", "visible": true, "position": 4, "type": "row", "answer_id": "9384627365" } The library understands how this mapping works, and uses that to give you the following ProcessedAnswer object, which first describes the family and type of question, and secondly gives you the respondent’s answers as they relate to the question. Survey Monkey has many different question types, with 11 distinct data structures, each of which are supported by the library. If you have suggestions or spot any bugs, let me know in the comments, or even better submit a pull request .

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• LLBLGen Pro v3.5 has been released!

  - by FransBouma

  Last weekend we released LLBLGen Pro v3.5! Below the list of what's new in this release. Of course, not everything is on this list, like the large amount of work we put in refactoring the runtime framework. The refactoring was necessary because our framework has two paradigms which are added to the framework at a different time, and from a design perspective in the wrong order (the paradigm we added first, SelfServicing, should have been built on top of Adapter, the other paradigm, which was added more than a year after the first released version). The refactoring made sure the framework re-uses more code across the two paradigms (they already shared a lot of code) and is better prepared for the future. We're not done yet, but refactoring a massive framework like ours without breaking interfaces and existing applications is ... a bit of a challenge ;) To celebrate the release of v3.5, we give every customer a 30% discount! Use the coupon code NR1ORM with your order :) The full list of what's new: Designer Rule based .NET Attribute definitions. It's now possible to specify a rule using fine-grained expressions with an attribute definition to define which elements of a given type will receive the attribute definition. Rules can be assigned to attribute definitions on the project level, to make it even easier to define attribute definitions in bulk for many elements in the project. More information... Revamped Project Settings dialog. Multiple project related properties and settings dialogs have been merged into a single dialog called Project Settings, which makes it easier to configure the various settings related to project elements. It also makes it easier to find features previously not used  by many (e.g. type conversions) More information... Home tab with Quick Start Guides. To make new users feel right at home, we added a home tab with quick start guides which guide you through four main use cases of the designer. System Type Converters. Many common conversions have been implemented by default in system type converters so users don't have to develop their own type converters anymore for these type conversions. Bulk Element Setting Manipulator. To change setting values for multiple project elements, it was a little cumbersome to do that without a lot of clicking and opening various editors. This dialog makes changing settings for multiple elements very easy. EDMX Importer. It's now possible to import entity model data information from an existing Entity Framework EDMX file. Other changes and fixes See for the full list of changes and fixes the online documentation. LLBLGen Pro Runtime Framework WCF Data Services (OData) support has been added. It's now possible to use your LLBLGen Pro runtime framework powered domain layer in a WCF Data Services application using the VS.NET tools for WCF Data Services. WCF Data Services is a Microsoft technology for .NET 4 to expose your domain model using OData. More information... New query specification and execution API: QuerySpec. QuerySpec is our new query specification and execution API as an alternative to Linq and our more low-level API. It's build, like our Linq provider, on top of our lower-level API. More information... SQL Server 2012 support. The SQL Server DQE allows paging using the new SQL Server 2012 style. More information... System Type converters. For a common set of types the LLBLGen Pro runtime framework contains built-in type conversions so you don't need to write your own type converters anymore. Public/NonPublic property support. It's now possible to mark a field / navigator as non-public which is reflected in the runtime framework as an internal/friend property instead of a public property. This way you can hide properties from the public interface of a generated class and still access it through code added to the generated code base. FULL JOIN support. It's now possible to perform FULL JOIN joins using the native query api and QuerySpec. It's left to the developer to check whether the used target database supports FULL (OUTER) JOINs. Using a FULL JOIN with entity fetches is not recommended, and should only be used when both participants in the join aren't the target of the fetch. Dependency Injection Tracing. It's now possible to enable tracing on dependency injection. Enable tracing at level '4' on the traceswitch 'ORMGeneral'. This will emit trace information about which instance of which type got an instance of type T injected into property P. Entity Instances in projections in Linq. It's now possible to return an entity instance in a custom Linq projection. It's now also possible to pass this instance to a method inside the query projection. Inheritance fully supported in this construct. Entity Framework support The Entity Framework has been updated in the recent year with code-first support and a new simpler context api: DbContext (with DbSet). The amount of code to generate is smaller and the context simpler. LLBLGen Pro v3.5 comes with support for DbContext and DbSet and generates code which utilizes these new classes. NHibernate support NHibernate v3.2+ built-in proxy factory factory support. By default the built-in ProxyFactoryFactory is selected. FluentNHibernate Session Manager uses 1.2 syntax. Fluent NHibernate mappings generate a SessionManager which uses the v1.2 syntax for the ProxyFactoryFactory location Optionally emit schema / catalog name in mappings Two settings have been added which allow the user to control whether the catalog name and/or schema name as known in the project in the designer is emitted into the mappings.

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• Testing Mobile Websites with Adobe Shadow

  - by dwahlin

  It’s no surprise that mobile development is all the rage these days. With all of the new mobile devices being released nearly every day the ability for developers to deliver mobile solutions is more important than ever. Nearly every developer or company I’ve talked to recently about mobile development in training classes, at conferences, and on consulting projects says that they need to find a solution to get existing websites into the mobile space. Although there are several different frameworks out there that can be used such as jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, jQTouch, and others, how do you test how your site renders on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, and the variety of mobile form factors out there? Although there are different virtual solutions that can be used including Electric Plum for iOS, emulators, browser plugins for resizing the laptop/desktop browser, and more, at some point you need to test on as many physical devices as possible. This can be extremely challenging and quite time consuming though especially when you consider that you have to manually enter URLs into devices and click links on each one to drill-down into sites. Adobe Labs just released a product called Adobe Shadow (thanks to Kurt Sprinzl for letting me know about it) that significantly simplifies testing sites on physical devices, debugging problems you find, and even making live modifications to HTML and CSS content while viewing a site on the device to see how rendering changes. You can view a page in your laptop/desktop browser and have it automatically pushed to all of your devices without actually touching the device (a huge time saver). See a problem with a device? Locate it using the free Chrome extension, pull up inspection tools (based on the Chrome Developer tools) and make live changes through Chrome that appear on the respective device so that it’s easy to identify how problems can be resolved. I’ve been using Adobe Shadow and am very impressed with the amount of time saved and the different features that it offers. In the rest of the post I’ll walk through how to get it installed, get it started, and use it to view and debug pages.   Getting Adobe Shadow Installed The following steps can be used to get Adobe Shadow installed: 1. Download and install Adobe Shadow on your laptop/desktop 2. Install the Adobe Shadow extension for Chrome 3. Install the Adobe Shadow app on all of your devices (you can find it in various app stores) 4. Connect your devices to Wifi. Make sure they’re on the same network that your laptop/desktop machine is on   Getting Adobe Shadow Started Once Adobe Shadow is installed, you’ll need to get it running on your laptop/desktop and on all your mobile devices. The following steps walk through that process: 1. Start the Adobe Shadow application on your laptop/desktop 2. Start the Adobe Shadow app on each of your mobile devices 3. Locate the laptop/desktop name in the list that’s shown on each mobile device: 4. Select the laptop/desktop name and a passcode will be shown: 5. Open the Adobe Shadow Chrome extension on the laptop/desktop and enter the passcode for the given device: Using Adobe Shadow to View and Modify Pages Once Adobe Shadow is up and running on your laptop/desktop and on all of your mobile devices you can navigate to a page in Chrome on the laptop/desktop and it will automatically be pushed out to all connected mobile devices. If you have 5 mobile devices setup they’ll all navigate to the page displayed in Chrome (pretty awesome!). This makes it super easy to see how a given page looks on your iPad, Android device, etc. without having to touch the device itself. If you find a problem with a page on a device you can select the device in the Chrome Adobe Shadow extension on your laptop/desktop and select the remote inspector icon (it’s the < > icon): This will pull up the Adobe Shadow remote debugging window which contains the standard Chrome Developer tool tabs such as Elements, Resources, Network, etc. Click on the Elements tab to see the HTML rendered for the target device and then drill into the respective HTML content, CSS styles, etc. As HTML elements are selected in the Adobe Shadow debugging tool they’ll be highlighted on the device itself just like they would if you were debugging a page directly in Chrome with the developer tools. Here’s an example from my Android device that shows how the page looks on the device as I select different HTML elements on the laptop/desktop: Conclusion I’m really impressed with what I’ve to this point from Adobe Shadow. Controlling pages that display on devices directly from my laptop/desktop is a big time saver and the ability to remotely see changes made through the Chrome Developer Tools (on my laptop/desktop) really pushes the tool over the top. If you’re developing mobile applications it’s definitely something to check out. It’s currently free to download and use. For additional details check out the video below:  

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• Invariant code contracts – using class-wide contracts

  - by DigiMortal

  It is possible to define invariant code contracts for classes. Invariant contracts should always hold true whatever member of class is called. In this posting I will show you how to use invariant code contracts so you understand how they work and how they should be tested. This is my randomizer class I am using to demonstrate code contracts. I added one method for invariant code contracts. Currently there is one contract that makes sure that random number generator is not null. public class Randomizer {     private IRandomGenerator _generator;       private Randomizer() { }       public Randomizer(IRandomGenerator generator)     {         _generator = generator;     }       public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(             min < max,             "Min must be less than max"         );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           return _generator.Next(min, max);     }       [ContractInvariantMethod]     private void ObjectInvariant()     {         Contract.Invariant(_generator != null);     } } Invariant code contracts are define in methods that have ContractInvariantMethod attribute. Some notes: It is good idea to define invariant methods as private. Don’t call invariant methods from your code because code contracts system does not allow it. Invariant methods are defined only as place where you can keep invariant contracts. Invariant methods are called only when call to some class member is made! The last note means that having invariant method and creating Randomizer object with null as argument does not automatically generate exception. We have to call at least one method from Randomizer class. Here is the test for generator. You can find more about contracted code testing from my posting Code Contracts: Unit testing contracted code. There is also explained why the exception handling in test is like it is. [TestMethod] [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))] public void Should_fail_if_generator_is_null() {     try     {         var randomizer = new Randomizer(null);         randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(1, 4);     }     catch (Exception ex)     {         throw new Exception(ex.Message, ex);     } } Try out this code – with unit tests or with test application to see that invariant contracts are checked as soon as you call some member of Randomizer class.

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