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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 20, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 20, 2014Popular ReleasesEdiFabric: Release 3.1: Fixed parse tree generation for the latest validation schemasCompare .NET Objects: Version 2.03.0.0: Support for System.Drawing.Font type New Option to Ignore Unknown Object TypesQuickMon: Version 3.11: This release adds some major changes to the core monitoring engine. 1. Polling overrides: Each collector entry can specify a minimum time updating is allowed for it and dependent collector entries. 2. Polling frequency sliding: Additional to polling overrides a collector entry can specify 'sliding' polling frequency if the state remains the same. This means the frequency slows down reducing overhead of polling on a stagnant resource. 3. The monitor pack has an overriding frequency. If used...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 3.7.2.3-beta2: Small beta test to determine issue with Lost Cousins facts with census with no country.AST - a tool for exploring windows kernel: Ast-0.2.20140519-win8.1x86: symbol form, supports any symbol query like dt/x command in windbg symbol form, supports loading pdb file pe form, visualizer of pe info (dos/optional header, sections, directories, import/export table)Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.72.457): Apologies for the previous update! FK issue fixed and also a template data cache issue.Endomondo Export: First Release: This is the first release, it might be buggy, so I'll eventually try to improve it over time. I did it quick and dirty as I didn't have much spare time to develop it, but again it works for me. ;-) If I see people use it and there are reasonable requests I might add more stuff to it. Hope you guys like it!FileTable Services for Lightswitch: FileTable Services for Lightswitch 1.0.0: 19 MAY 2014 v.1.0.0 Initial releaseWordMat: WordMat v. 1.06: Check WordMat.blogspot.com for a complete description of new features.Visual F# Tools: Daily Builds Preview 05-16-2014: This preview is released for use under a proprietary license.Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1405.17: Add Russian translation (thanks to VSharmanov) Fix a bug that make WPP to crash if the user click on "Connect/Reload" while the Report Tab is loading. Enhance the way WPP store the password for remote computers command.MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): More Terra 1.12.9: =========== = Compatibility = =========== Updated to account for new format 1.2.4.1 =========== = Issues = =========== all items have not been added. Some colors for new tiles may be off. I wanted to get this out so people have a usable program.LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v3.0.3: Supports .NET 4.5x, Windows Phone 8.x, Windows 8.x, Windows Azure, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.iOS. New features include Status/Lookup, Mute APIs, and bug fixes. 100% Twitter API v1.1 coverage, Async, Portable Class Library (PCL).ConEmu - Windows console with tabs: ConEmu 140519 [Alpha]: ConEmu - developer build x86 and x64 versions. Written in C++, no additional packages required. Run "ConEmu.exe" or "ConEmu64.exe". Some useful information you may found: http://superuser.com/questions/tagged/conemu http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/ConEmuFAQ http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/wiki/TableOfContents If you want to use ConEmu in portable mode, just create empty "ConEmu.xml" file near to "ConEmu.exe" CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.26.0: Added access to the Release Notes during 'Check for Updates...'' Debug panels Added support for generic types members Members are grouped into 'Raw View' and 'Non-Public members' categories Implemented dedicated (array-like) view for Lists and Dictionaries http://download-codeplex.sec.s-msft.com/Download?ProjectName=csscriptnpp&DownloadId=846498ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.70.0: A lot of fixes. See history.SFDL.NET: SFDL.NET (2.2.9.2): Changelog: Neues Icon Xup.in CnL Plugin BugfixSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.030.008 Release 1: Fixed cube editor failing to apply color to cubes. Added to cube editor, replace cube dialog, and Build Percent dialog. Corrected for hidden asteroid ore, allowing rare ore to show when importing an asteroid, or converting a 3d model to an asteroid (still appears to be limitations on rare ore in small asteroids). Allowed ore selection to Asteroid file import. (Can copy/import and convert existing asteroid to another ore). Added progress bars to common long running operations. Fixed ...Better Robocopy GUI: Command Line GUI for Robocopy: Better Robocopy GUI had become the primary plugin in Command Line GUI built on .NET 4TFS Planning and Disaster Recovery Avoidance Guide: v1.4.BETA - TFS, DR and Azure IaaS Planning Guides: Welcome to the TFS Planning and DR Avoidance Guidance What is new? A new crisper, more compact style, which is easier to consume on multiple devices without sacrificing any content. Also included are the new TFS on Azure IaaS guide and supplementary guides. Note Capacity planning workbook and posters are included in the Everything Zip package. Quality-Bar Detail Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review ...New ProjectsBizTalk Port Info Query Tool: This tool is capable of retrieving BizTalk send and receive port information, through which can be searched.C5_StyleCopped: The C5 project while an excellent set of collections suffers from being very non StyleCop compliant.Channel 9 RSS Reader (Universal / WinPhone 8): Channel 9 RSS Reader Code Share Sample- A simple RSS reader app for the Channel 9 RSS feed sharing code across 3 apps.CRM Web API Yelp Example: Sample Visual Studio 2013 project that provides an example of how you could use Web API and Microsoft Azure to integrate with Yelp.ERP Accounting System: ERP Accounting SystemEssIL: Essential classes written in CIL.FileTable Services for Lightswitch: Integrates SQL Server 2012 and later FileTable functionality with Lightswitch rapid application development tools. Works with ALL types of Lightswitch clients.freeasyDMS: A free and easy to use DMS for everyone. Without any cloud restrictions. All information about added Documents are stored lokaly at XML files.FreelancerCreateReport: Freelancer_CreateReportInstituto Superior de Ciencias Comerciales: esta es una pruebaMVC Blogger: Under TestingMVC Bootstrap Timepicker: ASP.NET MVC html helper for Bootstrap 3 time picker. This helper makes it easy to use a time picker with the bootstrap look 'n feel in your web site.NextGen: NextGen FrameworkPlato 2D Framework: Plato Windows Runtime App canvas oriented MVVM framework.Promotion Planner Pro: Trade Promotion Management and Analytic suitSharePoint Managed Metadata List Filter: This managed metadata list filter webpart provides the ability to filter multiple list view webparts that contain the same Managed metadata site column on the sSurfwave: A Windows Store (Windows Runtime) library that provides multi-touch tracking and normalized interpretation capabilities.Torrent Description Generator: A simple WPF application to generate a robust torrent description for movies in text or bbcode. Includes file info, thumbs, imdb/RT links and poster.Trang's Project: Qu?n lý thông tin khách hàng trong ho?t d?ng vay v?nWebSniffer: A bot written in C# to play a hangman game and intelligently make decisions about what to pick next.WorldBankBBS: BBS Package designed for use with ASCII, ANSI and PETSCII (Commodore) users. All resources are shared between differing clients. WPF Password Generator with Prism 5 and Moq (2014): This is a WPF reference implementation for developing an MVVM application that uses Prism (5) and Moq.????-????【??】????????: ??????????????,??????????????????,?????????????。?????????,????????????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????,????,????,?????????.?????,?????!?????,?????????、??、??! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????,???????,??????。??????????,????,????,?????,????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????、???????,?????????,???????????????。?????????????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,???????????????????????????,????:????,????,????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,?????????????? ??。??????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???、???!???????,????????????????,????????????,???! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????,????,???????、???????????,???????????,????,?????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????????,?????????,??????????,????????,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????,????????,??????????????,?????????,????,????,??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????、?????????,?????????,????,????????,????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????:??????、????、????、????、????、??????、??????，???????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????、?????,????????????????????,????,????,??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????，???????、???????????，????????、????、????、??????、????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????????,???????????????????????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????、????、????、??????、????、???????,?????,?????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????、????、??????、????????,????????????,???????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????????????????????,?????,????,???????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????、???????,?????????,???????????????,?????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????、??、???????????,??????,????????,??????????????????...????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????，?????????/?,,???????????,??????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????,????????????????????????,???????????????,?????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????,????????,?????,???,???????????,???????????,?????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????????、??????????????,??????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????"????,????"???,????????????????????????,??????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,????:????,????,????,??????,?????,???????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????????,???????????,????????,?????????????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????、????、????、??????、????、????????,????????、?????????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,?????????????。????????????,???????,???????,?????,?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,?????????、??、??、????,??????????,?????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????、????、????、??????????,???,?????,???????????????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????,?????, ... ????????????,????,????,?????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????????、??????,????、?????、????， ?????????，?????????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????,??????,?????????????????????,???????????????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????、????、????、??????、???????,??????、??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????【.????.????.????.????.】??【??】:、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,????,??.??.??.??.??.??.??.???，????，???????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????、????????、????????、????????、???????,????????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????,???????,???????????,??????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????、??????、????、?????、?????!????,????????????????!????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????,??,????????。 ... ??????????????????、??????????????????... ???????-???????【??】???????????: ???????????????????????????,???????????????,????????????????！ ???????-???????【??】???????????: ???????????????:????,????,????,???????,????????,??????:????????,?????! ???????-???????【??】???????????: ???????,?????????,?????????????。?????????????,?????????,???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,???????、???????????,????????,????,?????????,??????,??????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,????????????,?????????????????,??????,????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???????、????、????、??????、???????,??????,???????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????,??,??,??,??? ?,??,,??,??,??,??,??,??,????????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????????????:???????,??????,????,????,????,?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????,????,????,????,???????,?????,?????.??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????????????,???????????.????????????,????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,??:??????,????,????,????,?????,??????????????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,???????????????。?????????????,???????,?????????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????,????(??)????????，??????，????，???，????，???????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????,?????????????,?????????????,??????,????,????,??????????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,????????,????:???????,??????,????,????,?????,?????,??????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????,????,????,??????????。???????????????,??,??,??????????,??????... ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,??????????????、???????、???????、???????、?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????,?????????????? ??。????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????、?????、?????、?????、?????、????,???????????,?????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????、?????、?????、????、?????,??????????。????????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,????????????,?????、??、????,?????,??????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????,???????????????。???????????,??????:????、????、???????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????,?????????????,????,?????????,?????????????,?????,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,???????????,??????????????,??????????，??????????????！

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 17, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 17, 2014Popular ReleasesSEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.030.008 Release 1: Fixed cube editor failing to apply color to cubes. Added to cube editor, replace cube dialog, and Build Percent dialog. Corrected for hidden asteroid ore, allowing rare ore to show when importing an asteroid, or converting a 3d model to an asteroid (still appears to be limitations on rare ore in small asteroids). Allowed ore selection to Asteroid file import. (Can copy/import and convert existing asteroid to another ore). Added progress bars to common long running operations. Fixed ...Better Robocopy GUI: Command Line GUI for Robocopy: Better Robocopy GUI had become the primary plugin in Command Line GUI built on .NET 4CTI Text Encryption: CTI Text Encryption 5.3: Change Log: - Remove read only behavior of text area of encrypted text. - Minor UI functionality update.Mini SQL Query: Mini SQL Query (1.0.71.456): Minor fixes and template corrections.QuickMon: Version 3.10: Adding the ability to see 'history' of Collector states (including details of errors or warnings at that time). The history size is configurable (default is switched off) and the Windows Service completely ignores keeping history (no UI or user to access it anyway). The Collector stats window now displays this history plus multiple collector stats windows can be opened at the same time. Additionally fixed a bug in the event log collector that reported an 'Error' state when an 'out of bounds' ...TFS Planning and Disaster Recovery Avoidance Guide: v1.4.BETA - TFS, DR and Azure IaaS Planning Guides: Welcome to the TFS Planning and DR Avoidance Guidance What is new? A new crisper, more compact style, which is easier to consume on multiple devices without sacrificing any content. Also included are the new TFS on Azure IaaS guide and supplementary guides. Note Capacity planning workbook and posters are included in the Everything Zip package. Quality-Bar Detail Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review ...WinAudit: WinAudit Freeware v3.0: WinAudit.exe v3.0 MD5: 88750CCF49FF7418199B2645755830FA Known Issues: 1. Report creation can be very slow when right-to-left (Hebrew) characters are present. 2. Emsisoft Anti-Malware may stop and/or quarantine WinAudit. This happens when WinAudit attempts to obtain a list if running programmes. You will need to set an exception rule in Emsisoft to allow WinAudit to run.Aspose for Sitefinity: Sitefinity Export to Microsoft Word and PDF: Aspose Sitefinity Content Export Add-on allow users to export online content into Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat PDF document using Aspose.Words. This Add-on makes it very simple and easy to have an offline copy of your favorite online content for editing, sharing and printing etc. in popular Microsoft Word Doc/Docx or PDF format. It adds simple Export to Word and Export to Pdf buttons at any desired location on the page and clicking the button dynamically exports the content of the page int...MVCwCMS - ASP.NET MVC CMS: MVCwCMS 2.2.2: Updated CKFinder config. For the installation instructions visit the documentation page: https://mvcwcms.codeplex.com/documentationTerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.4: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed installer not uninstalling older versions The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip ...WPF Localization Extension: v2.2.1: Issue #9277 Issue #9292 Issue #9311 Issue #9312 Issue #9313 Issue #9314CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.1.41167 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Variable walking / flying speed. Xbox 360 Controller support. Kinect for Windows support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.6.5 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-1-41167-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http:/...ParserIO: ParserIO v1.0.0.3: Fixed some bug about AIM Symbology IDSSIS SFTP Task Control Flow Component: SSIS SFTP v2 for SQL Server 2012: Please report you to the Documentation page for installation instructions.Grade Calculator For BTEC First Diploma in IT level 2: Grade Calculator For BTEC First Diploma in IT: Grade Calculator For BTEC First Diploma in IT level 2Spaghetti CMS: Version 1.50: New: Backend with new design, bootstrap integration New: Patch function for assigning themes, master page files to pages New: Wysiwyg editor (possible to link css file against editor) and filemanager New: Support time triggered content New: Edit css, js, skin, master file within the CMS New: Dynamically add controls to the CMS New: Change password for an user (usermanagement) New: Localize CMS In the near future we will open our new website for documentation and demo. http://...ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0.6: FineUI（???） ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ??? FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript，No CSS，No UpdatePanel，No ViewState，No WebServices ??????? ?????? IE 8.0+、Chrome、Firefox、Opera、Safari ???? Apache License v2.0 ?：ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license) ???? ??：http://fineui.com/ ??：http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??：http://fineui.com/demo/ ??：http://fineui.com/doc/ ??：http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI ???? ExtJS ????????，???? ExtJS ?，?????： 1. ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ? http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.ph...Office App Model Samples: Office App Model Samples v2.0: Office App Model Samples v2.0Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.13.0: Version 0.13.0 Added "mutators" which add uppercase and numbers to passphrases (to help complying with upper, lower, number complexity rules). Additional API methods which help consuming the generator from 3rd party c# projects. 13,160 words in the default dictionary (~600 more than previous release).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.25.0: Release v1.0.25.0 MemberInfo/MethodInfo popup is now positioned properly to fit the screen In MethodInfo popup method signatures are word-wrapped Implemented Debug text value visualizer Pining sub-values from Watch PanelNew ProjectsAllowing Multiple Attachments for SharePoint 2013 Custom Lists: This code supports basic upload multiple attachments to Custom List item and should be able to attach the existing file name override.Azure File Depot: The Azure File Depot is an effort to provide sample implementations of various tasks related to using blob storage to move files around.CRM Customization Comparer - 2011 and 2013: Compare your Dynamics CRM Solution files via XML Diff. Graphical interface to quickly assess changes. Features: - Graphical UI - Supports CRM 2011 and 2013ElectrosLtd DSA Assignment: This program was created in order to make use of models views and controllersGPS Tracking: A GPS Tracker App.OOP-2112110195: mon:OOP ten:mai duy tanPowerShell Task Control Flow Component for SSIS: Launch PowerShell Script/Commands from SSIS - An another Custom Control Flow Component with the new "PowerShell Task" (currently targets PowerShell 3.0)Quan ly giai bong da: Qu?n lý gi?i bóng dá ngo?i hang AnhSharePoint PDF OpenDocument: SharePoint PDF Content type (Sandbox solution) One OpenDocuments Com+ server for PDF content Adobe software not included but required.Useful Classes: Useful Classes is a DLL that I have written to include a ton of features from one file within your project. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????,??????????????????,????????,??????????????、????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????,?????????。????????????,??????,????,????,?????????！ ????-????【??】????????: ????????????300??,????????、???????、????、????????、?????,??????:????,????,???????！ ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????????,?? ???????,??????? ???,????? , ???? ?????,?????????????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????? , ???? ?????,??????????????,????,????,??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,????(??)????????，??????，????，???，????，???????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ?????????????????????,????????,????????,????,????,??????，???????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????,?????,???，???、???、?????,???,?????,???????????????. ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????:???????,????,????,????,??????????,????,????,????。??????... ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????????????，?????、???、????，????，???、???、???、???、???，????，?????！ ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????、??、???????????,??????,????????,??????????????????...????。 ????-????【??】????????: ??????????????????????,?????????,??????????,????????,?????! ????-????【??】????????: ?????????????、???????,?????????,???????????????,?????????????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????、?????????,?????????,????,????????,????????????????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????????,????????,??????????????,?????????,????,????,??????。

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• 7-Eleven Improves the Digital Guest Experience With 10-Minute Application Provisioning

  - by MichaelM-Oracle

  By Vishal Mehra - Director, Cloud Computing, Oracle Consulting Making the Cloud Journey Matter There’s much more to cloud computing than cutting costs and closing data centers. In fact, cloud computing is fast becoming the engine for innovation and productivity in the digital age. Oracle Consulting Services contributes to our customers’ cloud journey by accelerating application provisioning and rapidly deploying enterprise solutions. By blending flexibility with standardization, our Middleware as a Service (MWaaS) offering is ensuring the success of many cloud initiatives. 10-Minute Application Provisioning Times at 7-Eleven As a case in point, 7-Eleven recently highlighted the scope, scale, and results of a cloud-powered environment. The world’s largest convenience store chain is rolling out a Digital Guest Experience (DGE) program across 8,500 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Everyday, 7-Eleven connects with tens of millions of customers through point-of-sale terminals, web sites, and mobile apps. Promoting customer loyalty, targeting promotions, downloading digital coupons, and accepting digital payments are all part of the roadmap for a comprehensive and rewarding customer experience. And what about the time required for deploying successive versions of this mission-critical solution? Ron Clanton, 7-Eleven's DGE Program Manager, Information Technology reported at Oracle Open World, " We are now able to provision new environments in less than 10 minutes. This includes the complete SOA Suite on Exalogic, and Enterprise Manager managing both the SOA Suite, Exalogic, and our Exadata databases ." OCS understands the complex nature of innovative solutions and has processes and expertise to help clients like 7-Eleven rapidly develop technology that enhances the customer experience with little more than the click of a button. OCS understood that the 7-Eleven roadmap required careful planning, agile development, and a cloud-capable environment to move fast and perform at enterprise scale. Business Agility Today’s business-savvy technology leaders face competing priorities as they confront the digital disruptions of the mobile revolution and next-generation enterprise applications. To support an innovation agenda, IT is required to balance competing priorities between development and operations groups. Standardization and consolidation of computing resources are the keys to success. With our operational and technical expertise promoting business agility, Oracle Consulting's deep Middleware as a Service experience can make a significant difference to our clients by empowering enterprise IT organizations with the computing environment they seek to keep up with the pace of change that digitally driven business units expect. Depending on the needs of the organization, this environment runs within a private, public, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Through on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources, IT delivers the standard tools and methods for developing, integrating, deploying, and scaling next-generation applications. Gold profiles of predefined configurations eliminate the version mismatches among databases, application servers, and SOA suite components, delivered both by Oracle and other enterprise ISVs. These computing resources are well defined in business terms, enabling users to select what they need from a service catalog. Striking the Balance between Development and Operations As a result, development groups have the flexibility to choose among a menu of available services with descriptions of standard business functions, service level guarantees, and costs. Faced with the consumerization of enterprise IT, they can deliver the innovative customer experiences that seamlessly integrate with underlying enterprise applications and services. This cloud-powered development and testing environment accelerates release cycles to ensure agile development and rapid deployments. At the same time, the operations group is relying on certified stacks and frameworks, tuned to predefined environments and patterns. Operators can maintain a high level of security, and continue best practices for applications/systems monitoring and management. Moreover, faced with the challenges of delivering on service level agreements (SLAs) with the business units, operators can ensure performance, scalability, and reliability of the infrastructure. The elasticity of a cloud-computing environment – the ability to rapidly add virtual machines and storage in response to computing demands -- makes a difference for hardware utilization and efficiency. Contending with Continuous Change What does it take to succeed on the promise of the cloud? As the engine for innovation and productivity in the digital age, IT must face not only the technical transformations but also the organizational challenges of the cloud. Standardizing key technologies, resources, and services through cloud computing is only one part of the cloud journey. Managing relationships among multiple department and projects over time – developing the management, governance, and monitoring capabilities within IT – is an often unmentioned but all too important second part. In fact, IT must have the organizational agility to contend with continuous change. This is where a skilled consulting services partner can play a pivotal role as a trusted advisor in the successful adoption of cloud solutions. With a lifecycle services approach to delivering innovative business solutions, Oracle Consulting Services has expertise and a portfolio of services to help enterprise customers succeed on their cloud journeys as well as other converging mega trends .

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 15, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 15, 2012Popular ReleasesMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.15: Changelog for 2.2.15 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Added support for %originalfilepath% to get the source file full path. Used for custom commands only. 2. Added support for better parsing of Media Portal XML files to extract ShowName and Episode Name and download additional details from TVDB (like Season No, Episode No etc). 3. Added support for TVDB seriesID in metadata 4. Added support for eMail non blocking UI testCrashReporter.NET : Exception reporting library for C# and VB.NET: CrashReporter.NET 1.2: *Added html mail format which shows hierarchical exception report for better understanding.VCC: Latest build, v2.3.00914.0: Automatic drop of latest buildScarlet Road: Scarlet Road Test Build 007: Playable game. Includes source.DotNetNuke Search Engine Sitemaps Provider: Version 02.00.00: New release of the Search Engine Sitemap Providers New version - not backwards compatible with 1.x versions New sandboxing to prevent exceptions in module providers interfering with main provider Now installable using the Host->Extensions page New sitemaps available for Active Forums and Ventrian Property Agent Now derived from DotNetNuke Provider base for better framework integration DotNetNuke minimum compatibility raised to DNN 5.2, .NET to 3.5PDF Viewer Web part: PDF Viewer Web Part: PDF Viewer Web PartChris on SharePoint Solutions: View Grid Banding - v1.0: Initial release of the View Creation and Management Page Column Selector Banding solution.$linq - A Javascript LINQ library: Version 1.0: Version 1.0 Initial releasePowerConverter: PowerConverter Beta: This is the first release of PowerConverter. Allows for converting PE code to Power code.NetView Control for Microsoft Access: DevVersion 19852 - More Databinding and Resizing: NetView Renamed event GotFocus to Clicked Added events Clicked/DoubleClicked Added event BackgroundDoubleClicked Changed nomenclature for world coordinates to (Position1, Position2)|Extent1xExtent2 Renamed Locked -> Readonly Added properties Minimum1/Maximum1 and Minimum2/Maximum2 Removed NetView.DeviceDefinitionArea, obsolete properties Support for resizing Added properties BackColor and BorderColor NetView Properties form added binding field for BusinessId propagate erro...Runtime Dynamic Data Model Builder: Main Library Version 1.0.0.0: Main Library Version 1.0.0.0Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.67: Fix issue #18629 - incorrectly handling null characters in string literals and not throwing an error when outside string literals. update for Issue #18600 - forgot to make the ///#DEBUG= directive also set a known-global for the given debug namespace. removed the kill-switch for disregarding preprocessor define-comments (///#IF and the like) and created a separate CodeSettings.IgnorePreprocessorDefines property for those who really need to turn that off. Some people had been setting -kil...Lakana - WPF Framework: Lakana V2: Lakana V2 contains : - Lakana WPF Forms (with sample project) - Lakana WPF Navigation (with sample project)Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: OData QueryFeed workflow activity: The OData QueryFeed sample activity shows how to create a workflow activity that consumes an OData resource, and renders entity properties in a Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet or Microsoft Word 2010 document. Using the sample QueryFeed activity, you can consume any OData resource. The sample activity uses LINQ to project OData metadata into activity designer expression items. By setting activity expressions, a fully qualified OData query string is constructed consisting of Resource, Filter, Or...Arduino for Visual Studio: Arduino 1.x for Visual Studio 2012, 2010 and 2008: Register for the visualmicro.com forum for more news and updates Version 1209.10 includes support for VS2012 and minor fixes for the Arduino debugger beta test team. Version 1208.19 is considered stable for visual studio 2010 and 2008. If you are upgrading from an older release of Visual Micro and encounter a problem then uninstall "Visual Micro for Arduino" using "Control Panel>Add and Remove Programs" and then run the install again. Key Features of 1209.10 Support for Visual Studio 2...Social Network Importer for NodeXL: SocialNetImporter(v.1.5): This new version includes: - Fixed the "resource limit" bug caused by Facebook - Bug fixes To use the new graph data provider, do the following: Unzip the Zip file into the "PlugIns" folder that can be found in the NodeXL installation folder (i.e "C:\Program Files\Social Media Research Foundation\NodeXL Excel Template\PlugIns") Open NodeXL template and you can access the new importer from the "Import" menuAcDown????? - AcDown Downloader Framework: AcDown????? v4.1: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown??????????????????，????????????????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ???? 32??64? ???Linux ????(1)????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? (2)???????????Linux???，????????Mono?? ??...Move Mouse: Move Mouse 2.5.2: FIXED - Minor fixes and improvements.MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.3: Added The new release is compatible with Mvc4 RTM. Support for handling Time Zones in dates. Specifically added helper methods to convert to UTC or local time all DateTimes contained in a model received by a controller, and helper methods to handle date only fileds. This together with a detailed documentation on how TimeZones are handled in all situations by the Asp.net Mvc framework, will contribute to mitigate the nightmare of dates and timezones. Multiple Templates, and more options to...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.02.00: Maintenance Release Changes on Metro7 06.02.00 Fixed width and height on the jQuery popup for the Editor. Navigation Provider changed to DDR menu Added menu files and scripts Changed skins to Doctype HTML Changed manifest to dnn6 manifest file Changed License to HTML view Fixed issue on Metro7/PinkTitle.ascx with double registering of the Actions Changed source folder structure and start folder, so the project works with the default DNN structure on developing Added VS 20...New ProjectsBizTalk Zombie Management: A powerful tool to handle zombie. As a service you can monitor all zombie instance and process them. For the moment only file is supporting.bxkw8: oooooooooooh long johnsonCellularSolver: The main idea of a this project - create cellular automation (CA) simulation system. We try to reduce ODE/PDE/Integral Equations models to CA-modelEAWebService: EAWebService is web service that executes parallel evolutionary algorithm. Finite Element Method Samples with C#: Finite Element Method Samples with C# Game Jolt C# Trophy API: The Game Jolt Trophy API provides dotNET developers with access to the Game Jolt services including Trophies, High Scores, Data Storage and many more.GNSystem: GNSystem is a simple (yet, no so elegant) Web-Application which contains a Forum system and a CMS\Blog system. GNSystem is written in ASP.Net MVC 4 using C#Hospital Management System (HMS): HMS is a software basically working to make the hospital management much easier and fasterInfinity - WPF.MVC: Framework for WPF/SL/WinFormsKindle: Kindle PublisherMetroCash: A personal finance management programmetroCIS: metroCIS - Eine open-source Anwendung für Windows8 Verwalte dein Studium an der FH Technikum Wien mit dieser App und erleichter dir damit dein Studentenleben.MTAC: MTAC, for My Tfs Administration Center, is a centralized administration tool for TFSMyStart: Create an Open Source implementation of the Windows Start Menu (based initially on Windows 7), to be used on Windows 8.NLite Data Framework: NLite Linq ORM frameworkPDF Viewer Web part: Here now presenting PDF Viewer web part solution with code. Project91405: dfgfdgfdrProject91407: awqwqProject91407M: 111Purchasesales(??????): a simple Sales Manage Project.QueryOver Specification: A simple implementation of the Specification Pattern using NHibernate QueryOver.Shopping Analytics: Esta aplicacion muestra como aprovechar diversas caracteristicas de la plataforma Windows Phone.simbo: Simbo is a simple, fun app for sharing small notes with friends where many of the concepts in your note can be represented by a symbols.SISLOG: El sistema de logística SISLOG es un software que cual será capaz de automatizar y optimizar los procesos que se llevan a cabo en el área de logística.SQL Server Scripts - A RSSUG CodePlex Project: The SQL Server Scripts project is dedicated to supplying high quality scripts to help with the maintenance and development of SQL Server in every environment.Talqum.League: Talqum.League is a League organisator and statistics app.The Pratoriate Foundation: used for all software dev projects for the non profit Pratoriate Foundation.

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• Soft lockup after upgrade - cannot install from live CD

  - by nbm

  I dual-boot MacIntel Core 2 duo. nVidia graphics. Ran upgrade from ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 (64 bit). On restart ran into {numbers} Bug: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 22s! [swapper/0:1] Tried loading earlier kernel: same problem Tried re-installing ubuntu from a liveCD that has worked in the past: version 13.04. Same problem. Tried re-partitioning hard drive using Mac OS X disk utility and then installing ubuntu 14.04LTS from liveCD. Same problem. Not possible to verify liveCD disk (creates same "soft lockup" bug.) Tried installing from the liveCD with version 13.04 that I know works (that's how I got Ubuntu on this machine in the first place.) Same problem. I know this is not a hardware problem as OS X works just fine, I am using it right now on the same machine. I have been using various versions of Ubuntu for 2 years. Things I cannot do: Open a terminal Verify CD image Start ubuntu from CD (same soft lockup problem) This problem is similar to some other questions, none of which have been satisfactorily answered: Ubuntu 14.04 soft lockup on Vostro 3500 Cannot do fresh install of Ubuntu 13.04 while booting from DVD: "soft lockup" bug Live CD stalls when installing Ubuntu 13.10 UPDATE 6/11/14: Following some much-appreciated advice from bain (see below) I burned a 12.04LTS disk and started with kernel parameters: noapic, no1apic, acpi=off, nomodeset, elevator=deadline, and clocksource=jiffies. With all of these parameters I was able to load the 12.04LTS CD ("Try without installing"). It worked fine. However, as soon as I tried to install Ubuntu from the CD, my wired ethernet (eth0) connection would hang. There are already various askubuntu questions and bug reports about this problem, none of which had answers for me. (E.g., dhclient eth0 does nothing, none of the various reset commands does anything, manually setting IP &etc does nothing. I could reliably kill the ethernet connection by clicking "install ubuntu" every single time.) I could go ahead and install 12.04 without an internet connection, but the install would freeze after mostly completing (I tried several times.) There were some relevant error messages in the details of the install output script that, IIRC, had to do with searching for missing files and not being able to access eth0 (internet) to get them. To be honest I gave up at that point and I'm not sure I wrote those down. If I find some notes I will post them. At this point I no longer have Ubuntu on my system. I wiped the partitions and am using exclusively OS X. I am leaving this question in case it helps anyone else with similar problems. I love open source and I love Linux, and the next machine I get I will probably just build from Arch. At the moment I miss repositories and a lot of other things about Ubuntu, but the OS X terminal is 'nix, I can pretty much use all the open source apps I like, and while I am not a fan of the Apple software it gets the job done for me. Unlike Ubuntu, which can't even install. I realize this isn't necessarily a place for a soapbox speech, but when I first installed 12.04 several years ago there were already people in the community complaining that Canonical was going too "commercial". But I loved it. Several years later and all I've seen is Canonical adding more not-so-useful bells and whistles to Ubuntu while continually failing to fix basic problems on upgrades. With a dual-boot (and sometimes triple-boot) system it always took me some tweaking to get an upgrade to work, and to some extent that is okay. But at this point I feel like Canonical ought to just put a price tag on Ubuntu. All I see is more commercialism and advertising and product tie-ins, and ongoing problems do not get fixed. I am a big fan of open-source, not-for profit enterprise. I am also a big fan of for-profit enterprise, which certainly has its place and usefulness. I am not a fan of companies who pretend to be in favor of open source but really are just out to make a buck, and IMNSHO that is what Canonical has become. This is a great community and I wish you all the best, but my next install of Linux will not be Ubuntu.

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• Oracle NoSQL Database Exceeds 1 Million Mixed YCSB Ops/Sec

  - by Charles Lamb

  We ran a set of YCSB performance tests on Oracle NoSQL Database using SSD cards and Intel Xeon E5-2690 CPUs with the goal of achieving 1M mixed ops/sec on a 95% read / 5% update workload. We used the standard YCSB parameters: 13 byte keys and 1KB data size (1,102 bytes after serialization). The maximum database size was 2 billion records, or approximately 2 TB of data. We sized the shards to ensure that this was not an "in-memory" test (i.e. the data portion of the B-Trees did not fit into memory). All updates were durable and used the "simple majority" replica ack policy, effectively 'committing to the network'. All read operations used the Consistency.NONE_REQUIRED parameter allowing reads to be performed on any replica. In the past we have achieved 100K ops/sec using SSD cards on a single shard cluster (replication factor 3) so for this test we used 10 shards on 15 Storage Nodes with each SN carrying 2 Rep Nodes and each RN assigned to its own SSD card. After correcting a scaling problem in YCSB, we blew past the 1M ops/sec mark with 8 shards and proceeded to hit 1.2M ops/sec with 10 shards.  Hardware Configuration We used 15 servers, each configured with two 335 GB SSD cards. We did not have homogeneous CPUs across all 15 servers available to us so 12 of the 15 were Xeon E5-2690, 2.9 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM, and the other 3 were Xeon E5-2680, 2.7 GHz, 2 sockets, 32 threads, 193 GB RAM.  There might have been some upside in having all 15 machines configured with the faster CPU, but since CPU was not the limiting factor we don't believe the improvement would be significant. The client machines were Xeon X5670, 2.93 GHz, 2 sockets, 24 threads, 96 GB RAM. Although the clients had 96 GB of RAM, neither the NoSQL Database or YCSB clients require anywhere near that amount of memory and the test could have just easily been run with much less. Networking was all 10GigE. YCSB Scaling Problem We made three modifications to the YCSB benchmark. The first was to allow the test to accommodate more than 2 billion records (effectively int's vs long's). To keep the key size constant, we changed the code to use base 32 for the user ids. The second change involved to the way we run the YCSB client in order to make the test itself horizontally scalable.The basic problem has to do with the way the YCSB test creates its Zipfian distribution of keys which is intended to model "real" loads by generating clusters of key collisions. Unfortunately, the percentage of collisions on the most contentious keys remains the same even as the number of keys in the database increases. As we scale up the load, the number of collisions on those keys increases as well, eventually exceeding the capacity of the single server used for a given key.This is not a workload that is realistic or amenable to horizontal scaling. YCSB does provide alternate key distribution algorithms so this is not a shortcoming of YCSB in general. We decided that a better model would be for the key collisions to be limited to a given YCSB client process. That way, as additional YCSB client processes (i.e. additional load) are added, they each maintain the same number of collisions they encounter themselves, but do not increase the number of collisions on a single key in the entire store. We added client processes proportionally to the number of records in the database (and therefore the number of shards). This change to the use of YCSB better models a use case where new groups of users are likely to access either just their own entries, or entries within their own subgroups, rather than all users showing the same interest in a single global collection of keys. If an application finds every user having the same likelihood of wanting to modify a single global key, that application has no real hope of getting horizontal scaling. Finally, we used read/modify/write (also known as "Compare And Set") style updates during the mixed phase. This uses versioned operations to make sure that no updates are lost. This mode of operation provides better application behavior than the way we have typically run YCSB in the past, and is only practical at scale because we eliminated the shared key collision hotspots.It is also a more realistic testing scenario. To reiterate, all updates used a simple majority replica ack policy making them durable. Scalability Results In the table below, the "KVS Size" column is the number of records with the number of shards and the replication factor. Hence, the first row indicates 400m total records in the NoSQL Database (KV Store), 2 shards, and a replication factor of 3. The "Clients" column indicates the number of YCSB client processes. "Threads" is the number of threads per process with the total number of threads. Hence, 90 threads per YCSB process for a total of 360 threads. The client processes were distributed across 10 client machines. Shards KVS Size Clients Mixed (records) Threads OverallThroughput(ops/sec) Read Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) Write Latencyav/95%/99%(ms) 2 400m(2x3) 4 90(360) 302,152 0.76/1/3 3.08/8/35 4 800m(4x3) 8 90(720) 558,569 0.79/1/4 3.82/16/45 8 1600m(8x3) 16 90(1440) 1,028,868 0.85/2/5 4.29/21/51 10 2000m(10x3) 20 90(1800) 1,244,550 0.88/2/6 4.47/23/53

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• Performance triage

  - by Dave

  Folks often ask me how to approach a suspected performance issue. My personal strategy is informed by the fact that I work on concurrency issues. (When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, but I'll try to keep this general). A good starting point is to ask yourself if the observed performance matches your expectations. Expectations might be derived from known system performance limits, prototypes, and other software or environments that are comparable to your particular system-under-test. Some simple comparisons and microbenchmarks can be useful at this stage. It's also useful to write some very simple programs to validate some of the reported or expected system limits. Can that disk controller really tolerate and sustain 500 reads per second? To reduce the number of confounding factors it's better to try to answer that question with a very simple targeted program. And finally, nothing beats having familiarity with the technologies that underlying your particular layer. On the topic of confounding factors, as our technology stacks become deeper and less transparent, we often find our own technology working against us in some unexpected way to choke performance rather than simply running into some fundamental system limit. A good example is the warm-up time needed by just-in-time compilers in Java Virtual Machines. I won't delve too far into that particular hole except to say that it's rare to find good benchmarks and methodology for java code. Another example is power management on x86. Power management is great, but it can take a while for the CPUs to throttle up from low(er) frequencies to full throttle. And while I love "turbo" mode, it makes benchmarking applications with multiple threads a chore as you have to remember to turn it off and then back on otherwise short single-threaded runs may look abnormally fast compared to runs with higher thread counts. In general for performance characterization I disable turbo mode and fix the power governor at "performance" state. Another source of complexity is the scheduler, which I've discussed in prior blog entries. Lets say I have a running application and I want to better understand its behavior and performance. We'll presume it's warmed up, is under load, and is an execution mode representative of what we think the norm would be. It should be in steady-state, if a steady-state mode even exists. On Solaris the very first thing I'll do is take a set of "pstack" samples. Pstack briefly stops the process and walks each of the stacks, reporting symbolic information (if available) for each frame. For Java, pstack has been augmented to understand java frames, and even report inlining. A few pstack samples can provide powerful insight into what's actually going on inside the program. You'll be able to see calling patterns, which threads are blocked on what system calls or synchronization constructs, memory allocation, etc. If your code is CPU-bound then you'll get a good sense where the cycles are being spent. (I should caution that normal C/C++ inlining can diffuse an otherwise "hot" method into other methods. This is a rare instance where pstack sampling might not immediately point to the key problem). At this point you'll need to reconcile what you're seeing with pstack and your mental model of what you think the program should be doing. They're often rather different. And generally if there's a key performance issue, you'll spot it with a moderate number of samples. I'll also use OS-level observability tools to lock for the existence of bottlenecks where threads contend for locks; other situations where threads are blocked; and the distribution of threads over the system. On Solaris some good tools are mpstat and too a lesser degree, vmstat. Try running "mpstat -a 5" in one window while the application program runs concurrently. One key measure is the voluntary context switch rate "vctx" or "csw" which reflects threads descheduling themselves. It's also good to look at the user; system; and idle CPU percentages. This can give a broad but useful understanding if your threads are mostly parked or mostly running. For instance if your program makes heavy use of malloc/free, then it might be the case you're contending on the central malloc lock in the default allocator. In that case you'd see malloc calling lock in the stack traces, observe a high csw/vctx rate as threads block for the malloc lock, and your "usr" time would be less than expected. Solaris dtrace is a wonderful and invaluable performance tool as well, but in a sense you have to frame and articulate a meaningful and specific question to get a useful answer, so I tend not to use it for first-order screening of problems. It's also most effective for OS and software-level performance issues as opposed to HW-level issues. For that reason I recommend mpstat & pstack as my the 1st step in performance triage. If some other OS-level issue is evident then it's good to switch to dtrace to drill more deeply into the problem. Only after I've ruled out OS-level issues do I switch to using hardware performance counters to look for architectural impediments.

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• Taking the Plunge - or Dipping Your Toe - into the Fluffy IAM Cloud by Paul Dhanjal (Simeio Solutions)

  - by Greg Jensen

  In our last three posts, we’ve examined the revolution that’s occurring today in identity and access management (IAM). We looked at the business drivers behind the growth of cloud-based IAM, the shortcomings of the old, last-century IAM models, and the new opportunities that federation, identity hubs and other new cloud capabilities can provide by changing the way you interact with everyone who does business with you. In this, our final post in the series, we’ll cover the key things you, the enterprise architect, should keep in mind when considering moving IAM to the cloud. Invariably, what starts the consideration process is a burning business need: a compliance requirement, security vulnerability or belt-tightening edict. Many on the business side view IAM as the “silver bullet” – and for good reason. You can almost always devise a solution using some aspect of IAM. The most critical question to ask first when using IAM to address the business need is, simply: is my solution complete? Typically, “business” is not focused on the big picture. Understandably, they’re focused instead on the need at hand: Can we be HIPAA compliant in 6 months? Can we tighten our new hire, employee transfer and termination processes? What can we do to prevent another password breach? Can we reduce our service center costs by the end of next quarter? The business may not be focused on the complete set of services offered by IAM but rather a single aspect or two. But it is the job – indeed the duty – of the enterprise architect to ensure that all aspects are being met. It’s like remodeling a house but failing to consider the impact on the foundation, the furnace or the zoning or setback requirements. While the homeowners may not be thinking of such things, the architect, of course, must. At Simeio Solutions, the way we ensure that all aspects are being taken into account – to expose any gaps or weaknesses – is to assess our client’s IAM capabilities against a five-step maturity model ranging from “ad hoc” to “optimized.” The model we use is similar to Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s based upon some simple criteria, which can provide a visual representation of how well our clients fair when evaluated against four core categories: ·         Program Governance ·         Access Management (e.g., Single Sign-On) ·         Identity and Access Governance (e.g., Identity Intelligence) ·         Enterprise Security (e.g., DLP and SIEM) Often our clients believe they have a solution with all the bases covered, but the model exposes the gaps or weaknesses. The gaps are ideal opportunities for the cloud to enter into the conversation. The complete process is straightforward: 1.    Look at the big picture, not just the immediate need – what is our roadmap and how does this solution fit? 2.    Determine where you stand with respect to the four core areas – what are the gaps? 3.    Decide how to cover the gaps – what role can the cloud play? Returning to our home remodeling analogy, at some point, if gaps or weaknesses are discovered when evaluating the complete impact of the proposed remodel – if the existing foundation wouldn’t support the new addition, for example – the owners need to decide if it’s time to move to a new house instead of trying to remodel the old one. However, with IAM it’s not an either-or proposition – i.e., either move to the cloud or fix the existing infrastructure. It’s possible to use new cloud technologies just to cover the gaps. Many of our clients start their migration to the cloud this way, dipping in their toe instead of taking the plunge all at once. Because our cloud services offering is based on the Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite, we can offer a tremendous amount of flexibility in this regard. The Oracle platform is not a collection of point solutions, but rather a complete, integrated, best-of-breed suite. Yet it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can choose just the features and capabilities you need using a pay-as-you-go model, incrementally turning on and off services as needed. Better still, all the other capabilities are there, at the ready, whenever you need them. Spooling up these cloud-only services takes just a fraction of the time it would take a typical organization to deploy internally. SLAs in the cloud may be higher than on premise, too. And by using a suite of software that’s complete and integrated, you can dramatically lower cost and complexity. If your in-house solution cannot be migrated to the cloud, you might consider using hardware appliances such as Simeio’s Cloud Interceptor to extend your enterprise out into the network. You might also consider using Expert Managed Services. Cost is usually the key factor – not just development costs but also operational sustainment costs. Talent or resourcing issues often come into play when thinking about sustaining a program. Expert Managed Services such as those we offer at Simeio can address those concerns head on. In a cloud offering, identity and access services lend to the new paradigms described in my previous posts. Most importantly, it allows us all to focus on what we're meant to do – provide value, lower costs and increase security to our respective organizations. It’s that magic “silver bullet” that business knew you had all along. If you’d like to talk more, you can find us at simeiosolutions.com.

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• Clone a VirtualBox Machine

  I just installed VirtualBox, which I want to try out based on recommendations from peers for running a server from within my Windows 7 x64 OS.  Ive never used VirtualBox, so Im certainly no expert at it, but I did want to share my experience with it thus far.  Specifically, my intention is to create a couple of virtual machines.  One I intend to use as a build server, for which a virtual machine makes sense because I can easily move it around as needed if there are hardware issues (its worth noting my need for setting up a build server at the moment is a result of a disk failure on the old build server).  The other VM I want to set up will act as a proxy server for the issue tracking system were using at Code Project, Axosoft OnTime.  They have a Remote Server application for this purpose, and since the OnTime install is 300 miles away from my location, the Remote Server should speed up my use of the OnTime client by limiting the chattiness with the database (at least, thats the hope). So, I need two VMs, and Im lazy.  I dont want to have to install the OS and such twice.  No problem, it should be simple to clone a virtualbox machine, or clone a virtualbox hard drive, right?  Well unfortunately, if you look at the UI for VirtualBox, theres no such command.  Youre left wondering How do I clone a VirtualBox machine? or the slightly related How do I clone a VirtualBox hard drive? If youve used VirtualPC, then you know that its actually pretty easy to copy and move around those VMs.  Not quite so easy with VirtualBox.  Finding the files is easy, theyre located in your user folder within the .VirtualBox folder (possibly within a HardDisks folder).  The disks have a .vdi extension and will be pretty large if youve installed anything.  The one shown here has just Windows Server 2008 R2 installed on it nothing else. If you copy the .vdi file and rename it, you can use the Virtual Media Manager to view it and you can create a new machine and choose the new drive to attach to.  Unfortunately, if you simply make a copy of the drive, this wont work and youll get an error that says something to the effect of: Cannot register the hard disk PATH with UUID {id goes here} because a hard disk PATH2 with UUID {same id goes here} already exists in the media registry (PATH to XML file). There are command line tools you can use to do this in a way that avoids this error.  Specifically, the c:\Program File\Sun\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe program is used for all command line access to VirtualBox, and to copy a virtual disk (.vdi file) you would call something like this: VBoxManage clonehd Disk1.vdi Disk1_Copy.vdi However, in my case this didnt work.  I got basically the same error I showed above, along with some debug information for line 628 of VBoxManageDisk.cpp.  As my main task was not to debug the C++ code used to write VirtualBox, I continued looking for a simple way to clone a virtual drive.  I found it in this blog post. The Secret setvdiuuid Command VBoxManage has a whole bunch of commands you can use with it just pass it /? to see the list.  However, it also has a special command called internalcommands that opens up access to even more commands.  The one thats interesting for us here is the setvdiuuid command.  By calling this command and passing in the file path to your vdi file, it will reset the UUID to a new (random, apparently) UUID.  This then allows the virtual media manager to cope with the file, and lets you set up new machines that reference the newly UUIDd virtual drive.  The full command line would be: VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid MyCopy.vdi The following screenshot shows the error when trying clonehd as well as the successful use of setvdiuuid. Summary Now that I can clone machines easily, its a simple matter to set up base builds of any OS I might need, and then fork from there as needed.  Hopefully the GUI for VirtualBox will be improved to include better support for copying machines/disks, as this is Im sure a very common scenario. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, Please recommendation for further education of the former performing art manager seeking career in IT industries? [on hold]

  - by Baek Seungjoo

  IT specialists there J Thank you very much for your collective efforts here, and I got huge help reading your professional comments and advices on each questions I have searched so far! This time, I would like to ask for your practical advices or recommendation on what I am struggling on at this moment. I am currently seeking higher education for my career transition from performing art manager and director to “IT software and/or service development and management specialist”. However, as this field is quite new to me, and there are lots of different work positions, I have no idea which grad major I better pursue in order to get qualification. Of course I know this question could sounds wired as it is kind of personal choice. But my lack of understanding on how IT software companies work in general, your practical and experience-based advice will be great help to me, who spent more than two months of self-research on net. OK. Before my question, here is my plan and history, which are quite different from those currently in IT industry I think… 1) Target Firstly, get career transition into IT service or products companies and get experiences. Eventually, pursue IT entrepreneurship in combination with my arts and cultural production and business expertise. 2) Background Career: performing arts director and manager in theatre-based scale opera and musical Art education in youth BA in literature and Chinese studies (Art & Humanities) MA in Cultural & Creative Industries (Art & Humanities) – dissertation with focus on digital prosumption and the lived experience of the prosumer. (a qualitative research on the agents in the digital world) 2) Personally Huge interest in IT hardware and software, and their trend. Skills to build up, repair, tune PCs -of course this is no more than personal hobby, but shows my interests in this field. 4) Problem Encounter a question “So, what do you think you can contribute practically in this position”. This question turn me down everytime I go through job interviews, and I decided more education in the relevant area. Here are my questions. 1) In terms of work positions in IT software companies, I wonder if I can put the comparison of what “Artists” is to “Arts Manager or Director” is what “Developer” is to “Product Manager”. (Of course, this stereotypical division of Artist-Art Manager is out of sense because the domain overlaps to some extent, and is blurring at least in my field, and they are in different contexts, but just speaking easily.) Normally, artist comes with special arts educations, and they live in their own world of artistic inspiration and creation, and they feel alive in practice and on stages. Meanwhile, from the point of staging and managing productions, the role of art manager is critical as well. Our role cares how the production appeals to the audience in effective way, how to make profit and future sustainable management through that, how to set up future strategy in consideration of the external conditions such as political and social circumstances, audience trend and level, other production trends from on-going and historical perspectives, how and what the production make voice to the society from political, economic, humanitarian stances. So, we need keen eyes on economic, political, and societal environment, have to understand human-being and their desires, must know how to make presentation and attract investors, must have sense in managing and fighting over the limited financial resource, how to extend networking and so on. It is common that the two agents create productions in collaboration (normally not in that ideal way but in conflict and fight though J ). So, we need to know each other’s expertise to some extent, for better production. What are the work positions in IT software industries equivalent to the role of “art manager” in performing arts? From my view, considering developers come with special education in the world of computer science, software engineering, or others (self-education sometimes), and they express themselves with the arts of coding, computer languages on the black screen, and make sort of their artistic production online to the audience, I guess there might be someone who collaborate with developers in creating, managing, and launching IT services or products. 2) Which education among CS, SE, HCI, Information Science, is needed for those seeking such work position? Especially for person like me. (At this moment, Information Science has the highest possibility to get in, since I lack Calculus and Math in undergrad educaiton. But please let me know irrespective of this concern, I think there are ways to back it up if CS or SE education needed in my case) 3) Which field between Information Science and HCI can be more practical background regarding job hungting? And which of them have more demands in job market? AS I checked, HCI is more close to CS than IS in its focus of study area. Thank you very much for your patience reading such a long inquiry, and I appreciate to your efforts in advance. Have a nice day in this beautiful summer.

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• What Counts for A DBA - Logic

  - by drsql

  "There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who will always wonder why there are only two items in my list and those who will figured it out the first time they saw this very old joke."  Those readers who will give up immediately and get frustrated with me for not explaining it to them are not likely going to be great technical professionals of any sort, much less a programmer or administrator who will be constantly dealing with the common failures that make up a DBA's day.  Many of these people will stare at this like a dog staring at a traffic signal and still have no more idea of how to decipher the riddle. Without explanation they will give up, call the joke "stupid" and, feeling quite superior, walk away indignantly to their job likely flipping patties of meat-by-product. As a data professional or any programmer who has strayed  to this very data-oriented blog, you would, if you are worth your weight in air, either have recognized immediately what was going on, or felt a bit ignorant.  Your friends are chuckling over the joke, but why is it funny? Unfortunately you left your smartphone at home on the dresser because you were up late last night programming and were running late to work (again), so you will either have to fake a laugh or figure it out.  Digging through the joke, you figure out that the word "two" is the most important part, since initially the joke mentioned 10. Hmm, why did they spell out two, but not ten? Maybe 10 could be interpreted a different way?  As a DBA, this sort of logic comes into play every day, and sometimes it doesn't involve nerdy riddles or Star Wars folklore.  When you turn on your computer and get the dreaded blue screen of death, you don't immediately cry to the help desk and sit on your thumbs and whine about not being able to work. Do that and your co-workers will question your nerd-hood; I know I certainly would. You figure out the problem, and when you have it narrowed down, you call the help desk and tell them what the problem is, usually having to explain that yes, you did in fact try to reboot before calling.  Of course, sometimes humility does come in to play when you reach the end of your abilities, but the ‘end of abilities’ is not something any of us recognize readily. It is handy to have the ability to use logic to solve uncommon problems: It becomes especially useful when you are trying to solve a data-related problem such as a query performance issue, and the way that you approach things will tell your coworkers a great deal about your abilities.  The novice is likely to immediately take the approach of  trying to add more indexes or blaming the hardware. As you become more and more experienced, it becomes increasingly obvious that performance issues are a very complex topic. A query may be slow for a myriad of reasons, from concurrency issues, a poor query plan because of a parameter value (like parameter sniffing,) poor coding standards, or just because it is a complex query that is going to be slow sometimes. Some queries that you will deal with may have twenty joins and hundreds of search criteria, and it can take a lot of thought to determine what is going on.  You can usually figure out the problem to almost any query by using basic knowledge of how joins and queries work, together with the help of such things as the query plan, profiler or monitoring tools.  It is not unlikely that it can take a full day’s work to understand some queries, breaking them down into smaller queries to find a very tiny problem. Not every time will you actually find the problem, and it is part of the process to occasionally admit that the problem is random, and everything works fine now.  Sometimes, it is necessary to realize that a problem is outside of your current knowledge, and admit temporary defeat: You can, at least, narrow down the source of the problem by looking logically at all of the possible solutions. By doing this, you can satisfy your curiosity and learn more about what the actual problem was. For example, in the joke, had you never been exposed to the concept of binary numbers, there is no way you could have known that binary - 10 = decimal - 2, but you could have logically come to the conclusion that 10 must not mean ten in the context of the joke, and at that point you are that much closer to getting the joke and at least won't feel so ignorant.

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• How to fix Ubuntu 12.04.3 boot to black screen full of errors in white text, after upgrading on dell inspiron 1501

  - by Ibuntu

  I am running a Dell Inspiron 1501 I use Linux only. No Microsoft or Apple operating systems (or really anything closed-source). I've only been using Linux for a little over a year but I'm starting to gain a comfortable level of familiarity with the system and terminology. I've been having some issues with Quantel Quetzal and Raring Ringtail, especially with older hardware, so I opted to install Ubuntu 12.04.3 Precise Pangolin on the Inspiron 1501. I checked my MD5 sum after downloading my ISO and all was good. I have in fact used this iso/dvd to install Precise Pangolin successfully on a few other systems (some of which are even older than this laptop). Install goes fine. The wireless card doesn't work out of the box but this is a known issue which is fairly easy to fix. So, first thing I did was open up a terminal and run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade which, part way through, crashed (I assume lightdm and possibly X) and took me to a black screen filled with white lines of text that were either errors or just the ouputs of commands. The reason I say that is because I was unable to gleam any useful information from the output on the screen. I did take a picture however and will post a link. After that, every time I boot the system it goes right to that black screen posting all the error messages or output in white text. I never get a purple Ubuntu splash, so from what I can tell after reading this wiki article: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/BlankScreen That means that after the kernel is selected, it is unable to correctly implement the settings it needs. If the purple splash never shows, the frame buffer was never set correctly right? This leads me to believe that it could be a kernel issue? The wiki suggested to try and pinpoint the issue by rolling back kernels until I find one that works. Is this my best option? I think I'm going to give it a try anyways and will let everyone know if I am able to solve the issue this way. I have since done a few reinstalls and some trouble-shooting including a couple hours scouring the net for anyone with any kind of similar issue. Most of the issues I could find involved getting a black screen after login and none of them said anything about any information output on this black screen. My reinstalls have taught me that there is no issue updating, but as soon as I run sudo apt-get upgrade my system goes to the black screen and every time I boot it up it does the same thing. The only way to fix is by reinstall. I never get any ability to log in. After a hard power off to the laptop (because I cannot use ctrl+alt+del to reboot) when it boots again it goes to the grub boot menu and I can select between regular boot, recovery mode and the two memtest options. I never tried the memtest options but the other two both lead to the same black screen. Some people having a black/blank screen issue claim to have fixed it by using 12.10 or 13.04 but I believe they were having a different issue where they got a black/blank screen after logging in. I think I will still give these images a try, but mostly figured I would just wait another day or two for 13.10. Other things I figured I would try from the following three articles: After logging in, there's a black screen and my cursor, nothing else! in Ubuntu 12.10 Black Screen on Login After Upgrading to 12.04 I can't get to the login screen include opening a terminal using ctrl+alt+f1 and trying a variety of reseting unity, x settings, lightdm (or switching to gdm); but I doubt this will work or that I will even be able to access a terminal. I'm pretty sure the whole system is stuck after it loads the last line on the black screen. I will try these things and post more information when I have. Hopefully someone has an idea in the meantime and I will keep checking back trying to find a solution. Thank you. Here are 3 different pictures of the error message. I had to take with my phone: http://ubuntuone.com/album/0TBBkxmVajJIQQtoN9mVdN

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• Windows Phone 8 Launch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was the official coming out party for Windows Phone 8.  Below is a summary of the launch event.  There is a lot here to stay with me. They started with a commercial staring Joe Belfiore show how his Windows Phone 8 was personal too him which highlights something I think Microsoft has done well over the last couple of event: spotlight how Windows Phone is a different experience from other smartphones.  Joe actually called iPhone and Android “tired old metaphors" and explained that the idea around Windows Phone was to “reinvent the smartphone around you” as “the most personal smartphone operating system”.  The is the message that they need to drive home in their adds. The only real technical aspect we found out was that they have optimized the operating system around the dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip set.  It seems like all of the other hardware goodies had already been announced.  The remainder of the event was centered around new features of the OS and app announcements. So what are we getting?  The integrated features included lock screen live tile, Data Sense, Rooms and Kids corner.  There wasn’t a lot of information about it, but Joe also talked about apps not just having live tiles, but being live apps that could integrate with wallet and the hub. The lock screen will now be able to be personalized with live tile data or even a photo slide show.  This gives the lock screen an even better ability to give you the information you want to know before you even unlock the phone. The Kids Corner allows you as a parent to setup an area on your phone that you kids can go into an use it without disturbing your apps.  They can play games or use apps that you have designated and will only see those apps.  It even has a special lock screen gesture just for the kids corner. Rooms allow you to organize your phone around the groups of people in your life.  You get a shared calendar, a room wall as well as shared notes beyond just being able to send messages to a group.  You can also invite people not on the Windows Phone platform to access an online version of the room. Data Sense is a new feature that gives you better control and understanding of your data plan usage.  You can see which applications are using data and it can automatically adjust they way your phone behaves as you get close to your data limit. Add to these features the fact that the entire Windows ecosystem is integrated with SkyDrive and you have an available anywhere experience that is unequaled by any other platform.  Your document, photos and music are available on your Windows Phone, Window 8 device and Xbox.  SkyDrive also doesn’t limit how long you can keep files like the competing cloud platforms and give more free storage. It was interesting the way they made the launch event more personal.  First Joe brought out his own kids to demo the Kids Corner.  They followed this up by bringing out Jessica Alba to discuss her experience on the Windows Phone 8.  They need to keep putting a face on the product instead of just showing features as a cold list. Then we get to apps.  We knew that the new Skype was coming, but we found out that it was created in such a way that it can receive calls without running consistently in the background which would eat up battery.  This announcement was follow by the coming Facebook app that is optimized for Windows Phone 8.  As a matter of fact they indicated that just after launch the marketplace would have 46 out of the top 50 apps used by all smartphone platforms.  In a rational world this tide with over 120,000 apps currently in the marketplace there should be no more argument about the Windows Phone ecosystem. For those of us who develop for Windows Phone and weren’t on the early adoption program will finally get access to the SDK tomorrow after an announcement at Build (more waiting).  Perhaps we will get a few new features then. In the end I wouldn’t say there were any huge surprises, but I am really excited about getting my hands on the devices next month and starting to develop.  Stay tuned. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Winodws Phone 8 Launch,Joe Belfiore,Jessica Alba

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• The Dreaded Startup Repair Loop on Win 7

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  For most people, upgrading to Windows 7 has been a relatively painless process.  Not me.  I am in the unlucky 1% or less who had a somewhat less pleasant experience.  First, I cloned my entire onto a larger (and much faster) solid state hard drive, only experiencing minimal problems. Then, I bought the Retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate, took a deep breath and... oh yeah, I almost forgot - BACK UP THE COMPUTER.  The next morning I upgraded to Win 7 and everything seemed fine, until... I rebooted the system, the nice Windows 7 launch graphics come up, it's about to launch and AWWW, are you kidding me?!?!  Back to the BIOS splash screen?  Next comes the sequence of failure - attempt repair - unable to repair - do you want to wipe your hard drive decisions. Because I purchased the retail version, a number is provided where I could call Microsoft Tech support.  When I did, they instructed me to click "Install" from my installation CD, which did not work.  When I tried the "Upgrade" option, it reaches an impasse, telling you that yoiu have a newer version of Win 7, and thus cannot Upgrade.  If you choose "Install" you willl lose everything... files, programs, EVERYTHING.  Or at least this is what it tells you.  I was not willing to take the risk. To make things worse, I had installed a new antivirus software application before I realized my system was unstable (Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security), and this was causing additional problems. One interesting thing, and the only saving grace as it turns out, was that my system WOULD successfully reboot into the OS if I chose to restart it, rather than shut it down.  If I chose to shut down, I would have to go through the loop again until I was given the option to restart. As it turned out, I needed to update my BIOS.  I assumed that since I had updated my BIOS a long time ago to settings that were stable under Windows Vista Ultimate x64, I incorrectly expected Win 7 to adopt the same settings and didn't expect there to be any problems.  WRONG. My BIOS had a setting to halt the boot cycle if various kinds of errors were detected.  Windows Vista didn't care about this, but forget it under Windows 7.  I turned immediately corrected that BIOS setting.  Next, there were the two separate BIOS settings: enable USB mouse and enable USB keyboard.  The only sequence of events that would work were to start my reboot process over from stratch with a hard-wired non-usb keyboard and mouse.  Whent the system booted under these settings, it doesn't detect any errors due to either the mouse or keyboard, and actually booted for the first time in a long while (let me tell ya, that's an amazing experience after fiddling with settings for two entire weekends!) Next step: leave your old mouse and keyboard connected, but also connect your other two devices (mouse, keyboard) that use USB connections.  During the boot cycle, the operating system will not fail due to missing requirements during startup, and it will then pick up the new drivers necessary to use your new hardware. If you think you are in the clear here, you are wrong.  The next VERY IMPORTANT step is to remember to change your settings in the BIOS upon next startup.  Specifically, yoiu will need ot change your BIOS to enable USB mouse and enable USB keyboard input.  If you don't, Windows will detect an incompatibility upon the next startup, and you will be stuck once again in the endless cycle of reboot/Startup Repair/reboot/Startup Repair, without ever reaching a successful boot. Here's the thing - the BIOS and the drivers registered in Win 7 need to match.  If they don't, you're going to lose another weekend worrying and fiddling, all the while wondering if you've permanently damaged your hard drive beyond repair. (Sigh).  In the end, things worked out.  I must note that it is saddening to see how many posts there are out there that recommend just doing a clean install, as if it's the only option.  How many countless poor souls have lost their data, their backups, their pictures and videos, all for nothing other than the fact that the person giving advice just didn't know what to do at that point? My advice to you, try having a look at your BIOS settings first and making sure Win 7 can find your BIOS settings, and also disabling in your BIOS anything that might halt your system boot-up process if it encounters errors.

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• IE9, LightSwitch Beta 2 and Zune HD: A Study in Risk Management?

  - by andrewbrust

  Photo by parl, 'Risk.’ Under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License This has been a busy week for Microsoft, and for me as well.  On Monday, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 9 at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX.  That evening I flew from New York to Seattle.  On Tuesday morning, Microsoft launched Visual Studio LightSwitch, Beta 2 with a Go-Live license, in Redmond, and I had the privilege of speaking at the keynote presentation where the announcement was made.  Readers of this blog know I‘m a fan of LightSwitch, so I was happy to tell the app dev tools partners in the audience that I thought the LightSwitch extensions ecosystem represented a big opportunity – comparable to the opportunity when Visual Basic 1.0 was entering its final beta roughly 20 years ago.  On Tuesday evening, I flew back to New York (and wrote most of this post in-flight). Two busy, productive days.  But there was a caveat that impacts the accomplishments, because Monday was also the day reports surfaced from credible news agencies that Microsoft was discontinuing its dedicated Zune hardware efforts.  While the Zune brand, technology and service will continue to be a component of Windows Phone and a piece of the Xbox puzzle as well, speculation is that Microsoft will no longer be going toe-to-toe with iPod touch in the portable music player market. If we take all three of these developments together (even if one of them is based on speculation), two interesting conclusions can reasonably be drawn, one good and one less so. Microsoft is doubling down on technologies it finds strategic and de-emphasizing those that it does not.  HTML 5 and the Web are strategic, so here comes IE9, and it’s a very good browser.  Try it and see.  Silverlight is strategic too, as is SQL Server, Windows Azure and SQL Azure, so here comes Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 2 and a license to deploy its apps to production.  Downloads of that product have exceeded Microsoft’s projections by more than 50%, and the company is even citing analyst firms’ figures covering the number of power-user developers that might use it. (I happen to think the product will be used by full-fledged developers as well, but that’s a separate discussion.) Windows Phone is strategic too…I wasn’t 100% positive of that before, but the Nokia agreement has made me confident.  Xbox as an entertainment appliance is also strategic.  Standalone music players are not strategic – and even if they were, selling them has been a losing battle for Microsoft.  So if Microsoft has consolidated the Zune content story and the ZunePass subscription into Xbox and Windows Phone, it would make sense, and would be a smart allocation of resources.  Essentially, it would be for the greater good. But it’s not all good.  In this scenario, Zune player customers would lose out.  Unless they wanted to switch to Windows Phone, and then use their phone’s battery for the portable media needs, they’re going to need a new platform.  They’re going to feel abandoned.  Even if Zune lives, there have been other such cul de sacs for customers.  Remember SPOT watches?  Live Spaces?  The original Live Mesh?  Microsoft discontinued each of these products.  The company is to be commended for cutting its losses, as admitting a loss isn’t easy.  But Redmond won’t be well-regarded by the victims of those decisions.  Instead, it gets black marks. What’s the answer?  I think it’s a bit like the 1980’s New York City “don’t block the box” gridlock rules: don’t enter an intersection unless you see a clear path through it.  If the light turns red and you’re blocking the perpendicular traffic, that’s your fault in judgment.  You get fined and get points on your license and you don’t get to shrug it off as beyond your control.  Accountability is key.  The same goes for Microsoft.  If it decides to enter a market, it should see a reasonable path through success in that market. Switching analogies, Microsoft shouldn’t make investments haphazardly, and it certainly shouldn’t ask investors to buy into a high-risk fund that is sold as safe and which offers only moderate returns.  People won’t continue to invest with a fund manager with a track record of over-zealous, imprudent, sub-prime investments.  The same is true on the product side for Microsoft, and not just with music players and geeky wrist watches.  It’s true of Web browsers, and line-of-business app dev tools, and smartphones, and cloud platforms and operating systems too.  When Microsoft is casual about its own risk, it raises risk for its customers, and weakens its reputation, market share and credibility.  That doesn’t mean all risk is bad, but it does mean no product team’s risk should be taken lightly. For mutual fund companies, it’s the CEO’s job to give his fund managers autonomy, but to make sure they’re conforming to a standard of rational risk management.  Because all those funds carry the same brand, and many of them serve the same investors. The same goes for Microsoft, its product portfolio, its executive ranks and its product managers.

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• Why 32-bit color EGL configurations fail with EGL_BAD_MATCH on Moto Droid?

  - by Gilead

  I'm trying to figure out why certain EGL configurations cause eglMakeCurrent() call to return EGL_BAD_MATCH on Motorola Droid running Android 2.1u1. This is a full list of hardware-accelerated EGL configurations (those with EGL_CONFIG_CAVEAT == EGL_NONE) as there's a few others with EGL_CONFIG_CAVEAT == EGL_SLOW_CONFIG but those are backed by PixelFlinger 1.2 meaning they're using software renderer. ID: 0 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 1 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 0 Stencil: 0 // BAD MATCH ID: 2 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 3 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 4 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 0 Stencil: 0 // BAD MATCH ID: 5 RGB: 8, 8, 8 Alpha: 8 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 // BAD MATCH ID: 6 RGB: 5, 6, 5 Alpha: 0 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 ID: 7 RGB: 5, 6, 5 Alpha: 0 Depth: 0 Stencil: 0 ID: 8 RGB: 5, 6, 5 Alpha: 0 Depth: 24 Stencil: 8 Clearly, all configurations with 32-bit color depth fail and all 16-bit ones are OK but: 1. Why? 2. WHY?! :) 3. How do I tell which ones would fail before actually trying to use them? The code below is as simple as it can get. I put if (v[0] == 6) there to check different configs, normally they're chosen by half-clever config matcher :) private void createSurface(SurfaceHolder holder) { egl = (EGL10)EGLContext.getEGL(); eglDisplay = egl.eglGetDisplay(EGL10.EGL_DEFAULT_DISPLAY); egl.eglInitialize(eglDisplay, null); int[] numConfigs = new int[1]; egl.eglChooseConfig(eglDisplay, new int[] { EGL10.EGL_NONE }, null, 0, numConfigs); EGLConfig[] configs = new EGLConfig[numConfigs[0]]; egl.eglChooseConfig(eglDisplay, new int[] { EGL10.EGL_NONE }, configs, numConfigs[0], numConfigs); int[] v = new int[1]; for (EGLConfig c : configs) { egl.eglGetConfigAttrib(eglDisplay, c, EGL10.EGL_CONFIG_ID, v); if (v[0] == 6) { eglConfig = c; } } eglContext = egl.eglCreateContext(eglDisplay, eglConfig, EGL10.EGL_NO_CONTEXT, null); if (eglContext == null || eglContext == EGL10.EGL_NO_CONTEXT) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to create EGL context"); } eglSurface = egl.eglCreateWindowSurface(eglDisplay, eglConfig, holder, null); if (eglSurface == null || eglSurface == EGL10.EGL_NO_SURFACE) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to create EGL surface"); } if (!egl.eglMakeCurrent(eglDisplay, eglSurface, eglSurface, eglContext)) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to make EGL current"); } gl = (GL10)eglContext.getGL(); }

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• How to debug a native Java crash on Linux?

  - by Paul J. Lucas

  I've seen this question and this article on how to debug a native Java crash. The article is with respect to Windows. What are the equivalent debugging aids on Linux? Note: All I have is this crash log from a user in the field. I do not have access to the machine on which the crash occurred. Update: I am pretty sure the crash is due to JNI code we have. I never meant to imply that it was the JVM itself that was faulty. Per request, here is the crash dump (or as much of it as will fit in the 30K stackoverflow limit): # # An unexpected error has been detected by Java Runtime Environment: # # SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0x06300e76, pid=9983, tid=4106996592 # # Java VM: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.6.0_03-b05 mixed mode, sharing) # Problematic frame: # V [libjvm.so+0x300e76] # # If you would like to submit a bug report, please visit: # http://java.sun.com/webapps/bugreport/crash.jsp # --------------- T H R E A D --------------- Current thread (0x0922e000): VMThread [id=9985] siginfo:si_signo=11, si_errno=0, si_code=1, si_addr=0x00000008 Registers: EAX=0x00000008, EBX=0x88a829b3, ECX=0x88a829b0, EDX=0xa7d6c1dc ESP=0xf4cbba5c, EBP=0xf4cbba68, ESI=0xa7d6d1d8, EDI=0x00000404 EIP=0x06300e76, CR2=0x00000008, EFLAGS=0x00010202 Top of Stack: (sp=0xf4cbba5c) 0xf4cbba5c: a7d6c1c8 0920cc30 aa0de5c0 f4cbba98 0xf4cbba6c: 063517d7 cf8f2a20 a7d6c1c8 0920cc30 0xf4cbba7c: 0920cc30 00000000 00000000 6d224c40 0xf4cbba8c: 00000001 f4cbbbb0 0920b440 f4cbbab8 0xf4cbba9c: 061dd4df 0920cc30 f4cbbb10 f4cbbac8 0xf4cbbaac: 0633cb7e 0643b5b8 f4492968 f4cbbad8 0xf4cbbabc: 061dcd68 f4cbbaf0 0920cc30 f4cbbaf8 0xf4cbbacc: 061df31e f4cbbb10 d4cbcc2c f4cbbb08 Instructions: (pc=0x06300e76) 0x06300e66: 82 39 f2 73 34 90 8d 74 26 00 8b 02 85 c0 74 22 0x06300e76: 8b 18 80 3d 45 10 42 06 00 74 0c 89 d8 31 c9 83 Stack: [0xf4c3c000,0xf4cbd000), sp=0xf4cbba5c, free space=510k Native frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code, C=native code) V [libjvm.so+0x300e76] V [libjvm.so+0x3517d7] V [libjvm.so+0x1dd4df] V [libjvm.so+0x1dcd68] V [libjvm.so+0x1dc3cc] V [libjvm.so+0x1d4c52] V [libjvm.so+0x1d32cc] V [libjvm.so+0x1d4229] V [libjvm.so+0x1dc82a] V [libjvm.so+0x1d1d34] V [libjvm.so+0x186125] V [libjvm.so+0x1d20bc] V [libjvm.so+0x3b2cbe] V [libjvm.so+0x3c5037] V [libjvm.so+0x3c46bc] V [libjvm.so+0x3c488a] V [libjvm.so+0x3c446f] V [libjvm.so+0x30b719] C [libpthread.so.0+0x5cb2] VM_Operation (0xf2b60728): generation collection for allocation, mode: safepoint, requested by thread 0x09449c00 --------------- P R O C E S S --------------- Java Threads: ( = current thread ) 0x092afc00 JavaThread "RawImageCache" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10026] 0xf37d1000 JavaThread "TimerQueue" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10022] 0x09410000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard7" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10021] 0x0940f000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard6" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10020] 0x0946fc00 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard5" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10019] 0x0946e800 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard4" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10018] 0x0946d400 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard3" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10017] 0x0946c000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard2" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10016] 0x0946ac00 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard1" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10015] 0x0946a000 JavaThread "SunTileScheduler0Standard0" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10014] 0x0944a800 JavaThread "Image List Poller" [_thread_blocked, id=10012] 0x09449c00 JavaThread "Image Task Queue" [_thread_blocked, id=10011] 0xf37e3c00 JavaThread "Laf-Widget fade tracker" [_thread_blocked, id=10010] 0x094abc00 JavaThread "FileCacheMonitor" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10009] 0xf37e3800 JavaThread "DestroyJavaVM" [_thread_blocked, id=9984] 0xf37ee400 JavaThread "Thread-6" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10006] 0xf3a7c800 JavaThread "DirectoryMonitor.MonitorThread" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10005] 0xf3a73800 JavaThread "AWT Watchdog" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10004] 0xf3adb800 JavaThread "TileReaper" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=10003] 0x093c3c00 JavaThread "process reaper" daemon [_thread_in_native, id=10001] 0x093ac800 JavaThread "Timer-0" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9999] 0x093a8c00 JavaThread "AWT-EventQueue-0" [_thread_blocked, id=9997] 0x093a8000 JavaThread "AWT-Shutdown" [_thread_blocked, id=9996] 0x09378c00 JavaThread "AWT-XAWT" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9994] 0x09368400 JavaThread "Java2D Disposer" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9993] 0x09350000 JavaThread "Thread-1" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9992] 0x0923b400 JavaThread "Low Memory Detector" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9990] 0x09239c00 JavaThread "CompilerThread0" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9989] 0x09238800 JavaThread "Signal Dispatcher" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9988] 0x09230800 JavaThread "Finalizer" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9987] 0x0922f400 JavaThread "Reference Handler" daemon [_thread_blocked, id=9986] Other Threads: =0x0922e000 VMThread [id=9985] 0x09245000 WatcherThread [id=9991] VM state:at safepoint (normal execution) VM Mutex/Monitor currently owned by a thread: ([mutex/lock_event]) [0x09205178/0x092051a0] Threads_lock - owner thread: 0x0922e000 [0x09205638/0x09205650] Heap_lock - owner thread: 0x09449c00 Heap def new generation total 83968K, used 9280K [0x55600000, 0x5b110000, 0x5ec40000) eden space 74688K, 0% used [0x55600000, 0x55600000, 0x59ef0000) from space 9280K, 100% used [0x5a800000, 0x5b110000, 0x5b110000) to space 9280K, 0% used [0x59ef0000, 0x59ef0000, 0x5a800000) tenured generation total 1233640K, used 1233529K [0x5ec40000, 0xaa0fa000, 0xcf800000) the space 1233640K, 99% used [0x5ec40000, 0xaa0de5c0, 0x8b4af400, 0xaa0fa000) compacting perm gen total 13312K, used 13175K [0xcf800000, 0xd0500000, 0xd3800000) the space 13312K, 98% used [0xcf800000, 0xd04ddd70, 0xd04dde00, 0xd0500000) ro space 8192K, 69% used [0xd3800000, 0xd3d8f608, 0xd3d8f800, 0xd4000000) rw space 12288K, 57% used [0xd4000000, 0xd46eee98, 0xd46ef000, 0xd4c00000) Dynamic libraries: [ snip ] VM Arguments: jvm_args: -Dinstall4j.jvmDir=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre -Dinstall4j.appDir=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone -Dexe4j.moduleName=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/LightZone -Dcom.lightcrafts.licensetype=ESD -Xmx2000000k java_command: com.install4j.runtime.Launcher launch com.lightcrafts.platform.linux.LinuxLauncher true false /home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/LightZone.log /home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/LightZone.log false true false true true -1 -1 20 20 Arial 0,0,0 8 500 20 40 Arial 0,0,0 8 500 -1 Launcher Type: SUN_STANDARD Environment Variables: PATH=/home/berbmit/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games USERNAME=berbmit LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre/lib/i386/client:/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre/lib/i386:/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/jre/../lib/i386:/home/berbmit/bin/LightZone/.: SHELL=/bin/bash DISPLAY=:0.0 Signal Handlers: SIGSEGV: [libjvm.so+0x3b29c0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGBUS: [libjvm.so+0x3b29c0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGFPE: [libjvm.so+0x309ec0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGPIPE: SIG_IGN, sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x00000000 SIGILL: [libjvm.so+0x309ec0], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGUSR1: SIG_DFL, sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x00000000 SIGUSR2: [libjvm.so+0x30bef0], sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGHUP: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGINT: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGQUIT: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGTERM: [libjvm.so+0x30b910], sa_mask[0]=0x7ffbfeff, sa_flags=0x10000004 SIGUSR2: [libjvm.so+0x30bef0], sa_mask[0]=0x00000000, sa_flags=0x10000004 --------------- S Y S T E M --------------- OS:squeeze/sid uname:Linux 2.6.35-23-generic #41-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 24 11:55:36 UTC 2010 x86_64 libc:glibc 2.12.1 NPTL 2.12.1 rlimit: STACK 8192k, CORE 0k, NPROC infinity, NOFILE 1024, AS infinity load average:0.67 0.54 0.36 CPU:total 8 (8 cores per cpu, 2 threads per core) family 6 model 10 stepping 5, cmov, cx8, fxsr, mmx, sse, sse2, sse3, ssse3, ht Memory: 4k page, physical 8191552k(3359308k free), swap 1016828k(1016828k free) vm_info: Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (1.6.0_03-b05) for linux-x86, built on Sep 24 2007 22:45:46 by "java_re" with gcc 3.2.1-7a (J2SE release)

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• IIS Strategies for Accessing Secured Network Resources

  - by ErikE

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

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• Cocoa: AVAudioRecorder Fails to Record

  - by kumaryr

  AVAudioSession *audioSession = [AVAudioSession sharedInstance]; NSError *err = nil; [audioSession setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayAndRecord error:&err]; if(err){ NSLog(@"audioSession: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]); return; } [audioSession setActive:YES error:&err]; err = nil; if(err){ NSLog(@"audioSession: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]); return; } NSMutableDictionary *recordSetting = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init]; [recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt: kAudioFormatAppleIMA4] forKey:AVFormatIDKey]; [recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithFloat:40000.0] forKey:AVSampleRateKey]; [recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt: 2] forKey:AVNumberOfChannelsKey]; [recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt:16] forKey:AVLinearPCMBitDepthKey]; [recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:AVLinearPCMIsBigEndianKey]; [recordSetting setValue:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO] forKey:AVLinearPCMIsFloatKey]; // Create a new dated file NSDate *now = [NSDate dateWithTimeIntervalSinceNow:0]; NSString *caldate = [now description]; NSString *recorderFilePath = [[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@.caf", DOCUMENTS_FOLDER, caldate] retain]; NSLog(recorderFilePath); url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:recorderFilePath]; err = nil; recorder = [[ AVAudioRecorder alloc] initWithURL:url settings:recordSetting error:&err]; if(!recorder){ NSLog(@"recorder: %@ %d %@", [err domain], [err code], [[err userInfo] description]); UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle: @"Warning" message: [err localizedDescription] delegate: nil cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil]; [alert show]; [alert release]; return; } //prepare to record [recorder setDelegate:self]; [recorder prepareToRecord]; recorder.meteringEnabled = YES; BOOL audioHWAvailable = audioSession.inputIsAvailable; if (! audioHWAvailable) { UIAlertView *cantRecordAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle: @"Warning" message: @"Audio input hardware not available" delegate: nil cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil]; [cantRecordAlert show]; [cantRecordAlert release]; return; } // [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:1 target:self selector:@selector( updateTimerDisplay) userInfo:nil repeats:YES]; // [recorder recordForDuration:(NSTimeInterval)10 ]; // [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:1 target:self selector:@selector( updateTimerDisplay) userInfo:nil repeats:YES];

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• ASP.Net Web Farm Monitoring

  - by cisellis

  I am looking for suggestions on doing some simple monitoring of an ASP.Net web farm as close to real-time as possible. The objectives of this question are to: Identify the best way to monitor several Windows Server production boxes during short (minutes long) period of ridiculous load Receive near-real-time feedback on a few key metrics about each box. These are simple metrics available via WMI such as CPU, Memory and Disk Paging. I am defining my time constraints as soon as possible with 120 seconds delayed being the absolute upper limit. Monitor whether any given box is up (with "up" being defined as responding web requests in a reasonable amount of time) Here are more details, things I've tried, etc. I am not interested in logging. We have logging solutions in place. I have looked at solutions such as ELMAH which don't provide much in the way of hardware monitoring and are not visible across an entire web farm. ASP.Net Health Monitoring is too broad, focuses too much on logging and is not acceptable for deep analysis. We are on Amazon Web Services and we have looked into CloudWatch. It looks great but messages in the forum indicate that the metrics are often a few minutes behind, with one thread citing 2 minutes as the absolute soonest you could expect to receive the feedback. This would be good to have for later analysis but does not help us real-time Stuff like JetBrains profiler is good for testing but again, not helpful during real-time monitoring. The closest out-of-box solution I've seen is Nagios which is free and appears to measure key indicators on any kind of box, including Windows. However, it appears to require a Linux box to run itself on and a good deal of manual configuration. I'd prefer to not spend my time mining config files and then be up a creek when it fails in production since Linux is not my main (or even secondary) environment. Are there any out-of-box solutions that I am missing? Obviously a windows-based solution that is easy to setup is ideal. I don't require many bells and whistles. In the absence of an out-of-box solution, it seems easy for me to write something simple to handle what I need. I've been thinking a simple client-server setup where the server requests a few WMI metrics from each client over http and sticks them in a database. We could then monitor the metrics via a query or a dashboard or something. If the client doesn't respond, it's effectively down. Any problems with this, best practices, or other ideas? Thanks for any help/feedback.

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• iSCSI targets don't appear after rescan

  - by asmr

  Hi everybody, I have an Equallogic 4000PS SAN box to which I have connected 2 x ESX 4.0.0 hosts sharing the LUNs. I have an older ESX 3.5 host which I want to setup to share the same LUNs. I have setup a vmkernel port with 2 NICs attached to 2 the iSCSI switch. When I perform an iSCSI software adapter rescan, it takes a long time and it doesn't find the targets. In the ESX-3.5 host's log file I find these messages: Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.394 cpu5:1039)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.394 cpu5:1039)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.394 cpu5:1039)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.397 cpu0:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.397 cpu0:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.397 cpu0:1040)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.442 cpu1:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.442 cpu1:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:52:48 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:23:11.442 cpu1:1040)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.874 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.874 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.874 cpu3:1040)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.884 cpu4:1041)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.884 cpu4:1041)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.884 cpu4:1041)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.888 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.888 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:32.888 cpu3:1040)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.042 cpu7:1039)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.042 cpu7:1039)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.042 cpu7:1039)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.044 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.044 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.044 cpu3:1040)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.045 cpu4:1041)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.045 cpu4:1041)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:09 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.045 cpu4:1041)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.308 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.309 cpu3:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.309 cpu3:1040)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.598 cpu2:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.598 cpu2:1040)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.598 cpu2:1040)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.600 cpu7:1039)WARNING: SCSI: 279: SCSI device type 0xd is not supported. Cannot create target vmhba1:288:0 Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.600 cpu7:1039)WARNING: SCSI: 1293: LegacyMP Plugin could not claim path: vmhba1:288:0. Not supported Mar 30 08:57:10 sc59 vmkernel: 368:19:27:33.600 cpu7:1039)WARNING: ScsiPath: 3187: Plugin 'legacyMP' had an error (Not supported) while claiming path 'vmhba1:C0:T288:L0'.Skipping the path. Any ideas what the problem is?

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• SQL Server to PostgreSQL - Migration and design concerns

  - by youwhut

  Currently migrating from SQL Server to PostgreSQL and attempting to improve a couple of key areas on the way: I have an Articles table: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Articles]( [server_ref] [int] NOT NULL, [article_ref] [int] NOT NULL, [article_title] [varchar](400) NOT NULL, [category_ref] [int] NOT NULL, [size] [bigint] NOT NULL ) Data (comma delimited text files) is dumped on the import server by ~500 (out of ~1000) servers on a daily basis. Importing: Indexes are disabled on the Articles table. For each dumped text file Data is BULK copied to a temporary table. Temporary table is updated. Old data for the server is dropped from the Articles table. Temporary table data is copied to Articles table. Temporary table dropped. Once this process is complete for all servers the indexes are built and the new database is copied to a web server. I am reasonably happy with this process but there is always room for improvement as I strive for a real-time (haha!) system. Is what I am doing correct? The Articles table contains ~500 million records and is expected to grow. Searching across this table is okay but could be better. i.e. SELECT * FROM Articles WHERE server_ref=33 AND article_title LIKE '%criteria%' has been satisfactory but I want to improve the speed of searching. Obviously the "LIKE" is my problem here. Suggestions? SELECT * FROM Articles WHERE article_title LIKE '%criteria%' is horrendous. Partitioning is a feature of SQL Server Enterprise but $$$ which is one of the many exciting prospects of PostgreSQL. What performance hit will be incurred for the import process (drop data, insert data) and building indexes? Will the database grow by a huge amount? The database currently stands at 200 GB and will grow. Copying this across the network is not ideal but it works. I am putting thought into changing the hardware structure of the system. The thought process of having an import server and a web server is so that the import server can do the dirty work (WITHOUT indexes) while the web server (WITH indexes) can present reports. Maybe reducing the system down to one server would work to skip the copying across the network stage. This one server would have two versions of the database: one with the indexes for delivering reports and the other without for importing new data. The databases would swap daily. Thoughts? This is a fantastic system, and believe it or not there is some method to my madness by giving it a big shake up. UPDATE: I am not looking for help with relational databases, but hoping to bounce ideas around with data warehouse experts.

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• Universal iPad App rejected because of launch crash that I can't reproduce

  - by Enrique R.

  Hello everyone, I'm very frustrated with this problem. After one week of waiting my universal iPad app has been rejected because "is crashing on launch on iPad running iPhone OS 3.2 and iPhone 3GS running iPhone OS 3.1.3 and Mac OS X 10.6.2." Unfortunately I can't replicate the problem, I've tested in debug and release modes and the app works just fine. I even created an ad-hoc configuration and test it in other devices and everything works fine. I should clarify that this is an update to a current iPhone application and I'm using the same distribution profile as the original iPhone app. Also, I checked everything before building the universal app following this entry: http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/04/converting-iphone-apps-to-universal.html Here are the crash logs that Apple sent me: Incident Identifier: 3E0D4A3B-2896-444D-BCBE-6C0CA1A66A90 CrashReporter Key: 18b5124ea5f657227c5f202a27ed707379b3e2e7 Process: Transfer [982] Path: /var/mobile/Applications/E9062465-7EA6-424C-9C61-D9DBCC7C915A/Transfer.app/Transfer Identifier: Transfer Version: ??? (???) Code Type: ARM (Native) Parent Process: launchd [1] Date/Time: 2010-05-04 15:35:57.399 -0700 OS Version: iPhone OS 3.1.3 (7E18) Report Version: 104 Exception Type: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL) Exception Codes: 0x00000001, 0x3eaa2188 Highlighted Thread: 0 Backtrace not available Unknown thread crashed with ARM Thread State: r0: 0x00002f90 r1: 0x00000000 r2: 0x385242d8 r3: 0x0000010d r4: 0x00000000 r5: 0x00000000 r6: 0x00000000 r7: 0x00000000 r8: 0x2ffffba0 r9: 0x2fffef90 r10: 0x00000000 r11: 0x00000000 ip: 0x0000000c sp: 0x2ffffba4 lr: 0x2fe08727 pc: 0x00002f94 cpsr: 0x40000010 Binary Images: 0x1000 - 0x25fff +Transfer armv7 /var/mobile/Applications/E9062465-7EA6-424C-9C61-D9DBCC7C915A/Transfer.app/Transfer 0x2fe00000 - 0x2fe24fff dyld armv7 /usr/lib/dyld .... And the one for the iPad: Incident Identifier: 3B170A28-C8E2-4018-8166-E69432A65070 CrashReporter Key: 4a0194e3f60559127faef2b014df605e4c47b981 Hardware Model: iPad1,1 Process: Transfer [533] Path: /var/mobile/Applications/400EE394-7BEE-45CA-942D-DBDC106360FF/Transfer.app/Transfer Identifier: Transfer Version: ??? (???) Code Type: ARM (Native) Parent Process: launchd [1] Date/Time: 2010-05-04 15:37:17.505 -0700 OS Version: iPhone OS 3.2 (7B367) Report Version: 104 Exception Type: 00000020 Exception Codes: 0x8badf00d Highlighted Thread: 0 Application Specific Information: com.erclab.iphone.photodownload failed to launch in time elapsed total CPU time (seconds): 1.150 (user 0.560, system 0.590), 6% CPU elapsed application CPU time (seconds): 0.150, 1% CPU Thread 0: 0 libobjc.A.dylib 0x33561996 0x33560000 + 6550 1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x33564986 0x33560000 + 18822 2 libobjc.A.dylib 0x33564cb2 0x33560000 + 19634 ... The app does not do anything other than loading a local HTML into a web view after the app it's launched so I don't understand why it says "failed to launch in time" Any help will be very much appreciated.

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• IIS Strategies for Accessing Secured Network Resources

  - by Emtucifor

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

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• Signals and threads - good or bad design decision?

  - by Jens

  I have to write a program that performs highly computationally intensive calculations. The program might run for several days. The calculation can be separated easily in different threads without the need of shared data. I want a GUI or a web service that informs me of the current status. My current design uses BOOST::signals2 and BOOST::thread. It compiles and so far works as expected. If a thread finished one iteration and new data is available it calls a signal which is connected to a slot in the GUI class. My question(s): Is this combination of signals and threads a wise idea? I another forum somebody advised someone else not to "go down this road". Are there potential deadly pitfalls nearby that I failed to see? Is my expectation realistic that it will be "easy" to use my GUI class to provide a web interface or a QT, a VTK or a whatever window? Is there a more clever alternative (like other boost libs) that I overlooked? following code compiles with g++ -Wall -o main -lboost_thread-mt <filename>.cpp code follows: #include <boost/signals2.hpp> #include <boost/thread.hpp> #include <boost/bind.hpp> #include <iostream> #include <iterator> #include <string> using std::cout; using std::cerr; using std::string; /** * Called when a CalcThread finished a new bunch of data. */ boost::signals2::signal<void(string)> signal_new_data; /** * The whole data will be stored here. */ class DataCollector { typedef boost::mutex::scoped_lock scoped_lock; boost::mutex mutex; public: /** * Called by CalcThreads call the to store their data. */ void push(const string &s, const string &caller_name) { scoped_lock lock(mutex); _data.push_back(s); signal_new_data(caller_name); } /** * Output everything collected so far to std::out. */ void out() { typedef std::vector<string>::const_iterator iter; for (iter i = _data.begin(); i != _data.end(); ++i) cout << " " << *i << "\n"; } private: std::vector<string> _data; }; /** * Several of those can calculate stuff. * No data sharing needed. */ struct CalcThread { CalcThread(string name, DataCollector &datcol) : _name(name), _datcol(datcol) { } /** * Expensive algorithms will be implemented here. * @param num_results how many data sets are to be calculated by this thread. */ void operator()(int num_results) { for (int i = 1; i <= num_results; ++i) { std::stringstream s; s << "["; if (i == num_results) s << "LAST "; s << "DATA " << i << " from thread " << _name << "]"; _datcol.push(s.str(), _name); } } private: string _name; DataCollector &_datcol; }; /** * Maybe some VTK or QT or both will be used someday. */ class GuiClass { public: GuiClass(DataCollector &datcol) : _datcol(datcol) { } /** * If the GUI wants to present or at least count the data collected so far. * @param caller_name is the name of the thread whose data is new. */ void slot_data_changed(string caller_name) const { cout << "GuiClass knows: new data from " << caller_name << std::endl; } private: DataCollector & _datcol; }; int main() { DataCollector datcol; GuiClass mc(datcol); signal_new_data.connect(boost::bind(&GuiClass::slot_data_changed, &mc, _1)); CalcThread r1("A", datcol), r2("B", datcol), r3("C", datcol), r4("D", datcol), r5("E", datcol); boost::thread t1(r1, 3); boost::thread t2(r2, 1); boost::thread t3(r3, 2); boost::thread t4(r4, 2); boost::thread t5(r5, 3); t1.join(); t2.join(); t3.join(); t4.join(); t5.join(); datcol.out(); cout << "\nDone" << std::endl; return 0; }

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