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• my server suddenly crashes every 2 days or so. Programmer has no idea, please help find the cause, here is the top

  - by Alex

  Every couple of days my server suddenly crashes and I must request hardware reset at data center to get it back running. Today I came back to my shell and saw the server was dead and "top" was running on it, and see below for the "top" right before the crash. I opened /var/log/messages and scrolled to the reboot time and see nothing, no errors prior to the hard reboot. (I checked in /etc/syslog.conf and I see "*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none /var/log/messages" , isn't this good enough to log all problems?) Usually when I look at the top, the swap is never used up like this! I also don't know why mysqld is at 323% cpu (server only runs drupal and its never slow or overloaded). Solver is my application. I don't know whats that 'sh' doing and 'dovecot' doing. Its driving me crazy over the last month, please help me solve this mystery and stop my downtimes. top - 01:10:06 up 6 days, 5 min, 3 users, load average: 34.87, 18.68, 9.03 Tasks: 500 total, 19 running, 481 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 96.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 1.7%id, 1.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 8165600k total, 8139764k used, 25836k free, 428k buffers Swap: 2104496k total, 2104496k used, 0k free, 8236k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 4421 mysql 15 0 571m 105m 976 S 323.5 1.3 9:08.00 mysqld 564 root 20 -5 0 0 0 R 99.5 0.0 2:49.16 kswapd1 25767 apache 19 0 399m 8060 888 D 79.3 0.1 0:06.64 httpd 25781 apache 19 0 398m 5648 492 R 79.0 0.1 0:08.21 httpd 25961 apache 25 0 398m 5700 560 R 76.7 0.1 0:17.81 httpd 25980 apache 25 0 10816 668 520 R 75.0 0.0 0:46.95 sh 563 root 20 -5 0 0 0 D 71.4 0.0 3:12.37 kswapd0 25766 apache 25 0 399m 7256 756 R 69.7 0.1 0:39.83 httpd 25911 apache 25 0 398m 5612 480 R 58.8 0.1 0:17.63 httpd 25782 apache 25 0 440m 38m 648 R 55.2 0.5 0:18.94 httpd 25966 apache 25 0 398m 5640 556 R 55.2 0.1 0:48.84 httpd 4588 root 25 0 74860 596 476 R 53.9 0.0 0:37.90 crond 25939 apache 25 0 2776 172 84 R 48.9 0.0 0:59.46 solver 4575 root 25 0 397m 6004 1144 R 48.6 0.1 1:00.43 httpd 25962 apache 25 0 398m 5628 492 R 47.9 0.1 0:14.58 httpd 25824 apache 25 0 440m 39m 680 D 47.3 0.5 0:57.85 httpd 25968 apache 25 0 398m 5612 528 R 46.6 0.1 0:42.73 httpd 4477 root 25 0 6084 396 280 R 46.3 0.0 0:59.53 dovecot 25982 root 25 0 397m 5108 240 R 45.9 0.1 0:18.01 httpd 25943 apache 25 0 2916 172 8 R 44.0 0.0 0:53.54 solver 30687 apache 25 0 468m 63m 1124 D 42.3 0.8 0:45.02 httpd 25978 apache 25 0 398m 5688 600 R 23.8 0.1 0:40.99 httpd 25983 root 25 0 397m 5272 384 D 14.9 0.1 0:18.99 httpd 935 root 10 -5 0 0 0 D 14.2 0.0 1:54.60 kjournald 25986 root 25 0 397m 5308 420 D 8.9 0.1 0:04.75 httpd 4011 haldaemo 25 0 31568 1476 716 S 5.6 0.0 0:24.36 hald 25956 apache 23 0 398m 5872 644 S 5.6 0.1 0:13.85 httpd 18336 root 18 0 13004 1332 724 R 0.3 0.0 1:46.66 top 1 root 18 0 10372 212 180 S 0.0 0.0 0:05.99 init 2 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.95 migration/0 3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 ksoftirqd/0 4 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.15 migration/1 6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 .06 ksoftirqd/1 here is a normal top, when server is working fine: top - 01:50:41 up 21 min, 1 user, load average: 2.98, 2.70, 1.68 Tasks: 271 total, 2 running, 269 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 15.0%us, 1.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 81.4%id, 2.4%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 8165600k total, 2035856k used, 6129744k free, 60840k buffers Swap: 2104496k total, 0k used, 2104496k free, 283744k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 2204 apache 17 0 466m 83m 19m S 25.9 1.0 0:22.16 httpd 11347 apache 15 0 466m 83m 19m S 25.9 1.0 0:26.10 httpd 18204 apache 18 0 481m 97m 19m D 25.2 1.2 0:13.99 httpd 4644 apache 18 0 481m 100m 19m D 24.6 1.3 1:17.12 httpd 4727 apache 17 0 481m 99m 19m S 24.3 1.2 1:10.77 httpd 4777 apache 17 0 482m 102m 21m S 23.6 1.3 1:38.27 httpd 8924 apache 15 0 483m 99m 19m S 22.3 1.3 1:13.41 httpd 9390 apache 18 0 483m 99m 19m S 18.9 1.2 1:05.35 httpd 4728 apache 16 0 481m 101m 19m S 14.3 1.3 1:12.50 httpd 4648 apache 15 0 481m 107m 27m S 12.6 1.4 1:18.62 httpd 24955 apache 15 0 467m 82m 19m S 3.3 1.0 0:21.80 httpd 4722 apache 15 0 503m 118m 19m R 1.7 1.5 1:17.79 httpd 4647 apache 15 0 484m 105m 20m S 1.3 1.3 1:40.73 httpd 4643 apache 16 0 481m 100m 20m S 0.7 1.3 1:11.80 httpd 1561 root 15 0 12900 1264 828 R 0.3 0.0 0:00.54 top 4434 mysql 15 0 496m 55m 4812 S 0.3 0.7 0:06.69 mysqld 4646 apache 15 0 481m 100m 19m S 0.3 1.3 1:25.51 httpd 1 root 18 0 10372 692 580 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.09 init 2 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 migration/0 3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0 4 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1 6 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1 7 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1 8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/2 9 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/2 10 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/2 11 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/3 12 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/3 13 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/3 14 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 migration/4 15 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/4 16 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/4 17 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 migration/5 18 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/5 19 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/5 20 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 migration/6 21 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/6 22 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/6 23 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/7

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• Linux server is only using 60% of memory, then swapping

  - by Kamil Kisiel

  I've got a Linux server that's running our bacula backup system. The machine is grinding like mad because it's going heavy in to swap. The problem is, it's only using 60% of its physical memory! Here's the output from free -m: free -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3949 2356 1593 0 0 1 -/+ buffers/cache: 2354 1595 Swap: 7629 1804 5824 and some sample output from vmstat 1: procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- -----cpu------ r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st 0 2 1843536 1634512 0 4188 54 13 2524 666 2 1 1 1 89 9 0 1 11 1845916 1640724 0 388 2700 4816 221880 4879 14409 170721 4 3 63 30 0 0 9 1846096 1643952 0 0 4956 756 174832 804 12357 159306 3 4 63 30 0 0 11 1846104 1643532 0 0 4916 540 174320 580 10609 139960 3 4 64 29 0 0 4 1846084 1640272 0 2336 4080 524 140408 548 9331 118287 3 4 63 30 0 0 8 1846104 1642096 0 1488 2940 432 102516 457 7023 82230 2 4 65 29 0 0 5 1846104 1642268 0 1276 3704 452 126520 452 9494 119612 3 5 65 27 0 3 12 1846104 1641528 0 328 6092 608 187776 636 8269 113059 4 3 64 29 0 2 2 1846084 1640960 0 724 5948 0 111480 0 7751 116370 4 4 63 29 0 0 4 1846100 1641484 0 404 4144 1476 125760 1500 10668 105358 2 3 71 25 0 0 13 1846104 1641932 0 0 5872 828 153808 840 10518 128447 3 4 70 22 0 0 8 1846096 1639172 0 3164 3556 556 74884 580 5082 65362 2 2 73 23 0 1 4 1846080 1638676 0 396 4512 28 50928 44 2672 38277 2 2 80 16 0 0 3 1846080 1628808 0 7132 2636 0 28004 8 1358 14090 0 1 78 20 0 0 2 1844728 1618552 0 11140 7680 0 12740 8 763 2245 0 0 82 18 0 0 2 1837764 1532056 0 101504 2952 0 95644 24 802 3817 0 1 87 12 0 0 11 1842092 1633324 0 4416 1748 10900 143144 11024 6279 134442 3 3 70 24 0 2 6 1846104 1642756 0 0 4768 468 78752 468 4672 60141 2 2 76 20 0 1 12 1846104 1640792 0 236 4752 440 140712 464 7614 99593 3 5 58 34 0 0 3 1846084 1630368 0 6316 5104 0 20336 0 1703 22424 1 1 72 26 0 2 17 1846104 1638332 0 3168 4080 1720 211960 1744 11977 155886 3 4 65 28 0 1 10 1846104 1640800 0 132 4488 556 126016 584 8016 106368 3 4 63 29 0 0 14 1846104 1639740 0 2248 3436 428 114188 452 7030 92418 3 3 59 35 0 1 6 1846096 1639504 0 1932 5500 436 141412 460 8261 112210 4 4 63 29 0 0 10 1846104 1640164 0 3052 4028 448 147684 472 7366 109554 4 4 61 30 0 0 10 1846100 1641040 0 2332 4952 632 147452 664 8767 118384 3 4 63 30 0 4 8 1846084 1641092 0 664 4948 276 152264 292 6448 98813 5 5 62 28 0 Furthermore, the output of top sorted by CPU time seems to support the theory that swap is what's bogging down the system: top - 09:05:32 up 37 days, 23:24, 1 user, load average: 9.75, 8.24, 7.12 Tasks: 173 total, 1 running, 172 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 1.6%us, 1.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 76.1%id, 20.6%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st Mem: 4044632k total, 2405628k used, 1639004k free, 0k buffers Swap: 7812492k total, 1851852k used, 5960640k free, 436k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ TIME COMMAND 4174 root 17 0 63156 176 56 S 8 0.0 2138:52 35,38 bacula-fd 4185 root 17 0 63352 284 104 S 6 0.0 1709:25 28,29 bacula-sd 240 root 15 0 0 0 0 D 3 0.0 831:55.19 831:55 kswapd0 2852 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 1 0.0 126:35.59 126:35 xfsbufd 2849 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 119:50.94 119:50 xfsbufd 1364 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 117:05.39 117:05 xfsbufd 21 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 1 0.0 48:03.44 48:03 events/3 6940 postgres 16 0 43596 8 8 S 0 0.0 46:50.35 46:50 postmaster 1342 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 23:14.34 23:14 xfsdatad/4 5415 root 17 0 1770m 108 48 S 0 0.0 15:03.74 15:03 bacula-dir 23 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 13:09.71 13:09 events/5 5604 root 17 0 1216m 500 200 S 0 0.0 12:38.20 12:38 java 5552 root 16 0 1194m 580 248 S 0 0.0 11:58.00 11:58 java Here's the same sorted by virtual memory image size: top - 09:08:32 up 37 days, 23:27, 1 user, load average: 8.43, 8.26, 7.32 Tasks: 173 total, 1 running, 172 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 3.6%us, 3.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 62.2%id, 30.2%wa, 0.2%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st Mem: 4044632k total, 2404212k used, 1640420k free, 0k buffers Swap: 7812492k total, 1852548k used, 5959944k free, 100k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ TIME COMMAND 5415 root 17 0 1770m 56 44 S 0 0.0 15:03.78 15:03 bacula-dir 5604 root 17 0 1216m 492 200 S 0 0.0 12:38.30 12:38 java 5552 root 16 0 1194m 476 200 S 0 0.0 11:58.20 11:58 java 4598 root 16 0 117m 44 44 S 0 0.0 0:13.37 0:13 eventmond 9614 gdm 16 0 93188 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.30 0:00 gdmgreeter 5527 root 17 0 78716 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.30 0:00 gdm 4185 root 17 0 63352 284 104 S 20 0.0 1709:52 28,29 bacula-sd 4174 root 17 0 63156 208 88 S 24 0.0 2139:25 35,39 bacula-fd 10849 postgres 18 0 54740 216 108 D 0 0.0 0:31.40 0:31 postmaster 6661 postgres 17 0 49432 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:03.50 0:03 postmaster 5507 root 15 0 47980 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 0:00 gdm 6940 postgres 16 0 43596 16 16 S 0 0.0 46:51.39 46:51 postmaster 5304 postgres 16 0 40580 132 88 S 0 0.0 6:21.79 6:21 postmaster 5301 postgres 17 0 40448 24 24 S 0 0.0 0:32.17 0:32 postmaster 11280 root 16 0 40288 28 28 S 0 0.0 0:00.11 0:00 sshd 5534 root 17 0 37580 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:56.18 0:56 X 30870 root 30 15 31668 28 28 S 0 0.0 1:13.38 1:13 snmpd 5305 postgres 17 0 30628 16 16 S 0 0.0 0:11.60 0:11 postmaster 27403 postfix 17 0 30248 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.76 0:02 qmgr 10815 postfix 15 0 30208 16 16 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 0:00 pickup 5306 postgres 16 0 29760 20 20 S 0 0.0 0:52.89 0:52 postmaster 5302 postgres 17 0 29628 64 32 S 0 0.0 1:00.64 1:00 postmaster I've tried tuning the swappiness kernel parameter to both high and low values, but nothing appears to change the behavior here. I'm at a loss to figure out what's going on. How can I find out what's causing this? Update: The system is a fully 64-bit system, so there should be no question of memory limitations due to 32-bit issues. Update2: As I mentioned in the original question, I've already tried tuning swappiness to all sorts of values, including 0. The result is always the same, with approximately 1.6 GB of memory remaining unused. Update3: Added top output to the above info.

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• Microsoft and jQuery

  - by Rick Strahl

  The jQuery JavaScript library has been steadily getting more popular and with recent developments from Microsoft, jQuery is also getting ever more exposure on the ASP.NET platform including now directly from Microsoft. jQuery is a light weight, open source DOM manipulation library for JavaScript that has changed how many developers think about JavaScript. You can download it and find more information on jQuery on www.jquery.com. For me jQuery has had a huge impact on how I develop Web applications and was probably the main reason I went from dreading to do JavaScript development to actually looking forward to implementing client side JavaScript functionality. It has also had a profound impact on my JavaScript skill level for me by seeing how the library accomplishes things (and often reviewing the terse but excellent source code). jQuery made an uncomfortable development platform (JavaScript + DOM) a joy to work on. Although jQuery is by no means the only JavaScript library out there, its ease of use, small size, huge community of plug-ins and pure usefulness has made it easily the most popular JavaScript library available today. As a long time jQuery user, I’ve been excited to see the developments from Microsoft that are bringing jQuery to more ASP.NET developers and providing more integration with jQuery for ASP.NET’s core features rather than relying on the ASP.NET AJAX library. Microsoft and jQuery – making Friends jQuery is an open source project but in the last couple of years Microsoft has really thrown its weight behind supporting this open source library as a supported component on the Microsoft platform. When I say supported I literally mean supported: Microsoft now offers actual tech support for jQuery as part of their Product Support Services (PSS) as jQuery integration has become part of several of the ASP.NET toolkits and ships in several of the default Web project templates in Visual Studio 2010. The ASP.NET MVC 3 framework (still in Beta) also uses jQuery for a variety of client side support features including client side validation and we can look forward toward more integration of client side functionality via jQuery in both MVC and WebForms in the future. In other words jQuery is becoming an optional but included component of the ASP.NET platform. PSS support means that support staff will answer jQuery related support questions as part of any support incidents related to ASP.NET which provides some piece of mind to some corporate development shops that require end to end support from Microsoft. In addition to including jQuery and supporting it, Microsoft has also been getting involved in providing development resources for extending jQuery’s functionality via plug-ins. Microsoft’s last version of the Microsoft Ajax Library – which is the successor to the native ASP.NET AJAX Library – included some really cool functionality for client templates, databinding and localization. As it turns out Microsoft has rebuilt most of that functionality using jQuery as the base API and provided jQuery plug-ins of these components. Very recently these three plug-ins were submitted and have been approved for inclusion in the official jQuery plug-in repository and been taken over by the jQuery team for further improvements and maintenance. Even more surprising: The jQuery-templates component has actually been approved for inclusion in the next major update of the jQuery core in jQuery V1.5, which means it will become a native feature that doesn’t require additional script files to be loaded. Imagine this – an open source contribution from Microsoft that has been accepted into a major open source project for a core feature improvement. Microsoft has come a long way indeed! What the Microsoft Involvement with jQuery means to you For Microsoft jQuery support is a strategic decision that affects their direction in client side development, but nothing stopped you from using jQuery in your applications prior to Microsoft’s official backing and in fact a large chunk of developers did so readily prior to Microsoft’s announcement. Official support from Microsoft brings a few benefits to developers however. jQuery support in Visual Studio 2010 means built-in support for jQuery IntelliSense, automatically added jQuery scripts in many projects types and a common base for client side functionality that actually uses what most developers are already using. If you have already been using jQuery and were worried about straying from the Microsoft line and their internal Microsoft Ajax Library – worry no more. With official support and the change in direction towards jQuery Microsoft is now following along what most in the ASP.NET community had already been doing by using jQuery, which is likely the reason for Microsoft’s shift in direction in the first place. ASP.NET AJAX and the Microsoft AJAX Library weren’t bad technology – there was tons of useful functionality buried in these libraries. However, these libraries never got off the ground, mainly because early incarnations were squarely aimed at control/component developers rather than application developers. For all the functionality that these controls provided for control developers they lacked in useful and easily usable application developer functionality that was easily accessible in day to day client side development. The result was that even though Microsoft shipped support for these tools in the box (in .NET 3.5 and 4.0), other than for the internal support in ASP.NET for things like the UpdatePanel and the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit as well as some third party vendors, the Microsoft client libraries were largely ignored by the developer community opening the door for other client side solutions. Microsoft seems to be acknowledging developer choice in this case: Many more developers were going down the jQuery path rather than using the Microsoft built libraries and there seems to be little sense in continuing development of a technology that largely goes unused by the majority of developers. Kudos for Microsoft for recognizing this and gracefully changing directions. Note that even though there will be no further development in the Microsoft client libraries they will continue to be supported so if you’re using them in your applications there’s no reason to start running for the exit in a panic and start re-writing everything with jQuery. Although that might be a reasonable choice in some cases, jQuery and the Microsoft libraries work well side by side so that you can leave existing solutions untouched even as you enhance them with jQuery. The Microsoft jQuery Plug-ins – Solid Core Features One of the most interesting developments in Microsoft’s embracing of jQuery is that Microsoft has started contributing to jQuery via standard mechanism set for jQuery developers: By submitting plug-ins. Microsoft took some of the nicest new features of the unpublished Microsoft Ajax Client Library and re-wrote these components for jQuery and then submitted them as plug-ins to the jQuery plug-in repository. Accepted plug-ins get taken over by the jQuery team and that’s exactly what happened with the three plug-ins submitted by Microsoft with the templating plug-in even getting slated to be published as part of the jQuery core in the next major release (1.5). The following plug-ins are provided by Microsoft: jQuery Templates – a client side template rendering engine jQuery Data Link – a client side databinder that can synchronize changes without code jQuery Globalization – provides formatting and conversion features for dates and numbers The first two are ports of functionality that was slated for the Microsoft Ajax Library while functionality for the globalization library provides functionality that was already found in the original ASP.NET AJAX library. To me all three plug-ins address a pressing need in client side applications and provide functionality I’ve previously used in other incarnations, but with more complete implementations. Let’s take a close look at these plug-ins. jQuery Templates http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/templates/ Client side templating is a key component for building rich JavaScript applications in the browser. Templating on the client lets you avoid from manually creating markup by creating DOM nodes and injecting them individually into the document via code. Rather you can create markup templates – similar to the way you create classic ASP server markup – and merge data into these templates to render HTML which you can then inject into the document or replace existing content with. Output from templates are rendered as a jQuery matched set and can then be easily inserted into the document as needed. Templating is key to minimize client side code and reduce repeated code for rendering logic. Instead a single template can be used in many places for updating and adding content to existing pages. Further if you build pure AJAX interfaces that rely entirely on client rendering of the initial page content, templates allow you to a use a single markup template to handle all rendering of each specific HTML section/element. I’ve used a number of different client rendering template engines with jQuery in the past including jTemplates (a PHP style templating engine) and a modified version of John Resig’s MicroTemplating engine which I built into my own set of libraries because it’s such a commonly used feature in my client side applications. jQuery templates adds a much richer templating model that allows for sub-templates and access to the data items. Like John Resig’s original Micro Template engine, the core basics of the templating engine create JavaScript code which means that templates can include JavaScript code. To give you a basic idea of how templates work imagine I have an application that downloads a set of stock quotes based on a symbol list then displays them in the document. To do this you can create an ‘item’ template that describes how each of the quotes is renderd as a template inside of the document: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div><div>${LastPrice}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div><div>${LastQuoteTimeString}</div> </div> </script> The ‘template’ is little more than HTML with some markup expressions inside of it that define the template language. Notice the embedded ${} expressions which reference data from the quote objects returned from an AJAX call on the server. You can embed any JavaScript or value expression in these template expressions. There are also a number of structural commands like {{if}} and {{each}} that provide for rudimentary logic inside of your templates as well as commands ({{tmpl}} and {{wrap}}) for nesting templates. You can find more about the full set of markup expressions available in the documentation. To load up this data you can use code like the following: <script type="text/javascript"> //var Proxy = new ServiceProxy("../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/"); $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnGetQuotes").click(GetQuotes); }); function GetQuotes() { var symbols = $("#txtSymbols").val().split(","); $.ajax({ url: "../PageMethods/PageMethodsService.asmx/GetStockQuotes", data: JSON.stringify({ symbols: symbols }), // parameter map type: "POST", // data has to be POSTed contentType: "application/json", timeout: 10000, dataType: "json", success: function (result) { var quotes = result.d; var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); $("#quoteDisplay").empty().append(jEl); }, error: function (xhr, status) { alert(status + "\r\n" + xhr.responseText); } }); }; </script> In this case an ASMX AJAX service is called to retrieve the stock quotes. The service returns an array of quote objects. The result is returned as an object with the .d property (in Microsoft service style) that returns the actual array of quotes. The template is applied with: var jEl = $("#stockTemplate").tmpl(quotes); which selects the template script tag and uses the .tmpl() function to apply the data to it. The result is a jQuery matched set of elements that can then be appended to the quote display element in the page. The template is merged against an array in this example. When the result is an array the template is automatically applied to each each array item. If you pass a single data item – like say a stock quote – the template works exactly the same way but is applied only once. Templates also have access to a $data item which provides the current data item and information about the tempalte that is currently executing. This makes it possible to keep context within the context of the template itself and also to pass context from a parent template to a child template which is very powerful. Templates can be evaluated by using the template selector and calling the .tmpl() function on the jQuery matched set as shown above or you can use the static $.tmpl() function to provide a template as a string. This allows you to dynamically create templates in code or – more likely – to load templates from the server via AJAX calls. In short there are options The above shows off some of the basics, but there’s much for functionality available in the template engine. Check the documentation link for more information and links to additional examples. The plug-in download also comes with a number of examples that demonstrate functionality. jQuery templates will become a native component in jQuery Core 1.5, so it’s definitely worthwhile checking out the engine today and get familiar with this interface. As much as I’m stoked about templating becoming part of the jQuery core because it’s such an integral part of many applications, there are also a couple shortcomings in the current incarnation: Lack of Error Handling Currently if you embed an expression that is invalid it’s simply not rendered. There’s no error rendered into the template nor do the various  template functions throw errors which leaves finding of bugs as a runtime exercise. I would like some mechanism – optional if possible – to be able to get error info of what is failing in a template when it’s rendered. No String Output Templates are always rendered into a jQuery matched set and there’s no way that I can see to directly render to a string. String output can be useful for debugging as well as opening up templating for creating non-HTML string output. Limited JavaScript Access Unlike John Resig’s original MicroTemplating Engine which was entirely based on JavaScript code generation these templates are limited to a few structured commands that can ‘execute’. There’s no code execution inside of script code which means you’re limited to calling expressions available in global objects or the data item passed in. This may or may not be a big deal depending on the complexity of your template logic. Error handling has been discussed quite a bit and it’s likely there will be some solution to that particualar issue by the time jQuery templates ship. The others are relatively minor issues but something to think about anyway. jQuery Data Link http://api.jquery.com/category/plugins/data-link/ jQuery Data Link provides the ability to do two-way data binding between input controls and an underlying object’s properties. The typical scenario is linking a textbox to a property of an object and have the object updated when the text in the textbox is changed and have the textbox change when the value in the object or the entire object changes. The plug-in also supports converter functions that can be applied to provide the conversion logic from string to some other value typically necessary for mapping things like textbox string input to say a number property and potentially applying additional formatting and calculations. In theory this sounds great, however in reality this plug-in has some serious usability issues. Using the plug-in you can do things like the following to bind data: person = { firstName: "rick", lastName: "strahl"}; $(document).ready( function() { // provide for two-way linking of inputs $("form").link(person); // bind to non-input elements explicitly $("#objFirst").link(person, { firstName: { name: "objFirst", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); $("#objLast").link(person, { lastName: { name: "objLast", convertBack: function (value, source, target) { $(target).text(value); } } }); }); This code hooks up two-way linking between a couple of textboxes on the page and the person object. The first line in the .ready() handler provides mapping of object to form field with the same field names as properties on the object. Note that .link() does NOT bind items into the textboxes when you call .link() – changes are mapped only when values change and you move out of the field. Strike one. The two following commands allow manual binding of values to specific DOM elements which is effectively a one-way bind. You specify the object and a then an explicit mapping where name is an ID in the document. The converter is required to explicitly assign the value to the element. Strike two. You can also detect changes to the underlying object and cause updates to the input elements bound. Unfortunately the syntax to do this is not very natural as you have to rely on the jQuery data object. To update an object’s properties and get change notification looks like this: function updateFirstName() { $(person).data("firstName", person.firstName + " (code updated)"); } This works fine in causing any linked fields to be updated. In the bindings above both the firstName input field and objFirst DOM element gets updated. But the syntax requires you to use a jQuery .data() call for each property change to ensure that the changes are tracked properly. Really? Sure you’re binding through multiple layers of abstraction now but how is that better than just manually assigning values? The code savings (if any) are going to be minimal. As much as I would like to have a WPF/Silverlight/Observable-like binding mechanism in client script, this plug-in doesn’t help much towards that goal in its current incarnation. While you can bind values, the ‘binder’ is too limited to be really useful. If initial values can’t be assigned from the mappings you’re going to end up duplicating work loading the data using some other mechanism. There’s no easy way to re-bind data with a different object altogether since updates trigger only through the .data members. Finally, any non-input elements have to be bound via code that’s fairly verbose and frankly may be more voluminous than what you might write by hand for manual binding and unbinding. Two way binding can be very useful but it has to be easy and most importantly natural. If it’s more work to hook up a binding than writing a couple of lines to do binding/unbinding this sort of thing helps very little in most scenarios. In talking to some of the developers the feature set for Data Link is not complete and they are still soliciting input for features and functionality. If you have ideas on how you want this feature to be more useful get involved and post your recommendations. As it stands, it looks to me like this component needs a lot of love to become useful. For this component to really provide value, bindings need to be able to be refreshed easily and work at the object level, not just the property level. It seems to me we would be much better served by a model binder object that can perform these binding/unbinding tasks in bulk rather than a tool where each link has to be mapped first. I also find the choice of creating a jQuery plug-in questionable – it seems a standalone object – albeit one that relies on the jQuery library – would provide a more intuitive interface than the current forcing of options onto a plug-in style interface. Out of the three Microsoft created components this is by far the least useful and least polished implementation at this point. jQuery Globalization http://github.com/jquery/jquery-global Globalization in JavaScript applications often gets short shrift and part of the reason for this is that natively in JavaScript there’s little support for formatting and parsing of numbers and dates. There are a number of JavaScript libraries out there that provide some support for globalization, but most are limited to a particular portion of globalization. As .NET developers we’re fairly spoiled by the richness of APIs provided in the framework and when dealing with client development one really notices the lack of these features. While you may not necessarily need to localize your application the globalization plug-in also helps with some basic tasks for non-localized applications: Dealing with formatting and parsing of dates and time values. Dates in particular are problematic in JavaScript as there are no formatters whatsoever except the .toString() method which outputs a verbose and next to useless long string. With the globalization plug-in you get a good chunk of the formatting and parsing functionality that the .NET framework provides on the server. You can write code like the following for example to format numbers and dates: var date = new Date(); var output = $.format(date, "MMM. dd, yy") + "\r\n" + $.format(date, "d") + "\r\n" + // 10/25/2010 $.format(1222.32213, "N2") + "\r\n" + $.format(1222.33, "c") + "\r\n"; alert(output); This becomes even more useful if you combine it with templates which can also include any JavaScript expressions. Assuming the globalization plug-in is loaded you can create template expressions that use the $.format function. Here’s the template I used earlier for the stock quote again with a couple of formats applied: <script id="stockTemplate" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div id="divStockQuote" class="errordisplay" style="width: 500px;"> <div class="label">Company:</div><div><b>${Company}(${Symbol})</b></div> <div class="label">Last Price:</div> <div>${$.format(LastPrice,"N2")}</div> <div class="label">Net Change:</div><div> {{if NetChange > 0}} <b style="color:green" >${NetChange}</b> {{else}} <b style="color:red" >${NetChange}</b> {{/if}} </div> <div class="label">Last Update:</div> <div>${$.format(LastQuoteTime,"MMM dd, yyyy")}</div> </div> </script> There are also parsing methods that can parse dates and numbers from strings into numbers easily: alert($.parseDate("25.10.2010")); alert($.parseInt("12.222")); // de-DE uses . for thousands separators As you can see culture specific options are taken into account when parsing. The globalization plugin provides rich support for a variety of locales: Get a list of all available cultures Query cultures for culture items (like currency symbol, separators etc.) Localized string names for all calendar related items (days of week, months) Generated off of .NET’s supported locales In short you get much of the same functionality that you already might be using in .NET on the server side. The plugin includes a huge number of locales and an Globalization.all.min.js file that contains the text defaults for each of these locales as well as small locale specific script files that define each of the locale specific settings. It’s highly recommended that you NOT use the huge globalization file that includes all locales, but rather add script references to only those languages you explicitly care about. Overall this plug-in is a welcome helper. Even if you use it with a single locale (like en-US) and do no other localization, you’ll gain solid support for number and date formatting which is a vital feature of many applications. Changes for Microsoft It’s good to see Microsoft coming out of its shell and away from the ‘not-built-here’ mentality that has been so pervasive in the past. It’s especially good to see it applied to jQuery – a technology that has stood in drastic contrast to Microsoft’s own internal efforts in terms of design, usage model and… popularity. It’s great to see that Microsoft is paying attention to what customers prefer to use and supporting the customer sentiment – even if it meant drastically changing course of policy and moving into a more open and sharing environment in the process. The additional jQuery support that has been introduced in the last two years certainly has made lives easier for many developers on the ASP.NET platform. It’s also nice to see Microsoft submitting proposals through the standard jQuery process of plug-ins and getting accepted for various very useful projects. Certainly the jQuery Templates plug-in is going to be very useful to many especially since it will be baked into the jQuery core in jQuery 1.5. I hope we see more of this type of involvement from Microsoft in the future. Kudos!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery  ASP.NET  

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• HTG Reviews the CODE Keyboard: Old School Construction Meets Modern Amenities

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the smooth and crisp action of a well built keyboard. If you’re tired of  mushy keys and cheap feeling keyboards, a well-constructed mechanical keyboard is a welcome respite from the $10 keyboard that came with your computer. Read on as we put the CODE mechanical keyboard through the paces. What is the CODE Keyboard? The CODE keyboard is a collaboration between manufacturer WASD Keyboards and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror (the guy behind the Stack Exchange network and Discourse forum software). Atwood’s focus was incorporating the best of traditional mechanical keyboards and the best of modern keyboard usability improvements. In his own words: The world is awash in terrible, crappy, no name how-cheap-can-we-make-it keyboards. There are a few dozen better mechanical keyboard options out there. I’ve owned and used at least six different expensive mechanical keyboards, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, either: they didn’t have backlighting, were ugly, had terrible design, or were missing basic functions like media keys. That’s why I originally contacted Weyman Kwong of WASD Keyboards way back in early 2012. I told him that the state of keyboards was unacceptable to me as a geek, and I proposed a partnership wherein I was willing to work with him to do whatever it takes to produce a truly great mechanical keyboard. Even the ardent skeptic who questions whether Atwood has indeed created a truly great mechanical keyboard certainly can’t argue with the position he starts from: there are so many agonizingly crappy keyboards out there. Even worse, in our opinion, is that unless you’re a typist of a certain vintage there’s a good chance you’ve never actually typed on a really nice keyboard. Those that didn’t start using computers until the mid-to-late 1990s most likely have always typed on modern mushy-key keyboards and never known the joy of typing on a really responsive and crisp mechanical keyboard. Is our preference for and love of mechanical keyboards shining through here? Good. We’re not even going to try and hide it. So where does the CODE keyboard stack up in pantheon of keyboards? Read on as we walk you through the simple setup and our experience using the CODE. Setting Up the CODE Keyboard Although the setup of the CODE keyboard is essentially plug and play, there are two distinct setup steps that you likely haven’t had to perform on a previous keyboard. Both highlight the degree of care put into the keyboard and the amount of customization available. Inside the box you’ll find the keyboard, a micro USB cable, a USB-to-PS2 adapter, and a tool which you may be unfamiliar with: a key puller. We’ll return to the key puller in a moment. Unlike the majority of keyboards on the market, the cord isn’t permanently affixed to the keyboard. What does this mean for you? Aside from the obvious need to plug it in yourself, it makes it dead simple to repair your own keyboard cord if it gets attacked by a pet, mangled in a mechanism on your desk, or otherwise damaged. It also makes it easy to take advantage of the cable routing channels in on the underside of the keyboard to  route your cable exactly where you want it. While we’re staring at the underside of the keyboard, check out those beefy rubber feet. By peripherals standards they’re huge (and there is six instead of the usual four). Once you plunk the keyboard down where you want it, it might as well be glued down the rubber feet work so well. After you’ve secured the cable and adjusted it to your liking, there is one more task  before plug the keyboard into the computer. On the bottom left-hand side of the keyboard, you’ll find a small recess in the plastic with some dip switches inside: The dip switches are there to switch hardware functions for various operating systems, keyboard layouts, and to enable/disable function keys. By toggling the dip switches you can change the keyboard from QWERTY mode to Dvorak mode and Colemak mode, the two most popular alternative keyboard configurations. You can also use the switches to enable Mac-functionality (for Command/Option keys). One of our favorite little toggles is the SW3 dip switch: you can disable the Caps Lock key; goodbye accidentally pressing Caps when you mean to press Shift. You can review the entire dip switch configuration chart here. The quick-start for Windows users is simple: double check that all the switches are in the off position (as seen in the photo above) and then simply toggle SW6 on to enable the media and backlighting function keys (this turns the menu key on the keyboard into a function key as typically found on laptop keyboards). After adjusting the dip switches to your liking, plug the keyboard into an open USB port on your computer (or into your PS/2 port using the included adapter). Design, Layout, and Backlighting The CODE keyboard comes in two flavors, a traditional 87-key layout (no number pad) and a traditional 104-key layout (number pad on the right hand side). We identify the layout as traditional because, despite some modern trapping and sneaky shortcuts, the actual form factor of the keyboard from the shape of the keys to the spacing and position is as classic as it comes. You won’t have to learn a new keyboard layout and spend weeks conditioning yourself to a smaller than normal backspace key or a PgUp/PgDn pair in an unconventional location. Just because the keyboard is very conventional in layout, however, doesn’t mean you’ll be missing modern amenities like media-control keys. The following additional functions are hidden in the F11, F12, Pause button, and the 2×6 grid formed by the Insert and Delete rows: keyboard illumination brightness, keyboard illumination on/off, mute, and then the typical play/pause, forward/backward, stop, and volume +/- in Insert and Delete rows, respectively. While we weren’t sure what we’d think of the function-key system at first (especially after retiring a Microsoft Sidewinder keyboard with a huge and easily accessible volume knob on it), it took less than a day for us to adapt to using the Fn key, located next to the right Ctrl key, to adjust our media playback on the fly. Keyboard backlighting is a largely hit-or-miss undertaking but the CODE keyboard nails it. Not only does it have pleasant and easily adjustable through-the-keys lighting but the key switches the keys themselves are attached to are mounted to a steel plate with white paint. Enough of the light reflects off the interior cavity of the keys and then diffuses across the white plate to provide nice even illumination in between the keys. Highlighting the steel plate beneath the keys brings us to the actual construction of the keyboard. It’s rock solid. The 87-key model, the one we tested, is 2.0 pounds. The 104-key is nearly a half pound heavier at 2.42 pounds. Between the steel plate, the extra-thick PCB board beneath the steel plate, and the thick ABS plastic housing, the keyboard has very solid feel to it. Combine that heft with the previously mentioned thick rubber feet and you have a tank-like keyboard that won’t budge a millimeter during normal use. Examining The Keys This is the section of the review the hardcore typists and keyboard ninjas have been waiting for. We’ve looked at the layout of the keyboard, we’ve looked at the general construction of it, but what about the actual keys? There are a wide variety of keyboard construction techniques but the vast majority of modern keyboards use a rubber-dome construction. The key is floated in a plastic frame over a rubber membrane that has a little rubber dome for each key. The press of the physical key compresses the rubber dome downwards and a little bit of conductive material on the inside of the dome’s apex connects with the circuit board. Despite the near ubiquity of the design, many people dislike it. The principal complaint is that dome keyboards require a complete compression to register a keystroke; keyboard designers and enthusiasts refer to this as “bottoming out”. In other words, the register the “b” key, you need to completely press that key down. As such it slows you down and requires additional pressure and movement that, over the course of tens of thousands of keystrokes, adds up to a whole lot of wasted time and fatigue. The CODE keyboard features key switches manufactured by Cherry, a company that has manufactured key switches since the 1960s. Specifically the CODE features Cherry MX Clear switches. These switches feature the same classic design of the other Cherry switches (such as the MX Blue and Brown switch lineups) but they are significantly quieter (yes this is a mechanical keyboard, but no, your neighbors won’t think you’re firing off a machine gun) as they lack the audible click found in most Cherry switches. This isn’t to say that they keyboard doesn’t have a nice audible key press sound when the key is fully depressed, but that the key mechanism isn’t doesn’t create a loud click sound when triggered. One of the great features of the Cherry MX clear is a tactile “bump” that indicates the key has been compressed enough to register the stroke. For touch typists the very subtle tactile feedback is a great indicator that you can move on to the next stroke and provides a welcome speed boost. Even if you’re not trying to break any word-per-minute records, that little bump when pressing the key is satisfying. The Cherry key switches, in addition to providing a much more pleasant typing experience, are also significantly more durable than dome-style key switch. Rubber dome switch membrane keyboards are typically rated for 5-10 million contacts whereas the Cherry mechanical switches are rated for 50 million contacts. You’d have to write the next War and Peace  and follow that up with A Tale of Two Cities: Zombie Edition, and then turn around and transcribe them both into a dozen different languages to even begin putting a tiny dent in the lifecycle of this keyboard. So what do the switches look like under the classicly styled keys? You can take a look yourself with the included key puller. Slide the loop between the keys and then gently beneath the key you wish to remove: Wiggle the key puller gently back and forth while exerting a gentle upward pressure to pop the key off; You can repeat the process for every key, if you ever find yourself needing to extract piles of cat hair, Cheeto dust, or other foreign objects from your keyboard. There it is, the naked switch, the source of that wonderful crisp action with the tactile bump on each keystroke. The last feature worthy of a mention is the N-key rollover functionality of the keyboard. This is a feature you simply won’t find on non-mechanical keyboards and even gaming keyboards typically only have any sort of key roller on the high-frequency keys like WASD. So what is N-key rollover and why do you care? On a typical mass-produced rubber-dome keyboard you cannot simultaneously press more than two keys as the third one doesn’t register. PS/2 keyboards allow for unlimited rollover (in other words you can’t out type the keyboard as all of your keystrokes, no matter how fast, will register); if you use the CODE keyboard with the PS/2 adapter you gain this ability. If you don’t use the PS/2 adapter and use the native USB, you still get 6-key rollover (and the CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT don’t count towards the 6) so realistically you still won’t be able to out type the computer as even the more finger twisting keyboard combos and high speed typing will still fall well within the 6-key rollover. The rollover absolutely doesn’t matter if you’re a slow hunt-and-peck typist, but if you’ve read this far into a keyboard review there’s a good chance that you’re a serious typist and that kind of quality construction and high-number key rollover is a fantastic feature.  The Good, The Bad, and the Verdict We’ve put the CODE keyboard through the paces, we’ve played games with it, typed articles with it, left lengthy comments on Reddit, and otherwise used and abused it like we would any other keyboard. The Good: The construction is rock solid. In an emergency, we’re confident we could use the keyboard as a blunt weapon (and then resume using it later in the day with no ill effect on the keyboard). The Cherry switches are an absolute pleasure to type on; the Clear variety found in the CODE keyboard offer a really nice middle-ground between the gun-shot clack of a louder mechanical switch and the quietness of a lesser-quality dome keyboard without sacrificing quality. Touch typists will love the subtle tactile bump feedback. Dip switch system makes it very easy for users on different systems and with different keyboard layout needs to switch between operating system and keyboard layouts. If you’re investing a chunk of change in a keyboard it’s nice to know you can take it with you to a different operating system or “upgrade” it to a new layout if you decide to take up Dvorak-style typing. The backlighting is perfect. You can adjust it from a barely-visible glow to a blazing light-up-the-room brightness. Whatever your intesity preference, the white-coated steel backplate does a great job diffusing the light between the keys. You can easily remove the keys for cleaning (or to rearrange the letters to support a new keyboard layout). The weight of the unit combined with the extra thick rubber feet keep it planted exactly where you place it on the desk. The Bad: While you’re getting your money’s worth, the $150 price tag is a shock when compared to the $20-60 price tags you find on lower-end keyboards. People used to large dedicated media keys independent of the traditional key layout (such as the large buttons and volume controls found on many modern keyboards) might be off put by the Fn-key style media controls on the CODE. The Verdict: The keyboard is clearly and heavily influenced by the needs of serious typists. Whether you’re a programmer, transcriptionist, or just somebody that wants to leave the lengthiest article comments the Internet has ever seen, the CODE keyboard offers a rock solid typing experience. Yes, $150 isn’t pocket change, but the quality of the CODE keyboard is so high and the typing experience is so enjoyable, you’re easily getting ten times the value you’d get out of purchasing a lesser keyboard. Even compared to other mechanical keyboards on the market, like the Das Keyboard, you’re still getting more for your money as other mechanical keyboards don’t come with the lovely-to-type-on Cherry MX Clear switches, back lighting, and hardware-based operating system keyboard layout switching. If it’s in your budget to upgrade your keyboard (especially if you’ve been slogging along with a low-end rubber-dome keyboard) there’s no good reason to not pickup a CODE keyboard. Key animation courtesy of Geekhack.org user Lethal Squirrel.       

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• Using PHP OCI8 with 32-bit PHP on Windows 64-bit

  - by christopher.jones

  The world migration from 32-bit to 64-bit operating systems is gaining pace. However I've seen a couple of customers having difficulty with the PHP OCI8 extension and Oracle DB on Windows 64-bit platforms. The errors vary depending how PHP is run. They may appear in the Apache or PHP log: Unable to load dynamic library 'C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\ext\php_oci8_11g.dll' - %1 is not a valid Win32 application. or Warning oci_connect(): OCIEnvNlsCreate() failed. There is something wrong with your system - please check that PATH includes the directory with Oracle Instant Client libraries Other than IIS permission issues a common cause seems to be trying to use PHP with libraries from an Oracle 64-bit database on the same machine. There is currently no 64-bit version of PHP on http://php.net/ so there is a library mismatch. A solution is to install Oracle Instant Client 32-bit and make sure that PHP uses these libraries, while not interferring with the 64-bit database on the same machine. Warning: The following hacky steps come untested from a Linux user: Unzip Oracle Instant Client 32-bit and move it to C:\WINDOWS\SYSWOW64\INSTANTCLIENT_11_2. You may need to do this in a console with elevated permissions. Edit your PATH environment variable and insert C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\INSTANTCLIENT_11_2 in the directory list before the entry for the Oracle Home library. Windows makes it so all 32-bit applications that reference C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 actually see the contents of the C:\WINDOWS\SYSWOW64 directory. Your 64-bit database won't find an Instant Client in the real, physical C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory and will continue to use the database libraries. Some of our Windows team are concerned about this hack and prefer a more "correct" solution that (i) doesn't require changing the Windows system directory (ii) doesn't add to the "memory" burden about what was configured on the system (iii) works when there are multiple database versions installed. The solution is to write a script which will set the 64-bit (or 32-bit) Oracle libraries in the path as needed before invoking the relevant bit-ness application. This does have a weakness when the application is started as a service. As a footnote: If you don't have a local database and simply need to have 32-bit and 64-bit Instant Client accessible at the same time, try the "symbolic" link approach covered in the hack in this OTN forum thread. Reminder warning: This blog post came untested from a Linux user.

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• Dividing web.config into multiple files in asp.net

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  When you are having different people working on one project remotely you will get some problem with web.config, as everybody was having different version of web.config. So at that time once you check in your web.config with your latest changes the other people have to get latest that web.config and made some specific changes as per their local environment. Most of people who have worked things from remotely has faced that problem. I think most common example would be connection string and app settings changes. For this kind of situation this will be a best solution. We can divide particular section of web.config into the multiple files. For example we could have separate ConnectionStrings.config file for connection strings and AppSettings.config file for app settings file. Most of people does not know that there is attribute called ‘configSource’ where we can  define the path of external config file and it will load that section from that external file. Just like below. <configuration> <appSettings configSource="AppSettings.config"/> <connectionStrings configSource="ConnectionStrings.config"/> </configuration> And you could have your ConnectionStrings.config file like following. <connectionStrings> <add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=(LocalDb)\v11.0;Initial Catalog=aspnet-WebApplication1-20120523114732;Integrated Security=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> </connectionStrings> Same way you have another AppSettings.Config file like following. <appSettings> <add key="aspnet:UseTaskFriendlySynchronizationContext" value="true" /> <add key="ValidationSettings:UnobtrusiveValidationMode" value="WebForms" /> </appSettings> That's it. Hope you like this post. Stay tuned for more..

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• Creating Custom Ajax Control Toolkit Controls

  - by Stephen Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to explain how you can extend the Ajax Control Toolkit with custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. I describe how you can create the two halves of an Ajax Control Toolkit control: the server-side control extender and the client-side control behavior. Finally, I explain how you can use the new Ajax Control Toolkit control in a Web Forms page. At the end of this blog entry, there is a link to download a Visual Studio 2010 solution which contains the code for two Ajax Control Toolkit controls: SampleExtender and PopupHelpExtender. The SampleExtender contains the minimum skeleton for creating a new Ajax Control Toolkit control. You can use the SampleExtender as a starting point for your custom Ajax Control Toolkit controls. The PopupHelpExtender control is a super simple custom Ajax Control Toolkit control. This control extender displays a help message when you start typing into a TextBox control. The animated GIF below demonstrates what happens when you click into a TextBox which has been extended with the PopupHelp extender. Here’s a sample of a Web Forms page which uses the control: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowPopupHelp.aspx.cs" Inherits="MyACTControls.Web.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html > <head runat="server"> <title>Show Popup Help</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblSSN" Text="SSN:" AssociatedControlID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" /> <%-- Social Security Number --%> <asp:Label ID="lblPhone" Text="Phone Number:" AssociatedControlID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtPhone" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph2" TargetControlID="txtPhone" HelpText="Please enter your phone number." runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> In the page above, the PopupHelp extender is used to extend the functionality of the two TextBox controls. When focus is given to a TextBox control, the popup help message is displayed. An Ajax Control Toolkit control extender consists of two parts: a server-side control extender and a client-side behavior. For example, the PopupHelp extender consists of a server-side PopupHelpExtender control (PopupHelpExtender.cs) and a client-side PopupHelp behavior JavaScript script (PopupHelpBehavior.js). Over the course of this blog entry, I describe how you can create both the server-side extender and the client-side behavior. Writing the Server-Side Code Creating a Control Extender You create a control extender by creating a class that inherits from the abstract ExtenderControlBase class. For example, the PopupHelpExtender control is declared like this: public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The ExtenderControlBase class is part of the Ajax Control Toolkit. This base class contains all of the common server properties and methods of every Ajax Control Toolkit extender control. The ExtenderControlBase class inherits from the ExtenderControl class. The ExtenderControl class is a standard class in the ASP.NET framework located in the System.Web.UI namespace. This class is responsible for generating a client-side behavior. The class generates a call to the Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method which looks like this: <script type="text/javascript"> $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); }); </script> The JavaScript $create() method is part of the Microsoft Ajax Library. The reference for this method can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397487.aspx This method accepts the following parameters: type – The type of client behavior to create. The $create() method above creates a client PopupHelpBehavior. Properties – Enables you to pass initial values for the properties of the client behavior. For example, the initial value of the HelpText property. This is how server property values are passed to the client. Events – Enables you to pass client-side event handlers to the client behavior. References – Enables you to pass references to other client components. Element – The DOM element associated with the client behavior. This will be the DOM element associated with the control being extended such as the txtSSN TextBox. The $create() method is generated for you automatically. You just need to focus on writing the server-side control extender class. Specifying the Target Control All Ajax Control Toolkit extenders inherit a TargetControlID property from the ExtenderControlBase class. This property, the TargetControlID property, points at the control that the extender control extends. For example, the Ajax Control Toolkit TextBoxWatermark control extends a TextBox, the ConfirmButton control extends a Button, and the Calendar control extends a TextBox. You must indicate the type of control which your extender is extending. You indicate the type of control by adding a [TargetControlType] attribute to your control. For example, the PopupHelp extender is declared like this: [TargetControlType(typeof(TextBox))] public class PopupHelpExtender: ExtenderControlBase { } The PopupHelp extender can be used to extend a TextBox control. If you try to use the PopupHelp extender with another type of control then an exception is thrown. If you want to create an extender control which can be used with any type of ASP.NET control (Button, DataView, TextBox or whatever) then use the following attribute: [TargetControlType(typeof(Control))] Decorating Properties with Attributes If you decorate a server-side property with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute then the value of the property gets passed to the control’s client-side behavior. The value of the property gets passed to the client through the $create() method discussed above. The PopupHelp control contains the following HelpText property: [ExtenderControlProperty] [RequiredProperty] public string HelpText { get { return GetPropertyValue("HelpText", "Help Text"); } set { SetPropertyValue("HelpText", value); } } The HelpText property determines the help text which pops up when you start typing into a TextBox control. Because the HelpText property is decorated with the [ExtenderControlProperty] attribute, any value assigned to this property on the server is passed to the client automatically. For example, if you declare the PopupHelp extender in a Web Form page like this: <asp:TextBox ID="txtSSN" runat="server" /> <act:PopupHelpExtender id="ph1" TargetControlID="txtSSN" HelpText="Please enter your social security number." runat="server" />   Then the PopupHelpExtender renders the call to the the following Microsoft Ajax Library $create() method: $create(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, {"HelpText":"Please enter your social security number.","id":"ph1"}, null, null, $get("txtSSN")); You can see this call to the JavaScript $create() method by selecting View Source in your browser. This call to the $create() method calls a method named set_HelpText() automatically and passes the value “Please enter your social security number”. There are several attributes which you can use to decorate server-side properties including: ExtenderControlProperty – When a property is marked with this attribute, the value of the property is passed to the client automatically. ExtenderControlEvent – When a property is marked with this attribute, the property represents a client event handler. Required – When a value is not assigned to this property on the server, an error is displayed. DefaultValue – The default value of the property passed to the client. ClientPropertyName – The name of the corresponding property in the JavaScript behavior. For example, the server-side property is named ID (uppercase) and the client-side property is named id (lower-case). IDReferenceProperty – Applied to properties which refer to the IDs of other controls. URLProperty – Calls ResolveClientURL() to convert from a server-side URL to a URL which can be used on the client. ElementReference – Returns a reference to a DOM element by performing a client $get(). The WebResource, ClientResource, and the RequiredScript Attributes The PopupHelp extender uses three embedded resources named PopupHelpBehavior.js, PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js, and PopupHelpBehavior.css. The first two files are JavaScript files and the final file is a Cascading Style sheet file. These files are compiled as embedded resources. You don’t need to mark them as embedded resources in your Visual Studio solution because they get added to the assembly when the assembly is compiled by a build task. You can see that these files get embedded into the MyACTControls assembly by using Red Gate’s .NET Reflector tool: In order to use these files with the PopupHelp extender, you need to work with both the WebResource and the ClientScriptResource attributes. The PopupHelp extender includes the following three WebResource attributes. [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js", "text/javascript")] [assembly: WebResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css", "text/css", PerformSubstitution = true)] These WebResource attributes expose the embedded resource from the assembly so that they can be accessed by using the ScriptResource.axd or WebResource.axd handlers. The first parameter passed to the WebResource attribute is the name of the embedded resource and the second parameter is the content type of the embedded resource. The PopupHelp extender also includes the following ClientScriptResource and ClientCssResource attributes: [ClientScriptResource("MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior", "PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.js")] [ClientCssResource("PopupHelp.PopupHelpBehavior.css")] Including these attributes causes the PopupHelp extender to request these resources when you add the PopupHelp extender to a page. If you open View Source in a browser which uses the PopupHelp extender then you will see the following link for the Cascading Style Sheet file: <link href="/WebResource.axd?d=0uONMsWXUuEDG-pbJHAC1kuKiIMteQFkYLmZdkgv7X54TObqYoqVzU4mxvaa4zpn5H9ch0RDwRYKwtO8zM5mKgO6C4WbrbkWWidKR07LD1d4n4i_uNB1mHEvXdZu2Ae5mDdVNDV53znnBojzCzwvSw2&amp;t=634417392021676003" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> You also will see the following script include for the JavaScript file: <script src="/ScriptResource.axd?d=pIS7xcGaqvNLFBvExMBQSp_0xR3mpDfS0QVmmyu1aqDUjF06TrW1jVDyXNDMtBHxpRggLYDvgFTWOsrszflZEDqAcQCg-hDXjun7ON0Ol7EXPQIdOe1GLMceIDv3OeX658-tTq2LGdwXhC1-dE7_6g2&amp;t=ffffffff88a33b59" type="text/javascript"></script> The JavaScrpt file returned by this request to ScriptResource.axd contains the combined scripts for any and all Ajax Control Toolkit controls in a page. By default, the Ajax Control Toolkit combines all of the JavaScript files required by a page into a single JavaScript file. Combining files in this way really speeds up how quickly all of the JavaScript files get delivered from the web server to the browser. So, by default, there will be only one ScriptResource.axd include for all of the JavaScript files required by a page. If you want to disable Script Combining, and create separate links, then disable Script Combining like this: <act:ToolkitScriptManager ID="tsm" runat="server" CombineScripts="false" /> There is one more important attribute used by Ajax Control Toolkit extenders. The PopupHelp behavior uses the following two RequirdScript attributes to load the JavaScript files which are required by the PopupHelp behavior: [RequiredScript(typeof(CommonToolkitScripts), 0)] [RequiredScript(typeof(PopupExtender), 1)] The first parameter of the RequiredScript attribute represents either the string name of a JavaScript file or the type of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. The second parameter represents the order in which the JavaScript files are loaded (This second parameter is needed because .NET attributes are intrinsically unordered). In this case, the RequiredScript attribute will load the JavaScript files associated with the CommonToolkitScripts type and the JavaScript files associated with the PopupExtender in that order. The PopupHelp behavior depends on these JavaScript files. Writing the Client-Side Code The PopupHelp extender uses a client-side behavior written with the Microsoft Ajax Library. Here is the complete code for the client-side behavior: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); Sys.registerComponent(MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior, { name: "popupHelp" }); } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })();   In the following sections, we’ll discuss how this client-side behavior works. Wrapping the Behavior for the Script Loader The behavior is wrapped with the following script: (function () { // The unique name of the script registered with the // client script loader var scriptName = "PopupHelpBehavior"; function execute() { // Behavior Content } // execute if (window.Sys && Sys.loader) { Sys.loader.registerScript(scriptName, ["ExtendedBase", "ExtendedCommon"], execute); } else { execute(); } })(); This code is required by the Microsoft Ajax Library Script Loader. You need this code if you plan to use a behavior directly from client-side code and you want to use the Script Loader. If you plan to only use your code in the context of the Ajax Control Toolkit then you can leave out this code. Registering a JavaScript Namespace The PopupHelp behavior is declared within a namespace named MyACTControls. In the code above, this namespace is created with the following registerNamespace() method: Type.registerNamespace('MyACTControls'); JavaScript does not have any built-in way of creating namespaces to prevent naming conflicts. The Microsoft Ajax Library extends JavaScript with support for namespaces. You can learn more about the registerNamespace() method here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397723.aspx Creating the Behavior The actual Popup behavior is created with the following code. MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { /// <summary> /// A behavior which displays popup help for a textbox /// </summmary> /// <param name="element" type="Sys.UI.DomElement">The element to attach to</param> MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.initializeBase(this, [element]); this._textbox = Sys.Extended.UI.TextBoxWrapper.get_Wrapper(element); this._cssClass = "ajax__popupHelp"; this._popupBehavior = null; this._popupPosition = Sys.Extended.UI.PositioningMode.BottomLeft; this._popupDiv = null; this._helpText = "Help Text"; this._element$delegates = { focus: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onfocus), blur: Function.createDelegate(this, this._element_onblur) }; } MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { initialize: function () { MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.callBaseMethod(this, 'initialize'); // Add event handlers for focus and blur var element = this.get_element(); $addHandlers(element, this._element$delegates); }, _ensurePopup: function () { if (!this._popupDiv) { var element = this.get_element(); var id = this.get_id(); this._popupDiv = $common.createElementFromTemplate({ nodeName: "div", properties: { id: id + "_popupDiv" }, cssClasses: ["ajax__popupHelp"] }, element.parentNode); this._popupBehavior = new $create(Sys.Extended.UI.PopupBehavior, { parentElement: element }, {}, {}, this._popupDiv); this._popupBehavior.set_positioningMode(this._popupPosition); } }, get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, _element_onfocus: function (e) { this.show(); }, _element_onblur: function (e) { this.hide(); }, show: function () { this._popupBehavior.show(); }, hide: function () { if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.hide(); } }, dispose: function() { var element = this.get_element(); $clearHandlers(element); if (this._popupBehavior) { this._popupBehavior.dispose(); this._popupBehavior = null; } } }; The code above has two parts. The first part of the code is used to define the constructor function for the PopupHelp behavior. This is a factory method which returns an instance of a PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior = function (element) { } The second part of the code modified the prototype for the PopupHelp behavior: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.prototype = { } Any code which is particular to a single instance of the PopupHelp behavior should be placed in the constructor function. For example, the default value of the _helpText field is assigned in the constructor function: this._helpText = "Help Text"; Any code which is shared among all instances of the PopupHelp behavior should be added to the PopupHelp behavior’s prototype. For example, the public HelpText property is added to the prototype: get_HelpText: function () { return this._helpText; }, set_HelpText: function (value) { if (this._HelpText != value) { this._helpText = value; this._ensurePopup(); this._popupDiv.innerHTML = value; this.raisePropertyChanged("Text") } }, Registering a JavaScript Class After you create the PopupHelp behavior, you must register the behavior as a class by using the Microsoft Ajax registerClass() method like this: MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior.registerClass('MyACTControls.PopupHelpBehavior', Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase); This call to registerClass() registers PopupHelp behavior as a class which derives from the base Sys.Extended.UI.BehaviorBase class. Like the ExtenderControlBase class on the server side, the BehaviorBase class on the client side contains method used by every behavior. The documentation for the BehaviorBase class can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb311020.aspx The most important methods and properties of the BehaviorBase class are the following: dispose() – Use this method to clean up all resources used by your behavior. In the case of the PopupHelp behavior, the dispose() method is used to remote the event handlers created by the behavior and disposed the Popup behavior. get_element() -- Use this property to get the DOM element associated with the behavior. In other words, the DOM element which the behavior extends. get_id() – Use this property to the ID of the current behavior. initialize() – Use this method to initialize the behavior. This method is called after all of the properties are set by the $create() method. Creating Debug and Release Scripts You might have noticed that the PopupHelp behavior uses two scripts named PopupHelpBehavior.js and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js. However, you never create these two scripts. Instead, you only create a single script named PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js. The pre in PopupHelpBehavior.pre.js stands for preprocessor. When you build the Ajax Control Toolkit (or the sample Visual Studio Solution at the end of this blog entry), a build task named JSBuild generates the PopupHelpBehavior.js release script and PopupHelpBehavior.debug.js debug script automatically. The JSBuild preprocessor supports the following directives: #IF #ELSE #ENDIF #INCLUDE #LOCALIZE #DEFINE #UNDEFINE The preprocessor directives are used to mark code which should only appear in the debug version of the script. The directives are used extensively in the Microsoft Ajax Library. For example, the Microsoft Ajax Library Array.contains() method is created like this: $type.contains = function Array$contains(array, item) { //#if DEBUG var e = Function._validateParams(arguments, [ {name: "array", type: Array, elementMayBeNull: true}, {name: "item", mayBeNull: true} ]); if (e) throw e; //#endif return (indexOf(array, item) >= 0); } Notice that you add each of the preprocessor directives inside a JavaScript comment. The comment prevents Visual Studio from getting confused with its Intellisense. The release version, but not the debug version, of the PopupHelpBehavior script is also minified automatically by the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. The minifier is invoked by a build step in the project file. Conclusion The goal of this blog entry was to explain how you can create custom AJAX Control Toolkit controls. In the first part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the server-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control. You learned how to derive a new control from the ExtenderControlBase class and decorate its properties with the necessary attributes. Next, in the second part of this blog entry, you learned how to create the client-side portion of an Ajax Control Toolkit control by creating a client-side behavior with JavaScript. You learned how to use the methods of the Microsoft Ajax Library to extend your client behavior from the BehaviorBase class. Download the Custom ACT Starter Solution

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• Grounded in Dublin

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Friday's hands-on workshop in the Oracle office in Dublin was quite good fun for everybody - except for Mick who has just recognized that his Ryanair flight back to Cork has been canceled (So I hope you've returned home well!) and me as my flights back to Munich via London City had been canceled as well. It's always good to have somebody in the workshop from Air Lingus so I've got hourly information what's going in in the Irish airspace (and now I know that the system dealing with such situations is an well prepared Oracle database which runs just like a switch watch - Thanks again for all your support!!! Was great to talk to you!!!). But to be honest, there are worse places to be grounded for a few days than Dublin. At least it gave me the chance to do something which I never had time enough before when visiting Oracle Ireland: a bit of sightseeing. When I've realized that nothing seems to move over the weekend I started organizing my travel back yesterday. It was no fun at all because there's no single system to book such a travel. Figuring out all possibilities and options going back to Munich was the first challange. Irish Ferries webpage was moaning with all the unexpected load (currently it's fully down). Hotel booking websites showed vacancies in Holyhead but didn't let me book. And calling them just reveiled that there are no rooms left. Haven't stayed overnight in a train station for quite a while ;-) The website of VirginTrains puzzled me with offering a seat at an enormous price for a train ride from Holyhead to London Euston (Thanks, Sir Richard Branson!) just to tell me after I booked a ticket that there are no seats left (but I traveled German railsways a few weeks ago from Düsseldorf to Frankfurt sitting on the floor as well). Eurostar's website let me choose tickets through the tunnel to tell me in the final step that the ticket cannot be confirmed as there are no seats left - but the next check again showed bookable seats - must be a database from some other vendor which has no proper row level locking ... hm ...?! Finally the TGV page for the speed train to Stuttgart and then the ICE to Munich was not allowing searches for quite a while - but ultimately ... after 4.5 hours of searching, waiting, sending credit card information again and again ... So if you have a few spare fingers please keep them crossed :-) And good luck to all my colleagues traveling back from the Exadata training in Berlin. As Mike Appleyard, my colleague from the UK presales team wrote: "Dublin and Berlin aren't too bad a place to get stuck... ;-)"

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• PowerShell Script to Create PowerShell Profile

  - by Brian Jackett

  Utilizing a PowerShell profile can help any PowerShell user save time getting up and running with their work.  For those unfamiliar a PowerShell profile is a file you can store any PowerShell commands that you want to run when you fire up a PowerShell console (or ISE.)  In my typical profiles (example here) I load assemblies (like SharePoint 2007 DLL), set aliases, set environment variable values (such as max history), and perform other general customizations to make my work easier.  Below is a sample script that will check to see if a PowerShell profile (Console or ISE) exists and create it if not found.  The .ps1 script file version can also be downloaded from my SkyDrive here. Note: if downloading the .ps1 file, be sure you have enabled unsigned scripts to run on your machine as I have not signed mine.   $folderExists = test-path -path $Env:UserProfile\Documents\WindowsPowerShell if($folderExists -eq $false) { new-item -type directory -path $Env:UserProfile\Documents\WindowsPowerShell > $null echo "Containing folder for profile created at: $Env:UserProfile\Documents\WindowsPowerShell" }   $profileExists = test-path -path $profile if($profileExists -eq $false) { new-item -type file -path $profile > $null echo "Profile file created at: $profile" }     A few things to note while going through the above script. $Env:UserProfile represents the personal user folder (c:\documents and settings…. on older OSes like XP and c:\Users… on Win 7) so it adapts to whichever OS you are running but was tested against Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. “ > $null” sends the command to a null stream.  Essentially this is equivalent to DOS scripting of “@ECHO OFF” by suppressing echoing the command just run, but only for the specific command it is appended to.  I haven’t yet found a better way to accomplish command suppression, but this is definitely not required for the script to work. $profile represent a standard variable to the file path of the profile file.  It is dynamic based on whether you are running PowerShell Console or ISE.   Conclusion     In less than two weeks (Apr. 10th to be exact) I’ll be heading down to SharePoint Saturday Charlotte (SPSCLT) to give two presentations on using PowerShell with SharePoint.  Since I’ll be prepping a lot of material for PowerShell I thought it only appropriate to pass along this nice little script I recently created.  If you’ve never used a PowerShell profile this is a great chance to start using one.  If you’ve been using a profile before, perhaps you learned a trick or two to add to your toolbox.  For those of you in the Charlotte, NC area sign up for the SharePoint Saturday and see some great content and community with great folks.         -Frog Out

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• SQL SERVER – Copy Data from One Table to Another Table – SQL in Sixty Seconds #031 – Video

  - by pinaldave

  Copy data from one table to another table is one of the most requested questions on forums, Facebook and Twitter. The question has come in many formats and there are places I have seen developers are using cursor instead of this direct method. Earlier I have written the similar article a few years ago - SQL SERVER – Insert Data From One Table to Another Table – INSERT INTO SELECT – SELECT INTO TABLE. The article has been very popular and I have received many interesting and constructive comments. However there were two specific comments keep on ending up on my mailbox. 1) SQL Server AdventureWorks Samples Database does not have table I used in the example 2) If there is a video tutorial of the same example. After carefully thinking I decided to build a new set of the scripts for the example which are very similar to the old one as well video tutorial of the same. There was no better place than our SQL in Sixty Second Series to cover this interesting small concept. Let me know what you think of this video. Here is the updated script. -- Method 1 : INSERT INTO SELECT USE AdventureWorks2012 GO ----Create TestTable CREATE TABLE TestTable (FirstName VARCHAR(100), LastName VARCHAR(100)) ----INSERT INTO TestTable using SELECT INSERT INTO TestTable (FirstName, LastName) SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM Person.Person WHERE EmailPromotion = 2 ----Verify that Data in TestTable SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM TestTable ----Clean Up Database DROP TABLE TestTable GO --------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------- -- Method 2 : SELECT INTO USE AdventureWorks2012 GO ----Create new table and insert into table using SELECT INSERT SELECT FirstName, LastName INTO TestTable FROM Person.Person WHERE EmailPromotion = 2 ----Verify that Data in TestTable SELECT FirstName, LastName FROM TestTable ----Clean Up Database DROP TABLE TestTable GO Related Tips in SQL in Sixty Seconds: SQL SERVER – Insert Data From One Table to Another Table – INSERT INTO SELECT – SELECT INTO TABLE Powershell – Importing CSV File Into Database – Video SQL SERVER – 2005 – Export Data From SQL Server 2005 to Microsoft Excel Datasheet SQL SERVER – Import CSV File into Database Table Using SSIS SQL SERVER – Import CSV File Into SQL Server Using Bulk Insert – Load Comma Delimited File Into SQL Server SQL SERVER – 2005 – Generate Script with Data from Database – Database Publishing Wizard What would you like to see in the next SQL in Sixty Seconds video? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)   Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video Tagged: Excel

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• Display System Information on Your Desktop with Desktop Info

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you like to monitor your system but do not want a complicated app to do it with? If you love simplicity and easy configuration then join us as we look at Desktop Info. Desktop Info in Action Desktop Info comes in a zip file format so you will need to unzip the app, place it into an appropriate “Program Files Folder”, and create a shortcut. Do NOT delete the “Read Me File”…this will be extremely useful to you when you make changes to the “Configuration File”. Once you have everything set up you are ready to start Desktop Info up. This is the default layout and set of listings displayed when you start Desktop Info up for the first time. The font colors will be a mix of colors as seen here and the font size will perhaps be a bit small but those are very easy to change if desired. You can access the “Context Menu” directly over the “information area”…so no need to look for it in the “System Tray”. Notice that you can easily access that important “Read Me File” from here… The full contents of the configuration file (.ini file) are displayed here so that you can see exactly what kind of information can be displayed using the default listings. The first section is “Options”…you will most likely want to increase the font size while you are here. Then “Items”… If you are unhappy with any of the font colors in the “information area” this is where you can make the changes. You can turn information display items on or off here. And finally “Files, Registry, & Event Logs”. Here is our displayed information after a few tweaks in the configuration file. Very nice. Conclusion If you have been looking for a system information app that is simple and easy to set up then you should definitely give Desktop Info a try. Links Download Desktop Info Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Ask the Readers: What are Your Computer’s Hardware Specs?Allow Remote Control To Your Desktop On UbuntuHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCGet CPU / System Load Average on Ubuntu LinuxEnable Remote Desktop (VNC) on Kubuntu 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 Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday Generate Stunning Tag Clouds With Tagxedo Install, Remove and HIDE Fonts in Windows 7

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• An Introduction to Meteor

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog post is to give you a brief introduction to Meteor which is a framework for building Single Page Apps. In this blog entry, I provide a walkthrough of building a simple Movie database app. What is special about Meteor? Meteor has two jaw-dropping features: Live HTML – If you make any changes to the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or data on the server then every client shows the changes automatically without a browser refresh. For example, if you change the background color of a page to yellow then every open browser will show the new yellow background color without a refresh. Or, if you add a new movie to a collection of movies, then every open browser will display the new movie automatically. With Live HTML, users no longer need a refresh button. Changes to an application happen everywhere automatically without any effort. The Meteor framework handles all of the messy details of keeping all of the clients in sync with the server for you. Latency Compensation – When you modify data on the client, these modifications appear as if they happened on the server without any delay. For example, if you create a new movie then the movie appears instantly. However, that is all an illusion. In the background, Meteor updates the database with the new movie. If, for whatever reason, the movie cannot be added to the database then Meteor removes the movie from the client automatically. Latency compensation is extremely important for creating a responsive web application. You want the user to be able to make instant modifications in the browser and the framework to handle the details of updating the database without slowing down the user. Installing Meteor Meteor is licensed under the open-source MIT license and you can start building production apps with the framework right now. Be warned that Meteor is still in the “early preview” stage. It has not reached a 1.0 release. According to the Meteor FAQ, Meteor will reach version 1.0 in “More than a month, less than a year.” Don’t be scared away by that. You should be aware that, unlike most open source projects, Meteor has financial backing. The Meteor project received an $11.2 million round of financing from Andreessen Horowitz. So, it would be a good bet that this project will reach the 1.0 mark. And, if it doesn’t, the framework as it exists right now is still very powerful. Meteor runs on top of Node.js. You write Meteor apps by writing JavaScript which runs both on the client and on the server. You can build Meteor apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux (Although the support for Windows is still officially unofficial). If you want to install Meteor on Windows then download the MSI from the following URL: http://win.meteor.com/ If you want to install Meteor on Mac/Linux then run the following CURL command from your terminal: curl https://install.meteor.com | /bin/sh Meteor will install all of its dependencies automatically including Node.js. However, I recommend that you install Node.js before installing Meteor by installing Node.js from the following address: http://nodejs.org/ If you let Meteor install Node.js then Meteor won’t install NPM which is the standard package manager for Node.js. If you install Node.js and then you install Meteor then you get NPM automatically. Creating a New Meteor App To get a sense of how Meteor works, I am going to walk through the steps required to create a simple Movie database app. Our app will display a list of movies and contain a form for creating a new movie. The first thing that we need to do is create our new Meteor app. Open a command prompt/terminal window and execute the following command: Meteor create MovieApp After you execute this command, you should see something like the following: Follow the instructions: execute cd MovieApp to change to your MovieApp directory, and run the meteor command. Executing the meteor command starts Meteor on port 3000. Open up your favorite web browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 and you should see the default Meteor Hello World page: Open up your favorite development environment to see what the Meteor app looks like. Open the MovieApp folder which we just created. Here’s what the MovieApp looks like in Visual Studio 2012: Notice that our MovieApp contains three files named MovieApp.css, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.js. In other words, it contains a Cascading Style Sheet file, an HTML file, and a JavaScript file. Just for fun, let’s see how the Live HTML feature works. Open up multiple browsers and point each browser at http://localhost:3000. Now, open the MovieApp.html page and modify the text “Hello World!” to “Hello Cruel World!” and save the change. The text in all of the browsers should update automatically without a browser refresh. Pretty amazing, right? Controlling Where JavaScript Executes You write a Meteor app using JavaScript. Some of the JavaScript executes on the client (the browser) and some of the JavaScript executes on the server and some of the JavaScript executes in both places. For a super simple app, you can use the Meteor.isServer and Meteor.isClient properties to control where your JavaScript code executes. For example, the following JavaScript contains a section of code which executes on the server and a section of code which executes in the browser: if (Meteor.isClient) { console.log("Hello Browser!"); } if (Meteor.isServer) { console.log("Hello Server!"); } console.log("Hello Browser and Server!"); When you run the app, the message “Hello Browser!” is written to the browser JavaScript console. The message “Hello Server!” is written to the command/terminal window where you ran Meteor. Finally, the message “Hello Browser and Server!” is execute on both the browser and server and the message appears in both places. For simple apps, using Meteor.isClient and Meteor.isServer to control where JavaScript executes is fine. For more complex apps, you should create separate folders for your server and client code. Here are the folders which you can use in a Meteor app: · client – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the client. · server – This folder contains any JavaScript which executes only on the server. · common – This folder contains any JavaScript code which executes on both the client and server. · lib – This folder contains any JavaScript files which you want to execute before any other JavaScript files. · public – This folder contains static application assets such as images. For the Movie App, we need the client, server, and common folders. Delete the existing MovieApp.js, MovieApp.html, and MovieApp.css files. We will create new files in the right locations later in this walkthrough. Combining HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Files Meteor combines all of your JavaScript files, and all of your Cascading Style Sheet files, and all of your HTML files automatically. If you want to create one humongous JavaScript file which contains all of the code for your app then that is your business. However, if you want to build a more maintainable application, then you should break your JavaScript files into many separate JavaScript files and let Meteor combine them for you. Meteor also combines all of your HTML files into a single file. HTML files are allowed to have the following top-level elements: <head> — All <head> files are combined into a single <head> and served with the initial page load. <body> — All <body> files are combined into a single <body> and served with the initial page load. <template> — All <template> files are compiled into JavaScript templates. Because you are creating a single page app, a Meteor app typically will contain a single HTML file for the <head> and <body> content. However, a Meteor app typically will contain several template files. In other words, all of the interesting stuff happens within the <template> files. Displaying a List of Movies Let me start building the Movie App by displaying a list of movies. In order to display a list of movies, we need to create the following four files: · client\movies.html – Contains the HTML for the <head> and <body> of the page for the Movie app. · client\moviesTemplate.html – Contains the HTML template for displaying the list of movies. · client\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for supplying data to the moviesTemplate. · server\movies.js – Contains the JavaScript for seeding the database with movies. After you create these files, your folder structure should looks like this: Here’s what the client\movies.html file looks like: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} </body>   Notice that it contains <head> and <body> top-level elements. The <body> element includes the moviesTemplate with the syntax {{> moviesTemplate }}. The moviesTemplate is defined in the client/moviesTemplate.html file: <template name="moviesTemplate"> <ul> {{#each movies}} <li> {{title}} </li> {{/each}} </ul> </template> By default, Meteor uses the Handlebars templating library. In the moviesTemplate above, Handlebars is used to loop through each of the movies using {{#each}}…{{/each}} and display the title for each movie using {{title}}. The client\movies.js JavaScript file is used to bind the moviesTemplate to the Movies collection on the client. Here’s what this JavaScript file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; The Movies collection is a client-side proxy for the server-side Movies database collection. Whenever you want to interact with the collection of Movies stored in the database, you use the Movies collection instead of communicating back to the server. The moviesTemplate is bound to the Movies collection by assigning a function to the Template.moviesTemplate.movies property. The function simply returns all of the movies from the Movies collection. The final file which we need is the server-side server\movies.js file: // Declare server Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Seed the movie database with a few movies Meteor.startup(function () { if (Movies.find().count() == 0) { Movies.insert({ title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas" }); Movies.insert({ title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" }); Movies.insert({ title: "King Kong", director: "Jackson" }); } }); The server\movies.js file does two things. First, it declares the server-side Meteor Movies collection. When you declare a server-side Meteor collection, a collection is created in the MongoDB database associated with your Meteor app automatically (Meteor uses MongoDB as its database automatically). Second, the server\movies.js file seeds the Movies collection (MongoDB collection) with three movies. Seeding the database gives us some movies to look at when we open the Movies app in a browser. Creating New Movies Let me modify the Movies Database App so that we can add new movies to the database of movies. First, I need to create a new template file – named client\movieForm.html – which contains an HTML form for creating a new movie: <template name="movieForm"> <fieldset> <legend>Add New Movie</legend> <form> <div> <label> Title: <input id="title" /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Director: <input id="director" /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Add Movie" /> </div> </form> </fieldset> </template> In order for the new form to show up, I need to modify the client\movies.html file to include the movieForm.html template. Notice that I added {{> movieForm }} to the client\movies.html file: <head> <title>My Movie App</title> </head> <body> <h1>Movies</h1> {{> moviesTemplate }} {{> movieForm }} </body> After I make these modifications, our Movie app will display the form: The next step is to handle the submit event for the movie form. Below, I’ve modified the client\movies.js file so that it contains a handler for the submit event raised when you submit the form contained in the movieForm.html template: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Movies.insert(newMovie); } }; The Template.movieForm.events property contains an event map which maps event names to handlers. In this case, I am mapping the form submit event to an anonymous function which handles the event. In the event handler, I am first preventing a postback by calling e.preventDefault(). This is a single page app, no postbacks are allowed! Next, I am grabbing the new movie from the HTML form. I’m taking advantage of the template find() method to retrieve the form field values. Finally, I am calling Movies.insert() to insert the new movie into the Movies collection. Here, I am explicitly inserting the new movie into the client-side Movies collection. Meteor inserts the new movie into the server-side Movies collection behind the scenes. When Meteor inserts the movie into the server-side collection, the new movie is added to the MongoDB database associated with the Movies app automatically. If server-side insertion fails for whatever reasons – for example, your internet connection is lost – then Meteor will remove the movie from the client-side Movies collection automatically. In other words, Meteor takes care of keeping the client Movies collection and the server Movies collection in sync. If you open multiple browsers, and add movies, then you should notice that all of the movies appear on all of the open browser automatically. You don’t need to refresh individual browsers to update the client-side Movies collection. Meteor keeps everything synchronized between the browsers and server for you. Removing the Insecure Module To make it easier to develop and debug a new Meteor app, by default, you can modify the database directly from the client. For example, you can delete all of the data in the database by opening up your browser console window and executing multiple Movies.remove() commands. Obviously, enabling anyone to modify your database from the browser is not a good idea in a production application. Before you make a Meteor app public, you should first run the meteor remove insecure command from a command/terminal window: Running meteor remove insecure removes the insecure package from the Movie app. Unfortunately, it also breaks our Movie app. We’ll get an “Access denied” error in our browser console whenever we try to insert a new movie. No worries. I’ll fix this issue in the next section. Creating Meteor Methods By taking advantage of Meteor Methods, you can create methods which can be invoked on both the client and the server. By taking advantage of Meteor Methods you can: 1. Perform form validation on both the client and the server. For example, even if an evil hacker bypasses your client code, you can still prevent the hacker from submitting an invalid value for a form field by enforcing validation on the server. 2. Simulate database operations on the client but actually perform the operations on the server. Let me show you how we can modify our Movie app so it uses Meteor Methods to insert a new movie. First, we need to create a new file named common\methods.js which contains the definition of our Meteor Methods: Meteor.methods({ addMovie: function (newMovie) { // Perform form validation if (newMovie.title == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing title!"); } if (newMovie.director == "") { throw new Meteor.Error(413, "Missing director!"); } // Insert movie (simulate on client, do it on server) return Movies.insert(newMovie); } }); The addMovie() method is called from both the client and the server. This method does two things. First, it performs some basic validation. If you don’t enter a title or you don’t enter a director then an error is thrown. Second, the addMovie() method inserts the new movie into the Movies collection. When called on the client, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection just updates the collection. When called on the server, inserting the new movie into the Movies collection causes the database (MongoDB) to be updated with the new movie. You must add the common\methods.js file to the common folder so it will get executed on both the client and the server. Our folder structure now looks like this: We actually call the addMovie() method within our client code in the client\movies.js file. Here’s what the updated file looks like: // Declare client Movies collection Movies = new Meteor.Collection("movies"); // Bind moviesTemplate to Movies collection Template.moviesTemplate.movies = function () { return Movies.find(); }; // Handle movieForm events Template.movieForm.events = { 'submit': function (e, tmpl) { // Don't postback e.preventDefault(); // create the new movie var newMovie = { title: tmpl.find("#title").value, director: tmpl.find("#director").value }; // add the movie to the db Meteor.call( "addMovie", newMovie, function (err, result) { if (err) { alert("Could not add movie " + err.reason); } } ); } }; The addMovie() method is called – on both the client and the server – by calling the Meteor.call() method. This method accepts the following parameters: · The string name of the method to call. · The data to pass to the method (You can actually pass multiple params for the data if you like). · A callback function to invoke after the method completes. In the JavaScript code above, the addMovie() method is called with the new movie retrieved from the HTML form. The callback checks for an error. If there is an error then the error reason is displayed in an alert (please don’t use alerts for validation errors in a production app because they are ugly!). Summary The goal of this blog post was to provide you with a brief walk through of a simple Meteor app. I showed you how you can create a simple Movie Database app which enables you to display a list of movies and create new movies. I also explained why it is important to remove the Meteor insecure package from a production app. I showed you how to use Meteor Methods to insert data into the database instead of doing it directly from the client. I’m very impressed with the Meteor framework. The support for Live HTML and Latency Compensation are required features for many real world Single Page Apps but implementing these features by hand is not easy. Meteor makes it easy.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Concurrent Collections (1 of 3)

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again we consider some of the lesser known classes and keywords of C#.  In the next few weeks, we will discuss the concurrent collections and how they have changed the face of concurrent programming. This week’s post will begin with a general introduction and discuss the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T>.  Then in the following post we’ll discuss the ConcurrentDictionary<T> and ConcurrentBag<T>.  Finally, we shall close on the third post with a discussion of the BlockingCollection<T>. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see the index here. A brief history of collections In the beginning was the .NET 1.0 Framework.  And out of this framework emerged the System.Collections namespace, and it was good.  It contained all the basic things a growing programming language needs like the ArrayList and Hashtable collections.  The main problem, of course, with these original collections is that they held items of type object which means you had to be disciplined enough to use them correctly or you could end up with runtime errors if you got an object of a type you weren't expecting. Then came .NET 2.0 and generics and our world changed forever!  With generics the C# language finally got an equivalent of the very powerful C++ templates.  As such, the System.Collections.Generic was born and we got type-safe versions of all are favorite collections.  The List<T> succeeded the ArrayList and the Dictionary<TKey,TValue> succeeded the Hashtable and so on.  The new versions of the library were not only safer because they checked types at compile-time, in many cases they were more performant as well.  So much so that it's Microsoft's recommendation that the System.Collections original collections only be used for backwards compatibility. So we as developers came to know and love the generic collections and took them into our hearts and embraced them.  The problem is, thread safety in both the original collections and the generic collections can be problematic, for very different reasons. Now, if you are only doing single-threaded development you may not care – after all, no locking is required.  Even if you do have multiple threads, if a collection is “load-once, read-many” you don’t need to do anything to protect that container from multi-threaded access, as illustrated below: 1: public static class OrderTypeTranslator 2: { 3: // because this dictionary is loaded once before it is ever accessed, we don't need to synchronize 4: // multi-threaded read access 5: private static readonly Dictionary<string, char> _translator = new Dictionary<string, char> 6: { 7: {"New", 'N'}, 8: {"Update", 'U'}, 9: {"Cancel", 'X'} 10: }; 11:  12: // the only public interface into the dictionary is for reading, so inherently thread-safe 13: public static char? Translate(string orderType) 14: { 15: char charValue; 16: if (_translator.TryGetValue(orderType, out charValue)) 17: { 18: return charValue; 19: } 20:  21: return null; 22: } 23: } Unfortunately, most of our computer science problems cannot get by with just single-threaded applications or with multi-threading in a load-once manner.  Looking at  today's trends, it's clear to see that computers are not so much getting faster because of faster processor speeds -- we've nearly reached the limits we can push through with today's technologies -- but more because we're adding more cores to the boxes.  With this new hardware paradigm, it is even more important to use multi-threaded applications to take full advantage of parallel processing to achieve higher application speeds. So let's look at how to use collections in a thread-safe manner. Using historical collections in a concurrent fashion The early .NET collections (System.Collections) had a Synchronized() static method that could be used to wrap the early collections to make them completely thread-safe.  This paradigm was dropped in the generic collections (System.Collections.Generic) because having a synchronized wrapper resulted in atomic locks for all operations, which could prove overkill in many multithreading situations.  Thus the paradigm shifted to having the user of the collection specify their own locking, usually with an external object: 1: public class OrderAggregator 2: { 3: private static readonly Dictionary<string, List<Order>> _orders = new Dictionary<string, List<Order>>(); 4: private static readonly _orderLock = new object(); 5:  6: public void Add(string accountNumber, Order newOrder) 7: { 8: List<Order> ordersForAccount; 9:  10: // a complex operation like this should all be protected 11: lock (_orderLock) 12: { 13: if (!_orders.TryGetValue(accountNumber, out ordersForAccount)) 14: { 15: _orders.Add(accountNumber, ordersForAccount = new List<Order>()); 16: } 17:  18: ordersForAccount.Add(newOrder); 19: } 20: } 21: } Notice how we’re performing several operations on the dictionary under one lock.  With the Synchronized() static methods of the early collections, you wouldn’t be able to specify this level of locking (a more macro-level).  So in the generic collections, it was decided that if a user needed synchronization, they could implement their own locking scheme instead so that they could provide synchronization as needed. The need for better concurrent access to collections Here’s the problem: it’s relatively easy to write a collection that locks itself down completely for access, but anything more complex than that can be difficult and error-prone to write, and much less to make it perform efficiently!  For example, what if you have a Dictionary that has frequent reads but in-frequent updates?  Do you want to lock down the entire Dictionary for every access?  This would be overkill and would prevent concurrent reads.  In such cases you could use something like a ReaderWriterLockSlim which allows for multiple readers in a lock, and then once a writer grabs the lock it blocks all further readers until the writer is done (in a nutshell).  This is all very complex stuff to consider. Fortunately, this is where the Concurrent Collections come in.  The Parallel Computing Platform team at Microsoft went through great pains to determine how to make a set of concurrent collections that would have the best performance characteristics for general case multi-threaded use. Now, as in all things involving threading, you should always make sure you evaluate all your container options based on the particular usage scenario and the degree of parallelism you wish to acheive. This article should not be taken to understand that these collections are always supperior to the generic collections. Each fills a particular need for a particular situation. Understanding what each container is optimized for is key to the success of your application whether it be single-threaded or multi-threaded. General points to consider with the concurrent collections The MSDN points out that the concurrent collections all support the ICollection interface. However, since the collections are already synchronized, the IsSynchronized property always returns false, and SyncRoot always returns null.  Thus you should not attempt to use these properties for synchronization purposes. Note that since the concurrent collections also may have different operations than the traditional data structures you may be used to.  Now you may ask why they did this, but it was done out of necessity to keep operations safe and atomic.  For example, in order to do a Pop() on a stack you have to know the stack is non-empty, but between the time you check the stack’s IsEmpty property and then do the Pop() another thread may have come in and made the stack empty!  This is why some of the traditional operations have been changed to make them safe for concurrent use. In addition, some properties and methods in the concurrent collections achieve concurrency by creating a snapshot of the collection, which means that some operations that were traditionally O(1) may now be O(n) in the concurrent models.  I’ll try to point these out as we talk about each collection so you can be aware of any potential performance impacts.  Finally, all the concurrent containers are safe for enumeration even while being modified, but some of the containers support this in different ways (snapshot vs. dirty iteration).  Once again I’ll highlight how thread-safe enumeration works for each collection. ConcurrentStack<T>: The thread-safe LIFO container The ConcurrentStack<T> is the thread-safe counterpart to the System.Collections.Generic.Stack<T>, which as you may remember is your standard last-in-first-out container.  If you think of algorithms that favor stack usage (for example, depth-first searches of graphs and trees) then you can see how using a thread-safe stack would be of benefit. The ConcurrentStack<T> achieves thread-safe access by using System.Threading.Interlocked operations.  This means that the multi-threaded access to the stack requires no traditional locking and is very, very fast! For the most part, the ConcurrentStack<T> behaves like it’s Stack<T> counterpart with a few differences: Pop() was removed in favor of TryPop() Returns true if an item existed and was popped and false if empty. PushRange() and TryPopRange() were added Allows you to push multiple items and pop multiple items atomically. Count takes a snapshot of the stack and then counts the items. This means it is a O(n) operation, if you just want to check for an empty stack, call IsEmpty instead which is O(1). ToArray() and GetEnumerator() both also take snapshots. This means that iteration over a stack will give you a static view at the time of the call and will not reflect updates. Pushing on a ConcurrentStack<T> works just like you’d expect except for the aforementioned PushRange() method that was added to allow you to push a range of items concurrently. 1: var stack = new ConcurrentStack<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to stack is much the same as before 4: stack.Push("First"); 5:  6: // but you can also push multiple items in one atomic operation (no interleaves) 7: stack.PushRange(new [] { "Second", "Third", "Fourth" }); For looking at the top item of the stack (without removing it) the Peek() method has been removed in favor of a TryPeek().  This is because in order to do a peek the stack must be non-empty, but between the time you check for empty and the time you execute the peek the stack contents may have changed.  Thus the TryPeek() was created to be an atomic check for empty, and then peek if not empty: 1: // to look at top item of stack without removing it, can use TryPeek. 2: // Note that there is no Peek(), this is because you need to check for empty first. TryPeek does. 3: string item; 4: if (stack.TryPeek(out item)) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("Top item was " + item); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("Stack was empty."); 11: } Finally, to remove items from the stack, we have the TryPop() for single, and TryPopRange() for multiple items.  Just like the TryPeek(), these operations replace Pop() since we need to ensure atomically that the stack is non-empty before we pop from it: 1: // to remove items, use TryPop or TryPopRange to get multiple items atomically (no interleaves) 2: if (stack.TryPop(out item)) 3: { 4: Console.WriteLine("Popped " + item); 5: } 6:  7: // TryPopRange will only pop up to the number of spaces in the array, the actual number popped is returned. 8: var poppedItems = new string[2]; 9: int numPopped = stack.TryPopRange(poppedItems); 10:  11: foreach (var theItem in poppedItems.Take(numPopped)) 12: { 13: Console.WriteLine("Popped " + theItem); 14: } Finally, note that as stated before, GetEnumerator() and ToArray() gets a snapshot of the data at the time of the call.  That means if you are enumerating the stack you will get a snapshot of the stack at the time of the call.  This is illustrated below: 1: var stack = new ConcurrentStack<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to stack is much the same as before 4: stack.Push("First"); 5:  6: var results = stack.GetEnumerator(); 7:  8: // but you can also push multiple items in one atomic operation (no interleaves) 9: stack.PushRange(new [] { "Second", "Third", "Fourth" }); 10:  11: while(results.MoveNext()) 12: { 13: Console.WriteLine("Stack only has: " + results.Current); 14: } The only item that will be printed out in the above code is "First" because the snapshot was taken before the other items were added. This may sound like an issue, but it’s really for safety and is more correct.  You don’t want to enumerate a stack and have half a view of the stack before an update and half a view of the stack after an update, after all.  In addition, note that this is still thread-safe, whereas iterating through a non-concurrent collection while updating it in the old collections would cause an exception. ConcurrentQueue<T>: The thread-safe FIFO container The ConcurrentQueue<T> is the thread-safe counterpart of the System.Collections.Generic.Queue<T> class.  The concurrent queue uses an underlying list of small arrays and lock-free System.Threading.Interlocked operations on the head and tail arrays.  Once again, this allows us to do thread-safe operations without the need for heavy locks! The ConcurrentQueue<T> (like the ConcurrentStack<T>) has some departures from the non-concurrent counterpart.  Most notably: Dequeue() was removed in favor of TryDequeue(). Returns true if an item existed and was dequeued and false if empty. Count does not take a snapshot It subtracts the head and tail index to get the count.  This results overall in a O(1) complexity which is quite good.  It’s still recommended, however, that for empty checks you call IsEmpty instead of comparing Count to zero. ToArray() and GetEnumerator() both take snapshots. This means that iteration over a queue will give you a static view at the time of the call and will not reflect updates. The Enqueue() method on the ConcurrentQueue<T> works much the same as the generic Queue<T>: 1: var queue = new ConcurrentQueue<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to queue is much the same as before 4: queue.Enqueue("First"); 5: queue.Enqueue("Second"); 6: queue.Enqueue("Third"); For front item access, the TryPeek() method must be used to attempt to see the first item if the queue.  There is no Peek() method since, as you’ll remember, we can only peek on a non-empty queue, so we must have an atomic TryPeek() that checks for empty and then returns the first item if the queue is non-empty. 1: // to look at first item in queue without removing it, can use TryPeek. 2: // Note that there is no Peek(), this is because you need to check for empty first. TryPeek does. 3: string item; 4: if (queue.TryPeek(out item)) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("First item was " + item); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("Queue was empty."); 11: } Then, to remove items you use TryDequeue().  Once again this is for the same reason we have TryPeek() and not Peek(): 1: // to remove items, use TryDequeue. If queue is empty returns false. 2: if (queue.TryDequeue(out item)) 3: { 4: Console.WriteLine("Dequeued first item " + item); 5: } Just like the concurrent stack, the ConcurrentQueue<T> takes a snapshot when you call ToArray() or GetEnumerator() which means that subsequent updates to the queue will not be seen when you iterate over the results.  Thus once again the code below will only show the first item, since the other items were added after the snapshot. 1: var queue = new ConcurrentQueue<string>(); 2:  3: // adding to queue is much the same as before 4: queue.Enqueue("First"); 5:  6: var iterator = queue.GetEnumerator(); 7:  8: queue.Enqueue("Second"); 9: queue.Enqueue("Third"); 10:  11: // only shows First 12: while (iterator.MoveNext()) 13: { 14: Console.WriteLine("Dequeued item " + iterator.Current); 15: } Using collections concurrently You’ll notice in the examples above I stuck to using single-threaded examples so as to make them deterministic and the results obvious.  Of course, if we used these collections in a truly multi-threaded way the results would be less deterministic, but would still be thread-safe and with no locking on your part required! For example, say you have an order processor that takes an IEnumerable<Order> and handles each other in a multi-threaded fashion, then groups the responses together in a concurrent collection for aggregation.  This can be done easily with the TPL’s Parallel.ForEach(): 1: public static IEnumerable<OrderResult> ProcessOrders(IEnumerable<Order> orderList) 2: { 3: var proxy = new OrderProxy(); 4: var results = new ConcurrentQueue<OrderResult>(); 5:  6: // notice that we can process all these in parallel and put the results 7: // into our concurrent collection without needing any external locking! 8: Parallel.ForEach(orderList, 9: order => 10: { 11: var result = proxy.PlaceOrder(order); 12:  13: results.Enqueue(result); 14: }); 15:  16: return results; 17: } Summary Obviously, if you do not need multi-threaded safety, you don’t need to use these collections, but when you do need multi-threaded collections these are just the ticket! The plethora of features (I always think of the movie The Three Amigos when I say plethora) built into these containers and the amazing way they acheive thread-safe access in an efficient manner is wonderful to behold. Stay tuned next week where we’ll continue our discussion with the ConcurrentBag<T> and the ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue>. For some excellent information on the performance of the concurrent collections and how they perform compared to a traditional brute-force locking strategy, see this wonderful whitepaper by the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team here.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Concurrent Collections,Collections,Multi-Threading,Little Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,James Michael Hare

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• Game Design Dilemma

  - by Chris Williams

  I'm working on a 2d tilemapped RPG. I've actually made quite a fair amount of progress, but I'm at a point where I need to make a UI decision. I have the overland world completely mapped out, and I have several towns and special areas. I'm on the fence about how to integrate the two. Scenario 1: I have one ginormous map, where everything is the same scale. This means you can walk in and out of towns without having to load or wait and transition in any way. With everything the same scale, movement costs the same no matter where you are (in terms of time/turns/energy/hunger/whatever/etc...)  The potential downside to this is that it could take quite a long time to get anywhere on foot. Scenario 2: I have an overland map, a set of town maps, overland tactical maps, dungeon maps & special area maps. The overland map is at a different scale than the other maps. This means that time/turns/energy/hunger/whatever/etc is calculated at a different rate than on the other maps, which have a 1:1 scale. When entering a town, dungeon, special area or having a random encounter, you would effectively zoom in from the overland scale to the tactical scale. When you are done with combat, or exit a dungeon or town, it would zoom back out to the overland map. The downside to this is that at the zoomed out scale, the overland map isn't all that big (comparitively) and you can traverse it fairly quickly (in real time, not game world time.) Options: 1) Go with scenario 1, as is. 2) Go with scenario 1 and introduce a slightly speedier version of overland travel, such as a horse. 3) Go with scenario 1 and introduce "instant" travel, via portals or some kind of "click the big map" mechanism. This would only work with places you've already been, or somehow unlocked (perhaps via a quest.) 4) Go with Scenario 2, as is.   Thoughts, opinions, suggestions?  Feedback appreciated.

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• Desktop Fun: Triple Monitor Wallpaper Collection Series 1

  - by Asian Angel

  Triple monitor setups provide spacious amounts of screen real-estate but can be extremely frustrating to find good wallpapers for. Today we present the first in a series of wallpaper collections to help decorate your triple monitor setup with lots of wallpaper goodness. Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution. Special Note: The screen resolution sizes available for each of these wallpapers has been included to help you match them up to your individual settings as easily as possible. All images shown here are thumbnail screenshots of the largest size available for download. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, and 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, and 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, and 4800*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4800*1200, and 5040*1050. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, 5760*1200, and 7680*1600. Available in the following resolutions: 3840*960, 3840*1024, 4096*1024, 4320*900, 4800*1200, 5040*1050, and 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 5760*1200. Available in the following resolutions: 5760*1200. More Triple Monitor Goodness Beautiful 3 Screen Multi-Monitor Space Wallpaper Span the same wallpaper across multiple monitors or use a different wallpaper for each. Dual Monitors: Use a Different Wallpaper on Each Desktop in Windows 7, Vista or XP For more wallpapers be certain to see our great collections in the Desktop Fun section. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 Available for Download – Get Your Copy Now The Frustrations of a Computer Literate Watching a Newbie Use a Computer [Humorous Video] Season0nPass Jailbreaks Current Gen Apple TVs IBM’s Jeopardy Playing Computer Watson Shows The Pros How It’s Done [Video] Tranquil Juice Drop Abstract Wallpaper Pulse Is a Sleek Newsreader for iOS and Android Devices

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• Effectively implementing a game view using java

  - by kdavis8

  I am writing a 2d game in java. The game mechanics are similar to the Pokémon game boy advance series e.g. fire red, ruby, diamond and so on. I need a way to draw a huge map maybe 5000 by 5000 pixels and then load individual in game sprites to across the entirety of the map, like rendering a scene. Game sprites would be things like terrain objects, trees, rocks, bushes, also houses, castles, NPC's and so on. But i also need to implement some kind of camera view class that focuses on the player. the camera view class needs to follow the characters movements throughout the game map but it also needs to clip the rest of the map away from the user's field of view, so that the user can only see the arbitrary proximity adjacent to the player's sprite. The proximity's range could be something like 500 pixels in every direction around the player’s sprite. On top of this, i need to implement an independent resolution for the game world so that the game view will be uniform on all screen sizes and screen resolutions. I know that this does sound like a handful and may fall under the category of multiple questions, but the questions are all related and any advice would be very much appreciated. I don’t need a full source code listing but maybe some pointers to effective java API classes that could make doing what i need to do a lot simpler. Also any algorithmic/ design advice would greatly benefit me as well. example of what i am trying to do in source code form below package myPackage; /** * The Purpose of GameView is to: Render a scene using Scene class, Create a * clipping pane using CameraView class, and finally instantiate a coordinate * grid using Path class. * * Once all of these things have been done, GameView class should then be * instantiated and used jointly with its helper classes. CameraView should be * used as the main drawing image. CameraView is the the window to the game * world.Scene passes data constantly to CameraView so that the entire map flows * smoothly. Path uses the x and y coordinates from camera view to construct * cells for path finding algorithms. */ public class GameView { // Scene is a helper class to game view. it renders the entire map to memory // for the camera view. Scene scene; // Camera View is a helper class to game view. It clips the Scene into a // small image that follows the players coordinates. CameraView Camera; // Path is a helper class to game view. It observes and calculates the // coordinates of camera view and divides them into Grids/Cells for Path // finding. Path path; // this represents the player and has a getSprite() method that will return // the current frame column row combination of the passed sprite sheet. Sprite player; }

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• SQL Developer Q&A from ODTUG Tips & Tricks Webcast

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Another great webcast yesterday – if you’re a paying member of ODTUG you can watch the show for yourself in their archives. If not, you can get my slide deck off of SlideShare. About 150 of you brave souls sat through an entire hour of me talking and then 10 more minutes of Q&A. We went through everything rapid-fire style, so I thought I would post the questions and my refined answers here for your perusal. In the order in which I received them: You showed the preference to choose between resultsets in same tab or ain a new tab. I understand that we can not have it both using different hotkeys? For example: F5 run and resultset to same tab, ctrl-f5 same but to new tab? Sometimes you want the one other times the other. The questioner is asking about this preference, Tools Preferences Database Worksheet ‘Show query results in new tabs.’ This is an all or nothing proposition. But, there’s another, perhaps better way: the document PINs. If you have a result set you don’t want to lose, ‘pin it.’ Pin multiple result sets or plans for review and comparisons. You mentioned that sometimes it’s hard to remember where a certain preference is. I agree. So enhancement request: add a search-box to the preferences window. Maybe like in, for example, UltraEdit. It shows you all preferences containing your search criteria. Actually, we do have a search mechanism type the search string, we auto-filter the preferences Is there a version of SQL Developer that will connect to an 8i database (Yes, I realize how old that database version is!) Sorry, no. We also don’t have a version that will run on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups…probably. How do we access your blog? Carefully, and with much trepidation. When you’re ready, go to http://www.thatjeffsmith.com Is there a way to get good formatting with predefined settings? I believe the questioner is referring to the script output a la SQL*Plus formatting commands. Yes, there is. You can build your formatting commands into your login.sql script, and those will be applied for your script execution sessions. Example here. Why this version 4.0 doesn’t support external plugins? It does, it just requires the plugin developer to re-factor it for OSGi. This came about when we updated the JDeveloper framework to the later 11g/12c stuff. Any change in hookup with SVN? The only change with Subversion is that internally we’re using 1.7 stuff now. You can use SQLDev to work with a 1.8 SVN server, but if you get a working copy with a 1.8 client SQLDev won’t be able to do anything with it… Command line utilities ? improvements Yes! The long answer is here. Is that a Hint or a Comment?? /*CSV*/ It’s a comment – the database won’t recognize it, but SQLDev does when it goes through our statement pre-processor. We’ll redirect the output through our CSV formatter before displaying the results in the Script Output panel. That’s why this will ONLY work in SQL Developer. Are you selecting “”Run Script”" to get that CSV or HTML output, rather than “”Run Statement”"? Yes, the formatter hints like the CSV one mentioned above only make sense in a script output panel vs a grid. How do you save relational models once they’re defined? I’ve had trouble with setting one up, “”saving”" it, then the design work I did is longer there when loading it later. File – Data Modeler – Save. If you’re running the Modeler inside of SQL Developer, the menu’ing interface can get a bit tricky. That’s why I recommend using the stand along if you’re doing anything with a model that takes more than 5 minutes. See how the Data Modeler menus are folded up under the SQL Dev menus? Can u unplug and plug into another container in a database with only sqldeveloper? Yes, you can ‘Detach’ a multitentant 12c Database ‘pluggable’ and plug it into another instance. You have the option to copy or move the files. This isn’t a trivial operation, pay attention Can you run APEX code directly on the adopter? No, at least not as I understand your question. Give me an example and I can give you a better example. Is there a way that when u click on a particular table it wouldn’t show the table with the info but just to see the columns underneath clicking on the node? Yes, another one of my tips! Disable Tools Preferences Datbase ObjectViewer ‘Open Object on Single Click.’ Is there a patch to allow a double click on a procedure on an open package body to take you to that procedure in the editor? This has been fixed for EA3 – to be released soon. Can you open the spec with the body? You can open the spec or the body, and then also open the other. But you can’t open both with a single click. So if you want you can set it to CSV but can you also see it as a regular result set in rows and then click in the results to export to excel? If you run your query as a statement with Ctrl-Enter, you can send the data to Excel via the Export dialog. Will it do intellisense like using the alias and pop up the column, object names? Yes! You can select more than one column… Can a DBA turn off items from a high level for users so the only thing they can perform would be selects? A DBA should turn things ON, not OFF. Create a user with only CONNECT and required SELECT privs and you’re good to go, regardless of which application they are using. I use PL/SQL Developer from allround automations and was SQL Developer illiterate and now I like this for myself as a DBA. Now I get to train developers on this tool since they have been asking how to use this tool. Thank you. No, THANK YOU! Can you run multi queries in the worksheet after you added it to the worksheet? Yes, highlight what you want to run, and hit Ctrl-Enter. Can you export the result sets to excel, etc. Yes. In version 4.0 and going forward, I recommend you use the XLSX option for exports. It will run faster and consume much, much less memory. Will this be available after the webinar? If you are a ODTUG member, check out the webinar recordings in the archives. That’s worth the $99 right there. Ask your boss if they have $99 in their training budget for you. If not, maybe time to look for another job? Can you run command lines from this tool? Like executes without issuing a command line prompt? Ok, I’m stumped on this one. Not sure what you’re asking. You can setup external tools under the Tools menu, and from there you could probably rig what you’re looking for, but I’m not sure what you’re looking for… This maybe?Where and when to put the program Is there any way to save a copy database command set (certain tables/views etc) in a script? Yes! Create a cart with the objects you want to be used in the Copy. Then use the new command-line interface to kick off SQL Developer to do the copy of those said objects. How can we export the preference and then import them into different or same version of SQL Developer ? Today, there’s no interface for this. But you could copy the files around manually…Kris Rice has a cool idea where you can set your preferences to be saved to your local drop box folder and then you can use SQL Developer from anywhere with the same preferences What happens to SQL*Plus commands like COL & BREAK Nothing. Those are not currently supported. Is there a place where all “”hotkey”" functionality is listed? thanks Yes. Tools – Preferences – Shortcut Keys. And you can change them! Any tips for the DBA side of things? will the SQL generated for objects have more information (e.g. user privileges) in v4? You can get this now. In Tools – Preferences – Database – Utilities – Export, check ‘Grants.’ Voila! You now have the code necessary to recreate your object privileges Is there a limit on the number of rows that could be imported / exported from/to excel ? The only hard-coded limit lies in Excel. For best performance, use v4 and XLSX formats for Exports. Is there a way to see/watch active sessions to see current SQL and the explain plan being used, etc. Kind of like that frog product. Cough, yes. Tools – Monitor Sessions. Click on session, see SQL and plan. The plan was added in v4. If you’re not in version 4, use the Reports – Active Sessions to get the plans. In the DBA section is there a way to manage say tablespaces to add data files, shrink, edit profiles, etc. Yes, we support all of that. View – DBA. Connect, go to the Storage node. Are you (Jeff) available for a live presentation at our Oracle User Group here in Indiana? Maybe. Email me and we’ll see, [email protected] Where do I go to download sql developer 4.0? The Internet of course! Can you directly edit query results? Nope. But what I think you’re asking is, can I edit the data in the tables that are reflected in my query results? You can change the query results by changing your query of course. Or this. Can you show html example? Sure. I’d embed the HTML here, but it’s a lot of code, try it for yourself! How can I quickly close many SQL worksheet windows, but not all? Window – Documents. Multi-select, hit the ‘Close Document(s)’ button. What does the vertical red line denote? That’s the margin. Tells you when you’ve typed too far and it’s time for a carriage return. Did DBA/Database Status/Instance Viewer make it officially into 4.0? It was sort-of included in the first EA. I have NO idea what you’re talking about, WINK-WINK. No, it’s not in v4.0. Is there a “”handy”" way to debug trigger code? Yes, open your trigger. Hit the debug button. Works great as long as it’s a DML trigger. Will you make your presentation file available for us ( in PPT and/or PDF format ) ? It’s on SlideShare. How do you get SqlDeveloper to escape ‘ correctly when you use the wizard to export data as insert statements? If it’s not doing that, it’s a bug. I’ll take a look at that scenario ASAP.

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• Unable to ssh out anywhere - ssh_exchange_identification

  - by Chowlett

  I have a setup where I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 as a VirtualBox guest under a Windows 7 host, behind a restrictive corporate firewall. I have set up NAT from the host port 22 to Ubuntu's port 22; IT inform me that they have opened port 22 outbound for the host machine's IP address. I have run ssh-keygen -t rsa, and am trying to test the setup by connecting to github and another known ssh server. In both cases the connect is refused with ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host. Full -vvv log is below. Is this possibly still due to the corporate firewall? If so, what else might I need to request from them? Any other ideas what might be wrong and how to fix it? ~$ ssh -Tvvv [email protected] OpenSSH_5.8p1 Debian-7ubuntu1, OpenSSL 1.0.0e 6 Sep 2011 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config debug1: Applying options for * debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0 debug1: Connecting to github.com [207.97.227.239] port 22. debug1: Connection established. debug3: Incorrect RSA1 identifier debug3: Could not load "/home/chris/.ssh/id_rsa" as a RSA1 public key debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----BEGIN' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type 'Proc-Type:' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type 'DEK-Info:' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----END' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug1: identity file /home/chris/.ssh/id_rsa type 1 debug1: Checking blacklist file /usr/share/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048 debug1: Checking blacklist file /etc/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048 debug1: identity file /home/chris/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1 debug1: identity file /home/chris/.ssh/id_dsa type -1 debug1: identity file /home/chris/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1 debug1: identity file /home/chris/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1 debug1: identity file /home/chris/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1 ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host Edit: Requested diagnostics: ~$ ls -la ~/.ssh total 16 drwx------ 2 chris chris 4096 2012-03-30 13:12 . drwxr-xr-x 29 chris chris 4096 2012-03-30 13:25 .. -rw------- 1 chris chris 1766 2012-03-30 13:12 id_rsa -rw-r--r-- 1 chris chris 409 2012-03-30 13:12 id_rsa.pub

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• Oracle Service Registry 11gR1 Support for Oracle Fusion Middleware/SOA Suite 11g PatchSet 2

  - by Dave Berry

  As you might be aware, a few days back we released Patchset 2 (PS2) for several products in the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1 stack including WebLogic Server and SOA Suite. Though there was no patchset released for Oracle Service Registry (OSR) 11g, being an integral part of Fusion Middleware & SOA, OSR 11g R1 ( 11.1.1.2 ) is fully certified with this release. Below is some recommended reading before installing OSR 11g with the new PS2 : OSR 11g R1 & SOA Suite 11g PS2 in a Shared WebLogic Domain If you intend to deploy OSR 11g in the same domain as the SOA Suite 11g, the primary recommendation is to install OSR 11g in its own Managed Server within the same Weblogic Domain as the SOA Suite, as the following diagram depicts : An important pre-requisite for this setup is to apply Patch 9499508, after installation. It basically replaces a registry library - wasp.jar - in the registry application deployed on your server, so as to enable co-deployment of OSR 11g & SOA Suite 11g in the same WLS Domain. The patch fixes a java.lang.LinkageError: loader constraint violation that appears in your OSR system log and is now available for download. The second, equally important, pre-requisite is to modify the setDomainEnv.sh/.cmd file for your WebLogic Domain to conditionally set the CLASSPATH so that the oracle.soa.fabric.jar library is not included in it for the Managed Server(s) hosting OSR 11g. Both these pre-requisites and other OSR 11g Topology Best Practices are covered in detail in the new Knowledge Base article Oracle Service Registry 11g Topology : Best Practices. Architecting an OSR 11g High Availability Setup Typically you would want to create a High Availability (HA) OSR 11g setup, especially on your production system. The following illustrates the recommended topology. The article, Hands-on Guide to Creating an Oracle Service Registry 11g High-Availability Setup on Oracle WebLogic Server 11g on OTN provides step-by-step instructions for creating such an active-active HA setup of multiple OSR 11g nodes with a Load Balancer in an Oracle WebLogic Server cluster environment. Additional Info The OSR Home Page on OTN is the hub for OSR and is regularly updated with latest information, articles, white papers etc. For further reading, this FAQ answers some common questions on OSR. The OSR Certification Matrix lists the Application Servers, Databases, Artifact Storage Tools, Web Browsers, IDEs, etc... that OSR 11g is certified against. If you hit any problems during OSR 11g installation, design time or runtime, the first place to look into is the logs. To find more details about which logs to check when & where, take a look at Where to find Oracle Service Registry Logs? Finally, if you have any questions or problems, there are various ways to reach us - on the SOA Governance forum on OTN, on the Community Forums or by contacting Oracle Support. Yogesh Sontakke and Dave Berry

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• Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

  - by Mark Rackley

  I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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• HTTP Headers: Max-Age vs Expires – Which One To Choose?

  - by Gopinath

  Caching of static content like images, scripts, styles on the client browser reduces load on the webservers and also improves end users browsing experience by loading web pages quickly. We can use HTTP headers Expires or Cache-Control:max-age to cache content on client browser and set expiry time for them. Expire header is HTTP/1.0 standard and Cache-Control:max-age is introduced in HTTP/1.1 specification to solve the issues and limitation with Expire  header. Consider the following headers.   Cache-Control: max-age=24560 Expires: Tue, 15 May 2012 06:17:00 GMT The first header instructs web browsers to cache the content for 24560 seconds relative to the time the content is downloaded and expire it after the time period elapses. The second header instructs web browser to expiry the content after 15th May 2011 06:17. Out of these two options which one to use – max-age or expires? I prefer max-age header for the following reasons As max-age  is a relative value and in most of the cases it makes sense to set relative expiry date rather than an absolute expiry date. Expire  header values are complex to set – time format should be proper, time zones should be appropriate. Even a small mistake in settings these values results in unexpected behaviour. As Expire header values are absolute, we need to  keep changing them at regular intervals. Lets say if we set 2011 June 1 as expiry date to all the image files of this blog, on 2011 June 2 we should modify the expiry date to something like 2012 Jan 1. This add burden of managing the Expire headers. Related: Amazon S3 Tips: Quickly Add/Modify HTTP Headers To All Files Recursively cc image flickr:rogue3w This article titled,HTTP Headers: Max-Age vs Expires – Which One To Choose?, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• A couple of nice features when using OracleTextSearch

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  If you have your UCM/URM instance configured to use the Oracle 11g database as the search engine, you can be using OracleTextSearch as the search definition. OracleTextSearch uses the advanced features of Oracle Text for indexing and searching. This includes the ability to specify metadata fields to be optimized for the search index, fast rebuilding, and index optimization. If you are on 10g of UCM, then you'll need to load the OracleTextSearch component that is available in the CS10gR35UpdateBundle component on the support site (patch #6907073). If you are on 11g, no component is needed. Then you specify the search indexer name with the configuration flag of SearchIndexerEngineName=OracleTextSearch. Please see the docs for other configuration settings and setup instructions. So I thought I would highlight a couple of other unique features available with OracleTextSearch. The first is the Drill Down feature. This feature allows you to specify specific metadata fields that will break down the results of that field based on the total results. So in the above graphic, you can see how it broke down the extensions and gives a count for each. Then you just need to click on that link to then drill into that result. This setting is perfect for option list fields and ones with a distinct set of values possible. By default, it will use the fields Type, Security Group, and Account (if enabled). But you can also specify your own fields. In 10g, you can use the following configuration entry: DrillDownFields=xWebsiteObjectType,dExtension,dSecurityGroup,dDocType And in 11g, you can specify it through the Configuration Manager applet. Simply click on the Advanced Search Design, highlight the field to filter, click Edit, and check 'Is a filter category'. The other feature you get with OracleTextSearch are search snippets. These snippets show the occurrence of the search term in context of their usage. This is very similar to how Google displays its results. If you are on 10g, this is enabled by default. If you are on 11g, you need to turn on the feature. The following configuration entry will enable it: OracleTextDisableSearchSnippet=false Once enabled, you can add the snippets to your search results. Go to Change View -> Customize and add a new search result view. In the Available Fields in the Special section, select Snippet and move it to the Main or Additional Information. If you want to include the snippets with the Classic results, you can add the idoc variable of <$srfDocSnippet$> to display them. One caveat is that this can effect search performance on large collections. So plan the infrastructure accordingly.

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• Cocos2d-x Spritebatch node animation appears to be broken? cocos2d-x 2.0.3

  - by George Host

  Hi I have spent aprox 2 days trying to get this to work doing a google searches left and right and I did get it working except for sprite batch nodes. So in my class I am able to load kuwalio_stand.png and I tested kuwalio_walk1.png and 2 and 3 from the FrameCache(). They work for sure 100%. I run this code and it does not animate does anyone else have the same issue with sprite batch nodes? cocos2d::CCSprite * player = Player::create(); player->setPosition(cocos2d::CCPointMake(0.0f,0.0f)); player->setDisplayFrame(cocos2d::CCSpriteFrameCache::sharedSpriteFrameCache()->spriteFrameByName("kuwalio_stand.png")); player->setTag(PlayerTag); cocos2d::CCAnimation * walk = cocos2d::CCAnimation::create(); cocos2d::CCSpriteFrame * walk1 = cocos2d::CCSpriteFrameCache::sharedSpriteFrameCache()->spriteFrameByName("kuwalio_walk1"); cocos2d::CCSpriteFrame * walk2 = cocos2d::CCSpriteFrameCache::sharedSpriteFrameCache()->spriteFrameByName("kuwalio_walk2"); cocos2d::CCSpriteFrame * walk3 = cocos2d::CCSpriteFrameCache::sharedSpriteFrameCache()->spriteFrameByName("kuwalio_walk3"); walk->addSpriteFrame(walk1); walk->addSpriteFrame(walk2); walk->addSpriteFrame(walk3); cocos2d::CCAnimate * actionWalk = cocos2d::CCAnimate::create(walk); cocos2d::CCRepeatForever * actionRepeat = cocos2d::CCRepeatForever::create(actionWalk); walk->setDelayPerUnit(0.1f); actionWalk->setDuration(10.1f); this->runAction(actionRepeat); // Change camera to a soft follow camera. this->runAction(cocos2d::CCFollow::create(player)); mSceneSpriteBatchNode->addChild(player); // Have the CCNode object run its virtual update function as fast as possible. // Every frame for this layer. this-scheduleUpdate(); Counter example without the sprite batch node... cocos2d::CCSprite * sprite = cocos2d::CCSprite::create("kuwalio_walk1.png"); this->addChild(sprite,0); sprite->setPosition(cocos2d::CCPointMake(60,60)); sprite->retain(); cocos2d::CCAnimation * actionAnimation = cocos2d::CCAnimation::create(); actionAnimation->setDelayPerUnit(0.01f); actionAnimation->retain(); actionAnimation->addSpriteFrameWithFileName("kuwalio_walk1.png"); actionAnimation->addSpriteFrameWithFileName("kuwalio_walk2.png"); actionAnimation->addSpriteFrameWithFileName("kuwalio_walk3.png"); cocos2d::CCAnimate * a = cocos2d::CCAnimate::create(actionAnimation); a->setDuration(0.10f); cocos2d::CCRepeatForever * actionRepeat = cocos2d::CCRepeatForever::create(a); sprite->runAction(actionRepeat);

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• How to update all the SSIS packages&rsquo; Connection Managers in a BIDS project with PowerShell

  - by Luca Zavarella

  During the development of a BI solution, we all know that 80% of the time is spent during the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) phase. If you use the BI Stack Tool provided by Microsoft SQL Server, this step is accomplished by the development of n Integration Services (SSIS) packages. In general, the number of packages made ??in the ETL phase for a non-trivial solution of BI is quite significant. An SSIS package, therefore, extracts data from a source, it "hammers" :) the data and then transfers it to a specific destination. Very often it happens that the connection to the source data is the same for all packages. Using Integration Services, this results in having the same Connection Manager (perhaps with the same name) for all packages: The source data of my BI solution comes from an Helper database (HLP), then, for each package tha import this data, I have the HLP Connection Manager (the use of a Shared Data Source is not recommended, because the Connection String is wired and therefore you have to open the SSIS project and use the proper wizard change it...). In order to change the HLP Connection String at runtime, we could use the Package Configuration, or we could run our packages with DTLoggedExec by Davide Mauri (a must-have if you are developing with SQL Server 2005/2008). But my need was to change all the HLP connections in all packages within the SSIS Visual Studio project, because I had to version them through Team Foundation Server (TFS). A good scribe with a lot of patience should have changed by hand all the connections by double-clicking the HLP Connection Manager of each package, and then changing the referenced server/database: Not being endowed with such virtues :) I took just a little of time to write a small script in PowerShell, using the fact that a SSIS package (a .dtsx file) is nothing but an xml file, and therefore can be changed quite easily. I'm not a guru of PowerShell, but I managed more or less to put together the following lines of code: $LeftDelimiterString = "Initial Catalog=" $RightDelimiterString = ";Provider=" $ToBeReplacedString = "AstarteToBeReplaced" $ReplacingString = "AstarteReplacing" $MainFolder = "C:\MySSISPackagesFolder" $files = get-childitem "$MainFolder" *.dtsx `       | Where-Object {!($_.PSIsContainer)} foreach ($file in $files) {       (Get-Content $file.FullName) `             | % {$_ -replace "($LeftDelimiterString)($ToBeReplacedString)($RightDelimiterString)", "`$1$ReplacingString`$3"} ` | Set-Content $file.FullName; } The script above just opens any SSIS package (.dtsx) in the supplied folder, then for each of them goes in search of the following text: Initial Catalog=AstarteToBeReplaced;Provider= and it replaces the text found with this: Initial Catalog=AstarteReplacing;Provider= I don’t enter into the details of each cmdlet used. I leave the reader to search for these details. Alternatively, you can use a specific object model exposed in some .NET assemblies provided by Integration Services, or you can use the Pacman utility: Enjoy! :) P.S. Using TFS as versioning system, before running the script I checked out the packages and, after the script executed succesfully, I checked in them.

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• ¿Como puedo instalar Age of Mythology en Ubuntu? - How I can install Age of Mythology on Ubuntu?

  - by edgarsalguero93

  Spanish: Tengo un problema al tratar de instalar Age of Mythology Gold Edition (v 1.03). Al iniciarle con el Wine (1.3.28) en mi Ubuntu 11.10, y después de ingresar el serial y pulsar Siguiente, me sale un error "No se puede cargar PidGen.dll", y se regresa a la ventana anterior. En Configurar Wine, y en la pestaña Librerías le añadí el archivo DLL que me pide pero todo sigue igual. He intentado todo para que se instale pero no funciona. También he intentado instalarlo en una maquina virtual de VMware Workstation 8.0.1 con Microsoft Windows XP SP3 y me sale un error de compatibilidad con la tarjeta de vídeo: "Tarjeta de vídeo 0: vmx_fb.dll VMware SVGA II Vendor(0x15AD) Device(0x405)" y se cierra el Age of Mythology. Me parece que la solución en este caso seria aumentar la cantidad de vídeo que pone a disposición el VMware a la maquina virtual o un driver para esta tarjeta, pero no se como hacer eso. O tal vez alguien sabe la manera de que mi tarjeta de vídeo que tiene mi computadora se use también para VMware o destinar parte de la memoria del vídeo a la maquina virtual. He buscado en varios sitios, pero ninguno soluciona mi problema. Por favor, si alguien ya encontró la respuesta, que responda a esta pregunta, y de antemano gracias. English: I have a problem trying to install Age of Mythology Gold Edition (v 1.03). At the beginning of the Wine (1.3.28) on my Ubuntu 11.10, and after entering the serial and click Next, I get an error "Unable to load pidgen.dll" and return to the previous window. In Configure Wine and in the Libraries tab I added the DLL that calls me but nothing has changed. I tried everything to be installed but not working. I have also tried to install in a virtual machine with VMware Workstation 8.0.1 Microsoft Windows XP SP3 and I get a compatibility error with video card: "Video Card 0: VMware SVGA II vmx_fb.dll Vendor (0x15AD) Device (0x405) "and closes the Age of Mythology. I think the solution in this case would increase the amount of video available to the VMware virtual machine or a driver for this card, but not how to do that. Or maybe someone knows the way that my video card that has my computer is also used for VMware or earmark part of the video memory to the virtual machine. I searched several sites, but none solved my problem. Please, if someone already found the answer, to answer this question. I also apologize if the translation is not well understood. I used the Google translator. Thanks and greetings from Latin America

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