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Unity JS - simple if statements not behaving as expected?

- by IHazABone

I have a simple script (please no remarks on the fact that I'm not using a switch statement or better code, this is the earliest version and written this way by a peer, I am improving it) that takes an object and moves it back and forth. For some reason, the variable time gets stuck at 249. It is probably an obvious bug with this inefficient logic, but I cannot seem to find it. var speed = 1; private var time = 0; function Start() { } function Update() { if(condition == true)moveStuff(); } function moveStuff() { var timeSwitch = false; if(time == 0)timeSwitch = false; if(time == timeSet)timeSwitch = true; if(direction == 1) { if(timeSwitch == false) { transform.Translate(Vector3.up * (Time.deltaTime * speed)); time += 1; Debug.Log(time); }else if(timeSwitch == true) { transform.Translate(Vector3.up * ((Time.deltaTime * speed) * -1)); time -= 1; Debug.Log(time); } } else if(direction == 2) { if(timeSwitch == false) { transform.Translate(Vector3.down * (Time.deltaTime * speed)); time += 1; Debug.Log("Moved down. "); }else if(timeSwitch == true){ transform.Translate(Vector3.down * ((Time.deltaTime * speed) * -1)); time -= 1; } } else if(direction == 3) { if(timeSwitch == false) { transform.Translate(Vector3.forward * (Time.deltaTime * speed)); time += 1; Debug.Log("Moved forward. "); }else if(timeSwitch == true){ transform.Translate(Vector3.forward * ((Time.deltaTime * speed) * -1)); time -= 1; } } else if(direction == 4) { if(timeSwitch == false) { transform.Translate(Vector3.back * (Time.deltaTime * speed)); time += 1; Debug.Log("Moved back. "); }else if(timeSwitch == true){ transform.Translate(Vector3.back * ((Time.deltaTime * speed) * -1)); time -= 1; } } else if(direction == 5) { if(timeSwitch == false) { transform.Translate(Vector3.right * (Time.deltaTime * speed)); time += 1; Debug.Log("Moved right. "); }else if(timeSwitch == true){ transform.Translate(Vector3.right * ((Time.deltaTime * speed) * -1)); time -= 1; } } else if(direction == 6) { if(timeSwitch == false) { transform.Translate(Vector3.left * (Time.deltaTime * speed)); time += 1; Debug.Log("Moved left. "); }else if(timeSwitch == true){ transform.Translate(Vector3.left * ((Time.deltaTime * speed) * -1)); time -= 1; } } }

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Dealing with C++ web views

- by Jeffrey

I'm working, as an hobby (before any one rage out of their mind, I'm just trying to study C++ regarding something I love: web. I'm not trying to reinvent your precious wheel, and I'm not trying to create the new web technology. I just have the time to go for it.), creating a web CGI C++ library. I'm at a pretty good point, but in the future I see one big problem: views. I'm used to the great <body><?php echo "Hey!"; ?></body> embedded php, but there's no such thing in C++, so I'm wondering: How would you deal with views? Would you create a simple find-replace-variable templating system and deal with thousands of partial views? For example: View view; view.load("header.html"); view.load("nav.html"); view.load("post_start.html"); for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { std::map<std::string, std::string> post; Post p(i); post = p.get(); view.load(post_view.html, post); // p is passed as argument and every `{% varname %}` in the html will be replaced with its value inside the map } view.load(post_end.html); view.load(footer); Would you create a simple templating system? So that we can deal with this C++ code: std::vector<std::map<std::string, std::string>> posts; Posts p; posts = p.getAll(); view.load(posts.html, posts); and then this HTML/TPL: <html> ... <body> <h2> Posts </h2> {% for (i = 0; i < 10; i++): %} <div class="post">...</div> {% endfor %} </body> </html> Is there any other way? What is the best way to do this? (And no, I don't think this is subjective question)

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Do While loop breaks after incorrect input?

- by Daminkz

I am trying to have a loop continue to prompt the user for an option. When I get a string of characters instead of an int, the program loops indefinitely. I have tried setting the variable result to NULL, clearing the input stream, and have enclosed in try{}catch blocks (not in this example). Can anyone explain to me why this is? #include <iostream> #include <vector> #include <string> using namespace std; int menu(string question, vector<string> options) { int result; cout << question << endl; for(int i = 0; i < options.size(); i++) { cout << '[' << i << ']' << options[i] << endl; } bool ans = false; do { cin >> result; cin.ignore(1000, 10); if (result < options.size() ) { ans = true; } else { cout << "You must enter a valid option." << endl; result = NULL; ans = false; } } while(!ans); return result; } int main() { string menuQuestion = "Welcome to my game. What would you like to do?"; vector<string> mainMenu; mainMenu.push_back("Play Game"); mainMenu.push_back("Load Game"); mainMenu.push_back("About"); mainMenu.push_back("Exit"); int result = menu(menuQuestion, mainMenu); cout << "You entered: " << result << endl; return 0; }

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C++ class is not recognizing string data type

- by reallythecrash

I'm working on a program from my C++ textbook, and this this the first time I've really run into trouble. I just can't seem to see what is wrong here. Visual Studio is telling me Error: identifier "string" is undefined. I separated the program into three files. A header file for the class specification, a .cpp file for the class implementation and the main program file. These are the instructions from my book: Write a class named Car that has the following member variables: year. An int that holds the car's model year. make. A string that holds the make of the car. speed. An int that holds the car's current speed. In addition, the class should have the following member functions. Constructor. The constructor should accept the car's year and make as arguments and assign these values to the object's year and make member variables. The constructor should initialize the speed member variable to 0. Accessors. Appropriate accessor functions should be created to allow values to be retrieved from an object's year, make and speed member variables. There are more instructions, but they are not necessary to get this part to work. Here is my source code: // File Car.h -- Car class specification file #ifndef CAR_H #define CAR_H class Car { private: int year; string make; int speed; public: Car(int, string); int getYear(); string getMake(); int getSpeed(); }; #endif // File Car.cpp -- Car class function implementation file #include "Car.h" // Default Constructor Car::Car(int inputYear, string inputMake) { year = inputYear; make = inputMake; speed = 0; } // Accessors int Car::getYear() { return year; } string Car::getMake() { return make; } int Car::getSpeed() { return speed; } // Main program #include <iostream> #include <string> #include "Car.h" using namespace std; int main() { } I haven't written anything in the main program yet, because I can't get the class to compile. I've only linked the header file to the main program. Thanks in advance to all who take the time to investigate this problem for me.

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PHP Array Not Working in Function

- by lemonpole

Hello all. I'm currently experimenting with arrays in PHP, and I created a fake environment where a team's information will be displayed. $t1 = array ( "basicInfo" => array ( "The Sineps", "December 25, 2010", "lemonpole" ), "overallRecord" => array (0, 0, 0, 0), "overallSeasons" => array ( 1 => array (14, 0, 0), 2 => array (9, 5, 2), 3 => array (12, 4, 0), 4 => array (3, 11, 2) ), "games" => array ( "<img src=\"images/cs.gif\" alt=\"Counter-Strike\" />", "<img src=\"images/cs.gif\" alt=\"Counter-Strike\" />", "<img src=\"images/cs.gif\" alt=\"Counter-Strike\" />", "<img src=\"images/cs.gif\" alt=\"Counter-Strike\" />" ), "seasonHistory" => array ( "Season I", "Season II", "Season III", "Season IV" ), "divisions" => array ( "Open", "Main", "Main", "Invite" ) ); // Displays the seasons the team has been in along // with the record of each season. function seasonHistory() { // Make array variable local-scope. global $t1; // Count the number of seasons. $numrows = count($t1["seasonHistory"]); // Loop through all the variables until // it reaches the last entry made and display // each item seperately. for($v = 0; $v <= $numrows; $v++) { // Echo each season. echo "<tr><td>{$t1["games"][$v]}</td>"; echo "<td>{$t1["seasonHistory"][$v]}</td>"; echo "<td>{$t1["divisions"][$v]}</td></tr>"; } } I have tested several possible problems out and after narrowing them down I have come down to one conclusion and that is my function is not connecting to the array for some reason. I don't know what else to do because I thought making the array global would fix that problem. What works: I can echo $t1["games"][0] on the page I need it to display and it gives me the content. I tried echo $t1["games"][0] INSIDE the function and then calling the function and it doesn't display anything.

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How to store byte[] from Android Camera onPictureTaken method within application for later use

- by Kiel Wood

I am writing a larger Android application and I use the camera within the app. All I want to do with the camera is have the user take a picture, then start a new activity to show that image and allow the user to decide if they want to keep the image or not. I am having the hardest time figuring out how to simply store the byte[] data from the onPictureTaken method so that I can display it to the user in the next activity. I have tried many different routes and none of them have worked. The last thing I tried was creating a globalsettings class that extends the Application class and creating a byte[] field within it to store the byte[] from the camera so that I could use it within another activity, but my global variable is still not getting set. My CameraActivity code is shown below: public class CameraActivity extends Activity { CameraPreview Preview; Intent intent; byte[] image; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.cameralayout); Preview = new CameraPreview(this); ((FrameLayout)findViewById(R.id.uxfmlayPreview)).addView(Preview); intent = new Intent(this, PostCaptureActivity.class); } public void uxbtnCaptureSnap_Click(View v) { Preview.DeviceCamera.setPreviewCallback(null); Preview.DeviceCamera.takePicture(shutterCallback, rawCallback, jpegCallback); startActivity(intent); finish(); } public void uxbtnCaptureExit_Click(View v) { Intent i = new Intent(this, ExploreMenuActivity.class); setResult(RESULT_OK); startActivity(i); finish(); } ShutterCallback shutterCallback = new ShutterCallback() { public void onShutter() {} }; PictureCallback rawCallback = new PictureCallback() { public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera) {} }; PictureCallback jpegCallback = new PictureCallback() { public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera) { ((GlobalSettings)getApplication()).setGlobalImage(data); camera.release(); camera = null; } }; } Here is my code from my PostCaptureActivity onCreate() method where I attempt to convert and set the image as the source for an imageview: public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.postcapturelayout); SnapShot = ((ImageView)findViewById(R.id.uximgSnapshot)); if(((GlobalSettings)this.getApplication()).getGlobalImage() != null) { Bitmap b = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(((GlobalSettings)this.getApplication()).getGlobalImage(), 0, ((GlobalSettings)this.getApplication()).getGlobalImage().length); SnapShot.setImageBitmap(b); } else { Toast.makeText(this, "Oops! Picture cannot be saved", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } }

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how to list out the submited data in same page where form submitted?

- by OM The Eternity

I have a form with 3 text values and one image.. I want to save these values such that i can display these records in the list below.. how can i do that... I am using osCommerce For example: <form method="post" id="fm-form" action ="" enctype="multipart/form-data"> <label>Name:</label> <input type="text" id="fm-name" name="fm-name" value="" /> <label>Email:</label> <input type="text" id="fm-email" name="fm-email" value="" /> <label>Birthdate:</label> <input type="text" id="fm-birthdate" name="fm-birthdate" value="" /> <input type="file" id="fm-image" name="fm-image"/> <input type="submit" id="fm-submit" value="Save it"> </form> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr > <td align="center" class="productListing-heading">Product(s)</td> <td align="center" class="productListing-heading">Edit</td> <td align="center" class="productListing-heading">Delete</td> </tr> <?php for($i=0;$i<$count_image;$i++){?> <tr> <td align="left" class="productListing-data1"> <?php echo tep_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . $file_realname, $save_image[$i], '110', '110');?> </td> <td align="center" class="productListing-data1">Edit</td> <td align="center" class="productListing-data1">Delete</td> </tr> <tr><td> </td></tr> <?php }?> </table> In the above format as the form is submitted the image has to be stored in a count_image array variable... and the on its count, the list below the form is displayed.. but i cannot get it worked.. could u pls help in doing this...

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C# Different class objects in one list

- by jeah_wicer

I have looked around some now to find a solution to this problem. I found several ways that could solve it but to be honest I didn't realize which of the ways that would be considered the "right" C# or OOP way of solving it. My goal is not only to solve the problems but also to develop a good set of code standards and I'm fairly sure there's a standard way to handle this problem. Let's say I have 2 types of printer hardwares with their respective classes and ways of communicating: PrinterType1, PrinterType2. I would also like to be able to later on add another type if neccessary. One step up in abstraction those have much in common. It should be possible to send a string to each one of them as an example. They both have variables in common and variables unique to each class. (One for instance communicates via COM-port and has such an object, while the other one communicates via TCP and has such an object). I would however like to just implement a List of all those printers and be able to go through the list and perform things as "Send(string message)" on all Printers regardless of type. I would also like to access variables like "PrinterList[0].Name" that are the same for both objects, however I would also at some places like to access data that is specific to the object itself (For instance in the settings window of the application where the COM-port name is set for one object and the IP/port number for another). So, in short something like: In common: Name Send() Specific to PrinterType1: Port Specific to PrinterType2: IP And I wish to, for instance, do Send() on all objects regardless of type and the number of objects present. I've read about polymorphism, Generics, interfaces and such, but I would like to know how this, in my eyes basic, problem typically would be dealt with in C# (and/or OOP in general). I actually did try to make a base class, but it didn't quite seem right to me. For instance I have no use of a "string Send(string Message)" function in the base class itself. So why would I define one there that needs to be overridden in the derived classes when I would never use the function in the base class ever in the first place? I'm really thankful for any answers. People around here seem very knowledgeable and this place has provided me with many solutions earlier. Now I finally have an account to answer and vote with too. EDIT: To additionally explain, I would also like to be able to access the objects of the actual printertype. For instance the Port variable in PrinterType1 which is a SerialPort object. I would like to access it like: PrinterList[0].Port.Open() and have access to the full range of functionality of the underlaying port. At the same time I would like to call generic functions that work in the same way for the different objects (but with different implementations): foreach (printer in Printers) printer.Send(message)

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Unexpected output while using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (Express Edition) C++ Command Line Tool

- by Sujith S Pillai

One of my friends sent this code to me, saying it doesn't work as expected: #include<stdio.h> void main() { int a [10] ={23, 100, 20, 30, 25, 45, 40, 55, 43, 42}; int sizeOfInput = sizeof(a)/sizeof(int); int b, outer, inner, c; printf("Size is : %d \n", sizeOfInput); printf("Values before bubble sort are : \n"); for ( b = 0; b < sizeOfInput; b++) printf("%d\n", a[b]); printf("End of values before bubble sort... \n"); for ( outer = sizeOfInput; outer > 0; outer-- ) { for ( inner = 0 ; inner < outer ; inner++) { printf ( "Comparing positions: %d and %d\n",inner,inner+1); if ( a[inner] > a[inner + 1] ) { int tmp = a[inner]; a[inner] = a [inner+1]; a[inner+1] = tmp; } } printf ( "Bubble sort total array size after inner loop is %d :\n",sizeOfInput); printf ( "Bubble sort sizeOfInput after inner loop is %d :\n",sizeOfInput); } printf ( "Bubble sort total array size at the end is %d :\n",sizeOfInput); for ( c = 0 ; c < sizeOfInput; c++) printf("Element: %d\n", a[c]); } I am using Micosoft Visual Studio Command Line Tool for compiling this on a Windows XP machine. cl /EHsc bubblesort01.c My friend gets the correct output on a dinosaur machine (code is compiled using TCC there). My output is unexpected. The array mysteriously grows in size, in between. If you change the code so that the variable sizeOfInput is changed to sizeOfInputt, it gives the expected results! A search done at Microsoft Visual C++ Developer Center doesn't give any results for "sizeOfInput". I am not a C/C++ expert, and am curious to find out why this happens - any C/C++ experts who can "shed some light" on this? Unrelated note: I seriously thought of rewriting the whole code to use quicksort or merge sort before posting it here. But, after all, it is not Stooge sort...

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Different data for different dates

- by nsw1475

I am making a web page which will allow users to input and view data for different dates, and to change the date, there are two buttons, one of which will display the previous day, and one which will show the next day. I know that I can do this by submitting forms and reloading the page every time they press one of these buttons, but I would rather use javascript and not have to submit a form, but I am having troubles getting it to work. Currently, I have the two buttons, and the date stored in a PHP variable, as shown in my code below: <script> function init() { <? $nutrDate = $this->parseDate(date('m/d/Y')); ?> } function nutrPrevDay() { <? $nutrDate = mktime(0, 0, 0, date('m',$nutrDate), date('d',$nutrDate)-1, date('Y',$nutrDate)); ?> alert("<? echo(date("m/d/y", $nutrDate)) ?>"); } function nutrNextDay() { <? $nutrDate = mktime(0, 0, 0, date('m',$nutrDate), date('d',$nutrDate)+1, date('Y',$nutrDate)); ?> } window.onload = init; </script> <p style="text-align:center; font-size:14px; color:#03F"> <button onclick="nutrPrevDay()" style="width:200px" >< Show Previous Day</button> <? echo(date('m/d/Y', $nutrDate)) ?> <button onclick="nutrNextDay()" style="width:200px">Show Next Day ></button> </p> I have the alert in the nutrPrevDay() only as debugging. What happens is when I click on the button, the alert shows that the day is correctly decreased (for example from May 17 to May 16), but only decreases one day, and not one day for every click. Also, I do not know how to make the text on the page (created by the line ) change to display the new date after a button is clicked. So here are my questions: 1) Is it possible to dynamically change data (such as text, and in the future, SQL queries) on a page using javascript without having to reload a page when clicking on a button? 2) If possible, how can I make those changes? 3) How can I fix this so that it will increment and decrement through dates every time a button is clicked?

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Image upload not functioning correctly

- by PurpleSmurf

I'm still trying to get to grips with PHP, and I'm trying to make a form that uploads a picture to a database. I don't have permissions for move_uploaded_file so I'm using the copy() as an alternative. Everywhere I've seen experiencing similar problems have all been with move_uploaded_file so I'm rather stuck. Trying to copy the image from the desktop doesn't seem to be working, it's not throwing up any more PHP errors but is displaying the error message for if something goes wrong. The form sends data to two tables in the database but I'm mainly concerned with the upload not working. There's over 200 lines so I'll post a snippet of the upload code, thank you in advance: function getExtension($str) { $i = strrpos($str,"."); if (!$i) { return ""; } $l = strlen($str) - $i; $ext = substr($str,$i+1,$l); return $ext; } //This variable is used as a flag. The value is initialized with 0 (meaning no error found) and it will be changed to 1 if an errro occures. If the error occures the file will not be uploaded. $errors=0; //checks if the form has been submitted if(isset($_POST['submitted'])) { //reads the name of the file the user submitted for uploading $image=$_FILES['image']['name']; //if it is not empty if ($image) { //get the original name of the file from the clients machine $filename = stripslashes($_FILES['image']['name']); //get the extension of the file in a lower case format $extension = getExtension($filename); $extension = strtolower($extension); //if it is unknown extension, class as an error and do not upload the file, otherwise continue if (($extension != "jpg") && ($extension != "jpeg") && ($extension != "png") && ($extension != "gif")) { //print error message echo '<h1>Unknown extension!</h1>'; $errors=1; } else { //get the size of the image in bytes //$_FILES['image']['tmp_name'] is the temporary filename of the file in which the uploaded file was stored on the server $size=filesize($_FILES['image']['tmp_name']); //give an unique name, for example the time in unix time format $image_name=time().'.'.$extension; //the new name will be containing the full path where will be stored (images folder) $newname="/home/k0929907/www/uploads/".$image_name; //verify if the image has been uploaded, and print error instead $copied = copy($_FILES['image']['tmp_name'], $newname); if (!$copied) { echo '<h1>Copy unsuccessfull!</h1>'; $errors=1; } } } }

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Android: Stopping method to be called twice if already running.

- by user285831

I'm trying to prevent my application to call the same method twice in the event of a double-click, or if the user presses different buttons quickly, almost at the same time. I have clickable Views, acting as buttons, that call the same method but passing different parameters. This is the call: startTheSearch(context, getState(), what, where); Inside this method I'm creating a new Thread, because it queries a web server for the result: new Thread(new Runnable() { public void run() { progDiag = ProgressDialog.show(ctx, null, "Searching", true); getServerXML(context, what, where, searchIsCustom, mOffset); handler.sendEmptyMessage(0); } }).start(); The problem is that upon two quick clicks, the method is fired twice, two threads are created, and consequently two new activities are created. That makes my app crash. When the methods are done, and we have the result from the server, we call the handler: private Handler handler = new Handler() { @Override public void handleMessage(Message msg) { super.handleMessage(msg); try { Intent i = new Intent(Golf.this, Result.class); Bundle b = new Bundle(); b.putString("what", mWhat); b.putString("where", mWhere); b.putInt("offset", mOffset); b.putBoolean("searchIsCustom", searchIsCustom); i.putExtras(b); startActivityForResult(i, Activity.RESULT_OK); progDiag.dismiss(); } catch (Exception e) { Alerts.generalDialogAlert("Error", "settings", ctx); } } }; I tried to have a global boolean variable called "blocked" initially set to false, creating a condition like: if(!blocked){ blocked = true; new Thread(new Runnable() { public void run() { But this only seems to work on slower phones like the G1, I tried on Nexus and before it set blocked = true, the second request has was granted. So is there any way I can block the method being called if it's already running, or if the thread has started so it wont create a new one? Please, I really need to fix this. I've been developing on Android for almost 2 months now, but I'm yet to tackle that bug. Thanks in advance.

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Load HTML NSString into a UIWebView

- by ehenrik

Im doing a project where I connect to a webpage using the NSURLConnection to be able to monitor the status codes that are returned (200 OK / 404 ERROR). I would like to send the user to the top url www.domain.com if I recieve 404 as status code and if i recieve as 200 status code I would like to load the page in to a webview. I have seen several implementations of this problem by creating a new request but I feel that it is unnecessary since you already received the html in the first request so i would just like to load that HTML in to the webView. So i try to use the [webView loadHTMLFromString: baseURL:] but it doesn't always work, I have noticed that when i print the NSString with html in the connectionDidFinnishLoading it sometimes is null and when I monitor these cases by printing the html in didReceiveData a random number of the last packets is NULL (differs between 2-10). It is always the same webpages that doesn't get loaded. If I load them to my webView using [webView loadRequest:myRequest] it always works. My implementation looks like this perhaps someone of you can see what Im doing wrong. I create my first request with a button click. -(IBAction)buttonClick:(id)sender { NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.domain.com/page2/apa.html"]; NSURLRequest *theRequest = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url] NSURLConnection *theConnection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:theRequest delegate:self]; if( theConnection ) { webData = [[NSMutableData data] retain]; } else { } } Then I monitor the response code in the didReceiveResponse method by casting the request to a NSHTTPURLResponse to be able to access the status codes and then setting a Bool depending on the status code. -(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response { NSHTTPURLResponse *ne = (NSHTTPURLResponse *)response; if ([ne statusCode] == 200){ ok = TRUE; } [webData setLength: 0]; } I then check the bools value in connectionDidFinnishLoading. If I log the html NSString I get the source of the webpage so i know that it isn't an empty string. -(void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection { NSString *html = [[NSString alloc] initWithBytes: [webData mutableBytes] length:[webData length] encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.domain.com/"]; if (ok){ [webView loadHTMLString:html baseURL:url]; ok = FALSE; } else{ //Create a new request to www.domain.com } } webData is an instance variable and I load it in didReceiveData like this. -(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data { [webData appendData:data]; }

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Passing a panel widget to a function

- by user2939801

I have written a quite complex script which calls a server handler to refresh elements in a grid at the press of a button. For code re-use and consistent behaviour, I am wanting to call that server handler directly during the initial painting of the grid. When the server handler gets called by clicking on the button, all expected widgets are available and can be queried with e.parameter.widget etc. When I call the function directly and pass it the panel variable, the value of e is just 'AbsolutePanel'. Is there some way I can emulate the addCallbackElement way of passing the entire panel and all widgets it contains to the function? Or a way of automatically firing a server handler on script start? Please forgive any syntax errors below, I have pruned 500 lines of code down to the pertinent bits! Thanks Tony function doGet() { var app = UiApp.createApplication(); var mainPanel = app.createAbsolutePanel(); var monthsAbbr = ['Jan.', 'Feb.', 'Mar.', 'Apr.', 'May.', 'Jun.', 'Jul.', 'Aug.', 'Sep.', 'Oct.', 'Nov.', 'Dec.']; var Dates = Array(); var period = 5; var dateHidden = Array(); var dayOfMonth = new Date(((period * 28) + 15887) * 86400000); var dateString = ''; var dayOfWeek = 0; for (var i=0; i<84; i++) { dateString = dayOfMonth.getDate() + ' ' + monthsAbbr[dayOfMonth.getMonth()] + ' ' + (dayOfMonth.getFullYear() - 2000); Dates [i] = dateString; dateHidden[i] = app.createHidden('dates'+i, dateString).setId('dates'+i); mainPanel.add(dateHidden[i]); dayOfMonth = new Date(dayOfMonth.getTime() + 86400000); } var buttonReset = app.createButton('Reset').setId('buttonReset'); var handlerChange = app.createServerHandler('myHandlerChange'); handlerChange.addCallbackElement(mainPanel); mainPanel.add(buttonReset.addChangeHandler(handlerChange)); app.add(mainPanel); myHandlerChange(mainPanel); return app; } function myHandlerChange(e) { var app = UiApp.getActiveApplication(); Logger.log('Here are the widgets passed into the function: ' + Utilities.jsonStringify(e)); return app; }

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How to see if type is instance of a class in Haskell?

- by Raekye

I'm probably doing this completely wrong (the unhaskell way); I'm just learning so please let me know if there's a better way to approach this. Context: I'm writing a bunch of tree structures. I want to reuse my prettyprint function for binary trees. Not all trees can use the generic Node/Branch data type though; different trees need different extra data. So to reuse the prettyprint function I thought of creating a class different trees would be instances of: class GenericBinaryTree a where is_leaf :: a -> Bool left :: a -> a node :: a -> b right :: a -> a This way they only have to implement methods to retrieve the left, right, and current node value, and prettyprint doesn't need to know about the internal structure. Then I get down to here: prettyprint_helper :: GenericBinaryTree a => a -> [String] prettyprint_helper tree | is_leaf tree = [] | otherwise = ("{" ++ (show (node tree)) ++ "}") : (prettyprint_subtree (left tree) (right tree)) where prettyprint_subtree left right = ((pad "+- " "| ") (prettyprint_helper right)) ++ ((pad "`- " " ") (prettyprint_helper left)) pad first rest = zipWith (++) (first : repeat rest) And I get the Ambiguous type variable 'a0' in the constraint: (Show a0) arising from a use of 'show' error for (show (node tree)) Here's an example of the most basic tree data type and instance definition (my other trees have other fields but they're irrelevant to the generic prettyprint function) data Tree a = Branch (Tree a) a (Tree a) | Leaf instance GenericBinaryTree (Tree a) where is_leaf Leaf = True is_leaf _ = False left (Branch left node right) = left right (Branch left node right) = right node (Branch left node right) = node I could have defined node :: a -> [String] and deal with the stringification in each instance/type of tree, but this feels neater. In terms of prettyprint, I only need a string representation, but if I add other generic binary tree functions later I may want the actual values. So how can I write this to work whether the node value is an instance of Show or not? Or what other way should I be approaching this problem? In an object oriented language I could easily check whether a class implements something, or if an object has a method. I can't use something like prettyprint :: Show a => a -> String Because it's not the tree that needs to be showable, it's the value inside the tree (returned by function node) that needs to be showable. I also tried changing node to Show b => a -> b without luck (and a bunch of other type class/preconditions/whatever/I don't even know what I'm doing anymore).

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SQLAuthority News – TechEd India – April 12-14, 2010 Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – An Op

- by pinaldave

TechEd India was one of the largest Technology events in India led by Microsoft. This event was attended by more than 3,000 technology enthusiasts, making it one of the most well-organized events of the year. Though I attempted to attend almost all the technology events here, I have not seen any bigger or better event in Indian subcontinents other than this. There are 21 Technical Tracks at Tech·Ed India 2010 that span more than 745 learning opportunities. I was fortunate enough to be a part of this whole event as a speaker and a delegate, as well. TechEd India Speaker Badge and A Token of Lifetime Hotel Selection I presented three different sessions at TechEd India and was also a part of panel discussion. (The details of the sessions are given at the end of this blog post.) Due to extensive traveling, I stay away from my family occasionally. For this reason, I took my wife – Nupur and daughter Shaivi (8 months old) to the event along with me. We stayed at the same hotel where the event was organized so as to maximize my time bonding with my family and to have more time in networking with technology community, at the same time. The hotel Lalit Ashok is the largest and most luxurious venue one can find in Bangalore, located in the middle of the city. The cost of the hotel was a bit pricey, but looking at all the advantages, I had decided to ask for a booking there. Hotel Lalit Ashok Nupur Dave and Shaivi Dave Arrival Day – DAY 0 – April 11, 2010 I reached the event a day earlier, and that was one wise decision for I was able to relax a bit and go over my presentation for the next day’s course. I am a kind of person who likes to get everything ready ahead of time. I was also able to enjoy a pleasant evening with several Microsoft employees and my family friends. I even checked out the location where I would be doing presentations the next day. I was fortunate enough to meet Bijoy Singhal from Microsoft who helped me out with a few of the logistics issues that occured the day before. I was not aware of the fact that the very next day he was going to be “The Man” of the TechEd 2010 event. Vinod Kumar from Microsoft was really very kind as he talked to me regarding my subsequent session. He gave me some suggestions which were really helpful that I was able to incorporate them during my presentation. Finally, I was able to meet Abhishek Kant from Microsoft; his valuable suggestions and unlimited passion have inspired many people like me to work with the Community. Pradipta from Microsoft was also around, being extremely busy with logistics; however, in those busy times, he did find some good spare time to have a chat with me and the other Community leaders. I also met Harish Ranganathan and Sachin Rathi, both from Microsoft. It was so interesting to listen to both of them talking about SharePoint. I just have no words to express my overwhelmed spirit because of all these passionate young guys - Pradipta,Vinod, Bijoy, Harish, Sachin and Ahishek (of course!). Map of TechEd India 2010 Event Day 1 – April 12, 2010 From morning until night time, today was truly a very busy day for me. I had two presentations and one panel discussion for the day. Needless to say, I had a few meetings to attend as well. The day started with a keynote from S. Somaseger where he announced the launch of Visual Studio 2010. The keynote area was really eye-catching because of the very large, bigger-than- life uniform screen. This was truly one to show. The title music of the keynote was very interesting and it featured Bijoy Singhal as the model. It was interesting to talk to him afterwards, when we laughed at jokes together about his modeling assignment. TechEd India Keynote Opening Featuring Bijoy TechEd India 2010 Keynote – S. Somasegar Time: 11:15pm – 11:45pm Session 1: True Lies of SQL Server – SQL Myth Buster Following the excellent keynote, I had my very first session on the subject of SQL Server Myth Buster. At first, I was a bit nervous as right after the keynote, for this was my very first session and during my presentation I saw lots of Microsoft Product Team members. Well, it really went well and I had a really good discussion with attendees of the session. I felt that a well begin was half-done and my confidence was regained. Right after the session, I met a few of my Community friends and had meaningful discussions with them on many subjects. The abstract of the session is as follows: In this 30-minute demo session, I am going to briefly demonstrate few SQL Server Myths and their resolutions as I back them up with some demo. This demo presentation is a must-attend for all developers and administrators who would come to the event. This is going to be a very quick yet fun session. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch with Somasegar After the session I went to see my daughter, and then I headed right away to the lunch with S. Somasegar – the keynote speaker and senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. I really thank to Abhishek who made it possible for us. Because of his efforts, all the MVPs had the opportunity to meet such a legendary person and had to talk with them on Microsoft Technology. Though Somasegar is currently holding such a high position in Microsoft, he is very polite and a real gentleman, and how I wish that everybody in industry is like him. Believe me, if you spread love and kindness, then that is what you will receive back. As soon as lunch time was over, I ran to the session hall as my second presentation was about to start. Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm Session 2: Master Data Services in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Business Intelligence is a subject which was widely talked about at TechEd. Everybody was interested in this subject, and I did not excuse myself from this great concept as well. I consider myself fortunate as I was presenting on the subject of Master Data Services at TechEd. When I had initially learned this subject, I had a bit of confusion about the usage of this tool. Later on, I decided that I would tackle about how we all developers and DBAs are not able to understand something so simple such as this, and even worst, creating confusion about the technology. During system designing, it is very important to have a reference material or master lookup tables. Well, I talked about the same subject and presented the session keeping that as my center talk. The session went very well and I received lots of interesting questions. I got many compliments for talking about this subject on the real-life scenario. I really thank Rushabh Mehta (CEO, Solid Quality Mentors India) for his supportive suggestions that helped me prepare the slide deck, as well as the subject. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: SQL Server Master Data Services will ship with SQL Server 2008 R2 and will improve Microsoft’s platform appeal. This session provides an in-depth demonstration of MDS features and highlights important usage scenarios. Master Data Services enables consistent decision-making process by allowing you to create, manage and propagate changes from a single master view of your business entities. Also, MDS – Master Data-hub which is a vital component, helps ensure the consistency of reporting across systems and deliver faster and more accurate results across the enterprise. We will talk about establishing the basis for a centralized approach to defining, deploying, and managing master data in the enterprise. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The day was still not over for me. I had ran into several friends but we were not able keep our enthusiasm under control about all the rumors saying that SQL Server 2008 R2 was about to be launched tomorrow in the keynote. I then ran to my third and final technical event for the day- a panel discussion with the top technologies of India. Time: 5:00pm – 6:00pm Panel Discussion: Harness the power of Web – SEO and Technical Blogging As I have delivered two technical sessions by this time, I was a bit tired but not less enthusiastic when I had to talk about Blog and Technology. We discussed many different topics there. I told them that the most important aspect for any blog is its content. We discussed in depth the issues with plagiarism and how to avoid it. Another topic of discussion was how we technology bloggers can create awareness in the Community about what the right kind of blogging is and what morally and technically wrong acts are. A couple of questions were raised about what type of liberty a person can have in terms of writing blogs. Well, it was generically agreed that a blog is mainly a representation of our ideas and thoughts; it should not be governed by external entities. As long as one is writing what they really want to say, but not providing incorrect information or not practicing plagiarism, a blogger should be allowed to express himself. This panel discussion was supposed to be over in an hour, but the interest of the participants was remarkable and so it was extended for 30 minutes more. Finally, we decided to bring to a close the discussion and agreed that we will continue the topic next year. TechEd India Panel Discussion on Web, Technology and SEO Surprisingly, the day was just beginning after doing all of these. By this time, I have almost met all the MVP who arrived at the event, as well as many Microsoft employees. There were lots of Community folks present, too. I decided that I would go to meet several friends from the Community and continue to communicate with me on SQLAuthority.com. I also met Abhishek Baxi and had a good talk with him regarding Win Mobile and Twitter. He also took a very quick video of me wherein I spoke in my mother’s tongue, Gujarati. It was funny that I talked in Gujarati almost all the day, but when I was talking in the interview I could not find the right Gujarati words to speak. I think we all think in English when we think about Technology, so as to address universality. After meeting them, I headed towards the Speakers’ Dinner. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Speakers Dinner The Speakers’ dinner was indeed a wonderful opportunity for all the speakers to get together and relax. We talked so many different things, from XBOX to Hindi Movies, and from SQL to Samosas. I just could not express how much fun I had. After a long evening, when I returned tmy room and met Shaivi, I just felt instantly relaxed. Kids are really gifts from God. Today was a really long but exciting day. So many things happened in just one day: Visual Studio Lanch, lunch with Somasegar, 2 technical sessions, 1 panel discussion, community leaders meeting, speakers dinner and, last but not leas,t playing with my child! A perfect day! Day 2 – April 13, 2010 Today started with a bang with the excellent keynote by Kamal Hathi who launched SQL Server 2008 R2 in India and demonstrated the power of PowerPivot to all of us. 101 Million Rows in Excel brought lots of applause from the audience. Kamal Hathi Presenting Keynote at TechEd India 2010 The day was a bit easier one for me. I had no sessions today and no events planned. I had a few meetings planned for the second day of the event. I sat in the speaker’s lounge for half a day and met many people there. I attended nearly 9 different meetings today. The subjects of the meetings were very different. Here is a list of the topics of the Community-related meetings: SQL PASS and its involvement in India and subcontinents How to start community blogging Forums and developing aptitude towards technology Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar User Groups and their developments SharePoint and SQL Business Meeting – a client meeting Business Meeting – a potential performance tuning project Business Meeting – Solid Quality Mentors (SolidQ) And family friends Pinal Dave at TechEd India The day passed by so quickly during this meeting. In the evening, I headed to Partners Expo with friends and checked out few of the booths. I really wanted to talk about some of the products, but due to the freebies there was so much crowd that I finally decided to just take the contact details of the partner. I will now start sending them with my queries and, hopefully, I will have my questions answered. Nupur and Shaivi had also one meeting to attend; it was with our family friend Vijay Raj. Vijay is also a person who loves Technology and loves it more than anybody. I see him growing and learning every day, but still remaining as a ‘human’. I believe that if someone acquires as much knowledge as him, that person will become either a computer or cyborg. Here, Vijay is still a kind gentleman and is able to stay as our close family friend. Shaivi was really happy to play with Uncle Vijay. Pinal Dave and Vijay Raj Renuka Prasad, a Microsoft MVP, impressed me with his passion and knowledge of SQL. Every time he gives me credit for his success, I believe that he is very humble. He has way more certifications than me and has worked many more years with SQL compared to me. He is an excellent photographer as well. Most of the photos in this blog post have been taken by him. I told him if ever he wants to do a part time job, he can do the photography very well. Pinal Dave and Renuka Prasad I also met L Srividya from Microsoft, whom I was looking forward to meet. She is a bundle of knowledge that everyone would surely learn a lot from her. I was able to get a few minutes from her and well, I felt confident. She enlightened me with SQL Server BI concepts, domain management and SQL Server security and few other interesting details. I also had a wonderful time talking about SharePoint with fellow Solid Quality Mentor Joy Rathnayake. He is very passionate about SharePoint but when you talk .NET and SQL with him, he is still overwhelmingly knowledgeable. In fact, while talking to him, I figured out that the recent training he delivered was on SQL Server 2008 R2. I told him a joke that it hurts my ego as he is more popular now in SQL training and consulting than me. I am sure all of you agree that working with good people is a gift from God. I am fortunate enough to work with the best of the best Industry experts. It was a great pleasure to hang out with my Community friends – Ahswin Kini, HimaBindu Vejella, Vasudev G, Suprotim Agrawal, Dhananjay, Vikram Pendse, Mahesh Dhola, Mahesh Mitkari, Manu Zacharia, Shobhan, Hardik Shah, Ashish Mohta, Manan, Subodh Sohani and Sanjay Shetty (of course!) . (Please let me know if I have met you at the event and forgot your name to list here). Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Community Leaders Dinner After lots of meetings, I headed towards the Community Leaders dinner meeting and met almost all the folks I met in morning. The discussion was almost the same but the real good thing was that we were enjoying it. The food was really good. Nupur was invited in the event, but Shaivi could not come. When Nupur tried to enter the event, she was stopped as Shaivi did not have the pass to enter the dinner. Nupur expressed that Shaivi is only 8 months old and does not eat outside food as well and could not stay by herself at this age, but the door keeper did not agree and asked that without the entry details Shaivi could not go in, but Nupur could. Nupur called me on phone and asked me to help her out. By the time, I was outside; the organizer of the event reached to the door and happily approved Shaivi to join the party. Once in the party, Shaivi had lots of fun meeting so many people. Shaivi Dave and Abhishek Kant Dean Guida (Infragistics President and CEO) and Pinal Dave (SQLAuthority.com) Day 3 – April 14, 2010 Though, it was last day, I was very much excited today as I was about to present my very favorite session. Query Optimization and Performance Tuning is my domain expertise and I make my leaving by consulting and training the same. Today’s session was on the same subject and as an additional twist, another subject about Spatial Database was presented. I was always intrigued with Spatial Database and I have enjoyed learning about it; however, I have never thought about Spatial Indexing before it was decided that I will do this session. I really thank Solid Quality Mentor Dr. Greg Low for his assistance in helping me prepare the slide deck and also review the content. Furthermore, today was really what I call my ‘learning day’ . So far I had not attended any session in TechEd and I felt a bit down for that. Everybody spends their valuable time & money to learn something new and exciting in TechEd and I had not attended a single session at the moment thinking that it was already last day of the event. I did have a plan for the day and I attended two technical sessions before my session of spatial database. I attended 2 sessions of Vinod Kumar. Vinod is a natural storyteller and there was no doubt that his sessions would be jam-packed. People attended his sessions simply because Vinod is syhe speaker. He did not have a single time disappointed audience; he is truly a good speaker. He knows his stuff very well. I personally do not think that in India he can be compared to anyone for SQL. Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm SQL Server Query Optimization, Execution and Debugging Query Performance I really had a fun time attending this session. Vinod made this session very interactive. The entire audience really got into the presentation and started participating in the event. Vinod was presenting a small problem with Query Tuning, which any developer would have encountered and solved with their help in such a fashion that a developer feels he or she have already resolved it. In one question, I was the only one who was ready to answer and Vinod told me in a light tone that I am now allowed to answer it! The audience really found it very amusing. There was a huge crowd around Vinod after the session. Vinod – A master storyteller! Time: 3:45pm-4:45pm Data Recovery / consistency with CheckDB This session was much heavier than the earlier one, and I must say this is my most favorite session I EVER attended in India. In this TechEd I have only attended two sessions, but in my career, I have attended numerous technical sessions not only in India, but all over the world. This session had taken my breath away. One by one, Vinod took the different databases, and started to corrupt them in different ways. Each database has some unique ways to get corrupted. Once that was done, Vinod started to show the DBCC CEHCKDB and demonstrated how it can solve your problem. He finally fixed all the databases with this single tool. I do have a good knowledge of this subject, but let me honestly admit that I have learned a lot from this session. I enjoyed and cheered during this session along with other attendees. I had total satisfaction that, just like everyone, I took advantage of the event and learned something. I am now TECHnically EDucated. Pinal Dave and Vinod Kumar After two very interactive and informative SQL Sessions from Vinod Kumar, the next turn me presenting on Spatial Database and Indexing. I got once again nervous but Vinod told me to stay natural and do my presentation. Well, once I got a huge stage with a total of four projectors and a large crowd, I felt better. Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 I kicked off this session with Michael J Swart‘s beautiful spatial image. This session was the last one for the day but, to my surprise, I had more than 200+ attendees. Slowly, the rain was starting outside and I was worried that the hall would not be full; despite this, there was not a single seat available in the first five minutes of the session. Thanks to all of you for attending my presentation. I had demonstrated the map of world (and India) and quickly explained what Geographic and Geometry data types in Spatial Database are. This session had interesting story of Indexing and Comparison, as well as how different traditional indexes are from spatial indexing. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Due to the heavy rain during this event, the power went off for about 22 minutes (just an accident – nobodies fault). During these minutes, there were no audio, no video and no light. I continued to address the mass of 200+ people without any audio device and PowerPoint. I must thank the audience because not a single person left from the session. They all stayed in their place, some moved closure to listen to me properly. I noticed that the curiosity and eagerness to learn new things was at the peak even though it was the very last session of the TechEd. Everybody wanted get the maximum knowledge out of this whole event. I was touched by the support from audience. They listened and participated in my session even without any kinds of technology (no ppt, no mike, no AC, nothing). During these 22 minutes, I had completed my theory verbally. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 After a while, we got the projector back online and we continued with some exciting demos. Many thanks to Microsoft people who worked energetically in background to get the backup power for project up. I had a very interesting demo wherein I overlaid Bangalore and Hyderabad on the India Map and find their aerial distance between them. After finding the aerial distance, we browsed online and found that SQL Server estimates the exact aerial distance between these two cities, as compared to the factual distance. There was a huge applause from the crowd on the subject that SQL Server takes into the count of the curvature of the earth and finds the precise distances based on details. During the process of finding the distance, I demonstrated a few examples of the indexes where I expressed how one can use those indexes to find these distances and how they can improve the performance of similar query. I also demonstrated few examples wherein we were able to see in which data type the Index is most useful. We finished the demos with a few more internal stuff. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Despite all issues, I was mostly satisfied with my presentation. I think it was the best session I have ever presented at any conference. There was no help from Technology for a while, but I still got lots of appreciation at the end. When we ended the session, the applause from the audience was so loud that for a moment, the rain was not audible. I was truly moved by the dedication of the Technology enthusiasts. Pinal Dave After Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Dinner by Sponsors After the lively session during the day, there was another dinner party courtesy of one of the sponsors of TechEd. All the MVPs and several Community leaders were present at the dinner. I would like to express my gratitude to Abhishek Kant for organizing this wonderful event for us. It was a blast and really relaxing in all angles. We all stayed there for a long time and talked about our sweet and unforgettable memories of the event. Pinal Dave and Bijoy Singhal It was really one wonderful event. After writing this much, I say that I have no words to express about how much I enjoyed TechEd. However, it is true that I shared with you only 1% of the total activities I have done at the event. There were so many people I have met, yet were not mentioned here although I wanted to write their names here, too . Anyway, I have learned so many things and up until now, I am not able to get over all the fun I had in this event. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2010 The Next Days – April 15, 2010 – till today I am still not able to get my mind out of the whole experience I had at TechEd India 2010. It was like a whole Microsoft Family working together to celebrate a happy occasion. TechEd India – Truly An Unforgettable Experience! Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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Using the West Wind Web Toolkit to set up AJAX and REST Services

- by Rick Strahl

I frequently get questions about which option to use for creating AJAX and REST backends for ASP.NET applications. There are many solutions out there to do this actually, but when I have a choice - not surprisingly - I fall back to my own tools in the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. I've talked a bunch about the 'in-the-box' solutions in the past so for a change in this post I'll talk about the tools that I use in my own and customer applications to handle AJAX and REST based access to service resources using the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. Let me preface this by saying that I like things to be easy. Yes flexible is very important as well but not at the expense of over-complexity. The goal I've had with my tools is make it drop dead easy, with good performance while providing the core features that I'm after, which are: Easy AJAX/JSON Callbacks Ability to return any kind of non JSON content (string, stream, byte[], images) Ability to work with both XML and JSON interchangeably for input/output Access endpoints via POST data, RPC JSON calls, GET QueryString values or Routing interface Easy to use generic JavaScript client to make RPC calls (same syntax, just what you need) Ability to create clean URLS with Routing Ability to use standard ASP.NET HTTP Stack for HTTP semantics It's all about options! In this post I'll demonstrate most of these features (except XML) in a few simple and short samples which you can download. So let's take a look and see how you can build an AJAX callback solution with the West Wind Web Toolkit. Installing the Toolkit Assemblies The easiest and leanest way of using the Toolkit in your Web project is to grab it via NuGet: West Wind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) and drop it into the project by right clicking in your Project and choosing Manage NuGet Packages from anywhere in the Project. When done you end up with your project looking like this: What just happened? Nuget added two assemblies - Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities and the client ww.jquery.js library. It also added a couple of references into web.config: The default namespaces so they can be accessed in pages/views and a ScriptCompressionModule that the toolkit optionally uses to compress script resources served from within the assembly (namely ww.jquery.js and optionally jquery.js). Creating a new Service The West Wind Web Toolkit supports several ways of creating and accessing AJAX services, but for this post I'll stick to the lower level approach that works from any plain HTML page or of course MVC, WebForms, WebPages. There's also a WebForms specific control that makes this even easier but I'll leave that for another post. So, to create a new standalone AJAX/REST service we can create a new HttpHandler in the new project either as a pure class based handler or as a generic .ASHX handler. Both work equally well, but generic handlers don't require any web.config configuration so I'll use that here. In the root of the project add a Generic Handler. I'm going to call this one StockService.ashx. Once the handler has been created, edit the code and remove all of the handler body code. Then change the base class to CallbackHandler and add methods that have a [CallbackMethod] attribute. Here's the modified base handler implementation now looks like with an added HelloWorld method: using System; using Westwind.Web; namespace WestWindWebAjax { /// <summary> /// Handler implements CallbackHandler to provide REST/AJAX services /// </summary> public class SampleService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } } } Notice that the class inherits from CallbackHandler and that the HelloWorld service method is marked up with [CallbackMethod]. We're done here. Services Urlbased Syntax Once you compile, the 'service' is live can respond to requests. All CallbackHandlers support input in GET and POST formats, and can return results as JSON or XML. To check our fancy HelloWorld method we can now access the service like this: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/StockService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick which produces a default JSON response - in this case a string (wrapped in quotes as it's JSON): (note by default JSON will be downloaded by most browsers not displayed - various options are available to view JSON right in the browser) If I want to return the same data as XML I can tack on a &format=xml at the end of the querystring which produces: <string>Hello Rick. Time is: 11/1/2011 12:11:13 PM</string> Cleaner URLs with Routing Syntax If you want cleaner URLs for each operation you can also configure custom routes on a per URL basis similar to the way that WCF REST does. To do this you need to add a new RouteHandler to your application's startup code in global.asax.cs one for each CallbackHandler based service you create: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); } With this code in place you can now add RouteUrl properties to any of your service methods. For the HelloWorld method that doesn't make a ton of sense but here is what a routed clean URL might look like in definition: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/HelloWorld/{name}")] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } The same URL I previously used now becomes a bit shorter and more readable with: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/HelloWorld/Rick It's an easy way to create cleaner URLs and still get the same functionality. Calling the Service with $.getJSON() Since the result produced is JSON you can now easily consume this data using jQuery's getJSON method. First we need a couple of scripts - jquery.js and ww.jquery.js in the page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <link href="Css/Westwind.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="scripts/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> Next let's add a small HelloWorld example form (what else) that has a single textbox to type a name, a button and a div tag to receive the result: <fieldset> <legend>Hello World</legend> Please enter a name: <input type="text" name="txtHello" id="txtHello" value="" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHello" value="Say Hello (POST)" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHelloGet" value="Say Hello (GET)" /> <div id="divHelloMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none;width: 450px;" > </div> </fieldset> Then to call the HelloWorld method a little jQuery is used to hook the document startup and the button click followed by the $.getJSON call to retrieve the data from the server. <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSayHelloGet").click(function () { $.getJSON("SampleService.ashx", { Method: "HelloWorld", name: $("#txtHello").val() }, function (result) { $("#divHelloMessage") .text(result) .fadeIn(1000); }); });</script> .getJSON() expects a full URL to the endpoint of our service, which is the ASHX file. We can either provide a full URL (SampleService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick) or we can just provide the base URL and an object that encodes the query string parameters for us using an object map that has a property that matches each parameter for the server method. We can also use the clean URL routing syntax, but using the object parameter encoding actually is safer as the parameters will get properly encoded by jQuery. The result returned is whatever the result on the server method is - in this case a string. The string is applied to the divHelloMessage element and we're done. Obviously this is a trivial example, but it demonstrates the basics of getting a JSON response back to the browser. AJAX Post Syntax - using ajaxCallMethod() The previous example allows you basic control over the data that you send to the server via querystring parameters. This works OK for simple values like short strings, numbers and boolean values, but doesn't really work if you need to pass something more complex like an object or an array back up to the server. To handle traditional RPC type messaging where the idea is to map server side functions and results to a client side invokation, POST operations can be used. The easiest way to use this functionality is to use ww.jquery.js and the ajaxCallMethod() function. ww.jquery wraps jQuery's AJAX functions and knows implicitly how to call a CallbackServer method with parameters and parse the result. Let's look at another simple example that posts a simple value but returns something more interesting. Let's start with the service method: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.UtcNow.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0))); StockServer server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); return quote; } This sample utilizes a small StockServer helper class (included in the sample) that downloads a stock quote from Yahoo's financial site via plain HTTP GET requests and formats it into a StockQuote object. Lets create a small HTML block that lets us query for the quote and display it: <fieldset> <legend>Single Stock Quote</legend> Please enter a stock symbol: <input type="text" name="txtSymbol" id="txtSymbol" value="msft" /> <input type="button" id="btnStockQuote" value="Get Quote" /> <div id="divStockDisplay" class="errordisplay" style="display:none; width: 450px;"> <div class="label-left">Company:</div> <div id="stockCompany"></div> <div class="label-left">Last Price:</div> <div id="stockLastPrice"></div> <div class="label-left">Quote Time:</div> <div id="stockQuoteTime"></div> </div> </fieldset> The final result looks something like this: Let's hook up the button handler to fire the request and fill in the data as shown: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").show().fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, HH:mm EST")); }, onPageError); }); So we point at SampleService.ashx and the GetStockQuote method, passing a single parameter of the input symbol value. Then there are two handlers for success and failure callbacks. The success handler is the interesting part - it receives the stock quote as a result and assigns its values to various 'holes' in the stock display elements. The data that comes back over the wire is JSON and it looks like this: { "Symbol":"MSFT", "Company":"Microsoft Corpora", "OpenPrice":26.11, "LastPrice":26.01, "NetChange":0.02, "LastQuoteTime":"2011-11-03T02:00:00Z", "LastQuoteTimeString":"Nov. 11, 2011 4:20pm" } which is an object representation of the data. JavaScript can evaluate this JSON string back into an object easily and that's the reslut that gets passed to the success function. The quote data is then applied to existing page content by manually selecting items and applying them. There are other ways to do this more elegantly like using templates, but here we're only interested in seeing how the data is returned. The data in the object is typed - LastPrice is a number and QuoteTime is a date. Note about the date value: JavaScript doesn't have a date literal although the JSON embedded ISO string format used above ("2011-11-03T02:00:00Z") is becoming fairly standard for JSON serializers. However, JSON parsers don't deserialize dates by default and return them by string. This is why the StockQuote actually returns a string value of LastQuoteTimeString for the same date. ajaxMethodCallback always converts dates properly into 'real' dates and the example above uses the real date value along with a .formatDate() data extension (also in ww.jquery.js) to display the raw date properly. Errors and Exceptions So what happens if your code fails? For example if I pass an invalid stock symbol to the GetStockQuote() method you notice that the code does this: if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); CallbackHandler automatically pushes the exception message back to the client so it's easy to pick up the error message. Regardless of what kind of error occurs: Server side, client side, protocol errors - any error will fire the failure handler with an error object parameter. The error is returned to the client via a JSON response in the error callback. In the previous examples I called onPageError which is a generic routine in ww.jquery that displays a status message on the bottom of the screen. But of course you can also take over the error handling yourself: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); }, function (error, xhr) { $("#divErrorDisplay").text(error.message).fadeIn(1000); }); }); The error object has a isCallbackError, message and stackTrace properties, the latter of which is only populated when running in Debug mode, and this object is returned for all errors: Client side, transport and server side errors. Regardless of which type of error you get the same object passed (as well as the XHR instance optionally) which makes for a consistent error retrieval mechanism. Specifying HttpVerbs You can also specify HTTP Verbs that are allowed using the AllowedHttpVerbs option on the CallbackMethod attribute: [CallbackMethod(AllowedHttpVerbs=HttpVerbs.GET | HttpVerbs.POST)] public string HelloWorld(string name) { … } If you're building REST style API's this might be useful to force certain request semantics onto the client calling. For the above if call with a non-allowed HttpVerb the request returns a 405 error response along with a JSON (or XML) error object result. The default behavior is to allow all verbs access (HttpVerbs.All). Passing in object Parameters Up to now the parameters I passed were very simple. But what if you need to send something more complex like an object or an array? Let's look at another example now that passes an object from the client to the server. Keeping with the Stock theme here lets add a method called BuyOrder that lets us buy some shares for a stock. Consider the following service method that receives an StockBuyOrder object as a parameter: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStock(StockBuyOrder buyOrder) { var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } public class StockBuyOrder { public string Symbol { get; set; } public int Quantity { get; set; } public DateTime BuyOn { get; set; } public StockBuyOrder() { BuyOn = DateTime.Now; } } This is a contrived do-nothing example that simply echoes back what was passed in, but it demonstrates how you can pass complex data to a callback method. On the client side we now have a very simple form that captures the three values on a form: <fieldset> <legend>Post a Stock Buy Order</legend> Enter a symbol: <input type="text" name="txtBuySymbol" id="txtBuySymbol" value="GLD" />   Qty: <input type="text" name="txtBuyQty" id="txtBuyQty" value="10" style="width: 50px" />   Buy on: <input type="text" name="txtBuyOn" id="txtBuyOn" value="<%= DateTime.Now.ToString("d") %>" style="width: 70px;" /> <input type="button" id="btnBuyStock" value="Buy Stock" /> <div id="divStockBuyMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none"></div> </fieldset> The completed form and demo then looks something like this: The client side code that picks up the input values and assigns them to object properties and sends the AJAX request looks like this: $("#btnBuyStock").click(function () { // create an object map that matches StockBuyOrder signature var buyOrder = { Symbol: $("#txtBuySymbol").val(), Quantity: $("#txtBuyQty").val() * 1, // number Entered: new Date() } ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStock", [buyOrder], function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError); }); The code creates an object and attaches the properties that match the server side object passed to the BuyStock method. Each property that you want to update needs to be included and the type must match (ie. string, number, date in this case). Any missing properties will not be set but also not cause any errors. Pass POST data instead of Objects In the last example I collected a bunch of values from form variables and stuffed them into object variables in JavaScript code. While that works, often times this isn't really helping - I end up converting my types on the client and then doing another conversion on the server. If lots of input controls are on a page and you just want to pick up the values on the server via plain POST variables - that can be done too - and it makes sense especially if you're creating and filling the client side object only to push data to the server. Let's add another method to the server that once again lets us buy a stock. But this time let's not accept a parameter but rather send POST data to the server. Here's the server method receiving POST data: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStockPost() { StockBuyOrder buyOrder = new StockBuyOrder(); buyOrder.Symbol = Request.Form["txtBuySymbol"]; ; int qty; int.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyQuantity"], out qty); buyOrder.Quantity = qty; DateTime time; DateTime.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyBuyOn"], out time); buyOrder.BuyOn = time; // Or easier way yet //FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } Clearly we've made this server method take more code than it did with the object parameter. We've basically moved the parameter assignment logic from the client to the server. As a result the client code to call this method is now a bit shorter since there's no client side shuffling of values from the controls to an object. $("#btnBuyStockPost").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStockPost", [], // Note: No parameters - function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError, // Force all page Form Variables to be posted { postbackMode: "Post" }); }); The client simply calls the BuyStockQuote method and pushes all the form variables from the page up to the server which parses them instead. The feature that makes this work is one of the options you can pass to the ajaxCallMethod() function: { postbackMode: "Post" }); which directs the function to include form variable POST data when making the service call. Other options include PostNoViewState (for WebForms to strip out WebForms crap vars), PostParametersOnly (default), None. If you pass parameters those are always posted to the server except when None is set. The above code can be simplified a bit by using the FormVariableBinder helper, which can unbind form variables directly into an object: FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); which replaces the manual Request.Form[] reading code. It receives the object to unbind into, a string of properties to skip, and an optional prefix which is stripped off form variables to match property names. The component is similar to the MVC model binder but it's independent of MVC. Returning non-JSON Data CallbackHandler also supports returning non-JSON/XML data via special return types. You can return raw non-JSON encoded strings like this: [CallbackMethod(ReturnAsRawString=true,ContentType="text/plain")] public string HelloWorldNoJSON(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } Calling this method results in just a plain string - no JSON encoding with quotes around the result. This can be useful if your server handling code needs to return a string or HTML result that doesn't fit well for a page or other UI component. Any string output can be returned. You can also return binary data. Stream, byte[] and Bitmap/Image results are automatically streamed back to the client. Notice that you should set the ContentType of the request either on the CallbackMethod attribute or using Response.ContentType. This ensures the Web Server knows how to display your binary response. Using a stream response makes it possible to return any of data. Streamed data can be pretty handy to return bitmap data from a method. The following is a method that returns a stock history graph for a particular stock over a provided number of years: [CallbackMethod(ContentType="image/png",RouteUrl="stocks/history/graph/{symbol}/{years}")] public Stream GetStockHistoryGraph(string symbol, int years = 2,int width = 500, int height=350) { if (width == 0) width = 500; if (height == 0) height = 350; StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockHistoryGraph(symbol,"Stock History for " + symbol,width,height,years); } I can now hook this up into the JavaScript code when I get a stock quote. At the end of the process I can assign the URL to the service that returns the image into the src property and so force the image to display. Here's the changed code: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { var symbol = $("#txtSymbol").val(); ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [symbol], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); // display a stock chart $("#imgStockHistory").attr("src", "stocks/history/graph/" + symbol + "/2"); },onPageError); }); The resulting output then looks like this: The charting code uses the new ASP.NET 4.0 Chart components via code to display a bar chart of the 2 year stock data as part of the StockServer class which you can find in the sample download. The ability to return arbitrary data from a service is useful as you can see - in this case the chart is clearly associated with the service and it's nice that the graph generation can happen off a handler rather than through a page. Images are common resources, but output can also be PDF reports, zip files for downloads etc. which is becoming increasingly more common to be returned from REST endpoints and other applications. Why reinvent? Obviously the examples I've shown here are pretty basic in terms of functionality. But I hope they demonstrate the core features of AJAX callbacks that you need to work through in most applications which is simple: return data, send back data and potentially retrieve data in various formats. While there are other solutions when it comes down to making AJAX callbacks and servicing REST like requests, I like the flexibility my home grown solution provides. Simply put it's still the easiest solution that I've found that addresses my common use cases: AJAX JSON RPC style callbacks Url based access XML and JSON Output from single method endpoint XML and JSON POST support, querystring input, routing parameter mapping UrlEncoded POST data support on callbacks Ability to return stream/raw string data Essentially ability to return ANYTHING from Service and pass anything All these features are available in various solutions but not together in one place. I've been using this code base for over 4 years now in a number of projects both for myself and commercial work and it's served me extremely well. Besides the AJAX functionality CallbackHandler provides, it's also an easy way to create any kind of output endpoint I need to create. Need to create a few simple routines that spit back some data, but don't want to create a Page or View or full blown handler for it? Create a CallbackHandler and add a method or multiple methods and you have your generic endpoints. It's a quick and easy way to add small code pieces that are pretty efficient as they're running through a pretty small handler implementation. I can have this up and running in a couple of minutes literally without any setup and returning just about any kind of data. Resources Download the Sample NuGet: Westwind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) ajaxCallMethod() Documentation Using the AjaxMethodCallback WebForms Control West Wind Web Toolkit Home Page West Wind Web Toolkit Source Code © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET jQuery AJAX Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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SQLAuthority News – TechEd India – April 12-14, 2010 Bangalore – An Unforgettable Experience – An Op

- by pinaldave

TechEd India was one of the largest Technology events in India led by Microsoft. This event was attended by more than 3,000 technology enthusiasts, making it one of the most well-organized events of the year. Though I attempted to attend almost all the technology events here, I have not seen any bigger or better event in Indian subcontinents other than this. There are 21 Technical Tracks at Tech·Ed India 2010 that span more than 745 learning opportunities. I was fortunate enough to be a part of this whole event as a speaker and a delegate, as well. TechEd India Speaker Badge and A Token of Lifetime Hotel Selection I presented three different sessions at TechEd India and was also a part of panel discussion. (The details of the sessions are given at the end of this blog post.) Due to extensive traveling, I stay away from my family occasionally. For this reason, I took my wife – Nupur and daughter Shaivi (8 months old) to the event along with me. We stayed at the same hotel where the event was organized so as to maximize my time bonding with my family and to have more time in networking with technology community, at the same time. The hotel Lalit Ashok is the largest and most luxurious venue one can find in Bangalore, located in the middle of the city. The cost of the hotel was a bit pricey, but looking at all the advantages, I had decided to ask for a booking there. Hotel Lalit Ashok Nupur Dave and Shaivi Dave Arrival Day – DAY 0 – April 11, 2010 I reached the event a day earlier, and that was one wise decision for I was able to relax a bit and go over my presentation for the next day’s course. I am a kind of person who likes to get everything ready ahead of time. I was also able to enjoy a pleasant evening with several Microsoft employees and my family friends. I even checked out the location where I would be doing presentations the next day. I was fortunate enough to meet Bijoy Singhal from Microsoft who helped me out with a few of the logistics issues that occured the day before. I was not aware of the fact that the very next day he was going to be “The Man” of the TechEd 2010 event. Vinod Kumar from Microsoft was really very kind as he talked to me regarding my subsequent session. He gave me some suggestions which were really helpful that I was able to incorporate them during my presentation. Finally, I was able to meet Abhishek Kant from Microsoft; his valuable suggestions and unlimited passion have inspired many people like me to work with the Community. Pradipta from Microsoft was also around, being extremely busy with logistics; however, in those busy times, he did find some good spare time to have a chat with me and the other Community leaders. I also met Harish Ranganathan and Sachin Rathi, both from Microsoft. It was so interesting to listen to both of them talking about SharePoint. I just have no words to express my overwhelmed spirit because of all these passionate young guys - Pradipta,Vinod, Bijoy, Harish, Sachin and Ahishek (of course!). Map of TechEd India 2010 Event Day 1 – April 12, 2010 From morning until night time, today was truly a very busy day for me. I had two presentations and one panel discussion for the day. Needless to say, I had a few meetings to attend as well. The day started with a keynote from S. Somaseger where he announced the launch of Visual Studio 2010. The keynote area was really eye-catching because of the very large, bigger-than- life uniform screen. This was truly one to show. The title music of the keynote was very interesting and it featured Bijoy Singhal as the model. It was interesting to talk to him afterwards, when we laughed at jokes together about his modeling assignment. TechEd India Keynote Opening Featuring Bijoy TechEd India 2010 Keynote – S. Somasegar Time: 11:15pm – 11:45pm Session 1: True Lies of SQL Server – SQL Myth Buster Following the excellent keynote, I had my very first session on the subject of SQL Server Myth Buster. At first, I was a bit nervous as right after the keynote, for this was my very first session and during my presentation I saw lots of Microsoft Product Team members. Well, it really went well and I had a really good discussion with attendees of the session. I felt that a well begin was half-done and my confidence was regained. Right after the session, I met a few of my Community friends and had meaningful discussions with them on many subjects. The abstract of the session is as follows: In this 30-minute demo session, I am going to briefly demonstrate few SQL Server Myths and their resolutions as I back them up with some demo. This demo presentation is a must-attend for all developers and administrators who would come to the event. This is going to be a very quick yet fun session. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch with Somasegar After the session I went to see my daughter, and then I headed right away to the lunch with S. Somasegar – the keynote speaker and senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft. I really thank to Abhishek who made it possible for us. Because of his efforts, all the MVPs had the opportunity to meet such a legendary person and had to talk with them on Microsoft Technology. Though Somasegar is currently holding such a high position in Microsoft, he is very polite and a real gentleman, and how I wish that everybody in industry is like him. Believe me, if you spread love and kindness, then that is what you will receive back. As soon as lunch time was over, I ran to the session hall as my second presentation was about to start. Time: 2:30pm – 3:30pm Session 2: Master Data Services in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Business Intelligence is a subject which was widely talked about at TechEd. Everybody was interested in this subject, and I did not excuse myself from this great concept as well. I consider myself fortunate as I was presenting on the subject of Master Data Services at TechEd. When I had initially learned this subject, I had a bit of confusion about the usage of this tool. Later on, I decided that I would tackle about how we all developers and DBAs are not able to understand something so simple such as this, and even worst, creating confusion about the technology. During system designing, it is very important to have a reference material or master lookup tables. Well, I talked about the same subject and presented the session keeping that as my center talk. The session went very well and I received lots of interesting questions. I got many compliments for talking about this subject on the real-life scenario. I really thank Rushabh Mehta (CEO, Solid Quality Mentors India) for his supportive suggestions that helped me prepare the slide deck, as well as the subject. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: SQL Server Master Data Services will ship with SQL Server 2008 R2 and will improve Microsoft’s platform appeal. This session provides an in-depth demonstration of MDS features and highlights important usage scenarios. Master Data Services enables consistent decision-making process by allowing you to create, manage and propagate changes from a single master view of your business entities. Also, MDS – Master Data-hub which is a vital component, helps ensure the consistency of reporting across systems and deliver faster and more accurate results across the enterprise. We will talk about establishing the basis for a centralized approach to defining, deploying, and managing master data in the enterprise. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The day was still not over for me. I had ran into several friends but we were not able keep our enthusiasm under control about all the rumors saying that SQL Server 2008 R2 was about to be launched tomorrow in the keynote. I then ran to my third and final technical event for the day- a panel discussion with the top technologies of India. Time: 5:00pm – 6:00pm Panel Discussion: Harness the power of Web – SEO and Technical Blogging As I have delivered two technical sessions by this time, I was a bit tired but not less enthusiastic when I had to talk about Blog and Technology. We discussed many different topics there. I told them that the most important aspect for any blog is its content. We discussed in depth the issues with plagiarism and how to avoid it. Another topic of discussion was how we technology bloggers can create awareness in the Community about what the right kind of blogging is and what morally and technically wrong acts are. A couple of questions were raised about what type of liberty a person can have in terms of writing blogs. Well, it was generically agreed that a blog is mainly a representation of our ideas and thoughts; it should not be governed by external entities. As long as one is writing what they really want to say, but not providing incorrect information or not practicing plagiarism, a blogger should be allowed to express himself. This panel discussion was supposed to be over in an hour, but the interest of the participants was remarkable and so it was extended for 30 minutes more. Finally, we decided to bring to a close the discussion and agreed that we will continue the topic next year. TechEd India Panel Discussion on Web, Technology and SEO Surprisingly, the day was just beginning after doing all of these. By this time, I have almost met all the MVP who arrived at the event, as well as many Microsoft employees. There were lots of Community folks present, too. I decided that I would go to meet several friends from the Community and continue to communicate with me on SQLAuthority.com. I also met Abhishek Baxi and had a good talk with him regarding Win Mobile and Twitter. He also took a very quick video of me wherein I spoke in my mother’s tongue, Gujarati. It was funny that I talked in Gujarati almost all the day, but when I was talking in the interview I could not find the right Gujarati words to speak. I think we all think in English when we think about Technology, so as to address universality. After meeting them, I headed towards the Speakers’ Dinner. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Speakers Dinner The Speakers’ dinner was indeed a wonderful opportunity for all the speakers to get together and relax. We talked so many different things, from XBOX to Hindi Movies, and from SQL to Samosas. I just could not express how much fun I had. After a long evening, when I returned tmy room and met Shaivi, I just felt instantly relaxed. Kids are really gifts from God. Today was a really long but exciting day. So many things happened in just one day: Visual Studio Lanch, lunch with Somasegar, 2 technical sessions, 1 panel discussion, community leaders meeting, speakers dinner and, last but not leas,t playing with my child! A perfect day! Day 2 – April 13, 2010 Today started with a bang with the excellent keynote by Kamal Hathi who launched SQL Server 2008 R2 in India and demonstrated the power of PowerPivot to all of us. 101 Million Rows in Excel brought lots of applause from the audience. Kamal Hathi Presenting Keynote at TechEd India 2010 The day was a bit easier one for me. I had no sessions today and no events planned. I had a few meetings planned for the second day of the event. I sat in the speaker’s lounge for half a day and met many people there. I attended nearly 9 different meetings today. The subjects of the meetings were very different. Here is a list of the topics of the Community-related meetings: SQL PASS and its involvement in India and subcontinents How to start community blogging Forums and developing aptitude towards technology Ahmedabad/Gandhinagar User Groups and their developments SharePoint and SQL Business Meeting – a client meeting Business Meeting – a potential performance tuning project Business Meeting – Solid Quality Mentors (SolidQ) And family friends Pinal Dave at TechEd India The day passed by so quickly during this meeting. In the evening, I headed to Partners Expo with friends and checked out few of the booths. I really wanted to talk about some of the products, but due to the freebies there was so much crowd that I finally decided to just take the contact details of the partner. I will now start sending them with my queries and, hopefully, I will have my questions answered. Nupur and Shaivi had also one meeting to attend; it was with our family friend Vijay Raj. Vijay is also a person who loves Technology and loves it more than anybody. I see him growing and learning every day, but still remaining as a ‘human’. I believe that if someone acquires as much knowledge as him, that person will become either a computer or cyborg. Here, Vijay is still a kind gentleman and is able to stay as our close family friend. Shaivi was really happy to play with Uncle Vijay. Pinal Dave and Vijay Raj Renuka Prasad, a Microsoft MVP, impressed me with his passion and knowledge of SQL. Every time he gives me credit for his success, I believe that he is very humble. He has way more certifications than me and has worked many more years with SQL compared to me. He is an excellent photographer as well. Most of the photos in this blog post have been taken by him. I told him if ever he wants to do a part time job, he can do the photography very well. Pinal Dave and Renuka Prasad I also met L Srividya from Microsoft, whom I was looking forward to meet. She is a bundle of knowledge that everyone would surely learn a lot from her. I was able to get a few minutes from her and well, I felt confident. She enlightened me with SQL Server BI concepts, domain management and SQL Server security and few other interesting details. I also had a wonderful time talking about SharePoint with fellow Solid Quality Mentor Joy Rathnayake. He is very passionate about SharePoint but when you talk .NET and SQL with him, he is still overwhelmingly knowledgeable. In fact, while talking to him, I figured out that the recent training he delivered was on SQL Server 2008 R2. I told him a joke that it hurts my ego as he is more popular now in SQL training and consulting than me. I am sure all of you agree that working with good people is a gift from God. I am fortunate enough to work with the best of the best Industry experts. It was a great pleasure to hang out with my Community friends – Ahswin Kini, HimaBindu Vejella, Vasudev G, Suprotim Agrawal, Dhananjay, Vikram Pendse, Mahesh Dhola, Mahesh Mitkari, Manu Zacharia, Shobhan, Hardik Shah, Ashish Mohta, Manan, Subodh Sohani and Sanjay Shetty (of course!) . (Please let me know if I have met you at the event and forgot your name to list here). Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Community Leaders Dinner After lots of meetings, I headed towards the Community Leaders dinner meeting and met almost all the folks I met in morning. The discussion was almost the same but the real good thing was that we were enjoying it. The food was really good. Nupur was invited in the event, but Shaivi could not come. When Nupur tried to enter the event, she was stopped as Shaivi did not have the pass to enter the dinner. Nupur expressed that Shaivi is only 8 months old and does not eat outside food as well and could not stay by herself at this age, but the door keeper did not agree and asked that without the entry details Shaivi could not go in, but Nupur could. Nupur called me on phone and asked me to help her out. By the time, I was outside; the organizer of the event reached to the door and happily approved Shaivi to join the party. Once in the party, Shaivi had lots of fun meeting so many people. Shaivi Dave and Abhishek Kant Dean Guida (Infragistics President and CEO) and Pinal Dave (SQLAuthority.com) Day 3 – April 14, 2010 Though, it was last day, I was very much excited today as I was about to present my very favorite session. Query Optimization and Performance Tuning is my domain expertise and I make my leaving by consulting and training the same. Today’s session was on the same subject and as an additional twist, another subject about Spatial Database was presented. I was always intrigued with Spatial Database and I have enjoyed learning about it; however, I have never thought about Spatial Indexing before it was decided that I will do this session. I really thank Solid Quality Mentor Dr. Greg Low for his assistance in helping me prepare the slide deck and also review the content. Furthermore, today was really what I call my ‘learning day’ . So far I had not attended any session in TechEd and I felt a bit down for that. Everybody spends their valuable time & money to learn something new and exciting in TechEd and I had not attended a single session at the moment thinking that it was already last day of the event. I did have a plan for the day and I attended two technical sessions before my session of spatial database. I attended 2 sessions of Vinod Kumar. Vinod is a natural storyteller and there was no doubt that his sessions would be jam-packed. People attended his sessions simply because Vinod is syhe speaker. He did not have a single time disappointed audience; he is truly a good speaker. He knows his stuff very well. I personally do not think that in India he can be compared to anyone for SQL. Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm SQL Server Query Optimization, Execution and Debugging Query Performance I really had a fun time attending this session. Vinod made this session very interactive. The entire audience really got into the presentation and started participating in the event. Vinod was presenting a small problem with Query Tuning, which any developer would have encountered and solved with their help in such a fashion that a developer feels he or she have already resolved it. In one question, I was the only one who was ready to answer and Vinod told me in a light tone that I am now allowed to answer it! The audience really found it very amusing. There was a huge crowd around Vinod after the session. Vinod – A master storyteller! Time: 3:45pm-4:45pm Data Recovery / consistency with CheckDB This session was much heavier than the earlier one, and I must say this is my most favorite session I EVER attended in India. In this TechEd I have only attended two sessions, but in my career, I have attended numerous technical sessions not only in India, but all over the world. This session had taken my breath away. One by one, Vinod took the different databases, and started to corrupt them in different ways. Each database has some unique ways to get corrupted. Once that was done, Vinod started to show the DBCC CEHCKDB and demonstrated how it can solve your problem. He finally fixed all the databases with this single tool. I do have a good knowledge of this subject, but let me honestly admit that I have learned a lot from this session. I enjoyed and cheered during this session along with other attendees. I had total satisfaction that, just like everyone, I took advantage of the event and learned something. I am now TECHnically EDucated. Pinal Dave and Vinod Kumar After two very interactive and informative SQL Sessions from Vinod Kumar, the next turn me presenting on Spatial Database and Indexing. I got once again nervous but Vinod told me to stay natural and do my presentation. Well, once I got a huge stage with a total of four projectors and a large crowd, I felt better. Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 I kicked off this session with Michael J Swart‘s beautiful spatial image. This session was the last one for the day but, to my surprise, I had more than 200+ attendees. Slowly, the rain was starting outside and I was worried that the hall would not be full; despite this, there was not a single seat available in the first five minutes of the session. Thanks to all of you for attending my presentation. I had demonstrated the map of world (and India) and quickly explained what Geographic and Geometry data types in Spatial Database are. This session had interesting story of Indexing and Comparison, as well as how different traditional indexes are from spatial indexing. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Due to the heavy rain during this event, the power went off for about 22 minutes (just an accident – nobodies fault). During these minutes, there were no audio, no video and no light. I continued to address the mass of 200+ people without any audio device and PowerPoint. I must thank the audience because not a single person left from the session. They all stayed in their place, some moved closure to listen to me properly. I noticed that the curiosity and eagerness to learn new things was at the peak even though it was the very last session of the TechEd. Everybody wanted get the maximum knowledge out of this whole event. I was touched by the support from audience. They listened and participated in my session even without any kinds of technology (no ppt, no mike, no AC, nothing). During these 22 minutes, I had completed my theory verbally. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 After a while, we got the projector back online and we continued with some exciting demos. Many thanks to Microsoft people who worked energetically in background to get the backup power for project up. I had a very interesting demo wherein I overlaid Bangalore and Hyderabad on the India Map and find their aerial distance between them. After finding the aerial distance, we browsed online and found that SQL Server estimates the exact aerial distance between these two cities, as compared to the factual distance. There was a huge applause from the crowd on the subject that SQL Server takes into the count of the curvature of the earth and finds the precise distances based on details. During the process of finding the distance, I demonstrated a few examples of the indexes where I expressed how one can use those indexes to find these distances and how they can improve the performance of similar query. I also demonstrated few examples wherein we were able to see in which data type the Index is most useful. We finished the demos with a few more internal stuff. Pinal Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 Despite all issues, I was mostly satisfied with my presentation. I think it was the best session I have ever presented at any conference. There was no help from Technology for a while, but I still got lots of appreciation at the end. When we ended the session, the applause from the audience was so loud that for a moment, the rain was not audible. I was truly moved by the dedication of the Technology enthusiasts. Pinal Dave After Presenting session at TechEd India 2010 The abstract of the session is as follows: The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Time: 8:00 PM – onwards Dinner by Sponsors After the lively session during the day, there was another dinner party courtesy of one of the sponsors of TechEd. All the MVPs and several Community leaders were present at the dinner. I would like to express my gratitude to Abhishek Kant for organizing this wonderful event for us. It was a blast and really relaxing in all angles. We all stayed there for a long time and talked about our sweet and unforgettable memories of the event. Pinal Dave and Bijoy Singhal It was really one wonderful event. After writing this much, I say that I have no words to express about how much I enjoyed TechEd. However, it is true that I shared with you only 1% of the total activities I have done at the event. There were so many people I have met, yet were not mentioned here although I wanted to write their names here, too . Anyway, I have learned so many things and up until now, I am not able to get over all the fun I had in this event. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2010 The Next Days – April 15, 2010 – till today I am still not able to get my mind out of the whole experience I had at TechEd India 2010. It was like a whole Microsoft Family working together to celebrate a happy occasion. TechEd India – Truly An Unforgettable Experience! Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

- by ScottGu

Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure. Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview). Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account. This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it). The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service. You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal. Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it. This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog. You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects. We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them). You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data. We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs. You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud. You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog. For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery. You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog. For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level. So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites. This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier). Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications. Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy. Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer. Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure. The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio. For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template. When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property. When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser. This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio. You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance. To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end. Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting. You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!). Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center. Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions. They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services. Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support. It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services. This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services. I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it. Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks). Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings. This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass). Enabling this is now really easy. To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal. This will create a dialog like below. I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository. We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account. Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to. Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories. This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services. Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure. You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services. We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy. Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI. If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal. You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase. For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever: Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site. We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app. We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager. You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent. Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go. We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it. We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal. Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it. The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this. Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code. The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages. You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more). The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these. This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications. Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic. The multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure. This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total. To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview. Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit. For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS. Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today. Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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Apache 2.2 and FastCGI stops responding, warnings, crashes

- by Brett

I've seen this question posted a few times using a Google search, with no real answers. I have a multi-threaded FastCGI application running with Apache 2.2 on FreeBSD 7.2. There are a few issues with it, and I am unable to really figure out the source of the problem even after poking through a bunch of the mod_fastcgi source code. My FastCGI application gets anywhere from 2 to 15 or so hits per second, and mostly services a back-end API (the majority of web server usage is for this, and not actually serving content). Everything seems to work ok under normal conditions, but recently this problem has been becoming worse. It starts out with the FastCGI process manager apparently trying to close unneeded processes, sending them a SIGTERM signal. I catch the signal, clean up some stuff, and exit (by calling exit()) with status code 0. This process seems to result in three log messages in my httpd error log: [Tue Jun 01 14:03:31 2010] [warn] FastCGI: (dynamic) server "/home/program/wwwroot/domains/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/program.cgi" (pid 98182) termination signaled [Tue Jun 01 14:03:31 2010] [warn] FastCGI: (dynamic) server "/home/program/wwwroot/domains/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/program.cgi" (pid 98182) terminated by calling exit with status '0' [Tue Jun 01 14:03:31 2010] [warn] FastCGI: (dynamic) server "/home/program/wwwroot/domains/www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/program.cgi" restarted (pid 98294) I am not sure why it says it is restarting the process, but in any case no core dump is ever generated so I do believe it is the FastCGI process manager doing it's thing. This makes sense because it begins to happen after the initial load increase from restarting Apache. Since it's down for a few seconds, it gets hit with a couple of hundred requests over the first few seconds it's running again (sometimes even hitting the upper limit of MAXCLIENTS in Apache), and this seems to be the process manager doing the work of spawning more processes to handle the increased load. So this all seems fine, but here is where things get weird. There are really two problems that I see. First, my multithreaded FastCGI process spawns 25 worker threads, and all seem to be used according to my internal log files (multiple processes are clearly using multiple threads to do work). However it seems that 3 or 4 FastCGI processes is not enough to handle the 5 to 15 hit per second load, even though the requests take about .02s or so to process internally. In order to be at all responsive, it seems I need 50 or more FastCGI processes, leading me to believe that FastCGI does not realize that my program is multithreaded. I've read the documentation at http://www.fastcgi.com/mod_fastcgi/docs/mod_fastcgi.html and do not see any option pertaining to multithreaded-ness, and my internal code is more or less set up just like the examples provided by the FastCGI library. The second problem I am having is that once process termination has happened a bunch of times as above (and seemingly at random), I begin getting a lot of these messages in my error log: [Tue Jun 01 14:06:22 2010] [warn] (32)Broken pipe: FastCGI: write() to PM failed (ignore if a restart or shutdown is pending) The messages occur for about half the hits I get to the server, and it completely kills the responsiveness of my application - it seems FastCGI will look for a working "pipe" until it finds one, and fail to realize that whatever application it is trying to contact is dead. It does still work though, it's just incredibly unresponsive - sometimes taking up to 40 or so seconds to process a request. I recompiled mod_fastcgi with some extra debugging around the point of the error message, and it appears that the error happens when it tries to write() to the application. The call to write() fails with a -1 return code, and sets errno to EPIPE. I am noticing that the issue happens mostly when either a crash occurs in one of the FastCGI processes, or a bunch of them are seemingly terminated by the process manager. I haven't had any core dumps though, except for one, where the backtrace outputted by gdb is just a single call to free() at address 0x0000000000000000 with nothing else in the stack trace, so I don't really know what to make of that. I'm thinking it happens sometime after the SIGTERM signal is caught, maybe some global variable not being cleaned up properly or something.

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Error when installing AppFabric 1.1 on Server 2012 64bit

- by no9

I am trying to install AppFabric 1.1 on 64bit Windows Server 2012 R2. All updates have been installed and updates are turned ON .NET Framework 4.0 is installed .NET Framework 3.5 is installed IIS is installed Windows Powershell 3.0 should already be included in Server 2012 I am getting the following error: 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup ===== Logging started: 2014-03-21 11:02:34+01:00 ===== 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup File: c:\6c4006b0b3f6dee1bf616f1967\setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup InternalName: Setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OriginalFilename: Setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup FileVersion: 1.1.2106.32 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup FileDescription: Setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Product: Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server AppFabric 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup ProductVersion: 1.1.2106.32 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Debug: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Patched: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup PreRelease: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup PrivateBuild: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup SpecialBuild: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Language: Language Neutral 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OS Name: Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OS Edition: ServerStandard 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OSVersion: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup CurrentCulture: sl-SI 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Processor Architecture: AMD64 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Event Registration Source : AppFabric_Setup 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : Initiating V1.0 Upgrade module. 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : V1.0 is not installed. 2014-03-21 11:02:54, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : Initiating V1 Upgrade pre-install. 2014-03-21 11:02:54, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : V1.0 is not installed, not taking backup. 2014-03-21 11:02:55, Information Setup Executing C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe with commandline -iru. 2014-03-21 11:02:55, Information Setup Return code from aspnet_regiis.exe is 0 2014-03-21 11:02:55, Information Setup Process.Start: C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe /quiet /norestart /i "c:\6c4006b0b3f6dee1bf616f1967\Microsoft CCR and DSS Runtime 2008 R3.msi" /l*vx "C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1(2014-03-21 11-02-55).log" 2014-03-21 11:02:57, Information Setup Process.ExitCode: 0x00000000 2014-03-21 11:02:57, Information Setup Windows features successfully enabled. 2014-03-21 11:02:57, Information Setup Process.Start: C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe /quiet /norestart /i "c:\6c4006b0b3f6dee1bf616f1967\Packages\AppFabric-1.1-for-Windows-Server-64.msi" ADDDEFAULT=Worker,WorkerAdmin,CacheService,CacheAdmin,Setup /l*vx "C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1(2014-03-21 11-02-57).log" LOGFILE="C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1_CustomActions(2014-03-21 11-02-57).log" INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server" LANGID=en-US 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Process.ExitCode: 0x00000643 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup AppFabric installation failed because installer MSI returned with error code : 1603 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup AppFabric installation failed because installer MSI returned with error code : 1603 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Core.SetupException: AppFabric installation failed because installer MSI returned with error code : 1603 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.WindowsInstallerProxy.GenerateAndThrowSetupException(Int32 exitCode, LogEventSource logEventSource) 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.WindowsInstallerProxy.Invoke(LogEventSource logEventSource, InstallMode installMode, String packageIdentity, List`1 updateList, List`1 customArguments) 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.MsiInstaller.InstallSelectedFeatures() 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.MsiInstaller.Install() 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Client.ProgressPage.StartAction() 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup === Summary of Actions === 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Required Windows components : Completed Successfully 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup IIS Management Console : Completed Successfully 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft CCR and DSS Runtime 2008 R3 : Completed Successfully 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Hosting Services : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Caching Services : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Hosting Administration : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Cache Administration : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft Update : Skipped 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft Update : Skipped 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup ===== Logging stopped: 2014-03-21 11:03:45+01:00 ===== I have tried this solution but no success: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11205927/appfabric-installation-failed-because-installer-msi-returned-with-error-code-1 My system enviroment variable PSModulesPath has this value: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules I have also followed this link with no success: http://jefferytay.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/installing-appfabric-on-windows-server-2012/ Any help would be greatly appreciated !

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PHP crashing (seg-fault) under mod_fcgi, apache

- by Andras Gyomrey

I've been programming a site using: Zend Framework 1.11.5 (complete MVC) PHP 5.3.6 Apache 2.2.19 CentOS 5.6 i686 virtuozzo on vps cPanel WHM 11.30.1 (build 4) Mysql 5.1.56-log Mysqli API 5.1.56 The issue started here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6769515/php-programming-seg-fault. In brief, php is giving me random segmentation-faults. [Wed Jul 20 17:45:34 2011] [error] mod_fcgid: process /usr/local/cpanel/cgi-sys/php5(11562) exit(communication error), get unexpected signal 11 [Wed Jul 20 17:45:34 2011] [warn] [client 190.78.208.30] (104)Connection reset by peer: mod_fcgid: error reading data from FastCGI server [Wed Jul 20 17:45:34 2011] [error] [client 190.78.208.30] Premature end of script headers: index.php About extensions. When i compile php with "--enable-debug" flag, i have to disable this line: zend_extension="/usr/local/IonCube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.3.so" Otherwise, the server doesn't accept requests and i get a "The connection with the server was reset". It is possible that i have to disable eaccelerator too because of the same reason. I still don't get why apache gets running it some times and some others not: extension="eaccelerator.so" Anyway, after i get httpd running, seg-faults can occurr randomly. If i don't compile php with "--enable-debug" flag, i can get DETERMINISTICALLY a php crash: <?php class Admin_DbController extends Controller_BaseController { public function updateSqlDefinitionsAction() { $db = Zend_Registry::get('db'); $row = $db->fetchRow("SHOW CREATE TABLE 222AFI"); } } ?> BUT if i compile php with "--enable-debug" flag, it's really hard to get this error. I must add some complexity to make it crash. I have to be doing many paralell requests for a few seconds to get a crash: <?php class Admin_DbController extends Controller_BaseController { public function updateSqlDefinitionsAction() { $db = Zend_Registry::get('db'); $tableList = $db->listTables(); foreach ($tableList as $tableName){ $row = $db->fetchRow("SHOW CREATE TABLE " . $db->quoteIdentifier($tableName)); file_put_contents( DB_DEFINITIONS_PATH . '/' . $tableName . '.sql', $row['Create Table'] . ';' ); } } } ?> Please notice this is the same script, but creating DDL for all tables in database rather than for one. It seems that if php is heavy loaded (with extensions and me doing many paralell requests) it's when i get php to crash. About starting httpd with "-X": i've tried. The thing is, it is already hard to make php crash with --enable-debug. With "-X" option (which only enables one child process) i can't do parallel requests. So i haven't been able to create to proper debug backtrace: https://bugs.php.net/bugs-generating-backtrace.php My concrete question is, what do i do to get a coredump? root@GWT4 [~]# httpd -V Server version: Apache/2.2.19 (Unix) Server built: Jul 20 2011 19:18:58 Cpanel::Easy::Apache v3.4.2 rev9999 Server's Module Magic Number: 20051115:28 Server loaded: APR 1.4.5, APR-Util 1.3.12 Compiled using: APR 1.4.5, APR-Util 1.3.12 Architecture: 32-bit Server MPM: Prefork threaded: no forked: yes (variable process count) Server compiled with.... -D APACHE_MPM_DIR="server/mpm/prefork" -D APR_HAS_SENDFILE -D APR_HAS_MMAP -D APR_HAVE_IPV6 (IPv4-mapped addresses enabled) -D APR_USE_SYSVSEM_SERIALIZE -D APR_USE_PTHREAD_SERIALIZE -D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D APR_HAS_OTHER_CHILD -D AP_HAVE_RELIABLE_PIPED_LOGS -D DYNAMIC_MODULE_LIMIT=128 -D HTTPD_ROOT="/usr/local/apache" -D SUEXEC_BIN="/usr/local/apache/bin/suexec" -D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="logs/httpd.pid" -D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="logs/apache_runtime_status" -D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="logs/accept.lock" -D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="logs/error_log" -D AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="conf/mime.types" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="conf/httpd.conf"

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Delaying NIS & NFS startup till after network interface is fully ready on Fedora 17

- by obmarg

I've recently set up a fedora 17 server for our network, and I've been having trouble getting the NIS service to work on startup. Here's some logs from the system: Aug 21 12:57:12 cairnwell ypbind-pre-setdomain[718]: Setting NIS domain: 'indigo-nis' (environment variable) Aug 21 12:57:13 cairnwell ypbind: Binding NIS service Aug 21 12:57:13 cairnwell rpc.statd[730]: Unable to prune capability 0 from bounding set: Operation not permitted Aug 21 12:57:13 cairnwell systemd[1]: nfs-lock.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1 Aug 21 12:57:13 cairnwell systemd[1]: Unit nfs-lock.service entered failed state. Aug 21 12:57:14 cairnwell setroubleshoot: SELinux is preventing /usr/sbin/rpc.statd from using the setpcap capability. For complete SELinux messages. run sealert -l 024bba8a-b0ef-43dc-b195-5c9a2d4c4d41 Aug 21 12:57:15 cairnwell kernel: [ 18.822282] bnx2 0000:02:00.0: em1: NIC Copper Link is Up, 1000 Mbps full duplex Aug 21 12:57:15 cairnwell kernel: [ 18.822925] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): em1: link becomes ready Aug 21 12:57:15 cairnwell NetworkManager[621]: <info> (em1): carrier now ON (device state 20) Aug 21 12:57:15 cairnwell NetworkManager[621]: <info> (em1): device state change: unavailable -> disconnected (reason 'carrier-changed') [20 30 40] Aug 21 12:57:15 cairnwell NetworkManager[621]: <info> Auto-activating connection 'System em1'. Aug 21 12:57:15 cairnwell NetworkManager[621]: <info> Activation (em1) starting connection 'System em1' Aug 21 12:57:15 cairnwell NetworkManager[621]: <info> (em1): device state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none') [30 40 0] ....... Aug 21 12:57:19 cairnwell sendmail[790]: YPBINDPROC_DOMAIN: Domain not bound Aug 21 12:57:26 cairnwell sendmail[790]: YPBINDPROC_DOMAIN: Domain not bound Aug 21 12:57:31 cairnwell sendmail[790]: YPBINDPROC_DOMAIN: Domain not bound Aug 21 12:57:35 cairnwell sendmail[790]: YPBINDPROC_DOMAIN: Domain not bound Aug 21 12:58:00 cairnwell ypbind: Binding took 47 seconds Aug 21 12:58:00 cairnwell ypbind: NIS server for domain indigo-nis is not responding. Aug 21 12:58:01 cairnwell ypbind: Killing ypbind with PID 733. Aug 21 12:58:01 cairnwell ypbind-post-waitbind[734]: /usr/lib/ypbind/ypbind-post-waitbind: line 51: kill: SIGTERM: invalid signal specification Aug 21 12:58:01 cairnwell systemd[1]: ypbind.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1 Aug 21 12:58:01 cairnwell systemd[1]: Unit ypbind.service entered failed state. By the looks of these logs the ypbind service is starting up at 12:57:12 but the network interface isn't coming up till 12:57:15. My guess is that this is causing ypbind to time out when trying to connect. As a knock-on effect the NIS failure is causing problems with NFS which is no longer able to map UIDs properly. This problem doesn't seem to be fixed by actually starting ypbind etc. so I've had to set all my NFS shares to noauto. I have tried manually adding NETWORKDELAY and NETWORKWAIT in /etc/sysconfig/network and also running systemctl enable NetworkManager-wait-online.service as I've seen suggested in some places, but neither of these have had any effect. It is relatively easy to fix manually by restarting ypbind & mounting NFS shares after the network has started up, but it's less than ideal to have to do this every time the server has been rebooted. Does anyone know of an easy (and preferably hack-free) way of delaying the ypbind startup till after the network interface is fully ready?

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MySQL my.cnf file not being read, Ubuntu 10.04 64bit

- by reallyordinary

I've been researching this for a few hours with no luck. Basically it looks like my server's my.cnf file isn't being read at all. I've searched my server, and there's only one my.cnf file on it, located at /etc/mysql/my.cnf. Its ownership is root:root. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 64bit on a Linode.com server. I have the latest versions of MySQL and PHP installed. I've edited the my.cnf file, commented out "skip-innodb", and have set innodb to be the default storage engine using default-storage-engine = innodb And then restarted mysql. But when I do show engines, MyISAM is still coming up as the default engine. Also - none of the innodb settings I've added to the my.cnf file are being read. For example, I have this in my.cnf: innodb_buffer_pool_size=4G But in phpmyadmin, InnoDB is showing as having a buffer pool size of 8,192 KiB. Similarly, I have this in the my.cnf: innodb_data-file_path = ibdata1:500M:autoextend But in phpmyadmin, it's reading as ibdata1:10M:autoextend. It doesn't look like MyISAM info is being read from the my.cnf file either. The my.cnf file has skip-external-locking queried out, but it's showing as "on" in phpmyadmin. So - yeah, it looks like nothing in the my.cnf file is being read at all. But the server still works. I'm running a Drupal site on it and it seems to operate fine. So mysql seems to be drawing default settings from... some mysterious secret location. Any idea how I can make mysql see and use this my.cnf file? Actually, wait - it looks like it may be being read, not sure. I checked the error.log and found this: 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Cannot find or open table databasename/cache_apachesolr from the internal data dictionary of InnoDB though the .frm file for the table exists. Maybe you have deleted and recreated InnoDB data files but have forgotten to delete the corresponding .frm files of InnoDB tables, or you have moved .frm files to another database? or, the table contains indexes that this version of the engine doesn't support. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-troubleshooting.html how you can resolve the problem. InnoDB: Error: auto-extending data file ./ibdata1 is of a different size InnoDB: 640 pages (rounded down to MB) than specified in the .cnf file: InnoDB: initial 32000 pages, max 0 (relevant if non-zero) pages! InnoDB: Could not open or create data files. InnoDB: If you tried to add new data files, and it failed here, InnoDB: you should now edit innodb_data_file_path in my.cnf back InnoDB: to what it was, and remove the new ibdata files InnoDB created InnoDB: in this failed attempt. InnoDB only wrote those files full of InnoDB: zeros, but did not yet use them in any way. But be careful: do not InnoDB: remove old data files which contain your precious data! 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error. 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed. 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] /usr/sbin/mysqld: unknown variable 'innodb_lock_wait_timout=50' 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Aborting 101128 4:28:52 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete

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Riak "error":"insufficient_vnodes_available"

- by Wolfiem

We have 4 nodes Riak installation. They are running on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise installed servers. We have installed 1.1.4 at August 1st 2012 and upgraded 1.2.0 when its available. Server names are: f1 - 10.10.0.12 - This is the first installed server. We have joined other ones to this server. This also serves Riak control. s2 - 10.10.0.22 - s3 - 10.10.0.23 - s4 - 10.10.0.24 - This server also serves Riak control. This morning we've seen "insufficient nodes available" error at our applications log and restarted all nodes. 3 of them became available except "f1" UPDATE : while I prepare this message live 3 nodes became unavailable and need restart Riak. wolfiem@f01:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/riak start Riak failed to start within 15 seconds, see the output of 'riak console' for more information. If you want to wait longer, set the environment variable WAIT_FOR_ERLANG to the number of seconds to wait. I've tried to set WAIT_FOR_ERLANG value to 60 seconds but I can't. adding this line in vm.args didn't work: -env WAIT_FOR_ERLANG 60 I also tried to set this from terminal but it didn't work either. wolfiem@f01:~$ export WAIT_FOR_ERLANG=60 It still says "Riak failed to start within 15 seconds" This is the console.log output: 2012-09-11 10:58:02.532 [info] <0.7.0> Application lager started on node '[email protected]' 2012-09-11 10:58:02.560 [warning] <0.148.0>@riak_core_ring_manager:reload_ring:231 No ring file available. 2012-09-11 10:58:02.585 [error] <0.164.0> CRASH REPORT Process <0.164.0> with 0 neighbours exited with reason: eaddrnotavail in gen_server:init_it/6 line 320 This is the error.log output 2012-09-11 10:58:02.585 [error] <0.164.0> CRASH REPORT Process <0.164.0> with 0 neighbours exited with reason: eaddrnotavail in gen_server:init_it/6 line 320 This is the crash.log output: 2012-09-11 10:58:02 =CRASH REPORT==== crasher: initial call: mochiweb_socket_server:init/1 pid: <0.164.0> registered_name: [] exception exit: {eaddrnotavail,[{gen_server,init_it,6,[{file,"gen_server.erl"},{line,320}]},{proc_lib,init_p_do_apply,3,[{file,"proc_lib.erl"},{line,227}]}]} ancestors: [riak_core_sup,<0.135.0>] messages: [] links: [<0.136.0>] dictionary: [] trap_exit: true status: running heap_size: 377 stack_size: 24 reductions: 403 neighbours: You can find the riak console output below: wolfiem@f01:~$ riak console Attempting to restart script through sudo -H -u riak Exec: /usr/lib/riak/erts-5.9.1/bin/erlexec -boot /usr/lib/riak/releases/1.2.0/riak -embedded -config /etc/riak/app.config -pa /usr/lib/riak/basho-patches -args_file /etc/riak/vm.args -- console Root: /usr/lib/riak Erlang R15B01 (erts-5.9.1) [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:64] [kernel-poll:true] =INFO REPORT==== 11-Sep-2012::10:44:18 === alarm_handler: {set,{system_memory_high_watermark,[]}} ** /usr/lib/riak/lib/observer-1.1/ebin/etop_txt.beam hides /usr/lib/riak/lib/basho-patches/etop_txt.beam ** Found 1 name clashes in code paths 10:44:19.099 [info] Application lager started on node '[email protected]' 10:44:19.130 [warning] No ring file available. 10:44:19.158 [error] CRASH REPORT Process <0.164.0> with 0 neighbours exited with reason: eaddrnotavail in gen_server:init_it/6 line 320 /usr/lib/riak/lib/os_mon-2.2.9/priv/bin/memsup: Erlang has closed. =INFO REPORT==== 11-Sep-2012::10:44:19 === alarm_handler: {clear,system_memory_high_watermark} Erlang has closed {"Kernel pid terminated",application_controller,"{application_start_failure,riak_core,{shutdown,{riak_core_app,start,[normal,[]]}}}"} Crash dump was written to: /var/log/riak/erl_crash.dump Kernel pid terminated (application_controller) ({application_start_failure,riak_core,{shutdown,{riak_core_app,start,[normal,[]]}}})

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