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• Clean Up the New Ubuntu Grub2 Boot Menu

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Ubuntu adopted the new version of the Grub boot manager in version 9.10, getting rid of the old problematic menu.lst. Today we look at how to change the boot menu options in Grub2. Grub2 is a step forward in a lot of ways, and most of the annoying menu.lst issues from the past are gone. Still, if you’re not vigilant with removing old versions of the kernel, the boot list can still end up being longer than it needs to be. Note: You may have to hold the SHIFT button on your keyboard while booting up to get this menu to show. If only one operating system is installed on your computer, it may load it automatically without displaying this menu. Remove Old Kernel Entries The most common clean up task for the boot menu is to remove old kernel versions lying around on your machine. In our case we want to remove the 2.6.32-21-generic boot menu entries. In the past, this meant opening up /boot/grub/menu.lst…but with Grub2, if we remove the kernel package from our computer, Grub automatically removes those options. To remove old kernel versions, open up Synaptic Package Manager, found in the System > Administration menu. When it opens up, type the kernel version that you want to remove in the Quick search text field. The first few numbers should suffice. For each of the entries associated with the old kernel (e.g. linux-headers-2.6.32-21 and linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic), right-click and choose Mark for Complete Removal. Click the Apply button in the toolbar and then Apply in the summary window that pops up. Close Synaptic Package Manager. The next time you boot up your computer, the Grub menu will not contain the entries associated with the removed kernel version. Remove Any Option by Editing /etc/grub.d If you need more fine-grained control, or want to remove entries that are not kernel versions, you must change the files located in /etc/grub.d. /etc/grub.d contains files that hold the menu entries that used to be contained in /boot/grub/menu.lst. If you want to add new boot menu entries, you would create a new file in this folder, making sure to mark it as executable. If you want to remove boot menu entries, as we do, you would edit files in this folder. If we wanted to remove all of the memtest86+ entries, we could just make the 20_memtest86+ file non-executable, with the terminal command sudo chmod –x 20_memtest86+ Followed by the terminal command sudo update-grub Note that memtest86+ was not found by update-grub because it will only consider executable files. However, instead, we’re going to remove the Serial console 115200 entry for memtest86+… Open a terminal window Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, type in the command: sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ The menu entries are found at the bottom of this file. Comment out the menu entry for serial console 115200 by adding a “#” to the start of each line. Save and close this file. In the terminal window you opened, enter in the command sudo update-grub Note: If you don’t run update-grub, the boot menu options will not change! Now, the next time you boot up, that strange entry will be gone, and you’re left with a simple and clean boot menu. Conclusion While changing Grub2’s boot menu may seem overly complicated to legacy Grub masters, for normal users, Grub2 means that you won’t have to change the boot menu that often. Fortunately, if you do have to do it, the process is still pretty easy. For more detailed information about how to change entries in Grub2, this Ubuntu forum thread is a great resource. If you’re using an older version of Ubuntu, check out our article on how to clean up Ubuntu grub boot menu after upgrades. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Clean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After UpgradesReinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it OutChange the GRUB Menu Timeout on UbuntuHow To Switch to Console Mode for Ubuntu VMware GuestSet Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation"

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 8, PLINQ’s ForAll Method

  - by Reed

  Parallel LINQ extends LINQ to Objects, and is typically very similar.  However, as I previously discussed, there are some differences.  Although the standard way to handle simple Data Parellelism is via Parallel.ForEach, it’s possible to do the same thing via PLINQ. PLINQ adds a new method unavailable in standard LINQ which provides new functionality… LINQ is designed to provide a much simpler way of handling querying, including filtering, ordering, grouping, and many other benefits.  Reading the description in LINQ to Objects on MSDN, it becomes clear that the thinking behind LINQ deals with retrieval of data.  LINQ works by adding a functional programming style on top of .NET, allowing us to express filters in terms of predicate functions, for example. PLINQ is, generally, very similar.  Typically, when using PLINQ, we write declarative statements to filter a dataset or perform an aggregation.  However, PLINQ adds one new method, which provides a very different purpose: ForAll. The ForAll method is defined on ParallelEnumerable, and will work upon any ParallelQuery<T>.  Unlike the sequence operators in LINQ and PLINQ, ForAll is intended to cause side effects.  It does not filter a collection, but rather invokes an action on each element of the collection. At first glance, this seems like a bad idea.  For example, Eric Lippert clearly explained two philosophical objections to providing an IEnumerable<T>.ForEach extension method, one of which still applies when parallelized.  The sole purpose of this method is to cause side effects, and as such, I agree that the ForAll method “violates the functional programming principles that all the other sequence operators are based upon”, in exactly the same manner an IEnumerable<T>.ForEach extension method would violate these principles.  Eric Lippert’s second reason for disliking a ForEach extension method does not necessarily apply to ForAll – replacing ForAll with a call to Parallel.ForEach has the same closure semantics, so there is no loss there. Although ForAll may have philosophical issues, there is a pragmatic reason to include this method.  Without ForAll, we would take a fairly serious performance hit in many situations.  Often, we need to perform some filtering or grouping, then perform an action using the results of our filter.  Using a standard foreach statement to perform our action would avoid this philosophical issue: // Filter our collection var filteredItems = collection.AsParallel().Where( i => i.SomePredicate() ); // Now perform an action foreach (var item in filteredItems) { // These will now run serially item.DoSomething(); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This would cause a loss in performance, since we lose any parallelism in place, and cause all of our actions to be run serially. We could easily use a Parallel.ForEach instead, which adds parallelism to the actions: // Filter our collection var filteredItems = collection.AsParallel().Where( i => i.SomePredicate() ); // Now perform an action once the filter completes Parallel.ForEach(filteredItems, item => { // These will now run in parallel item.DoSomething(); }); This is a noticeable improvement, since both our filtering and our actions run parallelized.  However, there is still a large bottleneck in place here.  The problem lies with my comment “perform an action once the filter completes”.  Here, we’re parallelizing the filter, then collecting all of the results, blocking until the filter completes.  Once the filtering of every element is completed, we then repartition the results of the filter, reschedule into multiple threads, and perform the action on each element.  By moving this into two separate statements, we potentially double our parallelization overhead, since we’re forcing the work to be partitioned and scheduled twice as many times. This is where the pragmatism comes into play.  By violating our functional principles, we gain the ability to avoid the overhead and cost of rescheduling the work: // Perform an action on the results of our filter collection .AsParallel() .Where( i => i.SomePredicate() ) .ForAll( i => i.DoSomething() ); The ability to avoid the scheduling overhead is a compelling reason to use ForAll.  This really goes back to one of the key points I discussed in data parallelism: Partition your problem in a way to place the most work possible into each task.  Here, this means leaving the statement attached to the expression, even though it causes side effects and is not standard usage for LINQ. This leads to my one guideline for using ForAll: The ForAll extension method should only be used to process the results of a parallel query, as returned by a PLINQ expression. Any other usage scenario should use Parallel.ForEach, instead.

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• CQRS &ndash; Questions and Concerns

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been doing a lot of learning on CQRS and Event Sourcing over the last little while and I have a number of questions that I haven’t been able to answer. 1. What is the benefit of CQRS when compared to a typical DDD architecture that uses Event Sourcing and properly captures intent and behavior via verb-based commands? (other than Scalability) 2. When using CQRS what do you do with complex query-based logic? I’m going to elaborate on #1 in this blog post and I’ll do a follow-up post on #2. I watched through Greg Young’s video on the business benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing and first let me say that I thought it was an excellent presentation that really drives home a lot of the benefits to this approach to architecture (I watched it twice in a row I enjoyed it so much!). But it didn’t answer some of my questions fully (I wish I had been there to ask these of Greg in person!). So let me pick apart some of the points he makes and how they relate to my first question above. I’m completely sold on the idea of event sourcing and have a clear understanding of the benefits that it brings to the table, so I’m not going to question that. But you can use event sourcing without going to a CQRS architecture, so my main question is around the benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing vs Event Sourcing + Typical DDD architecture Architecture with Event Sourcing + Commands on Left, CQRS on Right Greg talks about how the stereotypical architecture doesn’t support DDD, but is that only because his diagram shows DTO’s coming up from the client. If we use the same diagram but allow the client to send commands doesn’t that remove a lot of the arguments that Greg makes against the stereotypical architecture? We can now introduce verbs into the system. We can capture intent now (storing it still requires event sourcing, but you can implement event sourcing without doing CQRS) We can create a rich domain model (as opposed to an anemic domain model) Scalability is obviously a benefit that CQRS brings to the table, but like Greg says, very few of the systems we create truly need significant scalability Greg talks about the ability to scale your development efforts. He says CQRS allows you to split the system into 3 parts (Client, Domain/Commands, Reads) and assign 3 teams of developers to work on them in parallel; letting you scale your development efforts by 3x with nearly linear gains. But in the stereotypical architecture don’t you already have 2 separate modules that you can split your dev efforts between: The client that sends commands/queries and receives DTO’s, and the Domain which accepts commands/queries, and generates events/DTO’s. If this is true it’s not really a 3x scaling you achieve with CQRS but merely a 1.5x scaling which while great doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic (“I can do it with 10 devs in 12 months – let me hire 5 more and we can have it done in 8 months”). Making the Query side “stupid simple” such that you can assign junior developers (or even outsource it) sounds like a valid benefit, but I have some concerns over what you do with complex query-based logic/behavior. I’m going to go into more detail on this in a follow-up blog post shortly. He also seemed to focus on how “stupid-simple” it is doing queries against the de-normalized data store, but I imagine there is still significant complexity in the event handlers that interpret the events and apply them to the de-normalized tables. It sounds like Greg suggests that because we’re doing CQRS that allows us to apply Event Sourcing when we otherwise wouldn’t be able to (~33:30 in the video). I don’t believe this is true. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to apply Event Sourcing without separating out the Commands and Queries. The queries would just operate against the domain model instead of the database. But you’d still get the benefits of Event Sourcing. Without CQRS the queries would only be able to operate against the current state rather than the event history, but even in CQRS the domain behaviors can only operate against the current state and I don’t see that being a big limiting factor. If some query needs to operate against something that is not captured by the current state you would just have to update the domain model to capture that information (no different than if that statement were made about a Command under CQRS). Some of the benefits I do see being applicable are that your domain model might end up being simpler/smaller since it only needs to represent the state needed to process commands and not worry about the reads (like the Deactivate Inventory Item and associated comment example that Greg provides). And also commands that can be handled in a Transaction Script style manner by the command handler simply generating events and not touching the domain model. It also makes it easier for your senior developers to focus on the command behavior and ignore the queries, which is usually going to be a better use of their time. And of course scalability. If anybody out there has any thoughts on this and can help educate me further, please either leave a comment or feel free to get in touch with me via email:

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• Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC Review

  - by Ben Griswold

  A few years back I started dallying with test-driven development, but I never fully committed to the practice. This wasn’t because I didn’t believe in the value of TDD; it was more a matter of not completely understanding how to incorporate “test first” into my everyday development. Back in my web forms days, I could point fingers at the framework for my ignorance and laziness. After all, web forms weren’t exactly designed for testability so who could blame me for not embracing TDD in those conditions, right? But when I switched to ASP.NET MVC and quickly found myself fresh out of excuses and it became instantly clear that it was time to get my head around red-green-refactor once and for all or I would regretfully miss out on one of the biggest selling points the new framework had to offer. I have previously written about how I learned ASP.NET MVC. It was primarily hands on learning but I did read a couple of ASP.NET MVC books along the way. The books I read dedicated a chapter or two to TDD and they certainly addressed the benefits of TDD and how MVC was designed with testability in mind, but TDD was merely an afterthought compared to, well, teaching one how to code the model, view and controller. This approach made some sense, and I learned a bunch about MVC from those books, but when it came to TDD the books were just a teaser and an opportunity missed.  But then I got lucky – Jonathan McCracken contacted me and asked if I’d review his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, and it was just what I needed to get over the TDD hump. As the title suggests, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC takes a different approach to learning MVC as it focuses on testing right from the very start. McCracken wastes no time and swiftly familiarizes us with the framework by building out a trivial Quote-O-Matic application and then dedicates the better part of his book to testing first – first by explaining TDD and then coding a full-featured Getting Organized application inspired by David Allen’s popular book, Getting Things Done. If you are a learn-by-example kind of coder (like me), you will instantly appreciate and enjoy McCracken’s style – its fast-moving, pragmatic and focused on only the most relevant information required to get you going with ASP.NET MVC and TDD. The book continues with the test-first theme but McCracken moves away from the sample application and incorporates other practical skills like persisting models with NHibernate, leveraging Inversion of Control with the IControllerFactory and building a RESTful web service. What I most appreciated about this section was McCracken’s use of and praise for open source libraries like Rhino Mocks, SQLite and StructureMap (to name just a few) and productivity tools like ReSharper, Web Platform Installer and ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard.  McCracken’s emphasis on real world, pragmatic development was clearly demonstrated in every tool choice, straight-forward code block and developer tip. Whether one is already familiar with the tools/tips or not, McCracken’s thought process is easily understood and appreciated. The final section of the book walks the reader through security and deployment – everything from error handling and logging with ELMAH, to ASP.NET Health Monitoring, to using MSBuild with automated builds, to the deployment  of ASP.NET MVC to various web environments. These chapters, like those prior, offer enough information and explanation to simply help you get the job done.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will turn you into an expert MVC developer overnight?  Well, no.  I don’t think any book can make that claim.  If that were possible, I think book list prices would skyrocket!  That said, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC provides a solid foundation and a unique (and dare I say necessary) approach to learning ASP.NET MVC.  Along the way McCracken shares loads of very practical software development tips and references numerous tools and libraries. The bottom line is it’s a great ASP.NET MVC primer – if you’re new to ASP.NET MVC it’s just what you need to get started.  Do I believe Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC will give you everything you need to start employing TDD in your everyday development?  Well, I used to think that learning TDD required a lot of practice and, if you’re lucky enough, the guidance of a mentor or coach.  I used to think that one couldn’t learn TDD from a book alone. Well, I’m still no pro, but I’m testing first now and Jonathan McCracken and his book, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC, played a big part in making this happen.  If you are an MVC developer and a TDD newb, Test-Drive ASP.NET MVC is just the book for you.

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• Installing SharePoint 2013 on Windows 2012- standalone installation

  - by sreejukg

  In this article, I am going to share my experience while installing SharePoint 2013 on Windows 2012. This was the first time I tried SharePoint 2013. So I thought sharing the same will benefit somebody who would like to install SharePoint 2013 as a standalone installation. Standalone installation is meant for evaluation/development purposes. For production environments, you need to follow the best practices and create required service accounts. Microsoft has published the deployment guide for SharePoint 2013, you can download this from the below link. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30384 Since this is for development environment, I am not going to create any service account, I logged in to Windows 2012 as an administrator and just placed my installation DVD on the drive. When I run the setup from the DVD, the below splash screen appears. This reflects the new UI changes happening with all Microsoft based applications; the interface matches the metro style applications (Windows 8 style). As you can see the options are same as that of the SharePoint 2010 installation screen. Click on the “install software prerequisites” link to get all the prerequisites get installed. You need a valid internet connection to do this. Clicking on the install software prerequisites will bring the following dialog. Click Next, you will see the terms and conditions. Select I accept check box and click Next. The installation will start immediately. For any reason, if you stop the installation and start it later, the product preparation tool will check whether a particular component is installed and if yes, then the installation of that particular component will be skipped. If you do not have internet connection, you will face the download error as follows. At any point of failure, the error log will be available for you to review. If all OK, you will reach the below dialog, this means some components will be installed once the PC is rebooted. Be noted that the clicking on finish will not ask you for further confirmation. So make sure to save all your work before clicking on finish button. Once the server is restarted, the product preparation tool will start automatically and you will see the following dialog. Now go to the SharePoint 2013 splash page and click on “Install SharePoint Server” link. You need to enter the product key here. Enter the product key as you received and click continue. Select the Checkbox for the license agreement and click on continue button. Now you need to select the installation type. Select Stand-alone and click on “Install Now” button. A dialog will pop up that updates you with the process and progress. The installation took around 15-20 minutes with 2 GB or Ram installed in the server, seems fair. Once the installation is over, you will see the following Dialog. Make sure you select the Run the products and configuration wizard. If you miss to select the check box, you can find the products and configuration wizard from the start tiles. The products and configuration wizard will start. If you get any dialog saying some of the services will be stopped, you just accept it. Since we selected standalone installation, it will not ask for any user input, as it already knows the database to be configured. Once the configuration is over without any problems you will see the configuration successful message. Also you can find the link to central administration on the Start Screen.     Troubleshooting During my first setup process, I got the below error. System.ArgumentException: The SDDL string contains an invalid sid or a sid that cannot be translated. Parameter name: sddlForm at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor.BinaryFormFromSddlForm(String sddlForm) at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor..ctor(String sddlForm) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateShareSecurityDescriptor(String[] readNames, String[] changeNames, String[] fullControlNames, String& sddl) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServer.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.AnalyticsAdministration.CreateAnalyticsUNCShare(String dirParentLocation, String shareName) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.AnalyticsAdministration.ProvisionAnalyticsShare(SearchServiceApplication serviceApplication) ………………………………………… ………………………………………… The configuration wizard displayed the error as below. The error occurred in step 8 of the configuration wizard and by the time the central administration is already provisioned. So from the start, I was able to open the central administration website, but the search service application was showing as error. I found a good blog that specifies the reason for error. http://kbdump.com/sharepoint2013-standalone-config-error-create-sample-data/ The workaround specified in the blog works fine. I think SharePoint must be provisioning Search using the Network Service account, so instead of giving permission to everyone, you could try giving permission to Network Service account(I didn’t try this yet, buy you could try and post your feedback here). In production environment you will have specific accounts that have access rights as recommended by Microsoft guidelines. Installation of SharePoint 2013 is pretty straight forward. Hope you enjoyed the article!

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• XNA Notes 004

  - by George Clingerman

  The XNA community has been crazy busy again. It always make me fee like such a slacker collecting all of these notes as I see the tremendous output from people all over the world and it’s incredible and humbling. There are some amazingly skilled people working with XNA. On another not, I’m going to take a minute to get on my soapbox and say, if you are developing ANYTHING and are not using some sort of source/revision control, START IMMEDIATELY. This applies to teams of one. Projects for fun. And “I back up my hard drive” or “I use dropbox!” does NOT count as using source control. You’ll be doing yourself a HUGE favor if you find one, learn to use it and integrate it into your everyday workflow. I personally use Subversion. It’s hosted offsite at xp.dev.com and I use TortoiseSVN as my front end to interface with the repository. It’s simple and easy to use and has saved me from myself so many time. Honestly, get setup with some type of source control immediately. If you don’t understand how, grab another developer that does and have them walk you through setup and the basics of using it. Ok, I’m done. On to the notes… The XNA Team Only 14 days left to Submit XNA GS 3.1 Games! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/24/14-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx Shawn Hargreaves shares some great information on Exception Handling best practices on the XNA forums http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73333/448556.aspx#448556 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2008/09/10/vexing-exceptions.aspx XNA MVPs @CatalinZima gives us a peek at Chicken’s Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/games/chickens-cant-fly/ Screen-space deformations in XNA for WP7 from Catalin Zima http://twitter.com/CatalinZima/statuses/30313083767357440 http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/01/screen-space-deformations-in-xna-for-windows-phone-7/ XNA Developers Going to GDC? Don’t miss the XNA panel hosted by a plethora of well known XNA community names! http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73576/448842.aspx#448842 MasterBlud does an interview with @Xalterax http://twitter.com/MasterBlud/statuses/28510774812999680 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/?p=7102 Luke Schneider of Radiangames posts about The Radiangames Style http://radiangames.com/?p=532 Holmade Games had a “vote for the new playable character” poll going on for Hurdle Turtle this past week http://holmadegames.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-level-pack-vote-for-your-favorite.html IGF v0.1.0.0 release post mortem http://indiefreaks.com/2011/01/24/v0-1-0-0-release-post-mortem/ James an Super Dunner post Good Morning Gato #46 and a look at the Vampire Smile box art http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/01/21/good-morning-gato-46/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/01/20/vampire-smiles-digital-box-art/ Alfredo Di Napoli creates Cow Pong using XNA and F#! http://alfredodinapoli.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/cow-pong-a-simple-xna-game-in-f/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games Signed In Podcast posts Episode #61 http://www.signedinpodcast.com/?p=559 Gamergeddon posts the January 23rd edition of XBLIG Round Up http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/01/23/xbox-indie-games-round-up-january-23rd/ Indie Asylum posts Antipole Review http://www.indieasylum.com/reviews/38-xblig/112-antipole.html 1UPOrPosion Reviews OSR Unhinged http://www.1uporpoison.com/xblig/osr-unhinged/ DarkstarMatryx review Warbirds at Work http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=185 Review of Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/24/xbox-indie-review-aban-hawkins-the-1000-spikes/ XboxHornet reviews Corrupted http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/?p=7123 XBLIG 2010: The Best And The Worst http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamieMann/20110121/6840/ Xbox LIVE Arcade Sales Analysis - an interesting read for XBLIG developers wondering how they’re doing compared to arcade.. http://www.gamerbytes.com/2011/01/xbla_sales_analysis_dec_2010.php Best of Indies for January 25th http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/games/best-of-the-indies-25th-january-2011 Decimation X3 appears as an arcade machine in the wild! http://twitter.com/mdoucette/statuses/29605562484260864 XNA Game Development Guiseppe De Francesco (@PinoEire) announced Torque X 4.0 CEV is now in RC phase! http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20779 DrMistry of mstargames shares his struggle (and mistakes) with learning to use the Content Pipeline http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/181-pontent-cipeline-more-like-it.html New Tutorial posted XNA 2D Basic Collision Detection with Rotation from Ioannis Panagopoulos http://www.progware.org/Blog/post/XNA-2D-Basic-Collision-Detection-with-Rotation.aspx Sgt. Conker roars to life! Doing a much better (and prettier) job of collecting XNA news from around the interwebs. http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/dedication-for-captain-boki/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/screen-space-deformations-in-xna-for-windows-phone-7/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-2/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/indiefreaks-game-framework-0-1-0-0-released/ Offering a little free publicity for XBLIGs http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/73465/448321.aspx#448321 Ben Kane writes about building loot tables from Excel using the Content Pipeline http://benkane.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/building-loot-tables-from-excel-using-the-content-pipeline/ Good tips on attracting a game artist AND an offer to create your cover art for FREE http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/72998.aspx If you’re an XBLIG developer keeping your eye on places to release on the PC, might want to be watching the IndieCity blog. Seems like these guys are well on their way to constructing something worth watching. http://www.indiecity.com/blog/ DVMGames spotted a new crowd-funding site for Indies http://twitter.com/DVMGames/statuses/29947274767372289 http://www.8bitfunding.com/ Transmute continues to make progress and there’s a nice dev blog to follow along here http://forgottenstarstudios.com/blog/

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• Oracle Enterprise Data Quality: Ever Integration-ready

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  It is closing in on a year now since Oracle’s acquisition of Datanomic, and the addition of Oracle Enterprise Data Quality (EDQ) to the Oracle software family. The big move has caused some big shifts in emphasis and some very encouraging excitement from the field.  To give an illustration, combined with a shameless promotion of how EDQ can help to give quick insights into your data, I did a quick Phrase Profile of the subject field of emails to the Global EDQ mailing list since it was set up last September. The results revealed a very clear theme:   Integration, Integration, Integration! As well as the important Siebel and Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) integrations, we have been asked about integration with a huge variety of Oracle applications, including EBS, Peoplesoft, CRM on Demand, Fusion, DRM, Endeca, RightNow, and more - and we have not stood still! While it would not have been possible to develop specific pre-integrations with all of the above within a year, we have developed a package of feature-rich out-of-the-box web services and batch processes that can be plugged into any application or middleware technology with ease. And with Siebel, they work out of the box. Oracle Enterprise Data Quality version 9.0.4 includes the Customer Data Services (CDS) pack – a ready set of standard processes with standard interfaces, to provide integrated: Address verification and cleansing  Individual matching Organization matching The services can are suitable for either Batch or Real-Time processing, and are enabled for international data, with simple configuration options driving the set of locale-specific dictionaries that are used. For example, large dictionaries are provided to support international name transcription and variant matching, including highly specialized handling for Arabic, Japanese, Chinese and Korean data. In total across all locales, CDS includes well over a million dictionary entries.   Excerpt from EDQ’s CDS Individual Name Standardization Dictionary CDS has been developed to replace the OEM of Informatica Identity Resolution (IIR) for attached Data Quality on the Oracle price list, but does this in a way that creates a ‘best of both worlds’ situation for customers, who can harness not only the out-of-the-box functionality of pre-packaged matching and standardization services, but also the flexibility of OEDQ if they want to customize the interfaces or the process logic, without having to learn more than one product. From a competitive point of view, we believe this stands us in good stead against our key competitors, including Informatica, who have separate ‘Identity Resolution’ and general DQ products, and IBM, who provide limited out-of-the-box capabilities (with a steep learning curve) in both their QualityStage data quality and Initiate matching products. Here is a brief guide to the main services provided in the pack: Address Verification and Standardization EDQ’s CDS Address Cleaning Process The Address Verification and Standardization service uses EDQ Address Verification (an OEM of Loqate software) to verify and clean addresses in either real-time or batch. The Address Verification processor is wrapped in an EDQ process – this adds significant capabilities over calling the underlying Address Verification API directly, specifically: Country-specific thresholds to determine when to accept the verification result (and therefore to change the input address) based on the confidence level of the API Optimization of address verification by pre-standardizing data where required Formatting of output addresses into the input address fields normally used by applications Adding descriptions of the address verification and geocoding return codes The process can then be used to provide real-time and batch address cleansing in any application; such as a simple web page calling address cleaning and geocoding as part of a check on individual data.     Duplicate Prevention Unlike Informatica Identity Resolution (IIR), EDQ uses stateless services for duplicate prevention to avoid issues caused by complex replication and synchronization of large volume customer data. When a record is added or updated in an application, the EDQ Cluster Key Generation service is called, and returns a number of key values. These are used to select other records (‘candidates’) that may match in the application data (which has been pre-seeded with keys using the same service). The ‘driving record’ (the new or updated record) is then presented along with all selected candidates to the EDQ Matching Service, which decides which of the candidates are a good match with the driving record, and scores them according to the strength of match. In this model, complex multi-locale EDQ techniques can be used to generate the keys and ensure that the right balance between performance and matching effectiveness is maintained, while ensuring that the application retains control of data integrity and transactional commits. The process is explained below: EDQ Duplicate Prevention Architecture Note that where the integration is with a hub, there may be an additional call to the Cluster Key Generation service if the master record has changed due to merges with other records (and therefore needs to have new key values generated before commit). Batch Matching In order to allow customers to use different match rules in batch to real-time, separate matching templates are provided for batch matching. For example, some customers want to minimize intervention in key user flows (such as adding new customers) in front end applications, but to conduct a more exhaustive match on a regular basis in the back office. The batch matching jobs are also used when migrating data between systems, and in this case normally a more precise (and automated) type of matching is required, in order to minimize the review work performed by Data Stewards.  In batch matching, data is captured into EDQ using its standard interfaces, and records are standardized, clustered and matched in an EDQ job before matches are written out. As with all EDQ jobs, batch matching may be called from Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) if required. When working with Siebel CRM (or master data in Siebel UCM), Siebel’s Data Quality Manager is used to instigate batch jobs, and a shared staging database is used to write records for matching and to consume match results. The CDS batch matching processes automatically adjust to Siebel’s ‘Full Match’ (match all records against each other) and ‘Incremental Match’ (match a subset of records against all of their selected candidates) modes. The Future The Customer Data Services Pack is an important part of the Oracle strategy for EDQ, offering a clear path to making Data Quality Assurance an integral part of enterprise applications, and providing a strong value proposition for adopting EDQ. We are planning various additions and improvements, including: An out-of-the-box Data Quality Dashboard Even more comprehensive international data handling Address search (suggesting multiple results) Integrated address matching The EDQ Customer Data Services Pack is part of the Enterprise Data Quality Media Pack, available for download at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/oedq/downloads/index.html.

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• SQL SERVER – Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not Updated but are Created Once

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier I asked puzzle why statistics are not updated. Read the complete details over here: Statistics are not Updated but are Created Once In the question I have demonstrated even though statistics should have been updated after lots of insert in the table are not updated.(Read the details SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update) In this example I have created following situation: Create Table Insert 1000 Records Check the Statistics Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE Now I have requested two things in the example 1) Why this is happening? 2) How to fix this issue? I have many answers – here is the how I fixed it which has resolved the issue for me. NOTE: There are multiple answers to this problem and I will do my best to list all. Solution: Create nonclustered Index on column City Here is the working example for the same. Let us understand this script and there is added explanation at the end. -- Execution Plans Difference -- Estimated Execution Plan Vs Actual Execution Plan -- Create Sample Database CREATE DATABASE SampleDB GO USE SampleDB GO -- Create Table CREATE TABLE ExecTable (ID INT, FirstName VARCHAR(100), LastName VARCHAR(100), City VARCHAR(100)) GO CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_ExecTable1 ON ExecTable (City); GO -- Insert One Thousand Records -- INSERT 1 INSERT INTO ExecTable (ID,FirstName,LastName,City) SELECT TOP 1000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name) RowID, 'Bob', CASE WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%2 = 1 THEN 'Smith' ELSE 'Brown' END, CASE WHEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 1 THEN 'New York' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 5 THEN 'San Marino' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 3 THEN 'Los Angeles' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 7 THEN 'La Cinega' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 13 THEN 'San Diego' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 17 THEN 'Las Vegas' ELSE 'Houston' END FROM sys.all_objects a CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects b GO -- Display statistics of the table sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL' GO -- Select Statement SELECT FirstName, LastName, City FROM ExecTable WHERE City  = 'New York' GO -- Display statistics of the table sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL' GO -- Replace your Statistics over here DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS('ExecTable', IX_ExecTable1); GO -------------------------------------------------------------- -- Round 2 -- Insert One Thousand Records -- INSERT 2 INSERT INTO ExecTable (ID,FirstName,LastName,City) SELECT TOP 1000 ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name) RowID, 'Bob', CASE WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%2 = 1 THEN 'Smith' ELSE 'Brown' END, CASE WHEN ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 1 THEN 'New York' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 5 THEN 'San Marino' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 3 THEN 'Los Angeles' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 7 THEN 'La Cinega' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 13 THEN 'San Diego' WHEN  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.name)%20 = 17 THEN 'Las Vegas' ELSE 'Houston' END FROM sys.all_objects a CROSS JOIN sys.all_objects b GO -- Select Statement SELECT FirstName, LastName, City FROM ExecTable WHERE City  = 'New York' GO -- Display statistics of the table sp_helpstats N'ExecTable', 'ALL' GO -- Replace your Statistics over here DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS('ExecTable', IX_ExecTable1); GO -- Clean up Database DROP TABLE ExecTable GO When I created non clustered index on the column city, it also created statistics on the same column with same name as index. When we populate the data in the column the index is update – resulting execution plan to be invalided – this leads to the statistics to be updated in next execution of SELECT. This behavior does not happen on Heap or column where index is auto created. If you explicitly update the index, often you can see the statistics are updated as well. You can see this is for sure happening if you follow the tell of John Sansom. John Sansom‘s suggestion: That was fun! Although the column statistics are invalidated by the time the second select statement is executed, the query is not compiled/recompiled but instead the existing query plan is reused. It is the “next” compiled query against the column statistics that will see that they are out of date and will then in turn instantiate the action of updating statistics. You can see this in action by forcing the second statement to recompile. SELECT FirstName, LastName, City FROM ExecTable WHERE City = ‘New York’ option(RECOMPILE) GO Kevin Cross also have another suggestion: I agree with John. It is reusing the Execution Plan. Aside from OPTION(RECOMPILE), clearing the Execution Plan Cache before the subsequent tests will also work. i.e., run this before round 2: ————————————————————– – Clear execution plan cache before next test DBCC FREEPROCCACHE WITH NO_INFOMSGS; ————————————————————– Nice puzzle! Kevin As this was puzzle John and Kevin both got the correct answer, there was no condition for answer to be part of best practices. I know John and he is finest DBA around – his tremendous knowledge has always impressed me. John and Kevin both will agree that clearing cache either using DBCC FREEPROCCACHE and recompiling each query every time is for sure not good advice on production server. It is correct answer but not best practice. By the way, if you have better solution or have better suggestion please advise. I am open to change my answer and publish further improvement to this solution. On very separate note, I like to have clustered index on my Primary Key, which I have not mentioned here as it is out of the scope of this puzzle. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Statistics

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• Algorithmia Source Code released on CodePlex

  - by FransBouma

  Following the release of our BCL Extensions Library on CodePlex, we have now released the source-code of Algorithmia on CodePlex! Algorithmia is an algorithm and data-structures library for .NET 3.5 or higher and is one of the pillars LLBLGen Pro v3's designer is built on. The library contains many data-structures and algorithms, and the source-code is well documented and commented, often with links to official descriptions and papers of the algorithms and data-structures implemented. The source-code is shared using Mercurial on CodePlex and is licensed under the friendly BSD2 license. User documentation is not available at the moment but will be added soon. One of the main design goals of Algorithmia was to create a library which contains implementations of well-known algorithms which weren't already implemented in .NET itself. This way, more developers out there can enjoy the results of many years of what the field of Computer Science research has delivered. Some algorithms and datastructures are known in .NET but are re-implemented because the implementation in .NET isn't efficient for many situations or lacks features. An example is the linked list in .NET: it doesn't have an O(1) concat operation, as every node refers to the containing LinkedList object it's stored in. This is bad for algorithms which rely on O(1) concat operations, like the Fibonacci heap implementation in Algorithmia. Algorithmia therefore contains a linked list with an O(1) concat feature. The following functionality is available in Algorithmia: Command, Command management. This system is usable to build a fully undo/redo aware system by building your object graph using command-aware classes. The Command pattern is implemented using a system which allows transparent undo-redo and command grouping so you can use it to make a class undo/redo aware and set properties, use its contents without using commands at all. The Commands namespace is the namespace to start. Classes you'd want to look at are CommandifiedMember, CommandifiedList and KeyedCommandifiedList. See the CommandQueueTests in the test project for examples. Graphs, Graph algorithms. Algorithmia contains a sophisticated graph class hierarchy and algorithms implemented onto them: non-directed and directed graphs, as well as a subgraph view class, which can be used to create a view onto an existing graph class which can be self-maintaining. Algorithms include transitive closure, topological sorting and others. A feature rich depth-first search (DFS) crawler is available so DFS based algorithms can be implemented quickly. All graph classes are undo/redo aware, as they can be set to be 'commandified'. When a graph is 'commandified' it will do its housekeeping through commands, which makes it fully undo-redo aware, so you can remove, add and manipulate the graph and undo/redo the activity automatically without any extra code. If you define the properties of the class you set as the vertex type using CommandifiedMember, you can manipulate the properties of vertices and the graph contents with full undo/redo functionality without any extra code. Heaps. Heaps are data-structures which have the largest or smallest item stored in them always as the 'root'. Extracting the root from the heap makes the heap determine the next in line to be the 'maximum' or 'minimum' (max-heap vs. min-heap, all heaps in Algorithmia can do both). Algorithmia contains various heaps, among them an implementation of the Fibonacci heap, one of the most efficient heap datastructures known today, especially when you want to merge different instances into one. Priority queues. Priority queues are specializations of heaps. Algorithmia contains a couple of them. Sorting. What's an algorithm library without sort algorithms? Algorithmia implements a couple of sort algorithms which sort the data in-place. This aspect is important in situations where you want to sort the elements in a buffer/list/ICollection in-place, so all data stays in the data-structure it already is stored in. PropertyBag. It re-implements Tony Allowatt's original idea in .NET 3.5 specific syntax, which is to have a generic property bag and to be able to build an object in code at runtime which can be bound to a property grid for editing. This is handy for when you have data / settings stored in XML or other format, and want to create an editable form of it without creating many editors. IEditableObject/IDataErrorInfo implementations. It contains default implementations for IEditableObject and IDataErrorInfo (EditableObjectDataContainer for IEditableObject and ErrorContainer for IDataErrorInfo), which make it very easy to implement these interfaces (just a few lines of code) without having to worry about bookkeeping during databinding. They work seamlessly with CommandifiedMember as well, so your undo/redo aware code can use them out of the box. EventThrottler. It contains an event throttler, which can be used to filter out duplicate events in an event stream coming into an observer from an event. This can greatly enhance performance in your UI without needing to do anything other than hooking it up so it's placed between the event source and your real handler. If your UI is flooded with events from data-structures observed by your UI or a middle tier, you can use this class to filter out duplicates to avoid redundant updates to UI elements or to avoid having observers choke on many redundant events. Small, handy stuff. A MultiValueDictionary, which can store multiple unique values per key, instead of one with the default Dictionary, and is also merge-aware so you can merge two into one. A Pair class, to quickly group two elements together. Multiple interfaces for helping with building a de-coupled, observer based system, and some utility extension methods for the defined data-structures. We regularly update the library with new code. If you have ideas for new algorithms or want to share your contribution, feel free to discuss it on the project's Discussions page or send us a pull request. Enjoy!

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• Make a Drive Image Using an Ubuntu Live CD

  - by Trevor Bekolay

  Cloning a hard drive is useful, but what if you have to make several copies, or you just want to make a complete backup of a hard drive? Drive images let you put everything, and we mean everything, from your hard drive in one big file. With an Ubuntu Live CD, this is a simple process – the versatile tool dd can do this for us right out of the box. We’ve used dd to clone a hard drive before. Making a drive image is very similar, except instead of copying data from one hard drive to another, we copy from a hard drive to a file. Drive images are more flexible, as you can do what you please with the data once you’ve pulled it off the source drive. Your drive image is going to be a big file, depending on the size of your source drive – dd will copy every bit of it, even if there’s only one tiny file stored on the whole hard drive. So, to start, make sure you have a device connected to your computer that will be large enough to hold the drive image. Some ideas for places to store the drive image, and how to connect to them in an Ubuntu Live CD, can be found at this previous Live CD article. In this article, we’re going to make an image of a 1GB drive, and store it on another hard drive in the same PC. Note: always be cautious when using dd, as it’s very easy to completely wipe out a drive, as we will show later in this article. Creating a Drive Image Boot up into the Ubuntu Live CD environment. Since we’re going to store the drive image on a local hard drive, we first have to mount it. Click on Places and then the location that you want to store the image on – in our case, a 136GB internal drive. Open a terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and navigate to the newly mounted drive. All mounted drives should be in /media, so we’ll use the command cd /media and then type the first few letters of our difficult-to-type drive, press tab to auto-complete the name, and switch to that directory. If you wish to place the drive image in a specific folder, then navigate to it now. We’ll just place our drive image in the root of our mounted drive. The next step is to determine the identifier for the drive you want to make an image of. In the terminal window, type in the command sudo fdisk -l Our 1GB drive is /dev/sda, so we make a note of that. Now we’ll use dd to make the image. The invocation is sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=./OldHD.img This means that we want to copy from the input file (“if”) /dev/sda (our source drive) to the output file (“of”) OldHD.img, which is located in the current working directory (that’s the “.” portion of the “of” string). It takes some time, but our image has been created…Let’s test to make sure it works. Drive Image Testing: Wiping the Drive Another interesting thing that dd can do is totally wipe out the data on a drive (a process we’ve covered before). The command for that is sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda This takes some random data as input, and outputs it to our drive, /dev/sda. If we examine the drive now using sudo fdisk –l, we can see that the drive is, indeed, wiped. Drive Image Testing: Restoring the Drive Image We can restore our drive image with a call to dd that’s very similar to how we created the image. The only difference is that the image is going to be out input file, and the drive now our output file. The exact invocation is sudo dd if=./OldHD.img of=/dev/sda It takes a while, but when it’s finished, we can confirm with sudo fdisk –l that our drive is back to the way it used to be! Conclusion There are a lots of reasons to create a drive image, with backup being the most obvious. Fortunately, with dd creating a drive image only takes one line in a terminal window – if you’ve got an Ubuntu Live CD handy! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Reset Your Ubuntu Password Easily from the Live CDCreate a Bootable Ubuntu USB Flash Drive the Easy WayHow to Browse Without a Trace with an Ubuntu Live CDWipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy WayClone a Hard Drive Using an Ubuntu Live CD TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter Download Songs From MySpace

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• Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script

  In the series the following parts have been published Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Add arguments and variables Part 3: Use more complex arguments Part 4: Create your own activity Part 5: Increase AssemblyVersion Part 6: Use custom type for an argument Part 7: How is the custom assembly found Part 8: Send information to the build log Part 9: Impersonate activities (run under other credentials) Part 10: Include Version Number in the Build Number Part 11: Speed up opening my build process template Part 12: How to debug my custom activities Part 13: Get control over the Build Output Part 14: Execute a PowerShell script Part 15: Fail a build based on the exit code of a console application With PowerShell you can add powerful scripting to your build to for example execute a deployment. If you want more information on PowerShell, please refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973757.aspx For this example we will create a simple PowerShell script that prints “Hello world!”. To create the script, create a new text file and name it “HelloWorld.ps1”. Add to the contents of the script: Write-Host “Hello World!” To test the script do the following: Open the command prompt To run the script you must change the execution policy. To do this execute in the command prompt: powershell set-executionpolicy remotesigned Now go to the directory where you have saved the PowerShell script Execute the following command powershell .\HelloWorld.ps1 In this example I use a relative path, but when the path to the PowerShell script contains spaces, you need to change the syntax to powershell "& '<full path to script>' " for example: powershell "& ‘C:\sources\Build Customization\SolutionToBuild\PowerShell Scripts\HellloWorld.ps1’ " In this blog post, I create a new solution and that solution includes also this PowerShell script. I want to create an argument on the Build Process Template that holds the path to the PowerShell script. In the Build Process Template I will add an InvokeProcess activity to execute the PowerShell command. This InvokeProcess activity needs the location of the script as an argument for the PowerShell command. Since you don’t know the full path at the build server of this script, you can either specify in the argument the relative path of the script, but it is hard to find out what the relative path is. I prefer to specify the location of the script in source control and then convert that server path to a local path. To do this conversion you can use the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity. So to complete the task, open the Build Process Template CustomTemplate.xaml that we created in earlier parts, follow the following steps Add a new argument called “DeploymentScript” and set the appropriate settings in the metadata. See Part 2: Add arguments and variables  for more information. Scroll down beneath the TryCatch activity called “Try Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items” Add a new If activity and set the condition to "Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(DeploymentScript)" to ensure it will only run when the argument is passed. Add in the Then branch of the If activity a new Sequence activity and rename it to “Start deployment” Click on the activity and add a new variable called DeploymentScriptFilename (scoped to the “Start deployment” Sequence Add a ConvertWorkspaceItem activity on the “Start deployment” Sequence Add a InvokeProcess activity beneath the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity in the “Start deployment” Sequence Click on the ConvertWorkspaceItem activity and change the properties DisplayName = Convert deployment script filename Input = DeploymentScript Result = DeploymentScriptFilename Workspace = Workspace Click on the InvokeProcess activity and change the properties Arguments = String.Format(" ""& '{0}' "" ", DeploymentScriptFilename) DisplayName = Execute deployment script FileName = "PowerShell" To see results from the powershell command drop a WriteBuildMessage activity on the "Handle Standard Output" and pass the stdOutput variable to the Message property. Do the same for a WriteBuildError activity on the "Handle Error Output" To publish it, check in the Build Process Template This leads to the following result We now go to the build definition that depends on the template and set the path of the deployment script to the server path to the HelloWorld.ps1. (If you want to see the result of the PowerShell script, change the Logging verbosity to Detailed or Diagnostic). Save and run the build. A lot of the deployment scripts you have will have some kind of arguments (like username / password or environment variables) that you want to define in the Build Definition. To make the PowerShell configurable, you can follow the following steps. Create a new script and give it the name "HelloWho.ps1". In the contents of the file add the following lines: param (         $person     ) $message = [System.String]::Format(“Hello {0}!", $person) Write-Host $message When you now run the script on the command prompt, you will see the following So lets change the Build Process Template to accept one parameter for the deployment script. You can of course make it configurable to add a for-loop that reads through a collection of parameters but that is out of scope of this blog post. Add a new Argument called DeploymentScriptParameter In the InvokeProcess activity where the PowerShell command is executed, modify the Arguments property to String.Format(" ""& '{0}' '{1}' "" ", DeploymentScriptFilename, DeploymentScriptParameter) Check in the Build Process Template Now modify the build definition and set the Parameter of the deployment to any value and run the build. You can download the full solution at BuildProcess.zip. It will include the sources of every part and will continue to evolve.

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• Searching for the last logon of users in Active Directory

  - by Robert May

  I needed to clean out a bunch of old accounts at Veracity Solutions, and wanted to delete those that hadn’t used their account in more than a year. I found that AD has a property on objects called the lastLogonTimestamp.  However, this value isn’t exposed to you in any useful fashion.  Sure, you can pull up ADSI Edit and and eventually get to it there, but it’s painful. I spent some time searching, and discovered that there’s not much out there to help, so I thought a blog post showing exactly how to get at this information would be in order. Basically, what you end up doing is using System.DirectoryServices to search for accounts and then filtering those for users, doing some conversion and such to make it happen.  Basically, the end result of this is that you get a list of users with their logon information and you can then do with that what you will.  I turned my list into an observable collection and bound it into a XAML form. One important note, you need to add a reference to ActiveDs Type Library in the COM section of the world in references to get to LargeInteger. Here’s the class: namespace Veracity.Utilities { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.DirectoryServices; using ActiveDs; using log4net; /// <summary> /// Finds users inside of the active directory system. /// </summary> public class UserFinder { /// <summary> /// Creates the default logger /// </summary> private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(UserFinder)); /// <summary> /// Finds last logon information /// </summary> /// <param name="domain">The domain to search.</param> /// <param name="userName">The username for the query.</param> /// <param name="password">The password for the query.</param> /// <returns>A list of users with their last logon information.</returns> public IList<UserLoginInformation> GetLastLogonInformation(string domain, string userName, string password) { IList<UserLoginInformation> result = new List<UserLoginInformation>(); DirectoryEntry entry = new DirectoryEntry(domain, userName, password, AuthenticationTypes.Secure); DirectorySearcher directorySearcher = new DirectorySearcher(entry); directorySearcher.PropertyNamesOnly = true; directorySearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("name"); directorySearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("lastLogonTimeStamp"); SearchResultCollection searchResults; try { searchResults = directorySearcher.FindAll(); } catch (System.Exception ex) { log.Error("Failed to do a find all.", ex); throw; } try { foreach (SearchResult searchResult in searchResults) { DirectoryEntry resultEntry = searchResult.GetDirectoryEntry(); if (resultEntry.SchemaClassName == "user") { UserLoginInformation logon = new UserLoginInformation(); logon.Name = resultEntry.Name; PropertyValueCollection timeStampObject = resultEntry.Properties["lastLogonTimeStamp"]; if (timeStampObject.Count > 0) { IADsLargeInteger logonTimeStamp = (IADsLargeInteger)timeStampObject[0]; long lastLogon = (long)((uint)logonTimeStamp.LowPart + (((long)logonTimeStamp.HighPart) << 32)); logon.LastLogonTime = DateTime.FromFileTime(lastLogon); } result.Add(logon); } } } catch (System.Exception ex) { log.Error("Failed to iterate search results.", ex); throw; } return result; } } } Some important things to note: Username and Password can be set to null and if your computer us part of the domain, this may still work. Domain should be set to something like LDAP://servername/CN=Users,CN=Domain,CN=com You’re actually getting a com object back, so that’s why the LongInteger conversions are happening.  The class for UserLoginInformation looks like this:   namespace Veracity.Utilities { using System; /// <summary> /// Represents user login information. /// </summary> public class UserLoginInformation { /// <summary> /// Gets or sets Name /// </summary> public string Name { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets LastLogonTime /// </summary> public DateTime LastLogonTime { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the age of the account. /// </summary> public TimeSpan AccountAge { get { TimeSpan result = TimeSpan.Zero; if (this.LastLogonTime != DateTime.MinValue) { result = DateTime.Now.Subtract(this.LastLogonTime); } return result; } } } } I hope this is useful and instructive. Technorati Tags: Active Directory

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• Troubleshooting High-CPU Utilization for SQL Server

  - by Susantha Bathige

  The objective of this FAQ is to outline the basic steps in troubleshooting high CPU utilization on  a server hosting a SQL Server instance. The first and the most common step if you suspect high CPU utilization (or are alerted for it) is to login to the physical server and check the Windows Task Manager. The Performance tab will show the high utilization as shown below: Next, we need to determine which process is responsible for the high CPU consumption. The Processes tab of the Task Manager will show this information: Note that to see all processes you should select Show processes from all user. In this case, SQL Server (sqlserver.exe) is consuming 99% of the CPU (a normal benchmark for max CPU utilization is about 50-60%). Next we examine the scheduler data. Scheduler is a component of SQLOS which evenly distributes load amongst CPUs. The query below returns the important columns for CPU troubleshooting. Note – if your server is under severe stress and you are unable to login to SSMS, you can use another machine’s SSMS to login to the server through DAC – Dedicated Administrator Connection (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189595.aspx for details on using DAC) SELECT scheduler_id ,cpu_id ,status ,runnable_tasks_count ,active_workers_count ,load_factor ,yield_count FROM sys.dm_os_schedulers WHERE scheduler_id See below for the BOL definitions for the above columns. scheduler_id – ID of the scheduler. All schedulers that are used to run regular queries have ID numbers less than 1048576. Those schedulers that have IDs greater than or equal to 1048576 are used internally by SQL Server, such as the dedicated administrator connection scheduler. cpu_id – ID of the CPU with which this scheduler is associated. status – Indicates the status of the scheduler. runnable_tasks_count – Number of workers, with tasks assigned to them that are waiting to be scheduled on the runnable queue. active_workers_count – Number of workers that are active. An active worker is never preemptive, must have an associated task, and is either running, runnable, or suspended. current_tasks_count - Number of current tasks that are associated with this scheduler. load_factor – Internal value that indicates the perceived load on this scheduler. yield_count – Internal value that is used to indicate progress on this scheduler.                                                                 Now to interpret the above data. There are four schedulers and each assigned to a different CPU. All the CPUs are ready to accept user queries as they all are ONLINE. There are 294 active tasks in the output as per the current_tasks_count column. This count indicates how many activities currently associated with the schedulers. When a  task is complete, this number is decremented. The 294 is quite a high figure and indicates all four schedulers are extremely busy. When a task is enqueued, the load_factor  value is incremented. This value is used to determine whether a new task should be put on this scheduler or another scheduler. The new task will be allocated to less loaded scheduler by SQLOS. The very high value of this column indicates all the schedulers have a high load. There are 268 runnable tasks which mean all these tasks are assigned a worker and waiting to be scheduled on the runnable queue.   The next step is  to identify which queries are demanding a lot of CPU time. The below query is useful for this purpose (note, in its current form,  it only shows the top 10 records). SELECT TOP 10 st.text  ,st.dbid  ,st.objectid  ,qs.total_worker_time  ,qs.last_worker_time  ,qp.query_plan FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats qs CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(qs.sql_handle) st CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(qs.plan_handle) qp ORDER BY qs.total_worker_time DESC This query as total_worker_time as the measure of CPU load and is in descending order of the  total_worker_time to show the most expensive queries and their plans at the top:      Note the BOL definitions for the important columns: total_worker_time - Total amount of CPU time, in microseconds, that was consumed by executions of this plan since it was compiled. last_worker_time - CPU time, in microseconds, that was consumed the last time the plan was executed.   I re-ran the same query again after few seconds and was returned the below output. After few seconds the SP dbo.TestProc1 is shown in fourth place and once again the last_worker_time is the highest. This means the procedure TestProc1 consumes a CPU time continuously each time it executes.      In this case, the primary cause for high CPU utilization was a stored procedure. You can view the execution plan by clicking on query_plan column to investigate why this is causing a high CPU load. I have used SQL Server 2008 (SP1) to test all the queries used in this article.

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• ISO Files to USB &ndash; The Cheap and Easy Way

  - by RonGarlit

  (DISCLAIMER: Yes there are lots of more elegant ISO software beside the free Microsoft one I’m about to show. But free is free and it has been tested and works for me for making advance bootable USB drives. That is another story. Look up Windows 8 Developer Preview for that one on BING.) For those of use that work with new technology all the time we accumulate a lot of ISO files and have to burn them to CD/DVD’s quite often. But we now have machines without burner in the corporate environment. We have personally Netbooks and light wait highly mobile laptops that do not have DVD burner. USB ports are all the rage and now we have USB 3.0 which is way faster than the 2.0 we are used to. Just looking at the technology, space saving and the cost issues alone is a reason to buy these answer to the DVD’s. So what is special about USB 2.0 and USB 3.0? USB 2 has a maximum speed of 480 Mbps... (That is Megabits per SECOND!!) Now look at the storage that we have with USB thumb drives that are now up to 64 GB in size, cell phone and PDAs that have a lots of internal storage built in well above the 16 Gig range. At the MAX USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps a full transfer of data in between devices can take a long time. Time is money right. Every back up a iPhone? Don’t get me started. So at least the engineers have been planning ahead with USB 3.0 which offers a maximum transfer speed of 4.8 Gbps... (That is Giga bits per SECOND!!) That speed is almost 10 times faster than USB 2.0 …. We don’t need to do the math on that one do we? But for now I'm thrilled with USB 2.0 and the fact I can get these little 4 Gig USB drives for $4.00 each at Staples on sale. Well that is a no brainer don’t you think. But what can you do with them to replace that DVD. Simply and cheaply put………. THIS! First let’s get an ISO file like the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate DVD ISO from MSDN to demonstrate with. I develop on several computers so this is a good choice for me. So we downloaded the ISO file and put it in a folder somewhere like this. Next we go download to the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool site and read about the tool. http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool And click this like to get the tool and install it. Once it is installed you go to the Start, Programs menu, Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool folder. And then click the tool to open it up. As you will see it is a sweet, simple tool that was originally designed to put the ISO for Windows 7 which is designed to be bootable on a USB or DVD for us geeks to play with. It is now being used for the Windows 8 Developer Preview by many developers for that for the same purpose it was built for in the past. But for now we will use it to put a NON Bootable ISO on a USB. Hey it does the job and I’m reusing a left over program. Why buy the fancy one or a free trial and clutter up my machine. We will click the BROWSE button and navigate to where we put our ISO file we want to put on the USB drive. Obviously we are going to click NEXT and continue to select a USB Device (you can guess what the DVD button is for). Next we select the USB that we have plugged into one of our laptops USB ports. Then we click the BEGIN COPYING button and the first thing the program does is format our USB drive. Then it starts copying out files out of the ISO and constructing the USB as if it was a DVD. So now that the files are copying to the drive I’m going to warn you. We will error out here. This program was design for bootable ISO’s of which this one is NOT. No problem because what fails it the writing of the bootable data to the drive that isn’t there. No biggie…. Forget the STARTOVER button is even there and click the dialog’s CLOSE button and exit the program. Now go to Windows Explorer and navigate to the USB Device. You can now access everything and even add stuff to the drive. But for me I want to keep this drive for one purpose and that is to install VS2010 on various machines. So the only stuff I’ll add to this is a folder of notes on things on visual studio that I might want to put on other machines I’m installing VS2010 on to. So that is it. Have a nice day! The Ron

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• Weekend reading: Microsoft/Oracle and SkyDrive based code-editor

  - by jamiet

  A couple of news item caught my eye this weekend that I think are worthy of comment. Microsoft/Oracle partnership to be announced tomorrow (24/06/2013) According to many news site Microsoft and Oracle are about to announce a partnership (Oracle set for major Microsoft, Salesforce, Netsuite partnerships) and they all seem to be assuming that it will be something to do with “the cloud”. I wouldn’t disagree with that assessment, Microsoft are heavily pushing Azure and Oracle seem (to me anyway) to be rather lagging behind in the cloud game. More specifically folks seem to be assuming that Oracle’s forthcoming 12c database release will be offered on Azure. I did a bit of reading about Oracle 12c and one of its key pillars appears to be that it supports multi-tenant topologies and multi-tenancy is a common usage scenario for databases in the cloud. I’m left wondering then, if Microsoft are willing to push a rival’s multi-tenant solution what is happening to its own cloud-based multi-tenant offering – SQL Azure Federations. We haven’t heard anything about federations for what now seems to be a long time and moreover the main Program Manager behind the technology, Cihan Biyikoglu, recently left Microsoft to join Twitter. Furthermore, a Principle Architect for SQL Server, Conor Cunningham, recently presented the opening keynote at SQLBits 11 where he talked about multi-tenant solutions on SQL Azure and not once did he mention federations. All in all I don’t have a warm fuzzy feeling about the future of SQL Azure Federations so I hope that that question gets asked at some point following the Microsoft/Oracle announcement. Text Editor on SkyDrive with coding-specific features Liveside.net got a bit of a scoop this weekend with the news (Exclusive: SkyDrive.com to get web-based text file editing features) that Microsoft’s consumer-facing file storage service is going to get a new feature – a web-based code editor. Here’s Liveside’s screenshot: I’ve long had a passing interest in online code editors, indeed back in December 2009 I wondered out loud on this blog site: I started to wonder when the development tools that we use would also become cloud-based. After all, if we’re using cloud-based services does it not make sense to have cloud-based tools that work with them? I think it does. Project Houston Since then the world has moved on. Cloud 9 IDE (https://c9.io/) have blazed a trail in the fledgling world of online code editors and I have been wondering when Microsoft were going to start playing catch-up. I had no doubt that an online code editor was in Microsoft’s future; its an obvious future direction, why would I want to have to download and install a bloated text editor (which, arguably, is exactly what Visual Studio amounts to) and have to continually update it when I can simply open a web browser and have ready access to all of my code from wherever I am. There are signs that Microsoft is already making moves in this direction, after all the URL for their new offering Team Foundation Service doesn’t mention TFS at all – my own personalised URL for Team Foundation Service is http://jamiet.visualstudio.com – using “Visual Studio” as the domain name for a service that isn’t strictly speaking part of Visual Studio leads me to think that there’s a much bigger play here and that one day http://visualstudio.com will house an online code editor. With that in mind then I find Liveside’s revelation rather intriguing, why would a code editing tool show up in Skydrive? Perhaps SkyDrive is going to get integrated more tightly into TFS, I’m very interested to see where this goes. The larger question playing on my mind though is whether an online code editor from Microsoft will support SQL Server developers. I have opined before (see The SQL developer gap) about the shoddy treatment that SQL Server developers have to experience from Microsoft and I haven’t seen any change in Microsoft’s attitude in the three and a half years since I wrote that post. I’m constantly bewildered by the lack of investment in SQL Server developer productivity compared to the riches that are lavished upon our appdev brethren. When you consider that SQL Server is Microsoft’s third biggest revenue stream it is, frankly, rather insulting. SSDT was a step in the right direction but the hushed noises I hear coming out of Microsoft of late in regard to SSDT don’t bode fantastically well for its future. So, will an online code editor from Microsoft support T-SQL development? I have to assume not given the paucity of investment on us lowly SQL Server developers over the last few years, but I live in hope! Your thoughts in the comments section please. I would be very interested in reading them. @Jamiet

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• Change the User Interface Language in Vista or Windows 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to change the user interface language in any edition of Windows 7 or Vista on your computer?  Here’s a free app that can help you do this quickly and easily. If your native language is not the one most spoken in your area, you’ve likely purchased a PC with Windows preinstalled with a language that is difficult or impossible for you to use.  Windows 7 and Vista Ultimate include the ability to install multiple user interface languages and switch between them. However, all other editions are stuck with the language they shipped with.  With the free Vistalizator app, you can add several different interface languages to any edition of Vista or Windows 7 and easily switch between them. Note:  In this test, we used an US English copy of both Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows Vista Home Premium, and it works the same on any edition. The built-in language switching in the Ultimate Editions lets you set a user interface language for each user account, but this will only switch it for all users.  Add a User Interface Language to Windows To add an interface language to any edition of Windows 7 and Vista, first download Vistalizator (link below).  Then, from the same page, download the language pack of your choice.  The language packs are specific for each service pack of Windows, so make sure to choose the correct version and service pack you have installed. Once the downloads are finished, launch the Vistalizator program. You do not need to install it; simply run it and you’re ready to go.  Click the Add languages button to add a language to Windows. Select the user interface language pack you downloaded, and click Open. Depending on the language you selected, it may not automatically update with Windows Update when a service pack is released.  If so, you will have to remove the language pack and reinstall the new one for that service pack at that time.  Click Ok to continue. Make sure you’ve selected the correct language, and click Install language. Vistalizator will extract and install the language pack.  This took around 5 to 10 minutes in our test. Once the language pack is installed, click Yes to make it the default display language. Now, you have two languages installed in Windows.  You may be prompted to check for updates to the language pack; if so, click Update languages and Vistalizator will automatically check for and install any updates. When finished, exit Vistalizator to finish switching the language.  Click Yes to automatically reboot and apply the changes. When you computer reboots, it will show your new language, which in our test is Thai.  Here’s our Windows 7 Home Premium machine with the Thai language pack installed and running. You can even add a right to left language, such as Arabic, to Windows.  Simply repeat the steps to add another language pack.    Vistalizator was originally designed for Windows Vista, and works great with Windows 7 too.  The language packs for Vista are larger downloads than their Windows 7 counterparts.  Here’s our Vista Home Premium in English… And here’s how it looks after installing the Simplified Chinese language pack with Vistalizator. Revert to Your Original Language If you wish to return to the language that your computer shipped with, or want to switch to another language you’ve installed, run Vistalizator again.  Select the language you wish to use, and click Change language.   When you close Vistalizator, you will again be asked to reboot.  Once you’ve rebooted, you’ll see your new (or original) language ready to use.  Here’s our Windows 7 Home Premium desktop, back in it’s original English interface. Conclusion This is a great way to change your computer’s language into your own native language, and is especially useful for expatriates around the world.  Also, if you’d like to simply change or add an input language instead of changing the language throughout your computer, check out our tutorial on How to Add Keyboard Languages to XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Download Vistalizator Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Enable Military Time in Windows 7 or VistaWhy Does My Password Expire in Windows?Use Windows Vista Aero through Remote Desktop ConnectionDisable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Win 7 or VistaAdd keyboard languages to XP, Vista, and Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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• Did you miss the OFM Summer Camps III? Get access to the b2b & adapters and SOA Governance training material

  - by JuergenKress

  We posted the SOA Governance and b2b & adapters training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). We have no plans to post the ACM and Advanced SOA training material. Special thanks to all the trainers who delivered superb workshops. Thanks to all the partners who invested time and utilization plus travel expenses to attend the camp. Special thanks to all the international partners who traveled a long way to sunny Lisbon – including our Mexican friends! The Summer Camp feedback was excellent, everybody answered the question if he would attend a future OFM Summer Camp with YES and the overall feedback is 4,79 out of 5 (best)! For most of the trainings we had a waiting list with additional partners who want to attend. Make sure you use your middleware skills to deliver successful projects. It would be great if you can support your colegues and the community by sharing the lessons learned and best practice. Thanks for great feedback at twitter please continue to send your pictures to our twitter feed @soacommunity #OFMsummercamps or post them at our Facebook page. Here is a selection of some tweets: Walter Montantes ?México presence en #OFMSummerCamp Lisboa 2013 cc @soacommunity @AdquemTI pic.twitter.com/9NEFwsWCAq SOA Community ?thanks for attending the #OFMSummercamp - save trip home ;-) Want to attend a future training register http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa #soacommunity C2B2 Consulting ?Last day at the #OFMSummercamp Oracle SOA Suite Training in Portugal @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/6LZavVlvHc Patrick Sinke ?a FollowFriday for @Oracle_B2B because 19 followers is not enough #FF #OFMSummercamp Patrick Sinke ?Yogesh Sontakke is talking about #SOA #Governance. #OFMSummercamp Nuno Cancelo ?Oracle SOA Governance - Quick Overview #OFMSummerCamp Nuno Cancelo ?Last coffee break. #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/xZi9M5vAWz Scott Haaland Last day of #OFMSummercamp. It's been a great productive week..great students eager to learn. @Oracle_B2B @soacommunity . Patrick Sinke ?singletons are used to retain specific fetching order of files and records in multithread/multi-instance environment. #OFMSummercamp #SOA Patrick Sinke ?SOA's File Adapter is extremely versatile: It writes, reads and converts almost any type of file. #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/XjtJF9Y5SH Patrick Sinke ?Now deep-diving into Java EE Connector Architecture (JCA). Got to do some catching up at home on this subject. #OFMSummercamp #SOA Patrick Sinke ?Today we start with security and OPSS at #OFMSummercamp Advanced #SOA training. Then some #OSB. #OFM #Oracle #whitehorses Remco Cats ?Starting the last day on #OFMSummercamp building ADF Mobile applications with BPM Nuno Cancelo ?While attending #OFMSummerCamp i notice even more the importance of designing software. Any tips in how to become an software architect? Patrick Sinke ?Extensive information on Faullt handling and policies now in Advanced #SOA track. #OFMSummercamp #oraclesoa #middleware #whitehorses C2B2 Consulting ?Geoffroy de Lamalle speaking at the #OFMSummercamp @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/m4oOyzYB2q Patrick Sinke ?Oracle Document editor is a huge tool (6GB), but contains every version and subset of EDI, HL7, etc definitions. Impressive. #OFMSummercamp Patrick Sinke ?Oracle #B2B 11g presentation on #OFMSummercamp by Scott. Unfortunately only 2 hours in SOA advanced class. Very interesting. SOA Community Bon dia #OFMSummercamp - if you are here in sunny Lisbon ;-) you can checkin at http://foursquare.com/ #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/PnmudJgJTZ Nuno Cancelo ?Beautiful day! #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/nwByRM5YE1 Nuno Cancelo ?Relaxing after lunch :-) #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/hOJzebCM5p SOA Community Posted pictures from OFM Summer Camp III at our facebook page - share yours! https://www.facebook.com/soacommunity #OFMSummerCamp #soacommunity Nuno Cancelo ?Coffee break: day3 #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/97n1sAGhx4 Patrick Sinke #OFMSummercamp day 3; SOA Infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/ziivyw3L6q SOA Community ?@soacommunity 28 Aug Bon dia day 3 at #OFMSummercamp in Lisboa. Nial presenting ACM roadmap pic.twitter.com/iN3gTCHSbA SOA Community ?Hands-on time at the b2b & adapters training part of the #OFMSummercamp #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/9BzI7igrX8 SOA Community ?Laptop replacement at #OFMSummercamp - big thanks to Oracle Portugal for the fast help! 10 seconds to cut the cable pic.twitter.com/nwd2Px73pa SOA Community ?Hard work long training until 18.00 now enjoy the beach #ofmsummercamp #soacommunity pic.twitter.com/StogfxJNFH Walter Montantes? Primer día #OFMSummercamp pic.twitter.com/cTNDpzg5pL Miguel Delgadillo ?@walex86 Advanced SOA training by Geoffroy at #OFMSummercamp - full room hard working class pic.twitter.com/2SDz9FVhkh” si le sabes? SOA Community ?Welcome to the #OFMSummercamp in sunny Lisbon ;-) Send us your pictures of the training and city @soacommunity pic.twitter.com/i2ErZaaFbb SOA Community ?Advanced SOA training by Geoffroy at #OFMSummercamp - full room hard working class pic.twitter.com/uKjv0tV2bO Nuno Cancelo #OFMSummercamp afternoon break:) pic.twitter.com/pUaBvt2NIj Impressions of the event are posted at our facebook page. If you missed Lisbon, make sure you attend one of our Additional Middleware Trainings in Europe: We currently run 3 different training roadshows for Business Process Management & ADF & WebLogic across Europe make sure you sing-up for them: ADF & ADF Mobile or Business Process Management Suite or WebLogic Suite. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: b2b,training,education,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series Part 3: Delete and Update

  - by Jon Galloway

  We're continuing a six part series on ASP.NET Web API that accompanies the getting started screencast series. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. In Part 1 we looked at what ASP.NET Web API is, why you'd care, did the File / New Project thing, and did some basic HTTP testing using browser F12 developer tools. In Part 2 we started to build up a sample that returns data from a repository in JSON format via GET methods. In Part 3, we'll start to modify data on the server using DELETE and POST methods. So far we've been looking at GET requests, and the difference between standard browsing in a web browser and navigating an HTTP API isn't quite as clear. Delete is where the difference becomes more obvious. With a "traditional" web page, to delete something'd probably have a form that POSTs a request back to a controller that needs to know that it's really supposed to be deleting something even though POST was really designed to create things, so it does the work and then returns some HTML back to the client that says whether or not the delete succeeded. There's a good amount of plumbing involved in communicating between client and server. That gets a lot easier when we just work with the standard HTTP DELETE verb. Here's how the server side code works: public Comment DeleteComment(int id) { Comment comment; if (!repository.TryGet(id, out comment)) throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); repository.Delete(id); return comment; } If you look back at the GET /api/comments code in Part 2, you'll see that they start the exact same because the use cases are kind of similar - we're looking up an item by id and either displaying it or deleting it. So the only difference is that this method deletes the comment once it finds it. We don't need to do anything special to handle cases where the id isn't found, as the same HTTP 404 handling works fine here, too. Pretty much all "traditional" browsing uses just two HTTP verbs: GET and POST, so you might not be all that used to DELETE requests and think they're hard. Not so! Here's the jQuery method that calls the /api/comments with the DELETE verb: $(function() { $("a.delete").live('click', function () { var id = $(this).data('comment-id'); $.ajax({ url: "/api/comments/" + id, type: 'DELETE', cache: false, statusCode: { 200: function(data) { viewModel.comments.remove( function(comment) { return comment.ID == data.ID; } ); } } }); return false; }); }); So in order to use the DELETE verb instead of GET, we're just using $.ajax() and setting the type to DELETE. Not hard. But what's that statusCode business? Well, an HTTP status code of 200 is an OK response. Unless our Web API method sets another status (such as by throwing the Not Found exception we saw earlier), the default response status code is HTTP 200 - OK. That makes the jQuery code pretty simple - it calls the Delete action, and if it gets back an HTTP 200, the server-side delete was successful so the comment can be deleted. Adding a new comment uses the POST verb. It starts out looking like an MVC controller action, using model binding to get the new comment from JSON data into a c# model object to add to repository, but there are some interesting differences. public HttpResponseMessage<Comment> PostComment(Comment comment) { comment = repository.Add(comment); var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Comment>(comment, HttpStatusCode.Created); response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, "/api/comments/" + comment.ID.ToString()); return response; } First off, the POST method is returning an HttpResponseMessage<Comment>. In the GET methods earlier, we were just returning a JSON payload with an HTTP 200 OK, so we could just return the  model object and Web API would wrap it up in an HttpResponseMessage with that HTTP 200 for us (much as ASP.NET MVC controller actions can return strings, and they'll be automatically wrapped in a ContentResult). When we're creating a new comment, though, we want to follow standard REST practices and return the URL that points to the newly created comment in the Location header, and we can do that by explicitly creating that HttpResposeMessage and then setting the header information. And here's a key point - by using HTTP standard status codes and headers, our response payload doesn't need to explain any context - the client can see from the status code that the POST succeeded, the location header tells it where to get it, and all it needs in the JSON payload is the actual content. Note: This is a simplified sample. Among other things, you'll need to consider security and authorization in your Web API's, and especially in methods that allow creating or deleting data. We'll look at authorization in Part 6. As for security, you'll want to consider things like mass assignment if binding directly to model objects, etc. In Part 4, we'll extend on our simple querying methods form Part 2, adding in support for paging and querying.

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• ASP.NET MVC: Converting business objects to select list items

  - by DigiMortal

  Some of our business classes are used to fill dropdown boxes or select lists. And often you have some base class for all your business classes. In this posting I will show you how to use base business class to write extension method that converts collection of business objects to ASP.NET MVC select list items without writing a lot of code. BusinessBase, BaseEntity and other base classes I prefer to have some base class for all my business classes so I can easily use them regardless of their type in contexts I need. NB! Some guys say that it is good idea to have base class for all your business classes and they also suggest you to have mappings done same way in database. Other guys say that it is good to have base class but you don’t have to have one master table in database that contains identities of all your business objects. It is up to you how and what you prefer to do but whatever you do – think and analyze first, please. :) To keep things maximally simple I will use very primitive base class in this example. This class has only Id property and that’s it. public class BaseEntity {     public virtual long Id { get; set; } } Now we have Id in base class and we have one more question to solve – how to better visualize our business objects? To users ID is not enough, they want something more informative. We can define some abstract property that all classes must implement. But there is also another option we can use – overriding ToString() method in our business classes. public class Product : BaseEntity {     public virtual string SKU { get; set; }     public virtual string Name { get; set; }       public override string ToString()     {         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(Name))             return base.ToString();           return Name;     } } Although you can add more functionality and properties to your base class we are at point where we have what we needed: identity and human readable presentation of business objects. Writing list items converter Now we can write method that creates list items for us. public static class BaseEntityExtensions {            public static IEnumerable<SelectListItem> ToSelectListItems<T>         (this IList<T> baseEntities) where T : BaseEntity     {         return ToSelectListItems((IEnumerator<BaseEntity>)                    baseEntities.GetEnumerator());     }       public static IEnumerable<SelectListItem> ToSelectListItems         (this IEnumerator<BaseEntity> baseEntities)     {         var items = new HashSet<SelectListItem>();           while (baseEntities.MoveNext())         {             var item = new SelectListItem();             var entity = baseEntities.Current;               item.Value = entity.Id.ToString();             item.Text = entity.ToString();               items.Add(item);         }           return items;     } } You can see here to overloads of same method. One works with List<T> and the other with IEnumerator<BaseEntity>. Although mostly my repositories return IList<T> when querying data there are always situations where I can use more abstract types and interfaces. Using extension methods in code In your code you can use ToSelectListItems() extension methods like shown on following code fragment. ... var model = new MyFormModel(); model.Statuses = _myRepository.ListStatuses().ToSelectListItems(); ... You can call this method on all your business classes that extend your base entity. Wanna have some fun with this code? Write overload for extension method that accepts selected item ID.

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• How to find domain registrar and DNS hosting with good DNSSEC support?

  - by rsp

  Simplified problem I want to buy a domain and make a website that is fully secured with DNSSEC. Background I've been hearing about the insecurity of DNS for years. I've watched all of the talks by Dan Kaminsky and others from DNS exploits to The future of DNS Security Panel. I knew that using DNS without security is a disaster waiting to happen. I followed the development of the DNSSEC standard. I celebrated the key signing ceremony. Everything was on the right track to finally have a secure DNS system in place. And now more than 2 years later I wanted to just do what everyone said I should do: use DNSSEC for a new domain. So I need a domain registrar and a DNS hosting service that supports DNSSEC. Surprisingly it is not that easy to even find out who does support DNSSEC. It was actually much easier to find info on DNSSEC two years ago when everyone was going to support DNSSEC Real Soon Now but now years passed and I hardly see any progress done. I just hope that I was just looking in the wrong places and someone here will explain all of the doubts. I hope that other people who want to have a secure website will also find this question useful. What is needed registrar and DNS servers with full DNSSEC support for .com domains What is not needed IPv6 support Web hosting anything more What I found out so far Go Daddy offers Premium DNS service for additional $36 per year that lets you "Secure up to 5 domains with DNSSEC". easyDNS has DNSSEC available in Beta across all service levels (you need to enable the "beta" flag in configuration) but it doesn't seem to be production ready and judging from the lack of updates it isn't a feature of highest priority (the last update from March 2011 on the easyDNS blog). Name.com - according to The Register (US domain registrar does IPv6, DNSSEC) it has DNSSEC support since 2010 but right now (October 2012) I couldn't find anything related to DNSSEC on their website. Dynadot that is very often recommended doesn't support DNSSEC Namecheap that is also often recommended doesn't support DNSSEC. The support answer from 2011 suggested that it was being added but in 2012 still no ETA is given to customers. DynDNS was supposed to support DNSSEC, I found a link explaining DNSSEC support but it gives 404 Not Found page and offers a search box - when searching for DNSSEC I get "No results were found for your query." GKG was recommended online for DNSSEC support but it's hard to find any information on the level of DNSSEC support - there is a brief explanation on what is DNSSEC and how to sign Delegation Signer records in their FAQ but no information about the level of actual support can be found. Ask Slashdot: Which Registrars Support DNSSEC? from July 2011 - Answers list Go Daddy, DynDNS, GKG, Name.com as registrars that support DNSSEC but: see above. Related questions How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? What is needed to add DNSSEC to my site? DNS hosting better managed by Domain provider or Hosting provider? Registrar with good security, DNS hosting, and DNSSEC and IPv6 resolvers? In no. 1 no one is ever mentioning DNS at all. In no. 2 answers only mention the .se TLD, there are very few answers and they seem very outdated. In no. 3 one answer says "On projects that demand higher security, I might look for a web host that supports DNSSEC" but no more information is provided. The only relevant answers are in no. 4 where easyDNS is recommended by someone who has never used them personally. Meanwhile, as of October 2012, the support of DNSSEC is described as "in beta" on the easyDNS feature list. Another one recommends SiteGround but searching their site for DNSSEC returns no results. Other answers recommend web hosting providers that don't meet the requirement of DNSSEC support. Also the question mentioned above lists 9 very specific requirements other than only DNSSEC (like eg. HTTP-only login cookies, two-factor authentications, no DNS record limits, DNS statistics of queries/day, audit trails etc.) which might have excluded many possible recommendations if one is only interested in DNSSEC support. Conclusions I thought that by the end of 2012 the support of DNSSEC among domain registrars and DNS providers would be nearly universal. I am shocked that the support seems virtually nonexistent. Is this a result of some serious problems with the DNSSEC adoption? Or is it just not a hot topic and no one bothers anymore? According to the DNSSEC Scoreboard roughly about 0.1% of .com domains support DNSSEC. Could that be caused by the lack of DNSSEC support among registrars and DNS providers, is the information too hard to find or maybe no one cares? There is even no "dnssec" tag here. Questions The information is surprisingly hard to find. That is why I am asking for first-hand experience and personal recommendations. Has anyone here actually set up a website with DNSSEC, from the domain registration to the configuration of DNS servers? Can anyone recommend any of the registrars mentioned above? Can anyone recommend any registrar not mentioned above?

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• repair broken packages-"dpkg: error: conflicting actions -f (--field) and -r (--remove)"

  - by yinon

  Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. if more information will be needed, tell me and'll give. the main problem is: tzach@tzach-pc:~$ sudo apt-get install docky [sudo] password for tzach: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done docky is already the newest version. You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: ca-certificates-java : Depends: openjdk-6-jre-headless (>= 6b16-1.6.1-2) but it is not going to be installed or java6-runtime-headless openjdk-7-jre-lib : Depends: openjdk-7-jre-headless (>= 7~b130~pre0) but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). tzach@tzach-pc:~$ and also: tzach@tzach-pc:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these. **The following packages have unmet dependencies: ca-certificates-java : Depends: openjdk-6-jre-headless (>= 6b16-1.6.1-2) but it is not installed or java6-runtime-headless openjdk-7-jre-lib : Depends: openjdk-7-jre-headless (>= 7~b130~pre0) but it is not installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try using ******* so we tryied the guide here in messege #9: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=947124 we run all the first 4 commands and the last one-"sudo apt-get autoremove" gave us: tzach@tzach-pc:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these. The following packages have unmet dependencies: **ca-certificates-java** : Depends: openjdk-6-jre-headless (>= 6b16-1.6.1-2) but it is not installed or java6-runtime-headless **openjdk-7-jre-lib** : Depends: openjdk-7-jre-headless (>= 7~b130~pre0) but it is not installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f. so we run the last command twice: sudo dpkg --remove -force --force-remove-reinstreq ca-certificates-java and sudo dpkg --remove -force --force-remove-reinstreq openjdk-7-jre-lib but both of them gives: tzach@tzach-pc:~$ sudo dpkg --remove -force --force-remove-reinstreq ca-certificates-java [sudo] password for tzach: dpkg: error: conflicting actions -f (--field) and -r (--remove) Type dpkg --help for help about installing and deinstalling packages [*]; Use `dselect' or `aptitude' for user-friendly package management; Type dpkg -Dhelp for a list of dpkg debug flag values; Type dpkg --force-help for a list of forcing options; Type dpkg-deb --help for help about manipulating *.deb files; Options marked [*] produce a lot of output - pipe it through `less' or `more' ! EDIT FOR green7-output of "sudo apt-get -f install": tzach@tzach-pc:~$ sudo apt-get -f install [sudo] password for tzach: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following extra packages will be installed: icedtea-7-jre-cacao icedtea-7-jre-jamvm java-common openjdk-7-jre-headless tzdata-java Suggested packages: default-jre equivs sun-java6-fonts ttf-dejavu-extra fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-ipafont-mincho ttf-telugu-fonts ttf-oriya-fonts ttf-kannada-fonts ttf-bengali-fonts The following packages will be REMOVED: ttf-mscorefonts-installer The following NEW packages will be installed: icedtea-7-jre-cacao icedtea-7-jre-jamvm java-common openjdk-7-jre-headless tzdata-java 0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 1 to remove and 355 not upgraded. 5 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/29.6 MB of archives. After this operation, 88.5 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching ttf-mscorefonts-installer:amd64 Setting up tzdata (2012e-0ubuntu0.12.04) ... debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable dpkg: error processing tzdata (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: tzdata E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) EDIT2 FOR green7: tzach@tzach-pc:~$ sudo apt-get remove --purge tzdata [sudo] password for tzach: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: ca-certificates-java : Depends: openjdk-6-jre-headless (>= 6b16-1.6.1-2) but it is not going to be installed or java6-runtime-headless libc6 : Depends: tzdata but it is not going to be installed libc6:i386 : Depends: tzdata:i386 libical0 : Depends: tzdata but it is not going to be installed openjdk-7-jre-lib : Depends: openjdk-7-jre-headless (>= 7~b130~pre0) but it is not going to be installed python-dateutil : Depends: tzdata but it is not going to be installed ubuntu-minimal : Depends: tzdata but it is not going to be installed util-linux : Depends: tzdata (>= 2006c-2) but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). EDIT3 FOR green7: tzach@tzach-pc:~$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless [sudo] password for tzach: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: openjdk-7-jre-headless : Depends: tzdata-java but it is not going to be installed Depends: java-common (>= 0.28) but it is not going to be installed Recommends: icedtea-7-jre-cacao (= 7~u3-2.1.1~pre1-1ubuntu3) but it is not going to be installed Recommends: icedtea-7-jre-jamvm (= 7~u3-2.1.1~pre1-1ubuntu3) but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). some things in the text also supposed to be bolded. but not critic (: Thanks for the editing! Thanks a lot for your assistance.

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• Top Tweets SOA Partner Community – November 2011

  - by JuergenKress

  Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity soacommunity SOA Community Dutch ACEs SOA Partner Community award celebration wp.me/p10C8u-i9 OracleBPM Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy – part 1/2, bit.ly/vJE9UZ MagicChatzi Dutch ACE’s and ACE Directors had a small party: achatzia.blogspot.com/2011/11/celebr… leonsmiers #Capgemini #Oracle #BPM Blog index bit.ly/tUYtvD #yam lucasjellema Blog post by my colleague Emiel on the AMIS blog: Timeouts in Oracle SOA Suite 11g – tinyurl.com/73amo3r biemond Solving __OAUX_GENXSD_.TOP.XSD with BPEL: When you use an external web service in combination with a BPEL servic… t.co/Gzzatzrr OracleBlogs Jumpstart Fusion Middleware projects with Oracle User Productivity Kit ow.ly/1fJMev cpurdy on Oracle Coherence data grid, its new RESTful APIs, and Oracle Service Bus (OSB): blogs.oracle.com/slc/entry/orac… Accenture Learn how Service-Oriented Architecture can help public service agencies solve legacy system issues. bit.ly/sTteM4 #SOA eelzinga Thanks for organising it Andreas! #soacommunity eelzinga Had a nice drink with the fellow Dutch Oracle ACE members for a little celebration of the SOA Community Partner Award. #soacommunity EmielP Wrote a blogpost about timeouts in the #Oracle #SOA Suite: bit.ly/uhUcrX OracleBlogs Processing Binary Data in SOA Suite 11g t.co/Tzd1xBsY OracleBlogs Finding the Value in SOA by Stephen Bennett t.co/9MMLJoLz OTNArchBeat SOA All the Time; Architects in AZ; Clearing Info Integration hurdles t.co/5viNj8ib OracleBlogs Demo: Business Transaction Management with SOA Management Pack ow.ly/1fFBv3 OTNArchBeat SOA All the Time; Architects in AZ; Clearing Info Integration hurdles t.co/Dnfzo0PN oracletechnet Wikis.oracle.com lives leonsmiers A new #capgemini #oracle #blog, Measuring the Human Task activity in Oracle BPM bit.ly/uPan08 #yam @CapgeminiOracle OTNArchBeat 3 SOA business cases, explained in a 2-minute elevator speech | @JoeMcKendrick t.co/aYGNkZup OTNArchBeat Gartner, Inc. places Oracle SOA Governance in Magic Quadrant for SOA Governance Technologies t.co/bSG5cuTr Jphjulstad Red carpet to Oracle BPM – evita.no evita.no/ikbViewer/soa-… Oracle #Oracle Named a Leader in #SOA Governance Magic Quadrant by Leading Analyst Firm t.co/prnyGu2U soacommunity What presentations & topics do you like to see at the next SOA & BPM & Webcenter Community Forum early 2012? #soacommunity soacommunity Oracle BPM Suite 11g Handbook Released wp.me/p10C8u-hU OTNArchBeat SOA Development Virtual Developer Day (On Demand) | @soacommunity bit.ly/sqhQmX OracleBlogs SOA Development Virtual Developer Day (On Demand) t.co/MDrdnx0h 9 Nov Favorite Undo Retweet Reply OracleBlogs Specialized Partners Only! New Service to Promote Your Events t.co/qTgyEpY4 biemond @stevendavelaar this is for you t.co/hInKCcfY it explains your sso problem soacommunity SOA Development Virtual Developer Day (on demand) t.co/flXPWk4R soacommunity IPT Swiss SOA Experts – thanks for the nice ink wp.me/p10C8u-i3 soacommunity Enjoy #wjax specially the presentations from our #ACE @t_winterberg @myfear @AdamBien pic.twitter.com/m8VcBSG3 OTNArchBeat Discounts on books, more, for Oracle Technology Network members bit.ly/vRxMfB OracleSOA Justify the ROI of SOA in 10 seconds…a pic is worth 1000 words bit.ly/roi_of_soa_img #oraclesoa #soa #oow11 orclateamsoa A-Team SOA Blog: Case Management in BPM 11g -  Mark Foster Oracle BPM 11g & Case Management I’ve seen… t.co/l5zb6pFr t_winterberg Die nächste SIG #SOA steht an: 7.12. in Hamburg. Neues Tooling und Erfahrungen rund um Oracle FMW, SOA, BPM… (cont) deck.ly/~YC57v OracleBlogs Continuous Integration for SOA/BPM ow.ly/1fsekI OracleBlogs BPM Suite 11g Handbook Released ow.ly/1frlzv lucasjellema Iterating over collection (array) in BPM (and dispatching jobs for entries in array): t.co/1SEhSvWv – subprocesses are the key. lucasjellema Lucas Jellema Useful tip from Mark Nelson: BPM API documentation (as well as Human Workflow Service) available: redstack.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/api… OTNArchBeat SOA, cloud: it’s the architecture that matters | Joe McKendrick zd.net/tNCiTF orclateamsoa: Building a job dispatcher in BPM -or- Iterating over collections in BPM ow.ly/1frbrz orclateamsoa Using the Database as a Policy Store for SOA 11g ow.ly/1frbrA OracleBPM Oracle launches Process Accelerators for BPM: t.co/XPEE61QL Jphjulstad Human-Centric BPM Selection Checklist t.co/3TZXZHLH OracleBlogs Fusion Middleware General Session at OOW 2011: Missed It? Read On… t.co/aU5JvM6K gschmutz Great! The product page of the OSB 11g Development Cookbook is now online: t.co/5Jfbe6Ng Looking forward to get it, u too? brhubart Oracle IT Architecture Essentials; Lightweight Composite Service Development with SCA and Spring; Cloud Migration ow.ly/7esNg eelzinga New blogpost : Oracle Service Bus, Generic fault handling, bit.ly/sGr4UL #osb #oracleservicebus For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: soacommunity,twitter,Oracle,SOA Community,Jürgen Kress,OPN

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• It&rsquo;s A Team Sport: PASS Board Year 2, Q3

  - by Denise McInerney

  As I type this I’m on an airplane en route to my 12th PASS Summit. It’s been a very busy 3.5 months since my last post on my work as a Board member. Nearing the end of my 2-year term I am struck by how much has happened, and yet how fast the time has gone. But I’ll save the retrospective post for next time and today focus on what happened in Q3. In the last three months we made progress on several fronts, thanks to the contributions of many volunteers and HQ staff members. They deserve our appreciation for their dedication to delivering for the membership week after week. Virtual Chapters The Virtual Chapters continue to provide many PASS members with valuable free training. Between July and September of 2013 VCs hosted over 50 webinars with a total of 4300 attendees. This quarter also saw the launch of the Security & Global Russian VCs. Both are off to a strong start and I welcome these additions to the Virtual Chapter portfolio. At the beginning of 2012 we had 14 Virtual Chapters. Today we have 22. This growth has been exciting to see. It has also created a need to have more volunteers help manage the work of the VCs year-round. We have renewed focus on having Virtual Chapter Mentors work with the VC Leaders and other volunteers. I am grateful to volunteers Julie Koesmarno, Thomas LeBlanc and Marcus Bittencourt who join original VC Mentor Steve Simon on this team. Thank you for stepping up to help. Many improvements to the VC web sites have been rolling out over the past few weeks. Our marketing and IT teams have been busy working a new look-and-feel, features and a logo for each VC. They have given the VCs a fresh, professional look consistent with the rest of the PASS branding, and all VCs now have a logo that connects to PASS and the particular focus of the chapter. 24 Hours of PASS The Summit Preview edition  of 24HOP was held on July 31 and by all accounts was a success. Our first use of the GoToWebinar platform for this event went extremely well. Thanks to our speakers, moderators and sponsors for making this event possible. Special thanks to HQ staffers Vicki Van Damme and Jane Duffy for a smoothly run event. Coming up: the 24HOP Portuguese Edition will be held November 13-14, followed December 12-13 by the Spanish Edition. Thanks to the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking community volunteers who are organizing these events. July Board Meeting The Board met July 18-19 in Kansas City. The first order of business was the election of the Executive Committee who will take office January 1. I was elected Vice President of Marketing and will join incoming President Thomas LaRock, incoming Executive Vice President of Finance Adam Jorgensen and Immediate Past President Bill Graziano on the Exec Co. I am honored that my fellow Board members elected me to this position and look forward to serving the organization in this role. Visit to PASS HQ In late September I traveled to Vancouver for my first visit to PASS HQ, where I joined Tom LaRock and Adam Jorgensen to make plans for 2014.  Our visit was just a few weeks before PASS Summit and coincided with the Board election, and the office was humming with activity. I saw first-hand the enthusiasm and dedication of everyone there. In each interaction I observed a focus on what is best for PASS and our members. Our partners at HQ are key to the organization’s success. This week at PASS Summit is a great opportunity for all of us to remember that, and say “thanks.” Next Up PASS Summit—of course! I’ll be around all week and look forward to connecting with many of our member over meals, at the Community Zone and between sessions. In the evenings you can find me at the Welcome Reception, Exhibitor’s Reception and Community Appreciation Party. And I will be at the Board Q&A session  Friday at 12:45 p.m. Transitions The newly elected Exec Co and Board members take office January 1, and the Virtual Chapter portfolio is transitioning to a new director. I’m thrilled that Jen Stirrup will be taking over. Jen has experience as a volunteer and co-leader of the Business Intelligence Virtual Chapter and was a key contributor to the BI VCs expansion to serving our members in the EMEA region. I’ll be working closely with Jen over the next couple of months to ensure a smooth transition.

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 17, Think Continuations, not Callbacks

  - by Reed

  In traditional asynchronous programming, we’d often use a callback to handle notification of a background task’s completion.  The Task class in the Task Parallel Library introduces a cleaner alternative to the traditional callback: continuation tasks. Asynchronous programming methods typically required callback functions.  For example, MSDN’s Asynchronous Delegates Programming Sample shows a class that factorizes a number.  The original method in the example has the following signature: public static bool Factorize(int number, ref int primefactor1, ref int primefactor2) { //... .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } However, calling this is quite “tricky”, even if we modernize the sample to use lambda expressions via C# 3.0.  Normally, we could call this method like so: int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool answer = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", primeFactor1, primeFactor2, answer); If we want to make this operation run in the background, and report to the console via a callback, things get tricker.  First, we need a delegate definition: public delegate bool AsyncFactorCaller( int number, ref int primefactor1, ref int primefactor2); Then we need to use BeginInvoke to run this method asynchronously: int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; AsyncFactorCaller caller = new AsyncFactorCaller(Factorize); caller.BeginInvoke(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2, result => { int factor1 = 0; int factor2 = 0; bool answer = caller.EndInvoke(ref factor1, ref factor2, result); Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", factor1, factor2, answer); }, null); This works, but is quite difficult to understand from a conceptual standpoint.  To combat this, the framework added the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern, but it isn’t much easier to understand or author. Using .NET 4’s new Task<T> class and a continuation, we can dramatically simplify the implementation of the above code, as well as make it much more understandable.  We do this via the Task.ContinueWith method.  This method will schedule a new Task upon completion of the original task, and provide the original Task (including its Result if it’s a Task<T>) as an argument.  Using Task, we can eliminate the delegate, and rewrite this code like so: var background = Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool result = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); return new { Result = result, Factor1 = primeFactor1, Factor2 = primeFactor2 }; }); background.ContinueWith(task => Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", task.Result.Factor1, task.Result.Factor2, task.Result.Result)); This is much simpler to understand, in my opinion.  Here, we’re explicitly asking to start a new task, then continue the task with a resulting task.  In our case, our method used ref parameters (this was from the MSDN Sample), so there is a little bit of extra boiler plate involved, but the code is at least easy to understand. That being said, this isn’t dramatically shorter when compared with our C# 3 port of the MSDN code above.  However, if we were to extend our requirements a bit, we can start to see more advantages to the Task based approach.  For example, supposed we need to report the results in a user interface control instead of reporting it to the Console.  This would be a common operation, but now, we have to think about marshaling our calls back to the user interface.  This is probably going to require calling Control.Invoke or Dispatcher.Invoke within our callback, forcing us to specify a delegate within the delegate.  The maintainability and ease of understanding drops.  However, just as a standard Task can be created with a TaskScheduler that uses the UI synchronization context, so too can we continue a task with a specific context.  There are Task.ContinueWith method overloads which allow you to provide a TaskScheduler.  This means you can schedule the continuation to run on the UI thread, by simply doing: Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool result = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); return new { Result = result, Factor1 = primeFactor1, Factor2 = primeFactor2 }; }).ContinueWith(task => textBox1.Text = string.Format("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", task.Result.Factor1, task.Result.Factor2, task.Result.Result), TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext()); This is far more understandable than the alternative.  By using Task.ContinueWith in conjunction with TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext(), we get a simple way to push any work onto a background thread, and update the user interface on the proper UI thread.  This technique works with Windows Presentation Foundation as well as Windows Forms, with no change in methodology.

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• PASS Summit 2010 Recap

  - by AjarnMark

  Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event!  I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts.  Each year I have made a few more, and renewed friendships from years past.  Many of the attendees agree that the pure networking opportunities are one of the best benefits of attending the Summit.  And there’s a lot of great technical stuff, too, some of the things that stick out for me this year include… Pre-Con Monday: PowerShell with Allen White (blog | Twitter).  This was the first time that I attended a pre-con.  For those not familiar with the concept, the regular sessions for the conference are 75-90 minutes long.  For an extra fee, you can attend a full-day session on a single topic during a pre- or post-conference training day.  I had been meaning for several months to dive in and learn PowerShell, but just never seemed to find (or make) the time for it, so when I saw this was one of the all-day sessions, and I was planning to be there on Monday anyway, I decided to go for it.  And it was well worth it!  I definitely came out of there with a good foundation to build my own PowerShell scripts, plus several sample scripts that he showed which already cover the first four or five things I was planning to do with PowerShell anyway.  This looks like the right tool for me to build an automated version of our software deployment process, which right now contains many repeated steps.  Thanks Allen! Service Broker with Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter).  I remembered reading Denny’s blog post on Using Service Broker instead of Replication, and ever since then I have been thinking about using this to populate a new reporting-focused Data Repository that we will be building in the near future.  When I saw he was doing this session, I thought it would be great to get more information and be able to ask the author questions.  When I brought this idea back to my boss, he really liked it, as we had previously been discussing doing nightly data loads, with an option to manually trigger a mid-day load if up-to-the-minute data was needed for something.  If we go the Service Broker route, we can keep the Repository current in near real-time.  Hooray! DBA Mythbusters with Paul Randal (blog | Twitter).  Even though I read every one of the posts in Paul’s blog series of the same name, I had to go see the legend in person.  It was great, and I still learned something new! How to Conduct Effective Meetings with Joe Webb (blog | Twitter).  I always like to sit in on a session that Joe does.  I met Joe several years ago when both he and Bill Graziano were on the PASS Board of Directors together, and we have kept in touch.  Joe is very well-spoken and has great experience with both SQL Server and business.  And we could certainly use some pointers at my work (probably yours, too) on making our meetings more effective and to run on-time.  Of course, now that I’m the Chapter Leader for the Professional Development virtual chapter, I also had to sit in on this ProfDev session and recruit Joe to do a presentation or two for the chapter next year. Query Optimization with David DeWitt.  Anyone who has seen Dr. David DeWitt present the 3rd keynote at a PASS Summit over the last three years knows what a great time it is to sit and listen to him make some really complicated and advanced topic easy to understand (although it still makes your head hurt).  It still amazes me that the simple two-table join query from pubs that he used in his example can possibly have 22 million possible physical query plans.  Ouch! Exhibit Hall:  This year I spent more serious time in the exhibit hall than any year past.  I have talked my boss into making a significant (for us) investment in monitoring tools next year, and this was a great opportunity to talk with all the big-hitters.  Readers of mine may recall that I fell in love with the SQL Sentry Power Suite several months ago and wrote a blog entry about it just from the trial version.  Well as things turned out, short-term budget priorities shifted, and we weren’t able to make the purchase then.  I have it in the budget for next year, but since I was going to the Summit, my boss wanted me to look at the other options to see if this was really the one that we wanted.  I spent a couple of hours talking with representatives from Red-Gate, Idera, Confio, and Quest about their offerings, and giving them each the same 3 scenarios that I wanted to be able to accomplish based on the questions and issues that arise in our company.  It was interesting to discover the different approaches or “world view” that each vendor takes to the subject of performance monitoring and troubleshooting.  I may write a separate article that goes into this in more depth, but the product that best aligned with our point of view, and met the current needs we have is still the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  I’m not saying that the others are bad or wrong or anything like that, just that the way they tackled the issue did not align as well with our particular needs as does SQL Sentry’s product.  And that was something I learned too, when you go shopping for these products, you really need to know what you want to get from them.  It’s best if you have a few example scenarios from work that you can use to test out how well each tool fits your particular needs. Overall, another GREAT event.  I can’t wait to get the DVDs so I can sit in on a bunch of other sessions that I couldn’t get to because I was in one of the ones above.  And I can hardly wait until next year!

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