enable add ons - Page 426

Extract Audio from a Video File with Pazera Free Audio Extractor

- by DigitalGeekery

Have you ever wanted to extract some or all of the audio from a video file? Today we’ll take a look at Pazera Free Audio Extractor. A simple audio converter that specializes in that very task. Download the Pazera Free Audio Extractor. (See download link below) You’ll need to unzip the download folder, but there is no need to install the application. Simply double-click the AudioExtractor.exe file to run the application. To add your video files to the queue to be converted, click on the Add files button at the top left. You can add multiple files to the queue and convert them all at one time. Browse for your video file, and click Open. Your video will be added to the Queue for processing. Under Output directory you can choose to output to a folder of your choice. Outputting to the same folder as the input folder is the default. Pazera Free Audio Extractor includes pre-configured profiles that will simplify the process of choosing conversion settings. To load a profile, choose one from the Profile drop down list and then click the Load button. You can choose to output to MP3, AAC, AC3, WMA, FLAC, OGG or WAV file format. You will see the profile update the Audio settings in the panels at the lower left of the application. If you wish, you may also select your own custom settings. Advanced Settings The Advanced settings can be used if you want to extract only a portion of the the audio, such as a clip of dialog or a song from a movie. To extract only a portion of the audio, set the start time by selecting the Start time offset check box, then entering the time in the video clip where the audio begins. To set the end time, begin by selecting the Duration check box. Now, you can either select the Duration radio button and enter the amount of time for which you would like to extract the audio, or you can select the End time offset radio button and enter the time in the video clip where the audio ends. When you are ready to convert, click the CONVERT button on the menu at the top of the screen. An output box will open and display the conversion progress. When finished, click Close. Now you are ready to enjoy your audio clip. Pazera Free Audio Extractor is a basic audio tool that is easy enough for everyone to use. It runs on Windows only and supports most common video formats including AVI, FLV, MP4, MPG, MOV, 3GP, and WMV. Download Free Audio Extractor 1.3 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Eufony Free Audio Player – Resource Gentle Audio PlayerConvert .3GP and .3G2 Files to AVI / MPEG for FreeTurn Off Auto-Play of Audio and Video CDs and DVDs in UbuntuHow to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows VistaEasily Change Audio File Formats with XRECODE TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go NachoFoto Searches Images in Real-time Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs

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Share Folders & Files Between Vista and XP Machines

- by Mysticgeek

Since Microsoft has three operating systems in use, chances are you’ll find yourself needing to share files between XP, Vista, Windows 7, or some combination of the three. Here we take a look at sharing between a Vista and XP on your home network. Share Without Password Protected Sharing If you’re not worried about who’s accessing the files and folders, the easiest method is to disable Password Protected Sharing. So on the Vista machine open Network and Sharing Center. Under Sharing and Discovery make sure Network Discovery, File Sharing, and, Public Folder Sharing are turned on. Also turn off Password Protected Sharing… Now go into the Vista Public folder, located in C:\Users\Public, and add what you want to share or create a new folder. In this example we created a new folder called XP_Share and added some files to it. On the XP machine go into My Network Places and under Network Tasks click on View Workgroup Computers. Now you’ll see all of the computers on your network which should be part of the same Workgroup. Here we need to double-click on the Vista computer. And there we go…no password to enter so we can access the XP_Share folder or anything else that is located in the Public folder. Share with Password Protected Sharing If you want to keep Password Protected Sharing turned on, then we need to do things a little different. When it’s turned on and you try to access the Vista machine from XP, you’re prompted for a password, and no matter what you think the credentials are, you can’t get access…very annoying. So what we need to do is add the XP Machine as a user. Right-click on Computer from the Start Menu or desktop icon and select Manage from the context menu. The Computer Management screen opens up and you want to expand Local Users and Groups, then the Users folder. Then right-click any open area an select New User. Now create a new user name and password, you can also fill in the other fields if you want. Then make sure to uncheck User must change password at next logon and check the box next to Password never expires. Click the Create button and close out of the New User screen. You’ll then see the new user we created in the list and you can close out of the Computer Management window. Now back on the XP computer when you double-click on the Vista machine, your prompted to log in. Just type in the username and password you just created. Now you’ll have access to the Public folder contents. Set up Sharing on XP If you want to access a shared folder from the Vista computer located on the XP machine, it’s the same process in reverse. On the XP computer in Shared Documents, right-click on the folder you want to share and select Sharing and Security. Then select the radio button next to Share this folder and click Ok. Go into Computer Management and create a new user… Now from the Vista machine double click on the XP machine icon, enter the password, then access the folders and files you need. If you have multiple versions of Windows on your home network, you’ll now be able to access files and folders from each of them. If you want to share between Windows 7 and XP check out our article on how to share files and printers between Windows 7 and XP. You might also want to check out our article on how to share files and printers between Windows 7 and Vista. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Show Hidden Files and Folders in Windows 7 or VistaHow To Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and VistaShare Files and Printers between Windows 7 and XPHow To Share a Folder the XP Way in Windows VistaMoving Your Personal Data Folders in Windows Vista the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Scan your PC for nasties with Panda ActiveScan CleanMem – Memory Cleaner AceStock – The Personal Stock Monitor Add Multiple Tabs to Office Programs The Wearing of the Green – St. Patrick’s Day Theme (Firefox) Perform a Background Check on Yourself

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Uninstall, Disable, or Remove Windows 7 Media Center

- by Mysticgeek

Although Windows 7 Media Center has improved a lot over previous versions of Windows, but you might want to disable it for different reasons. Here we take a look at a couple of methods to get rid of it. There are a variety of reasons you might want to disable Windows 7 Media Center. Maybe you own a business and don’t want it to run on the machines. Or perhaps you don’t use it at all and just don’t want it around. Turn Off WMC Using Programs and Features Probably the easiest way to get rid of it on all versions of Windows 7 is to open Control Panel and select Programs and Features. This method is similar to disabling Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7. On the left hand panel click on Turn Windows Features on or off. Scroll down to Media Features and expand the folder. Then Uncheck Windows Media Center… You’ll get a verification message making sure you want to disable it, click Yes. Then the box next to Windows Media Center will be empty…click OK. Wait while WMC is disabled… To complete the process a reboot is required. After getting back from the restart, the WMC icon will be gone and there won’t be any way to launch it. Re-enable WMC If you want to re-enable it, just go back in and recheck it. Again you’ll need to wait while it’s configured, but when it’s done, a restart is not required. Disable Media Center Using Group Policy Note: This process uses Group Policy Editor which is not available in Home versions of Windows 7. Click on the Start menu and type gpedit.msc into the Search box and hit Enter. Now navigate to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ Windows Media Center. Double-click on Do not allow Windows Media Center to run. Then select the radio button next to Enabled, click OK and close out of Group Policy Editor. Now if a user tries to launch WMC they will get the following message. Conclusion If you’re not a fan of Windows Media Center or want to disable it for whatever reason, the process is simple and there are a couple of ways you can do it. WMC is not included in Starter or Home Basic versions of Windows 7. If you’re new to Windows 7 Media Center, you might want to check out our guide on getting started and setting up live TV. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Disable Windows Mobility Center in Windows 7 or VistaMake Outlook Faster by Disabling Unnecessary Add-InsSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterRemove "Map Network Drive" Menu Item from Windows Vista or XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Find Downloads and Add-ins for Outlook Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa !

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Getting Started with StreamInsight 2.1

- by Roman Schindlauer

If you're just beginning to get familiar with StreamInsight, you may be looking for a way to get started. What are the basics? How can I get my first StreamInsight application running so I can see how it works? Where is the 'front door' that will get me going? If that describes you, then this blog entry might be just what you need. If you're already a StreamInsight wiz, keep reading anyway - you may find some helpful links here that you weren't aware of. But here's what we'd like from you experienced readers in particular: if you know of other good resources that we missed, please feel free to add them in the comments below. We appreciate you sharing your expertise. The Book The basic documentation for StreamInsight is located in the MSDN Library (Microsoft StreamInsight 2.1). You'll notice that previous versions of StreamInsight are still there (1.2 and 2.0), but if you're just getting started you can stick to the 2.1 section. The documentation has been organized to function as reference material, which is fine after you're familiar with the technology. But if you're trying to learn the basics, you might want to take a different path instead of just starting at the top. The following is one map you can use. What Is StreamInsight? Here is a sequence of topics that should give you a good overview of what StreamInsight is and how it works: Overview answers the question, "what is it?" StreamInsight Server Architecture gives you a quick look at a high-level architectural drawing StreamInsight Concepts lays out an overview of the basic components Deploying StreamInsight Entities to a StreamInsight Server describes the mechanics of how these components work together Getting an Example Running Once you have this background, go ahead and install StreamInsight and get a basic example up and running: Installation download and install the software StreamInsight Examples walk through a set of 3 simple StreamInsight applications that work together to demonstrate what you learned in the topics above; you can copy and paste the code into Visual Studio, compile, and run That's it - you now have a real, functioning StreamInsight system! Now that you have a handle on the basics, you might want to start digging deeper. Digging Deeper Here's a suggested path through the documentation to help you understand the next layer of StreamInsight technologies: Using Event Sources and Event Sinks sources supply data and sinks consume it; this topic gives you an overview of how they work Publishing and Connecting to the StreamInsight Server practical details on how to set up a StreamInsight server A Hitchhiker’s Guide to StreamInsight 2.1 Queries queries are the heart of how StreamInsight performs data analytics, and this whitepaper will help you really understand how they work Using StreamInsight LINQ root through this section for technical details on specific query components Using the StreamInsight Event Flow Debugger in addition to troubleshooting, the debugger is a great way to learn more about what goes on inside a StreamInsight application And Even Deeper Finally, to get a handle on some of the more complex things you can do with StreamInsight, dig into these: Input and Output Adapters adapters can be useful for handling more complex sources and sinks Building Resilient StreamInsight Applications a resilient application is able to recover from system failures Operations this section will help you monitor and troubleshoot a running StreamInsight system The StreamInsight Community As you're designing and developing your StreamInsight solutions, you probably will find it helpful to see working examples or to learn tips and tricks from others. Or maybe you need a place to post a vexing question. Here are some community resources that we have found useful. If you know of others, please add them in the comments below. Code samples and tools Official StreamInsight code samples Introduction to LinqPad Driver for StreamInsight 2.1 - LinqPad is a very useful tool for developing queries The following case studies are based on earlier versions of StreamInsight, but they still are useful examples: Microsoft Media Analytics - real-time monitoring and analytic Edgenet - responding to information from multiple source ICONICS - managing energy usage Blogs Microsoft StreamInsight Ruminations of J.net Richard Seroter's Architecture Musings pluralsight Forums MSDN StreamInsight Forum stackoverflow Training Microsoft StreamInsight Fundamentals (“Introducing StreamInsight” is free) from pluralsight Twitter @streaminsight You’re a StreamInsight Expert That should get you going. Please add any other resources you have found useful in the comments below. Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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Adding page title to each page while creating a PDF file using itextsharp in VB.NET

- by Snowy

I have recently started using itextsharp and gradually learning it. So far I created a PDF file and it seems great. I have added a table and some subtables as the first table cells to hold data. It is done using two for loops. The first one loops through all data and the second one is each individual data displayed in columns. The html outcome looks like the following: <table> <tr> <td>Page title in center</td> </tr> <tr> <td> <table> <tr> <td>FirstPersonName</td> <td>Rank1</td> <td>info1a</td> <td>infob</td> <td>infoc</td> </tr> </table> </td> <td> <table> <tr> <td>SecondPersonName</td> <td>Rank2</td> <td>info1a</td> <td>infob</td> <td>infoc</td> <td>infod</td> <td>infoe</td> </tr> </table> </td> <td> <table> <tr> <td>ThirdPersonName</td> <td>Rank2</td> <td>info1a</td> <td>infob</td> <td>infoc</td> <td>infod</td> <td>infoe</td> <td>infof</td> <td>infog</td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> For page headings, I added a cell at the top before any other cells. I need to add this heading to all pages. Depending on the size of data, some pages have two rows and some pages have three rows of data. So I can not tell exactly when the new page starts to add the heading/title. My question is how to add the heading/title to all pages. I use VB.net. I searched for answer online and had no success. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

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Securing Flexfield Value Sets in EBS 12.2

- by Sara Woodhull

Release 12.2 includes a new feature: flexfield value set security. This new feature gives you additional options for ensuring that different administrators have non-overlapping responsibilities, which in turn provides checks and balances for sensitive activities. Separation of Duties (SoD) is one of the key concepts of internal controls and is a requirement for many regulations including: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) European Union Data Protection Directive. Its primary intent is to put barriers in place to prevent fraud or theft by an individual acting alone. Implementing Separation of Duties requires minimizing the possibility that users could modify data across application functions where the users should not normally have access. For flexfields and report parameters in Oracle E-Business Suite, values in value sets can affect functionality such as the rollup of accounting data, job grades used at a company, and so on. Controlling access to the creation or modification of value set values can be an important piece of implementing Separation of Duties in an organization. New Flexfield Value Set Security feature Flexfield value set security allows system administrators to restrict users from viewing, adding or updating values in specific value sets. Value set security enables role-based separation of duties for key flexfields, descriptive flexfields, and report parameters. For example, you can set up value set security such that certain users can view or insert values for any value set used by the Accounting Flexfield but no other value sets, while other users can view and update values for value sets used for any flexfields in Oracle HRMS. You can also segregate access by Operating Unit as well as by role or responsibility.Value set security uses a combination of data security and role-based access control in Oracle User Management. Flexfield value set security provides a level of security that is different from the previously-existing and similarly-named features in Oracle E-Business Suite: Function security controls whether a user has access to a specific page or form, as well as what operations the user can do in that screen. Flexfield value security controls what values a user can enter into a flexfield segment or report parameter (by responsibility) during routine data entry in many transaction screens across Oracle E-Business Suite. Flexfield value set security (this feature, new in Release 12.2) controls who can view, insert, or update values for a particular value set (by flexfield, report, or value set) in the Segment Values form (FNDFFMSV). The effect of flexfield value set security is that a user of the Segment Values form will only be able to view those value sets for which the user has been granted access. Further, the user will be able to insert or update/disable values in that value set if the user has been granted privileges to do so. Flexfield value set security affects independent, dependent, and certain table-validated value sets for flexfields and report parameters. Initial State of the Feature upon Upgrade Because this is a new security feature, it is turned on by default. When you initially install or upgrade to Release 12.2.2, no users are allowed to view, insert or update any value set values (users may even think that their values are missing or invalid because they cannot see the values). You must explicitly set up access for specific users by enabling appropriate grants and roles for those users.We recommend using flexfield value set security as part of a comprehensive Separation of Duties strategy. However, if you choose not to implement flexfield value set security upon upgrading to or installing Release 12.2, you can enable backwards compatibility--users can access any value sets if they have access to the Values form--after you upgrade. The feature does not affect day-to-day transactions that use flexfields. However, you must either set up specific grants and roles or enable backwards compatibility before users can create new values or update or disable existing values. For more information, see: Release 12.2 Flexfield Value Set Security Documentation Update for Patch 17305947:R12.FND.C (Document 1589204.1) R12.2 TOI: Implement and Use Application Object Library (AOL) - Flexfields Security and Separation of Duties for Value Sets (recorded training)

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Adding custom interfaces to your mock instance.

- by mehfuzh

Previously, i made a post showing how you can leverage the dependent interfaces that is implemented by JustMock during the creation of mock instance. It could be a informative post that let you understand how JustMock behaves internally for class or interfaces implement other interfaces into it. But the question remains, how you can add your own custom interface to your target mock. In this post, i am going to show you just that. Today, i will not start with a dummy class as usual rather i will use two most common interfaces in the .NET framework and create a mock combining those. Before, i start i would like to point out that in the recent release of JustMock we have extended the Mock.Create<T>(..) with support for additional settings though closure. You can add your own custom interfaces , specify directly the real constructor that should be called or even set the behavior of your target. Doing a fast forward directly to the point, here goes the test code for create a creating a mock that contains the mix for ICloneable and IDisposable using the above mentioned changeset. var myMock = Mock.Create<IDisposable>(x => x.Implements<ICloneable>()); var myMockAsClonable = myMock as ICloneable; bool isCloned = false; Mock.Arrange(() => myMockAsClonable.Clone()).DoInstead(() => isCloned = true); myMockAsClonable.Clone(); Assert.True(isCloned); Here, we are creating the target mock for IDisposable and also implementing ICloneable. Finally, using the “as” for getting the ICloneable reference accordingly arranging it, acting on it and asserting if the expectation is met properly. This is a very rudimentary example, you can do the same for a given class: var realItem = Mock.Create<RealItem>(x => { x.Implements<IDisposable>(); x.CallConstructor(() => new RealItem(0)); }); var iDispose = realItem as IDisposable; iDispose.Dispose(); Here, i am also calling the real constructor for RealItem class. This is to mention that you can implement custom interfaces only for non-sealed classes or less it will end up with a proper exception. Also, this feature don’t require any profiler, if you are agile or running it inside silverlight runtime feel free to try it turning off the JM add-in :-). TIP : Ability to specify real constructor could be a useful productivity boost in cases for code change and you can re-factor the usage just by one click with your favorite re-factor tool. That’s it for now and hope that helps Enjoy!!

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Code Contracts: validating arrays and collections

- by DigiMortal

Validating collections before using them is very common task when we use built-in generic types for our collections. In this posting I will show you how to validate collections using code contracts. It is cool how much awful looking code you can avoid using code contracts. Failing code Let’s suppose we have method that calculates sum of all invoices in collection. We have class Invoice and one of properties it has is Sum. I don’t introduce here any complex calculations on invoices because we have another problem to solve in this topic. Here is our code. public static decimal CalculateTotal(IList<Invoice> invoices) { var sum = invoices.Sum(p => p.Sum); return sum; } This method is very simple but it fails when invoices list contains at least one null. Of course, we can test if invoice is null but having nulls in lists like this is not good idea – it opens green way for different coding bugs in system. Our goal is to react to bugs ASAP at the nearest place they occur. There is one more way how to make our method fail. It happens when invoices is null. I thing it is also one common bugs during development and it even happens in production environments under some conditions that are usually hardly met. Now let’s protect our little calculation method with code contracts. We need two contracts: invoices cannot be null invoices cannot contain any nulls Our first contract is easy but how to write the second one? Solution: Contract.ForAll Preconditions in code are checked using Contract.Ensures method. This method takes boolean value as argument that sais if contract holds or not. There is also method Contract.ForAll that takes collection and predicate that must hold for that collection. Nice thing is ForAll returns boolean. So, we have very simple solution. public static decimal CalculateTotal(IList<Invoice> invoices) { Contract.Requires(invoices != null); Contract.Requires(Contract.ForAll<Invoice>(invoices, p => p != null)); var sum = invoices.Sum(p => p.Sum); return sum; } And here are some lines of code you can use to test the contracts quickly. var invoices = new List<Invoice>(); invoices.Add(new Invoice()); invoices.Add(null); invoices.Add(new Invoice()); //CalculateTotal(null); CalculateTotal(invoices); If your code is covered with unit tests then I suggest you to write tests to check that these contracts hold for every code run. Conclusion Although it seemed at first place that checking all elements in collection may end up with for-loops that does not look so nice we were able to solve our problem nicely. ForAll method of contract class offered us simple mechanism to check collections and it does it smoothly the code-contracts-way. P.S. I suggest you also read devlicio.us blog posting Validating Collections with Code Contracts by Derik Whittaker.

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JDeveloper 11g R1 (11.1.1.4.0) - New Features on ADF Desktop Integration Explained

- by juan.ruiz

One of the areas that introduced many new features on the latest release (11.1.1.4.0) of JDeveloper 11g R1 is ADF Desktop integration - in this article I’ll provide an overview of these new features. New ADF Desktop Integration Ribbon in Excel - After installing the ADF desktop integration add-in and depending on the mode in which you open the desktop integration workbook, the ADF Desktop integration ribbon for design time and runtime are displayed as a separate tab within Excel. In previous version the ADF Desktop integration environment used to be placed inside the add-ins tab. Above you can see both, design time ribbon as well as runtime ribbon. On the design time ribbon you can manage the workbook and worksheet properties, worksheet component properties, diagnostics, execution and publication of the workbook. The runtime version of the ribbon is totally customizable and represents what it used to be the runtime menu on the spreadsheet, in this ribbon you can include all the operations and actions that could be executed by the end user while working with the spreadsheet data. Diagnostics - A very important aspect for developers is how to debug or verify the interactions of the client with the server, for that ADF desktop integration has provided since day one a series of diagnostics tools. In this release the diagnostics tools are more visible and are really easy to configure. You can access the client console while testing the workbook, or you can simple dump all the messages to a log file – having the ability of setting the output level for both. Security - There are a number of enhancements on security but the one with more impact for developers is tha security now is optional when using ADF Desktop Integration. Until this version every time that you wanted to work with ADFdi it was a must that the application was previously secured. In this release security is optional which means that if you have previously defined security on your application, then you must secure the ADFdi servlet as explained in one of my previous (ADD LINK) posts. In the other hand, if but the time that you start working with ADFdi you have not defined security, you can test and publish your workbooks without adding security. Support for Continuous Integration - In this release we have added tooling for continuous integration building. in the ADF desktop integration space, the concept translates to adding functionality that developers can use to publish ADFdi workbooks as part of their entire application build. For that purpose, we have a publish tool that can be easily invoke from an ANT task such that all the design time workbooks are re-published into the latest version of the application building process. Key Column - At runtime, on any worksheet containing editable tables you will notice a new additional column called the key column. The purpose of this column is to make the end user aware that all rows on the table need to be selected at the time of sorting. The users cannot alter the value of this column. From the developers points of view there are no steps required in order to have the key column included into the worksheets. Installation and Creation of New Workbooks - Both use cases can be executed now directly from JDeveloper. As part of the Tools menu options the developer can install the ADF desktop integration designer. Also, creating new workbooks that previously was done through that convert tool shipped with JDeveloper is now automatic done from the New Gallery. Creating a new ADFdi workbook adds metadata information information to the Excel workbook so you can work in design time. Other Enhancements Support for Excel 2010 and the ADF components ready-only enabled don’t allow to change its value – the cell in Excel is automatically protected, this could cause confusion among customers of previous releases.

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Sharing configuration settings between Windows Azure roles

- by theo.spears

If you are working on a medium-large Windows Azure project it's likely it will involve more than one role, for example separate web and worker roles. Unfortunately although all the windows azure configuration settings are stored in a single cscfg file, there is no way to share configuration settings between multiple roles. This means you have to duplicate common settings like connection strings across all your roles. There is an open Connect issue about this topic, but Microsoft have not said when they will fix it. In the mean time I've put together a dirty dirty hack cunning workaround that creates a fake role containing your shared configuration settings, and copies it to all roles as part of the build process. Here's how you set it up: 1. Download the zip file attached to this post, and unzip it into the folder containing your Azure project (not your solution folder). 2. Edit your csdef and cscfg files to include the placeholder project ServiceDefinition.csdef<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="AzureSpendNotifier" http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition%22"http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="GLOBAL"> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="ExampleSetting" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </WorkerRole> <WorkerRole name="MyWorker"> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </WorkerRole> <WebRole name="MyWeb"> <Sites> <Site name="Web"> <Bindings> <Binding name="WebEndpoint" endpointName="WebEndpoint" /> </Bindings> </Site> </Sites> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </WebRole> </ServiceDefinition> ServiceConfiguration.cscfg<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="AzureSpendNotifier" xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="GLOBAL"> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="ExampleSetting" value="Hello World" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Instances count="1" /> </Role> <Role name="MyWorker"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> <Role name="MyWeb"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> It is important that all your roles contain a ConfigurationSettings entry in both cscfg and csdef files, even if it's empty- otherwise the shared configuration settings will not be inserted. 3. Open your azure deployment (.ccproj) project in notepad, and add the highlighted line below: ... <Import Project="$(CloudExtensionsDir)Microsoft.CloudService.targets" /> <Import Project="globalsettings/globalsettings.targets" /> </Project> It is important you add this below the Microsoft.CloudService.targets import line, as it replaces some of the rules defined in that file. Visual studio will prompt you to reload the project, say yes. At this point you will have a new Azure role called 'GLOBAL' with settings you can edit through the visual studio properties panel as normal. This role will never be deployed, but any settings you add to it will be copied to all your other roles when deployed or tested locally within visual studio.

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NetBeans Java Hints: Quick & Dirty Guide

- by Geertjan

In NetBeans IDE 7.2, a new wizard will be found in the "Module Development" category in the New File dialog, for creating new Java Hints. Select a package in a NetBeans module project. Right click, choose New/Other.../Module Development/Java Hint: You'll then see this: Fill in: Class Name: the name of the class that should be generated. E.g. "Example". Hint Display Name: the display name of the hint itself (as will appear in Tools/Options). E.g. "Example Hint". Warning Message: the warning that should be produced by the hint. E.g. "Something wrong is going on". Hint Description: a longer description of the hint, will appear in Tools/Options and eventually some other places. E.g. "This is an example hint that warns about an example problem." Will also provide an Automatic Fix: whether the hint will provide some kind of transformation. E.g. "yes". Fix Display Name: the display name of such a fix/transformation. E.g. "Fix the problem". Click Finish. Should generate "Example.java", the hint itself: import com.sun.source.util.TreePath; import org.netbeans.api.java.source.CompilationInfo; import org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints.ErrorDescription; import org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints.Fix; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.ConstraintVariableType; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.ErrorDescriptionFactory; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.Hint; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.HintContext; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.JavaFix; import org.netbeans.spi.java.hints.TriggerPattern; import org.openide.util.NbBundle.Messages; @Hint(displayName = "DN_com.bla.Example", description = "DESC_com.bla.Example", category = "general") //NOI18N @Messages({"DN_com.bla.Example=Example Hint", "DESC_com.bla.Example=This is an example hint that warns about an example problem."}) public class Example { @TriggerPattern(value = "$str.equals(\"\")", //Specify a pattern as needed constraints = @ConstraintVariableType(variable = "$str", type = "java.lang.String")) @Messages("ERR_com.bla.Example=Something wrong is going on") public static ErrorDescription computeWarning(HintContext ctx) { Fix fix = new FixImpl(ctx.getInfo(), ctx.getPath()).toEditorFix(); return ErrorDescriptionFactory.forName(ctx, ctx.getPath(), Bundle.ERR_com.bla_Example(), fix); } private static final class FixImpl extends JavaFix { public FixImpl(CompilationInfo info, TreePath tp) { super(info, tp); } @Override @Messages("FIX_com.bla.Example=Fix the problem") protected String getText() { return Bundle.FIX_com_bla_Example(); } @Override protected void performRewrite(TransformationContext ctx) { //perform the required transformation } } } Should also generate "ExampleTest.java", a test for it. Unfortunately, the wizard infrastructure is not capable of handling changes related to test dependencies. So the ExampleTest.java has a todo list at its begining: /* TODO to make this test work: - add test dependency on Java Hints Test API (and JUnit 4) - to ensure that the newest Java language features supported by the IDE are available, regardless of which JDK you build the module with: -- for Ant-based modules, add "requires.nb.javac=true" into nbproject/project.properties -- for Maven-based modules, use dependency:copy in validate phase to create target/endorsed/org-netbeans-libs-javacapi-*.jar and add to endorseddirs in maven-compiler-plugin configuration */Warning: if this is a project for which tests never existed before, you may need to close&reopen the project, so that "Unit Test Libraries" node appears - a bug in apisupport projects, as far as I can tell. Thanks to Jan Lahoda for the above rough guide.

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Browser Specific Extensions of HttpClient

- by imran_ku07

Introduction: REpresentational State Transfer (REST) causing/leaving a great impact on service/API development because it offers a way to access a service without requiring any specific library by embracing HTTP and its features. ASP.NET Web API makes it very easy to quickly build RESTful HTTP services. These HTTP services can be consumed by a variety of clients including browsers, devices, machines, etc. With .NET Framework 4.5, we can use HttpClient class to consume/send/receive RESTful HTTP services(for .NET Framework 4.0, HttpClient class is shipped as part of ASP.NET Web API). The HttpClient class provides a bunch of helper methods(for example, DeleteAsync, PostAsync, GetStringAsync, etc.) to consume a HTTP service very easily. ASP.NET Web API added some more extension methods(for example, PutAsJsonAsync, PutAsXmlAsync, etc) into HttpClient class to further simplify the usage. In addition, HttpClient is also an ideal choice for writing integration test for a RESTful HTTP service. Since a browser is a main client of any RESTful API, it is also important to test the HTTP service on a variety of browsers. RESTful service embraces HTTP headers and different browsers send different HTTP headers. So, I have created a package that will add overloads(with an additional Browser parameter) for almost all the helper methods of HttpClient class. In this article, I will show you how to use this package. Description: Create/open your test project and install ImranB.SystemNetHttp.HttpClientExtensions NuGet package. Then, add this using statement on your class, using ImranB.SystemNetHttp; Then, you can start using any HttpClient helper method which include the additional Browser parameter. For example, var client = new HttpClient(myserver); var task = client.GetAsync("http://domain/myapi", Browser.Chrome); task.Wait(); var response = task.Result; . Here is the definition of Browser, public enum Browser { Firefox = 0, Chrome = 1, IE10 = 2, IE9 = 3, IE8 = 4, IE7 = 5, IE6 = 6, Safari = 7, Opera = 8, Maxthon = 9, } These extension methods will make it very easy to write browser specific integration test. It will also help HTTP service consumer to mimic the request sending behavior of a browser. This package source is available on github. So, you can grab the source and add some additional behavior on the top of these extensions. Summary: Testing a REST API is an important aspect of service development and today, testing with a browser is crucial. In this article, I showed how to write integration test that will mimic the browser request sending behavior. I also showed an example. Hopefully you will enjoy this article too.

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My Dog, Cross-Channel Shopping, and Fusion SCM

- by Kathryn Perry

A guest post by Mark Carson, Director, Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management I was walking my dog Max in an open space behind my house. As we tromped through the tall weeds I remembered it is tick season and that I should get Max some protection. While he sniffed merrily in the tick infested brush, I started shopping in the middle of an open field on my phone. I thought it would be convenient to pick up the tick medicine from a pet store on the way home. Searching the pet store website I saw that they had the medicine, but there was no information on whether the store had any in stock and there were no options for shipping it to the store for pickup. I could return it, but not pick it up which seamed kind of odd. I really didn't feel like making calls to the local stores to find out if they had it. Since the product is popular, I tried one of the large 'everything' stores. Browsing its website I could see that it could be shipped to me, shipped to the store for free, and that the store nearest to me had it in stock. Needless to say, this store became a better option. This experience is a small example of why retailers, distributors, and manufactures have placed a high priority on enabling 'cross-channel commerce.' Shoppers like you and me expect to be able to search, compare, buy and return products on-line and over the phone using a variety of devices including PDAs, tablets and in-store kiosks. The pet store lost my business because its web channel had limited information about its stores. I have spoken with many customers and prospects about cross-channel commerce. They all realize the business implications and urgency behind cross-channel commerce but recognize there are challenges to enable it. New and existing applications must be integrated together globally through a consistent cross-channel business process. Integration is required between applications that provide the initial shopping experience and delivery applications associated with warehouses, stores, and partners. The enablement must be accomplished in a flexible way to react to fast-changing product portfolios and new acquisitions, while at the same time minimizing costs through reuse of existing systems. Meanwhile, the business must continue to grow and decision makers need to balance new capability with peak seasons. The challenges above are not unique to retail. Any customer in any industry who has multiple points for capturing orders and multiple points for fulfilling orders will face these challenges. With this in mind, we had a unique opportunity in Fusion SCM to re-think how to build a set of modular and flexible applications in the order management space that would make these challenges easier to conquer. The results are Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration and Global Order Promising. These applications can help companies, such as the pet store, enable true cross-channel commerce. The apps provide highly adaptable and flexible business processes to automate order orchestration across multiple cross-channel systems. They also show a global view of supply across warehouses, stores, and partners for real-time availability and more accurate order promising. Additional capability includes a standards-based integration framework for seamless execution and the ability to reuse existing systems for faster and lower cost implementations. OK, that was a mouthful of features and benefits. As Max waited to cross the street (he can do basic math too), I wondered if he could relate. He does not care about leash laws, pick-up courtesy, where he can/can't walk, what time of day it is, or even ticks. He does not care about how all these things could make walking complicated. He just wants to walk. Similarly, customers just want to shop and companies just want to make it easier to sell and deliver. You can learn more about Distributed Order Orchestration and Global Order Promising in cross-channel here.

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New features in TFS Demo Setup 1.0.0.2

- by Tarun Arora

Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/ | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas Just pushed out the 2nd release of the TFS Demo setup on CodePlex, below a quick look at some of the new features/improvements in the tool… Details of the existing features can be found here. Feature 1 – Set up Work Items Queries as Team Favorites The task board looks cooler when the team favourite work item queries show up on the task board. The demo setup console application now has the ability to set up the work item queries as team favorites for you. If you want to see how you can add Team Favorites programmatically, refer to this blogpost here. Image 1 – Task board without Team Favorites Let’s see how the TFS Demo Setup application sets-up team favorites as part of the run… Open up the DemoDictionary.xml and you should be able to see the new node <TeamFavorites> this accepts multiple <TeamFavorite>. You simply need to specify the <Type> as Query and in the <Name> specify the name of the work item query that you would like added as a favorite. Image 2 – Highlighting the TeamFavorites block in DemoDictionary.xml So, when the demo set up application is run with the above config, work item queries “Blocked Tasks” and “Open Impediments” are added as team favorites. They then show up on the task board, as highlighted in the screen shot below. Image 3 – Team Favorites setup during the TFS demo setup app execution Feature 2 – Choose what you want to setup and exclude the rest I had a great feature request come in requesting the ability to exclude parts of the setup at the sole discretion of the executioner. To accommodate this, I have added an attribute with each block, the attribute “Run” accepts “true” or “false”. If you set the flag to true then at the time of execution that block would be considered for setup and if you set the flag to false, the block will be ignored during the setup. So, lets look at an example below… The attribute "Run” is set to true for TeamSettings, Team Favorites, TeamMembers and WorkItems. So, all of these would be setup as part of the demo setup application execution. Image 4 – New Attribute Run added to all blocks in DemoDictionary.xml If I did not want to recreate the team and did not want to add new work items but only wanted to add favorites and team members to the existing team “AgileChamps1” then I could simple run the application with below DemoDictionary.xml. Note – TeamSettings Run=”false” and WorkItems Run=”false”. Image 5 – TeamFavorites and TeamMembers set as true and others set to false Feature 3 – Usability Improvement If you try and assign a work item to a team member that does not exist then the application throws a nasty exception. This behaviour has now been changed, upon adding such a work item, the work items will be created and not assigned to any user. The work item id will be printed to the console making it simple for you to assign the work item manually. As you can see in the screen shot below, I am trying to assign the work item to a user “Tarun” and a user “v2” both are *not valid users in my team project collection* so the tool creates the work items and provides me the work item id and lets me know that since the user is invalid the work item could not be assigned to the user. Better user experience ae Image 6 – Behaviour if work item assigned to users are in valid users in team project That’s about it for the current release. I have some new features planned for the next release. Mean while if you have any ideas/comments please feel free to leave a comment. Stay tuned for more… Enjoy! Other posts on TFS Demo Setup can be found here.

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Essential Links for the SharePoint Client Side Developer

- by Mark Rackley

Front End Developer? Client Side Developer? Middle Tier??? I’m covering all my bases. Regardless, I’m sick and tired of Googling with Bing when I forget where information that I need often is located. I was getting ready to bookmark some of them when it hit me… “Hey Mark… (I don’t actually refer to myself in the third person), Why don’t you put the links in a blog so that it looks like you are being helpful!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go back to some of my old blogs to remember how I did something. Seriously people, you need to start a blog, it’s the best way to remember how the frick you got something to work… and it looks like you are being helpful when in reality you are just forgetful. So… where was I? Oh yeah.. essential information that I’ve needed from time to time when I was not using Visual Studio. All of this info has come in handy from time to time. Know about these things and keep them in your tool belt, it’s amazing the stuff you can accomplish with just knowing where to look. What Why SPServices Widely used library written by Marc Anderson used to call SharePoint Web Services with jQuery jQuery For SPServices and other cool stuff Easy Tabs Essential tool for quick page enhancements. This widely used too from Christophe Humbert groups multiple web parts into one tabbed display. Very quick and easy way to get oohs and ahs from End Users. Convert Calculated Columns to HTML Also from Christophe, I use this script all the time to convert html in my calculated columns to actually display as html and not with the tags. Unlocking the Mysteries of Data View Web Part XSL Tags This blog series from Marc Anderson makes it very easy to understand what’s going on with all those weird xsl tags in your data view web parts. Essential to make those things do what you want them to do. Creating Parent / Child list relationships (2007) Creating Parent / Child list relationships (2010) By far my most viewed blog posts (tens and tens of thousands). I have posts for both 2007 and 2010 that walk you through automatically setting the lookup id on a list to its “parent”. Set SharePoint Form fields using Query String Variables Also widely read, this one walks you through taking a variable from your Query String and set a form field to that value. Hmmm… I KNOW there are more, but I’m tired and drawing a blank. I’ll try to add them when I remember them (or need them again and think “Oh, I forgot to add that one”) But it’s a start, and please feel free to add your own in the comments… So, it’s YOUR turn to be helpful. What little tip or trick do you find yourself using ALL the time that you think everyone should know about??

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Authenticating your windows domain users in the cloud

- by cibrax

Moving to the cloud can represent a big challenge for many organizations when it comes to reusing existing infrastructure. For applications that drive existing business processes in the organization, reusing IT assets like active directory represent good part of that challenge. For example, a new web mobile application that sales representatives can use for interacting with an existing CRM system in the organization. In the case of Windows Azure, the Access Control Service (ACS) already provides some integration with ADFS through WS-Federation. That means any organization can create a new trust relationship between the STS running in the ACS and the STS running in ADFS. As the following image illustrates, the ADFS running in the organization should be somehow exposed out of network boundaries to talk to the ACS. This is usually accomplish through an ADFS proxy running in a DMZ. This is the official story for authenticating existing domain users with the ACS. Getting an ADFS up and running in the organization, which talks to a proxy and also trust the ACS could represent a painful experience. It basically requires advance knowledge of ADSF and exhaustive testing to get everything right. However, if you want to get an infrastructure ready for authenticating your domain users in the cloud in a matter of minutes, you will probably want to take a look at the sample I wrote for talking to an existing Active Directory using a regular WCF service through the Service Bus Relay Binding. You can use the WCF ability for self hosting the authentication service within a any program running in the domain (a Windows service typically). The service will not require opening any port as it is opening an outbound connection to the cloud through the Relay Service. In addition, the service will be protected from being invoked by any unauthorized party with the ACS, which will act as a firewall between any client and the service. In that way, we can get a very safe solution up and running almost immediately. To make the solution even more convenient, I implemented an STS in the cloud that internally invokes the service running on premises for authenticating the users. Any existing web application in the cloud can just establish a trust relationship with this STS, and authenticate the users via WS-Federation passive profile with regular http calls, which makes this very attractive for web mobile for example. This is how the WCF service running on premises looks like, [ServiceBehavior(Namespace = "http://agilesight.com/active_directory/agent")] public class ProxyService : IAuthenticationService { IUserFinder userFinder; IUserAuthenticator userAuthenticator; public ProxyService() : this(new UserFinder(), new UserAuthenticator()) { } public ProxyService(IUserFinder userFinder, IUserAuthenticator userAuthenticator) { this.userFinder = userFinder; this.userAuthenticator = userAuthenticator; } public AuthenticationResponse Authenticate(AuthenticationRequest request) { if (userAuthenticator.Authenticate(request.Username, request.Password)) { return new AuthenticationResponse { Result = true, Attributes = this.userFinder.GetAttributes(request.Username) }; } return new AuthenticationResponse { Result = false }; } } Two external dependencies are used by this service for authenticating users (IUserAuthenticator) and for retrieving user attributes from the user’s directory (IUserFinder). The UserAuthenticator implementation is just a wrapper around the LogonUser Win Api. The UserFinder implementation relies on Directory Services in .NET for searching the user attributes in an existing directory service like Active Directory or the local user store. public UserAttribute[] GetAttributes(string username) { var attributes = new List<UserAttribute>(); var identity = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(new PrincipalContext(this.contextType, this.server, this.container), IdentityType.SamAccountName, username); if (identity != null) { var groups = identity.GetGroups(); foreach(var group in groups) { attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "Group", Value = group.Name }); } if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(identity.DisplayName)) attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "DisplayName", Value = identity.DisplayName }); if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(identity.EmailAddress)) attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "EmailAddress", Value = identity.EmailAddress }); } return attributes.ToArray(); } As you can see, the code is simple and uses all the existing infrastructure in Azure to simplify a problem that looks very complex at first glance with ADFS. All the source code for this sample is available to download (or change) in this GitHub repository, https://github.com/AgileSight/ActiveDirectoryForCloud

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Taking a screenshot from within a Silverlight #WP7 application

- by Laurent Bugnion

Often times, you want to take a screenshot of an application’s page. There can be multiple reasons. For instance, you can use this to provide an easy feedback method to beta testers. I find this super invaluable when working on integration of design in an app, and the user can take quick screenshots, attach them to an email and send them to me directly from the Windows Phone device. However, the same mechanism can also be used to provide screenshots are a feature of the app, for example if the user wants to save the current status of his application, etc. Caveats Note the following: The code requires an XNA library to save the picture to the media library. To have this, follow the steps: In your application (or class library), add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework. In your code, add a “using” statement to Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media. In the Properties folder, open WMAppManifest.xml and add the following capability: ID_CAP_MEDIALIB. The method call will fail with an exception if the device is connected to the Zune application on the PC. To avoid this, either disconnect the device when testing, or end the Zune application on the PC. While the method call will not fail on the emulator, there is no way to access the media library, so it is pretty much useless on this platform. This method only prints Silverlight elements to the output image. Other elements (such as a WebBrowser control’s content for instance) will output a black rectangle. The code public static void SaveToMediaLibrary( FrameworkElement element, string title) { try { var bmp = new WriteableBitmap(element, null); var ms = new MemoryStream(); bmp.SaveJpeg( ms, (int)element.ActualWidth, (int)element.ActualHeight, 0, 100); ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); var lib = new MediaLibrary(); var filePath = string.Format(title + ".jpg"); lib.SavePicture(filePath, ms); MessageBox.Show( "Saved in your media library!", "Done", MessageBoxButton.OK); } catch { MessageBox.Show( "There was an error. Please disconnect your phone from the computer before saving.", "Cannot save", MessageBoxButton.OK); } } This method can save any FrameworkElement. Typically I use it to save a whole page, but you can pass any other element to it. On line 7, we create a new WriteableBitmap. This excellent class can render a visual tree into a bitmap. Note that for even more features, you can use the great WriteableBitmapEx class library (which is open source). On lines 9 to 16, we save the WriteableBitmap to a MemoryStream. The only format supported by default is JPEG, however it is possible to convert to other formats with the ImageTools library (also open source). Lines 18 to 20 save the picture to the Windows Phone device’s media library. Using the image To retrieve the image, simply launch the Pictures library on the phone. The image will be in Saved Pictures. From here, you can share the image (by email, for instance), or synchronize it with the PC using the Zune software. Saving to other platforms It is of course possible to save to other platforms than the media library. For example, you can send the image to a web service, or save it to the isolated storage on the device. To do this, instead of using a MemoryStream, you can use any other stream (such as a web request stream, or a file stream) and save to that instead. Hopefully this code will be helpful to you! Happy coding, Laurent Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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PECL OCI8 2.0 Production Release Announcement

- by cj

The PHP OCI8 2.0.6 extension for Oracle Database is now "production" status. The source code is available on PECL. This can be used immediately to update your OCI8 extension in PHP 5.2 and later versions. The extension compiles with Oracle 10.2 or later client libraries. Oracle's standard cross-version database connectivity applies. OCI8 2.0 and PHP 5.5.5 RPMs for Oracle and Red Hat Linux are available from oss.oracle.com. Windows DLLs are available on PECL for PHP 5.3, PHP 5.4 and PHP 5.5. OCI8 2.0 source code will also be automatically included in the next major version of PHP. New Functionality Oracle Database 12c Implicit Result Set support. IRS's make it easy to pass query results back from stored PL/SQL procedures or anonymous PL/SQL blocks. Individual IRS statement resources, each corresponding to a single query, can be obtained with the new function oci_get_implicit_resultset(). These 'child' statement resources can be passed to any oci_fetch_* function. See Using PHP and Oracle Database 12c Implicit Result Sets and the PHP Manual: oci_get_implicit_resultset(). DTrace Dynamic Trace static probes. This well respected DTrace tracing framework is available on a number of platforms, including Oracle Linux. PHP OCI8 static user-space probes can be enabled with PHP's --enable-dtrace configuration option. See Using PHP DTrace on Oracle Linux. Documentation is also available in the PHP Manual OCI8 and DTrace Dynamic Tracing Improved Functionality Using oci_execute($s, OCI_NO_AUTO_COMMIT) for a SELECT no longer unnecessarily initiates an internal ROLLBACK during connection close. This can improve overall scalability by reducing "round trips" between PHP and the database. Changed Functionality PHP OCI8 2.0's minimum pre-requisites are now PHP 5.2 and Oracle client library 10.2. Later versions of both are usable and, in fact, recommended. Use the older PHP OCI8 1.4.10 extension when using PHP 4.3.9 through to PHP 5.1.x, or when only Oracle Database 9.2 client libraries are available. oci_set_*($connection, ...) meta data setting call error handling is fixed so that oci_error($connection) works for these calls. Note: The old, deprecated function aliases like ocilogon still exist but are not recommended for new applications. Phpinfo() Changes Some cosmetic changes were made to the output of php --ri oci8 and the phpinfo() function. The oci8.event and oci8.connection_class values are now shown only when the Oracle client libraries support the respective functionality. Connection statistics are now in a separate phpinfo() table. Temporary LOB and Collection support status lines in phpinfo() output were removed. These two features have always been enabled since 2007. Oci_internal_debug() Changes The oci_internal_debug() function is now a no-op. Use PHP's --enable-dtrace functionality with DTrace or SystemTap instead. References OCI8 Extension source code and Windows DLLs http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8 Oracle Linux RPMs oss.oracle.com PHP Manual for OCI8 OCI8 and DTrace Dynamic Tracing Oracle OpenWorld Conference paper What's New in Oracle Database 12c for PHP

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Custom Templates: Using user exits

- by Anthony Shorten

One of the features of Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4.1 is the ability to use templates and user exits to extend the base configuration files. The configuration files used by the product are based upon a set of templates shipped with the product. When the configureEnv utility asks for configuration settings they are stored in a configuration file ENVIRON.INI which outlines the environment settings. These settings are then used by the initialSetup utility to populate the various configuration files used by the product using templates located in the templates directory of the installation. Now, whilst the majority of the installations at any site are non-production and the templates provided are generally adequate for that need, there are circumstances where extension of templates are needed to take advantage of more advanced facilities (such as advanced security and environment settings). The issue then becomes that if you alter the configuration files manually (directly or indirectly) then you may lose all your custom settings the next time you run initialSetup. To counter this we allow customers to either override templates with their own template or we now provide user exits in the templates to add fragments of configuration unique to that part of the configuration file. The latter means that the base template is still used but additions are included to provide the extensions. The provision of custom templates is supported but as soon as you use a custom template you are then responsible for reflecting any changes we put in the base template over time. Not a big task but annoying if you have to do it for multiple copies of the product. I prefer to use user exits as they seem to represent the least effort solution. The way to find the user exits available is to either read the Server Administration Guide that comes with your product or look at individual templates and look for the lines: #ouaf_user_exit <user exit name> Where <user exit name> is the name of the user exit. User exits are not always present but are in places that we feel are the most likely to be changed. If a user exit does not exist the you can always use a custom template instead. Now lets show an example. By default, the product generates a config.xml file to be used with Oracle WebLogic. This configuration file has the basic setting contained in it to manage the product. If you want to take advantage of the Oracle WebLogic advanced settings, you can use the console to make those changes and it will be reflected in the config.xml automatically. To retain those changes across invocations of initialSetup, you need to alter the template that generates the config.xml or use user exits. The technique is this. Make the change in the console and when you save the change, WebLogic will reflect it in the config.xml for you. Compare the old version and new version of the config.xml and determine what to add and then find the user exit to put it in by examining the base template. For example, by default, the console is not automatically deployed (it is deployed on demand) in the base config.xml. To make the console deploy, you can add the following line to the templates/CM_config.xml.win.exit_3.include file (for windows) or templates/CM_config.xml.exit_3.include file (for linux/unix): <internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled>false</internal-apps-deploy-on-demand-enabled> Now run initialSetup to reflect the change and if you check the splapp/config/config.xml file you will see the change applied for you. Now how did I know which include file? I check the template for config.xml and found there was an user exit at the right place. I prefixed my include filename with "CM_" to denote it as a custom user exit. This will tell the upgrade tools to leave that file alone whenever you decide to upgrade (or even apply fixes). User exits can be powerful and allow customizations to be added for advanced configuration. You will see products using Oracle Utilities Application Framework use this exits themselves (usually prefixed with the product code). You are also taking advantage of them.

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How to Convert Videos to 3GP for Mobile Phones

- by DigitalGeekery

Would you like to play videos on your phone, but the device only supports 3GP files? We’ll show you how to convert popular video files into 3GP mobile phone video format with Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter. Download the Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter (Download link below). It will allow you to convert popular video files (AVI, MPEG, MP4, FLV, MKV, and MOV) to work on your mobile phone. There is no installation to run. You’ll just need to unzip the download folder and double-click the videoto3gp.exe file to run the application. To add video files to the queue, click on the Add files button. Browse for your file, and click Open. Your video will be added to the Queue. You can add multiple files to the queue and convert them all at one time. The converter comes with several pre-configured profiles for conversion settings. To load a profile, select one from the Profile drop down list and then click the Load button. The settings in the panels at the bottom of the application will be automatically updated. If you are a more advanced user, the options on the lower panels allow for adjusting settings to your liking. You can choose between 3GP and 3G2 (for some older phones), H.263, MPEG-4, and XviD video codecs, AAC or AMR-NB audio codecs, as well as a variety of bitrates, resolutions, etc. By default, the converted file will be output to the same location as the input directory. You can change it by clicking the text box input radio button and browsing for a different folder. Click Convert to start the conversion process. A conversion output box will open and display the progress. When finished, click Close. Now you’re ready to load the video onto your phone and enjoy. Conclusion Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter is not exactly the ultimate video conversion tool, but it is quick and simple enough for the average user to convert most video formats to 3GP. Plus, it’s portable. You can copy the folder to a USB drive and take it with you. Do you have some 3GP video files you’d like to convert to more common formats? Check out our earlier article on how to convert 3GP to AVI and MPEG for free. Link Download Pazera Free Video to 3GP Converter Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Convert .3GP and .3G2 Files to AVI / MPEG for FreeExtract Audio from a Video File with Pazera Free Audio ExtractorConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other FormatsConvert YouTube Videos to MP3 with YouTube DownloaderFriday Fun: Watch HD Video Content with Meevid TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation"

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database design help for game / user levels / progress

- by sprugman

Sorry this got long and all prose-y. I'm creating my first truly gamified web app and could use some help thinking about how to structure the data. The Set-up Users need to accomplish tasks in each of several categories before they can move up a level. I've got my Users, Tasks, and Categories tables, and a UserTasks table which joins the three. ("User 3 has added Task 42 in Category 8. Now they've completed it.") That's all fine and working wonderfully. The Challenge I'm not sure of the best way to track the progress in the individual categories toward each level. The "business" rules are: You have to achieve a certain number of points in each category to move up. If you get the number of points needed in Cat 8, but still have other work to do to complete the level, any new Cat 8 points count toward your overall score, but don't "roll over" into the next level. The number of Categories is small (five currently) and unlikely to change often, but by no means absolutely fixed. The number of points needed to level-up will vary per level, probably by a formula, or perhaps a lookup table. So the challenge is to track each user's progress toward the next level in each category. I've thought of a few potential approaches: Possible Solutions Add a column to the users table for each category and reset them all to zero each time a user levels-up. Have a separate UserProgress table with a row for each category for each user and the number of points they have. (Basically a Many-to-Many version of #1.) Add a userLevel column to the UserTasks table and use that to derive their progress with some kind of SUM statement. Their current level will be a simple int in the User table. Pros & Cons (1) seems like by far the most straightforward, but it's also the least flexible. Perhaps I could use a naming convention based on the category ids to help overcome some of that. (With code like "select cats; for each cat, get the value from Users.progress_{cat.id}.") It's also the one where I lose the most data -- I won't know which points counted toward leveling up. I don't have a need in mind for that, so maybe I don't care about that. (2) seems complicated: every time I add or subtract a user or a category, I have to maintain the other table. I foresee synchronization challenges. (3) Is somewhere in between -- cleaner than #2, but less intuitive than #1. In order to find out where a user is, I'd have mildly complex SQL like: SELECT categoryId, SUM(points) from UserTasks WHERE userId={user.id} & countsTowardLevel={user.level} groupBy categoryId Hmm... that doesn't seem so bad. I think I'm talking myself into #3 here, but would love any input, advice or other ideas. P.S. Sorry for the cross-post. I wrote this up on SO and then remembered that there was a game dev-focused one. Curious to see if I get different answers one place than the other....

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JDeveloper 11.1.2 : Command Link in Table Column Work Around

- by Frank Nimphius

Just figured that in Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.2, clicking on a command link in a table does not mark the table row as selected as it is the behavior in previous releases of Oracle JDeveloper. For the time being, the following work around can be used to achieve the "old" behavior: To mark the table row as selected, you need to build and queue the table selection event in the code executed by the command link action listener. To queue a selection event, you need to know about the rowKey of the row that the command link that you clicked on is located in. To get to this information, you add an f:attribute tag to the command link as shown below <af:column sortProperty="#{bindings.DepartmentsView1.hints.DepartmentId.name}" sortable="false" headerText="#{bindings.DepartmentsView1.hints.DepartmentId.label}" id="c1"> <af:commandLink text="#{row.DepartmentId}" id="cl1" partialSubmit="true" actionListener="#{BrowseBean.onCommandItemSelected}"> <f:attribute name="rowKey" value="#{row.rowKey}"/> </af:commandLink> ... </af:column> The f:attribute tag references #{row.rowKey} wich in ADF translates to JUCtrlHierNodeBinding.getRowKey(). This information can be used in the command link action listener to compose the RowKeySet you need to queue the selected row. For simplicitly reasons, I created a table "binding" reference to the managed bean that executes the command link action. The managed bean code that is referenced from the af:commandLink actionListener property is shown next: public void onCommandItemSelected(ActionEvent actionEvent) { //get access to the clicked command link RichCommandLink comp = (RichCommandLink)actionEvent.getComponent(); //read the added f:attribute value Key rowKey = (Key) comp.getAttributes().get("rowKey"); //get the current selected RowKeySet from the table RowKeySet oldSelection = table.getSelectedRowKeys(); //build an empty RowKeySet for the new selection RowKeySetImpl newSelection = new RowKeySetImpl(); //RowKeySets contain List objects with key objects in them ArrayList list = new ArrayList(); list.add(rowKey); newSelection.add(list); //create the selectionEvent and queue it SelectionEvent selectionEvent = new SelectionEvent(oldSelection, newSelection, table); selectionEvent.queue(); //refresh the table AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance().addPartialTarget(table); }

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T-SQL (SCD) Slowly Changing Dimension Type 2 using a merge statement

- by AtulThakor

Working on stored procedure recently which loads records into a data warehouse I found that the existing record was being expired using an update statement followed by an insert to add the new active record. Playing around with the merge statement you can actually expire the current record and insert a new record within one clean statement. This is how the statement works, we do the normal merge statement to insert a record when there is no match, if we match the record we update the existing record by expiring it and deactivating. At the end of the merge statement we use the output statement to output the staging values for the update, we wrap the whole merge statement within an insert statement and add new rows for the records which we inserted. I’ve added the full script at the bottom so you can paste it and play around. 1: INSERT INTO ExampleFactUpdate 2: (PolicyID, 3: Status) 4: SELECT -- these columns are returned from the output statement 5: PolicyID, 6: Status 7: FROM 8: ( 9: -- merge statement on unique id in this case Policy_ID 10: MERGE dbo.ExampleFactUpdate dp 11: USING dbo.ExampleStag s 12: ON dp.PolicyID = s.PolicyID 13: WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN -- when we cant match the record we insert a new record record and this is all that happens 14: INSERT (PolicyID,Status) 15: VALUES (s.PolicyID, s.Status) 16: WHEN MATCHED --if it already exists 17: AND ExpiryDate IS NULL -- and the Expiry Date is null 18: THEN 19: UPDATE 20: SET 21: dp.ExpiryDate = getdate(), --we set the expiry on the existing record 22: dp.Active = 0 -- and deactivate the existing record 23: OUTPUT $Action MergeAction, s.PolicyID, s.Status -- the output statement returns a merge action which can 24: ) MergeOutput -- be insert/update/delete, on our example where a record has been updated (or expired in our case 25: WHERE -- we'll filter using a where clause 26: MergeAction = 'Update'; -- here Complete source for example 1: if OBJECT_ID('ExampleFactUpdate') > 0 2: drop table ExampleFactUpdate 3: 4: Create Table ExampleFactUpdate( 5: ID int identity(1,1), 3: go 6: PolicyID varchar(100), 7: Status varchar(100), 8: EffectiveDate datetime default getdate(), 9: ExpiryDate datetime, 10: Active bit default 1 11: ) 12: 13: 14: insert into ExampleFactUpdate( 15: PolicyID, 16: Status) 17: select 18: 1, 19: 'Live' 20: 21: /*Create Staging Table*/ 22: if OBJECT_ID('ExampleStag') > 0 23: drop table ExampleStag 24: go 25: 26: /*Create example fact table */ 27: Create Table ExampleStag( 28: PolicyID varchar(100), 29: Status varchar(100)) 30: 31: --add some data 32: insert into ExampleStag( 33: PolicyID, 34: Status) 35: select 36: 1, 37: 'Lapsed' 38: union all 39: select 40: 2, 41: 'Quote' 42: 43: select * 44: from ExampleFactUpdate 45: 46: select * 47: from ExampleStag 48: 49: 50: INSERT INTO ExampleFactUpdate 51: (PolicyID, 52: Status) 53: SELECT -- these columns are returned from the output statement 54: PolicyID, 55: Status 56: FROM 57: ( 58: -- merge statement on unique id in this case Policy_ID 59: MERGE dbo.ExampleFactUpdate dp 60: USING dbo.ExampleStag s 61: ON dp.PolicyID = s.PolicyID 62: WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN -- when we cant match the record we insert a new record record and this is all that happens 63: INSERT (PolicyID,Status) 64: VALUES (s.PolicyID, s.Status) 65: WHEN MATCHED --if it already exists 66: AND ExpiryDate IS NULL -- and the Expiry Date is null 67: THEN 68: UPDATE 69: SET 70: dp.ExpiryDate = getdate(), --we set the expiry on the existing record 71: dp.Active = 0 -- and deactivate the existing record 72: OUTPUT $Action MergeAction, s.PolicyID, s.Status -- the output statement returns a merge action which can 73: ) MergeOutput -- be insert/update/delete, on our example where a record has been updated (or expired in our case 74: WHERE -- we'll filter using a where clause 75: MergeAction = 'Update'; -- here 76: 77: 78: select * 79: from ExampleFactUpdate 80:

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VirtualBox Clone Root HD / Ubuntu / Network issue

- by john.graves(at)oracle.com

When you clone a root Ubuntu disk in VirtualBox, one thing that gets messed up is the network card definition. This is because Ubuntu (as it should) uses UDEV IDs for the network device. When you boot your new disk, the network device ID has changed, so it creates a new eth1 device. Unfortunately, this conflicts with the VirtualBox network setup. What to do? Boot the box (no network) Edit the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules Delete the eth0 line and modify the eth1 line to be eth0 --------- Example OLD ----------- # This file was automatically generated by the /lib/udev/write_net_rules # program, run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file. # # You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single # line, and change only the value of the NAME= key. # PCI device 0x8086:0x100e (e1000) <-------------------- Delete these two lines SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="08:00:27:d8:8d:15", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0" # PCI device 0x8086:0x100e (e1000) ---Modify the next line and change eth1 to be eth0 SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="08:00:27:89:84:98", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth1" .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } ---------------------------------------- --------- Example NEW ----------- # This file was automatically generated by the /lib/udev/write_net_rules # program, run by the persistent-net-generator.rules rules file. # # You can modify it, as long as you keep each rule on a single # line, and change only the value of the NAME= key. # PCI device 0x8086:0x100e (e1000) SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="08:00:27:89:84:98", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0" .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } ----------------------------------------

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Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management (SCM) Designs May Improve End User Productivity

- by Applications User Experience

By Applications User Experience on March 10, 2011 Michele Molnar, Senior Usability Engineer, Applications User Experience The Challenge: The SCM User Experience team, in close collaboration with product management and strategy, completely redesigned the user experience for Oracle Fusion applications. One of the goals of this redesign was to increase end user productivity by applying design patterns and guidelines and incorporating findings from extensive usability research. But a question remained: How do we know that the Oracle Fusion designs will actually increase end user productivity? The Test: To answer this question, the SCM Usability Engineers compared Oracle Fusion designs to their corresponding existing Oracle applications using the workflow time analysis method. The workflow time analysis method breaks tasks into a sequence of operators. By applying standard time estimates for all of the operators in the task, an estimate of the overall task time can be calculated. The workflow time analysis method has been recently adopted by the Applications User Experience group for use in predicting end user productivity. Using this method, a design can be tested and refined as needed to improve productivity even before the design is coded. For the study, we selected some of our recent designs for Oracle Fusion Product Information Management (PIM). The designs encompassed tasks performed by Product Managers to create, manage, and define products for their organization. (See Figure 1 for an example.) In applying this method, the SCM Usability Engineers collaborated with Product Management to compare the new Oracle Fusion Applications designs against Oracle’s existing applications. Together, we performed the following activities: Identified the five most frequently performed tasks Created detailed task scenarios that provided the context for each task Conducted task walkthroughs Analyzed and documented the steps and flow required to complete each task Applied standard time estimates to the operators in each task to estimate the overall task completion time Figure 1. The interactions on each Oracle Fusion Product Information Management screen were documented, as indicated by the red highlighting. The task scenario and script provided the context for each task. The Results: The workflow time analysis method predicted that the Oracle Fusion Applications designs would result in productivity gains in each task, ranging from 8% to 62%, with an overall productivity gain of 43%. All other factors being equal, the new designs should enable these tasks to be completed in about half the time it takes with existing Oracle Applications. Further analysis revealed that these performance gains would be achieved by reducing the number of clicks and screens needed to complete the tasks. Conclusions: Using the workflow time analysis method, we can expect the Oracle Fusion Applications redesign to succeed in improving end user productivity. The workflow time analysis method appears to be an effective and efficient tool for testing, refining, and retesting designs to optimize productivity. The workflow time analysis method does not replace usability testing with end users, but it can be used as an early predictor of design productivity even before designs are coded. We are planning to conduct usability tests later in the development cycle to compare actual end user data with the workflow time analysis results. Such results can potentially be used to validate the productivity improvement predictions. Used together, the workflow time analysis method and usability testing will enable us to continue creating, evaluating, and delivering Oracle Fusion designs that exceed the expectations of our end users, both in the quality of the user experience and in productivity. (For more information about studying productivity, refer to the Measuring User Productivity blog.)

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