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• Do you know your ADF "grace period?"

  - by Chris Muir

  What does the term "support" mean to you in context of vendors such as Oracle giving your organization support with our products? Over the last few weeks I'm taken a straw poll to discuss this very question with customers, and I've received a wide array of answers much to my surprise (which I've paraphrased): "Support means my staff can access dedicated resources to assist them solve problems" "Support means I can call Oracle at anytime to request assistance" "Support means we can expect fixes and patches to bugs in Oracle software" The last expectation is the one I'd like to focus on in this post, keep it in mind while reading this blog. From Oracle's perspective as we're in the business of support, we in fact offer numerous services which are captured on the table in the following page. As the text under the table indicates, you should consult the relevant Oracle Lifetime Support brochures to understand the length of time Oracle will support Oracle products. As I'm a product manager for ADF that sits under the FMW tree of Oracle products, let's consider ADF in particular. The FMW brochure is found here. On page 8 and 9 you'll see the current "Application Development Framework 11gR1 (11.1.1.x)" and "Application Development Framework 11gR2 (11.1.2)" releases are supported out to 2017 for Extended Support. This timeframe is pretty standard for Oracle's current released products, though as new releases roll in we should see those dates extended. On page 8 of the PDF note the comment at the end of this page that refers to the Oracle Support document 209768.1: For more-detailed information on bug fix and patch release policies, please refer to the “Error Correction Support Policy” on MyOracle Support. This policy document is important as it introduces Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy which addresses "patches and fixes". You can find it attached the previous Oracle Support document 209768.1. Broadly speaking while Oracle does provide "generalized support" up to 2017 for ADF, the Error Correction Support Policy dictates when Oracle will provide "patches and fixes" for Oracle software, and this is where the concept of the "grace period" comes in. As Oracle releases different versions of Oracle software, say 11.1.1.4.0, you are fully supported for patches and fixes for that specific version. However when we release the next version, say 11.1.1.5.0, Oracle provides at minimum of 3 months to a maximum of 1 year "grace period" where we'll continue to provide patches and fixes for the previous version. This gives you time to move from 11.1.1.4.0 to 11.1.1.5.0 without being unsupported for patches and fixes. The last paragraph does generalize as I've attempted to highlight the concept of the grace period rather than the specific dates for any version. For specific ADF and FMW versions and their respective grace periods and when they terminated you must visit Oracle Support Note 1290894.1. I'd like to include a screenshot here of the relevant table from that Oracle Support Note but as it is will be frequently updated it's better I force you to visit that note. Be careful to heed the comment in the note: According to policy, the Grace Period has passed because a newer Patch Set has been released for more than a year. Its important to note that the Lifetime Support Policy and Error Correction Support Policy documents are the single source of truth, subject to change, and will provide exceptions when required. This My Oracle Support document is providing a summary of the Grace Period dates and time lines for planning purposes. So remember to return to the policy document for all definitions, note 1290894.1 is a summary only and not guaranteed to be up to date or correct. A last point from Oracle's perspective. Why doesn't Oracle provide patches and fixes for all releases as long as they're supported? Amongst other reasons, it's a matter of practicality. Consider JDeveloper 10.1.3 released in 2005. JDeveloper 10.1.3 is still currently supported to 2017, but since that version was released there has been just under 20 newer releases of JDeveloper. Now multiply that across all Oracle's products and imagine the number of releases Oracle would have to provide fixes and patches for, and maintain environments to test them, build them, staff to write them and more, it's simple beyond the capabilities of even a large software vendor like Oracle. So the "grace period" restricts that patches and fixes window to something manageable. In conclusion does the concept of the "grace period" matter to you? If you define support as "getting assistance from Oracle" then maybe not. But if patches and fixes are important to you, then you need to understand the "grace period" and operate within the bounds of Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy. Disclaimer: this blog post was written July 2012. Oracle Support policies do change from time to time so the emphasis is on you to double check the facts presented in this blog.

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• Securing WebSocket applications on Glassfish

  - by Pavel Bucek

  Today we are going to cover deploying secured WebSocket applications on Glassfish and access to these services using WebSocket Client API. WebSocket server application setup Our server endpoint might look as simple as this: @ServerEndpoint("/echo") public class EchoEndpoint { @OnMessage   public String echo(String message) {     return message + " (from your server)";   } } Everything else must be configured on container level. We can start with enabling SSL, which will require web.xml to be added to your project. For starters, it might look as following: <web-app version="3.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee">   <security-constraint>     <web-resource-collection>       <web-resource-name>Protected resource</web-resource-name>       <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>       <http-method>GET</http-method>     </web-resource-collection>     <!-- https -->     <user-data-constraint>       <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>     </user-data-constraint>   </security-constraint> </web-app> This is minimal web.xml for this task - web-resource-collection just defines URL pattern and HTTP method(s) we want to put a constraint on and user-data-constraint defines that constraint, which is in our case transport-guarantee. More information about these properties and security settings for web application can be found in Oracle Java EE 7 Tutorial. I have some simple webpage attached as well, so I can test my endpoint right away. You can find it (along with complete project) in Tyrus workspace: [webpage] [whole project]. After deploying this application to Glassfish Application Server, you should be able to hit it using your favorite browser. URL where my application resides is https://localhost:8181/sample-echo-https/ (may be different, depends on other configuration). My browser warns me about untrusted certificate (I use what freshly built Glassfish provides - self signed certificates) and after adding an exception for this site, I can see my webpage and I am able to securely connect to wss://localhost:8181/sample-echo-https/echo. WebSocket client Already mentioned demo application also contains test client, but execution of this is skipped for normal build. Reason for this is that Glassfish uses these self-signed "random" untrusted certificates and you are (in most cases) not able to connect to these services without any additional settings. Creating test WebSocket client is actually quite similar to server side, only difference is that you have to somewhere create client container and invoke connect with some additional info. Java API for WebSocket allows you to use annotated and programmatic way to construct endpoints. Server side shows the annotated case, so let's see how the programmatic approach will look. final WebSocketContainer client = ContainerProvider.getWebSocketContainer(); client.connectToServer(new Endpoint() {   @Override   public void onOpen(Session session, EndpointConfig EndpointConfig) {     try {       // register message handler - will just print out the       // received message on standard output.       session.addMessageHandler(new MessageHandler.Whole<String>() {       @Override         public void onMessage(String message) {          System.out.println("### Received: " + message);         }       });       // send a message       session.getBasicRemote().sendText("Do or do not, there is no try.");     } catch (IOException e) {       // do nothing     }   } }, ClientEndpointConfig.Builder.create().build(),    URI.create("wss://localhost:8181/sample-echo-https/echo")); This client should work with some secured endpoint with valid certificated signed by some trusted certificate authority (you can try that with wss://echo.websocket.org). Accessing our Glassfish instance will require some additional settings. You can tell Java which certificated you trust by adding -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore property (and few others in case you are using linked sample). Complete command line when you are testing your service might need to look somewhat like: mvn clean test -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=$AS_MAIN/domains/domain1/config/cacerts.jks\ -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=changeit -Dtyrus.test.host=localhost\ -DskipTests=false Where AS_MAIN points to your Glassfish instance. Note: you might need to setup keyStore and trustStore per client instead of per JVM; there is a way how to do it, but it is Tyrus proprietary feature: http://tyrus.java.net/documentation/1.2.1/user-guide.html#d0e1128. And that's it! Now nobody is able to "hear" what you are sending to or receiving from your WebSocket endpoint. There is always room for improvement, so the next step you might want to take is introduce some authentication mechanism (like HTTP Basic or Digest). This topic is more about container configuration so I'm not going to go into details, but there is one thing worth mentioning: to access services which require authorization, you might need to put this additional information to HTTP headers of first (Upgrade) request (there is not (yet) any direct support even for these fundamental mechanisms, user need to register Configurator and add headers in beforeRequest method invocation). I filed related feature request as TYRUS-228; feel free to comment/vote if you need this functionality.

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• Clean way to use mutable implementation of Immutable interfaces for encapsulation

  - by dsollen

  My code is working on some compost relationship which creates a tree structure, class A has many children of type B, which has many children of type C etc. The lowest level class, call it bar, also points to a connected bar class. This effectively makes nearly every object in my domain inter-connected. Immutable objects would be problematic due to the expense of rebuilding almost all of my domain to make a single change to one class. I chose to go with an interface approach. Every object has an Immutable interface which only publishes the getter methods. I have controller objects which constructs the domain objects and thus has reference to the full objects, thus capable of calling the setter methods; but only ever publishes the immutable interface. Any change requested will go through the controller. So something like this: public interface ImmutableFoo{ public Bar getBar(); public Location getLocation(); } public class Foo implements ImmutableFoo{ private Bar bar; private Location location; @Override public Bar getBar(){ return Bar; } public void setBar(Bar bar){ this.bar=bar; } @Override public Location getLocation(){ return Location; } } public class Controller{ Private Map<Location, Foo> fooMap; public ImmutableFoo addBar(Bar bar){ Foo foo=fooMap.get(bar.getLocation()); if(foo!=null) foo.addBar(bar); return foo; } } I felt the basic approach seems sensible, however, when I speak to others they always seem to have trouble envisioning what I'm describing, which leaves me concerned that I may have a larger design issue then I'm aware of. Is it problematic to have domain objects so tightly coupled, or to use the quasi-mutable approach to modifying them? Assuming that the design approach itself isn't inherently flawed the particular discussion which left me wondering about my approach had to do with the presence of business logic in the domain objects. Currently I have my setter methods in the mutable objects do error checking and all other logic required to verify and make a change to the object. It was suggested that this should be pulled out into a service class, which applies all the business logic, to simplify my domain objects. I understand the advantage in mocking/testing and general separation of logic into two classes. However, with a service method/object It seems I loose some of the advantage of polymorphism, I can't override a base class to add in new error checking or business logic. It seems, if my polymorphic classes were complicated enough, I would end up with a service method that has to check a dozen flags to decide what error checking and business logic applies. So, for example, if I wanted to have a childFoo which also had a size field which should be compared to bar before adding par my current approach would look something like this. public class Foo implements ImmutableFoo{ public void addBar(Bar bar){ if(!getLocation().equals(bar.getLocation()) throw new LocationException(); this.bar=bar; } } public interface ImmutableChildFoo extends ImmutableFoo{ public int getSize(); } public ChildFoo extends Foo implements ImmutableChildFoo{ private int size; @Override public int getSize(){ return size; } @Override public void addBar(Bar bar){ if(getSize()<bar.getSize()){ throw new LocationException(); super.addBar(bar); } My colleague was suggesting instead having a service object that looks something like this (over simplified, the 'service' object would likely be more complex). public interface ImmutableFoo{ ///original interface, presumably used in other methods public Location getLocation(); public boolean isChildFoo(); } public interface ImmutableSizedFoo implements ImmutableFoo{ public int getSize(); } public class Foo implements ImmutableSizedFoo{ public Bar bar; @Override public void addBar(Bar bar){ this.bar=bar; } @Override public int getSize(){ //default size if no size is known return 0; } @Override public boolean isChildFoo return false; } } public ChildFoo extends Foo{ private int size; @Override public int getSize(){ return size; } @Override public boolean isChildFoo(); return true; } } public class Controller{ Private Map<Location, Foo> fooMap; public ImmutableSizedFoo addBar(Bar bar){ Foo foo=fooMap.get(bar.getLocation()); service.addBarToFoo(foo, bar); returned foo; } public class Service{ public static void addBarToFoo(Foo foo, Bar bar){ if(foo==null) return; if(!foo.getLocation().equals(bar.getLocation())) throw new LocationException(); if(foo.isChildFoo() && foo.getSize()<bar.getSize()) throw new LocationException(); foo.setBar(bar); } } } Is the recommended approach of using services and inversion of control inherently superior, or superior in certain cases, to overriding methods directly? If so is there a good way to go with the service approach while not loosing the power of polymorphism to override some of the behavior?

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• Reference Data Management and Master Data: Are Relation ?

  - by Mala Narasimharajan

  Submitted By:  Rahul Kamath  Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) has always been extremely powerful as an Enterprise Master Data Management (MDM) solution that can help manage changes to master data in a way that influences enterprise structure, whether it be mastering chart of accounts to enable financial transformation, or revamping organization structures to drive business transformation and operational efficiencies, or restructuring sales territories to enable equitable distribution of leads to sales teams following the acquisition of new products, or adding additional cost centers to enable fine grain control over expenses. Increasingly, DRM is also being utilized by Oracle customers for reference data management, an emerging solution space that deserves some explanation. What is reference data? How does it relate to Master Data? Reference data is a close cousin of master data. While master data is challenged with problems of unique identification, may be more rapidly changing, requires consensus building across stakeholders and lends structure to business transactions, reference data is simpler, more slowly changing, but has semantic content that is used to categorize or group other information assets – including master data – and gives them contextual value. In fact, the creation of a new master data element may require new reference data to be created. For example, when a European company acquires a US business, chances are that they will now need to adapt their product line taxonomy to include a new category to describe the newly acquired US product line. Further, the cross-border transaction will also result in a revised geo hierarchy. The addition of new products represents changes to master data while changes to product categories and geo hierarchy are examples of reference data changes.1 The following table contains an illustrative list of examples of reference data by type. Reference data types may include types and codes, business taxonomies, complex relationships & cross-domain mappings or standards. Types & Codes Taxonomies Relationships / Mappings Standards Transaction Codes Industry Classification Categories and Codes, e.g., North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) Product / Segment; Product / Geo Calendars (e.g., Gregorian, Fiscal, Manufacturing, Retail, ISO8601) Lookup Tables (e.g., Gender, Marital Status, etc.) Product Categories City à State à Postal Codes Currency Codes (e.g., ISO) Status Codes Sales Territories (e.g., Geo, Industry Verticals, Named Accounts, Federal/State/Local/Defense) Customer / Market Segment; Business Unit / Channel Country Codes (e.g., ISO 3166, UN) Role Codes Market Segments Country Codes / Currency Codes / Financial Accounts Date/Time, Time Zones (e.g., ISO 8601) Domain Values Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC), eCl@ss International Classification of Diseases (ICD) e.g., ICD9 à IC10 mappings Tax Rates Why manage reference data? Reference data carries contextual value and meaning and therefore its use can drive business logic that helps execute a business process, create a desired application behavior or provide meaningful segmentation to analyze transaction data. Further, mapping reference data often requires human judgment. Sample Use Cases of Reference Data Management Healthcare: Diagnostic Codes The reference data challenges in the healthcare industry offer a case in point. Part of being HIPAA compliant requires medical practitioners to transition diagnosis codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10, a medical coding scheme used to classify diseases, signs and symptoms, causes, etc. The transition to ICD-10 has a significant impact on business processes, procedures, contracts, and IT systems. Since both code sets ICD-9 and ICD-10 offer diagnosis codes of very different levels of granularity, human judgment is required to map ICD-9 codes to ICD-10. The process requires collaboration and consensus building among stakeholders much in the same way as does master data management. Moreover, to build reports to understand utilization, frequency and quality of diagnoses, medical practitioners may need to “cross-walk” mappings -- either forward to ICD-10 or backwards to ICD-9 depending upon the reporting time horizon. Spend Management: Product, Service & Supplier Codes Similarly, as an enterprise looks to rationalize suppliers and leverage their spend, conforming supplier codes, as well as product and service codes requires supporting multiple classification schemes that may include industry standards (e.g., UNSPSC, eCl@ss) or enterprise taxonomies. Aberdeen Group estimates that 90% of companies rely on spreadsheets and manual reviews to aggregate, classify and analyze spend data, and that data management activities account for 12-15% of the sourcing cycle and consume 30-50% of a commodity manager’s time. Creating a common map across the extended enterprise to rationalize codes across procurement, accounts payable, general ledger, credit card, procurement card (P-card) as well as ACH and bank systems can cut sourcing costs, improve compliance, lower inventory stock, and free up talent to focus on value added tasks. Change Management: Point of Sales Transaction Codes and Product Codes In the specialty finance industry, enterprises are confronted with usury laws – governed at the state and local level – that regulate financial product innovation as it relates to consumer loans, check cashing and pawn lending. To comply, it is important to demonstrate that transactions booked at the point of sale are posted against valid product codes that were on offer at the time of booking the sale. Since new products are being released at a steady stream, it is important to ensure timely and accurate mapping of point-of-sale transaction codes with the appropriate product and GL codes to comply with the changing regulations. Multi-National Companies: Industry Classification Schemes As companies grow and expand across geographies, a typical challenge they encounter with reference data represents reconciling various versions of industry classification schemes in use across nations. While the United States, Mexico and Canada conform to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) standard, European Union countries choose different variants of the NACE industry classification scheme. Multi-national companies must manage the individual national NACE schemes and reconcile the differences across countries. Enterprises must invest in a reference data change management application to address the challenge of distributing reference data changes to downstream applications and assess which applications were impacted by a given change. References 1 Master Data versus Reference Data, Malcolm Chisholm, April 1, 2006.

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• Declarative Architectures in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

  - by BuckWoody

  I deal with computing architectures by first laying out requirements, and then laying in any constraints for it's success. Only then do I bring in computing elements to apply to the system. As an example, a requirement might be "world-side availability" and a constraint might be "with less than 80ms response time and full HA" or something similar. Then I can choose from the best fit of technologies which range from full-up on-premises computing to IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. I also deal in abstraction layers - on-premises systems are fully under your control, in IaaS the hardware is abstracted (but not the OS, scale, runtimes and so on), in PaaS the hardware and the OS is abstracted and you focus on code and data only, and in SaaS everything is abstracted - you merely purchase the function you want (like an e-mail server or some such) and simply use it. When you think about solutions this way, the architecture moves to the primary factor in your decision. It's problem-first architecting, and then laying in whatever technology or vendor best fixes the problem. To that end, most architects design a solution using a graphical tool (I use Visio) and then creating documents that  let the rest of the team (and business) know what is required. It's the template, or recipe, for the solution. This is extremely easy to do for SaaS - you merely point out what the needs are, research the vendor and present the findings (and bill) to the business. IT might not even be involved there. In PaaS it's not much more complicated - you use the same Application Lifecycle Management and design tools you always have for code, such as Visual Studio or some other process and toolset, and you can "stamp out" the application in multiple locations, update it and so on. IaaS is another story. Here you have multiple machines, operating systems, patches, virus scanning, run-times, scale-patterns and tools and much more that you have to deal with, since essentially it's just an in-house system being hosted by someone else. You can certainly automate builds of servers - we do this as technical professionals every day. From Windows to Linux, it's simple enough to create a "build script" that makes a system just like the one we made yesterday. What is more problematic is being able to tie those systems together in a coherent way (as a solution) and then stamp that out repeatedly, especially when you might want to deploy that solution on-premises, or in one cloud vendor or another. Lately I've been working with a company called RightScale that does exactly this. I'll point you to their site for more info, but the general idea is that you document out your intent for a set of servers, and it will deploy them to on-premises clouds, Windows Azure, and other cloud providers all from the same script. In other words, it doesn't contain the images or anything like that - it contains the scripts to build them on-premises or on a cloud vendor like Microsoft. Using a tool like this, you combine the steps of designing a system (all the way down to passwords and accounts if you wish) and then the document drives the distribution and implementation of that intent. As time goes on and more and more companies implement solutions on various providers (perhaps for HA and DR) then this becomes a compelling investigation. The RightScale information is here, if you want to investigate it further. Yes, there are other methods I've found, but most are tied to a single kind of cloud, and I'm not into vendor lock-in. Poppa Bear Level - Hands-on EvaluateRightScale at no cost.  Just bring your Windows Azurecredentials and follow the these tutorials: Sign Up for Windows Azure Add     Windows Azure to a RightScale Account Windows Azure Virtual Machines     3-tier Deployment Momma Bear Level - Just the Right level... ;0)  WindowsAzure Evaluation Guide - if you are new toWindows Azure Virtual Machines and new to RightScale, we recommend that youread the entire evaluation guide to gain a more complete understanding of theWindows Azure + RightScale solution.    WindowsAzure Support Page @ support.rightscale.com - FAQ's, tutorials,etc. for  Windows Azure Virtual Machines (Work in Progress) Baby Bear Level - Marketing WindowsAzure Page @ www.rightscale.com - find overview informationincluding solution briefs and presentation & demonstration videos   Scale     and Automate Applications on Windows Azure  Solution Brief     - how RightScale makes Windows Azure Virtual Machine even better SQL     Server on Windows Azure  Solution Brief   -       Run Highly Available SQL Server on Windows Azure Virtual Machines

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• My First Weeks at Red Gate

  - by Jess Nickson

  Hi, my name’s Jess and early September 2012 I started working at Red Gate as a Software Engineer down in The Agency (the Publishing team). This was a bit of a shock, as I didn’t think this team would have any developers! I admit, I was a little worried when it was mentioned that my role was going to be different from normal dev. roles within the company. However, as luck would have it, I was placed within a team that was responsible for the development and maintenance of Simple-Talk and SQL Server Central (SSC). I felt rather unprepared for this role. I hadn’t used many of the technologies involved and of those that I had, I hadn’t looked at them for quite a while. I was, nevertheless, quite excited about this turn of events. As I had predicted, the role has been quite challenging so far. I expected that I would struggle to get my head round the large codebase already in place, having never used anything so much as a fraction of the size of this before. However, I was perhaps a bit naive when it came to how quickly things would move. I was required to start learning/remembering a number of different languages and technologies within time frames I would never have tried to set myself previously. Having said that, my first week was pretty easy. It was filled with meetings that were designed to get the new starters up to speed with the different departments, ideals and rules within the company. I also attended some lightning talks being presented by other employees, which were pretty useful. These occur once a fortnight and normally consist of around four speakers. In my spare time, we set up the Simple-Talk codebase on my computer and I started exploring it and worked on my first feature – redirecting requests for URLs that used incorrect casing! It was also during this time that I was given my first introduction to test-driven development (TDD) with Michael via a code kata. Although I had heard of the general ideas behind TDD, I had definitely never tried it before. Indeed, I hadn’t really done any automated testing of code before, either. The session was therefore very useful and gave me insights as to some of the coding practices used in my team. Although I now understand the importance of TDD, it still seems odd in my head and I’ve yet to master how to sensibly step up the functionality of the code a bit at a time. The second week was both easier and more difficult than the first. I was given a new project to work on, meaning I was no longer using the codebase already in place. My job was to take some designs, a WordPress theme, and some initial content and build a page that allowed users of the site to read provided resources and give feedback. This feedback could include their thoughts about the resource, the topics covered and the page design itself. Although it didn’t sound the most challenging of projects when compared to fixing bugs in our current codebase, it nevertheless provided a few sneaky problems that had me stumped. I really enjoyed working on this project as it allowed me to play around with HTML, CSS and JavaScript; all things that I like working with but rarely have a chance to use. I completed the aims for the project on time and was happy with the final outcome – though it still needs a good designer to take a look at it! I am now into my third week at Red Gate and I have temporarily been pulled off the website from week 2. I am again back to figuring out the Simple-Talk codebase. Monday provided me with the chance to learn a bunch of new things: system level testing, Selenium and Python. I was set the challenge of testing a bug fix dealing with the search bars in Simple-Talk. The exercise was pretty fun, although Mike did have to point me in the right direction when I started making the tests a bit too complex. The rest of the week looks set to be focussed on pair programming with Mike as we work together on a new feature. I look forward to the challenges that still face me and hope that I will be able to get up to speed quickly. *fingers crossed*

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• Grid Layouts in ADF Faces using Trinidad

  - by frank.nimphius

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} ADF Faces does provide a data table component but none to define grid layouts. Grids are common in web design and developers often try HTML table markup wrapped in an f:verbatim tag or directly added the page to build a desired layout. Usually these attempts fail, showing unpredictable results, However, ADF Faces does not provide a table layout component, but Apache MyFaces Trinidad does. The Trinidad trh:tableLayout component is a thin wrapper around the HTML table element and contains a series of row layout elements, trh:rowLayout. Each trh:rowLayout component may contain one or many trh:cellLayout components to format cells content. <trh:tableLayout id="tl1" halign="left">   <trh:rowLayout id="rl1" valign="top" halign="left">     <trh:cellFormat id="cf1" width="100" header="true">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 1" id="ol1"/>     </trh:cellFormat>     <trh:cellFormat id="cf2" header="true"                               width="300">        <af:outputLabel value="Label 2" id="outputLabel1"/>        </trh:cellFormat>      </trh:rowLayout>      <trh:rowLayout id="rowLayout1" valign="top" halign="left">        <trh:cellFormat id="cellFormat1" width="100" header="false">           <af:outputLabel value="Label 3" id="outputLabel2"/>        </trh:cellFormat>     </trh:rowLayout>        ... </trh:tableLayout> To add the Trinidad tag library to your ADF Faces projects ... Open the Component Palette and right mouse click into it Choose "Edit Tag Libraries" and select the Trinidad components. Move them to the "Selected Libraries" section and Ok the dialog.The first time you drag a Trinidad component to a page, the web.xml file is updated with the required filters Note: The Trinidad tags don't participate in the ADF Faces RC geometry management. However, they are JSF components that are part of the JSF request lifecycle. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ADF Faces RC components work well with Trinidad layout components that don't use PPR. The PPR implementation of Trinidad is different from the one in ADF Faces. However, when you mix ADF Faces components with Trinidad components, avoid Trinidad components that have integrated PPR behavior. Only use passive Trinidad components.See:http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_tableLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_rowLayout.htmlhttp://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/trinidad-api/tagdoc/trh_cellFormat.html .

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• Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - CLR metadata 2

  - by Simon Cooper

  Before we look any further at the CLR metadata, we need a quick diversion to understand how the metadata is actually stored. Encoding table information As an example, we'll have a look at a row in the TypeDef table. According to the spec, each TypeDef consists of the following: Flags specifying various properties of the class, including visibility. The name of the type. The namespace of the type. What type this type extends. The field list of this type. The method list of this type. How is all this data actually represented? Offset & RID encoding Most assemblies don't need to use a 4 byte value to specify heap offsets and RIDs everywhere, however we can't hard-code every offset and RID to be 2 bytes long as there could conceivably be more than 65535 items in a heap or more than 65535 fields or types defined in an assembly. So heap offsets and RIDs are only represented in the full 4 bytes if it is required; in the header information at the top of the #~ stream are 3 bits indicating if the #Strings, #GUID, or #Blob heaps use 2 or 4 bytes (the #US stream is not accessed from metadata), and the rowcount of each table. If the rowcount for a particular table is greater than 65535 then all RIDs referencing that table throughout the metadata use 4 bytes, else only 2 bytes are used. Coded tokens Not every field in a table row references a single predefined table. For example, in the TypeDef extends field, a type can extend another TypeDef (a type in the same assembly), a TypeRef (a type in a different assembly), or a TypeSpec (an instantiation of a generic type). A token would have to be used to let us specify the table along with the RID. Tokens are always 4 bytes long; again, this is rather wasteful of space. Cutting the RID down to 2 bytes would make each token 3 bytes long, which isn't really an optimum size for computers to read from memory or disk. However, every use of a token in the metadata tables can only point to a limited subset of the metadata tables. For the extends field, we only need to be able to specify one of 3 tables, which we can do using 2 bits: 0x0: TypeDef 0x1: TypeRef 0x2: TypeSpec We could therefore compress the 4-byte token that would otherwise be needed into a coded token of type TypeDefOrRef. For each type of coded token, the least significant bits encode the table the token points to, and the rest of the bits encode the RID within that table. We can work out whether each type of coded token needs 2 or 4 bytes to represent it by working out whether the maximum RID of every table that the coded token type can point to will fit in the space available. The space available for the RID depends on the type of coded token; a TypeOrMethodDef coded token only needs 1 bit to specify the table, leaving 15 bits available for the RID before a 4-byte representation is needed, whereas a HasCustomAttribute coded token can point to one of 18 different tables, and so needs 5 bits to specify the table, only leaving 11 bits for the RID before 4 bytes are needed to represent that coded token type. For example, a 2-byte TypeDefOrRef coded token with the value 0x0321 has the following bit pattern: 0 3 2 1 0000 0011 0010 0001 The first two bits specify the table - TypeRef; the other bits specify the RID. Because we've used the first two bits, we've got to shift everything along two bits: 000000 1100 1000 This gives us a RID of 0xc8. If any one of the TypeDef, TypeRef or TypeSpec tables had more than 16383 rows (2^14 - 1), then 4 bytes would need to be used to represent all TypeDefOrRef coded tokens throughout the metadata tables. Lists The third representation we need to consider is 1-to-many references; each TypeDef refers to a list of FieldDef and MethodDef belonging to that type. If we were to specify every FieldDef and MethodDef individually then each TypeDef would be very large and a variable size, which isn't ideal. There is a way of specifying a list of references without explicitly specifying every item; if we order the MethodDef and FieldDef tables by the owning type, then the field list and method list in a TypeDef only have to be a single RID pointing at the first FieldDef or MethodDef belonging to that type; the end of the list can be inferred by the field list and method list RIDs of the next row in the TypeDef table. Going back to the TypeDef If we have a look back at the definition of a TypeDef, we end up with the following reprensentation for each row: Flags - always 4 bytes Name - a #Strings heap offset. Namespace - a #Strings heap offset. Extends - a TypeDefOrRef coded token. FieldList - a single RID to the FieldDef table. MethodList - a single RID to the MethodDef table. So, depending on the number of entries in the heaps and tables within the assembly, the rows in the TypeDef table can be as small as 14 bytes, or as large as 24 bytes. Now we've had a look at how information is encoded within the metadata tables, in the next post we can see how they are arranged on disk.

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• Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff   That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program.  In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe.  The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file.  There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version.  The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file.  If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology.  The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a  predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project.  Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time.  I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario.  I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007.  -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010?   Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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• Writing an ASP.Net Web based TFS Client

  - by Glav

  So one of the things I needed to do was write an ASP.Net MVC based application for our senior execs to manage a set of arbitrary attributes against stories, bugs etc to be able to attribute whether the item was related to Research and Development, and if so, what kind. We are using TFS Azure and don’t have the option of custom templates. I have decided on using a string based field within the template that is not very visible and which we don’t use to write a small set of custom which will determine the research and development association. However, this string munging on the field is not very user friendly so we need a simple tool that can display attributes against items in a simple dropdown list or something similar. Enter a custom web app that accesses our TFS items in Azure (Note: We are also using Visual Studio 2012) Now TFS Azure uses your Live ID and it is not really possible to easily do this in a server based app where no interaction is available. Even if you capture the Live ID credentials yourself and try to submit them to TFS Azure, it wont work. Bottom line is that it is not straightforward nor obvious what you have to do. In fact, it is a real pain to find and there are some answers out there which don’t appear to be answers at all given they didn’t work in my scenario. So for anyone else who wants to do this, here is a simple breakdown on what you have to do: Go here and get the “TFS Service Credential Viewer”. Install it, run it and connect to your TFS instance in azure and create a service account. Note the username and password exactly as it presents it to you. This is the magic identity that will allow unattended, programmatic access. Without this step, don’t bother trying to do anything else. In your MVC app, reference the following assemblies from “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0”: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Common.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.DataStoreLoader.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.dll Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Common.dll If hosting this in Internet Information Server, for the application pool this app runs under, you will need to enable 32 Bit support. You also have to allow the TFS client assemblies to store a cache of files on your system. If you don’t do this, you will authenticate fine, but then get an exception saying that it is unable to access the cache at some directory path when you query work items. You can set this up by adding the following to your web.config, in the <appSettings> element as shown below: <appSettings> <!-- Add reference to TFS Client Cache --> <add key="WorkItemTrackingCacheRoot" value="C:\windows\temp" /> </appSettings> With all that in place, you can write the following code: var token = new Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.SimpleWebTokenCredential("{you-service-account-name", "{your-service-acct-password}"); var clientCreds = new Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.TfsClientCredentials(token); var currentCollection = new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri(“https://{yourdomain}.visualstudio.com/defaultcollection”), clientCreds); TfsConfigurationServercurrentCollection.EnsureAuthenticated(); In the above code, not the URL contains the “defaultcollection” at the end of the URL. Obviously replace {yourdomain} with whatever is defined for your TFS in Azure instance. In addition, make sure the service user account and password that was generated in the first step is substituted in here. Note: If something is not right, the “EnsureAuthenticated()” call will throw an exception with the message being you are not authorised. If you forget the “defaultcollection” on the URL, it will still fail but with a message saying you are not authorised. That is, a similar but different exception message. And that is it. You can then query the collection using something like: var service = currentCollection.GetService<WorkItemStore>(); var proj = service.Projects[0]; var allQueries = proj.StoredQueries; for (int qcnt = 0; qcnt < allQueries.Count; qcnt++) {     var query = allQueries[qcnt];     var queryDesc = string.format(“Query found named: {0}”,query.Name); } You get the idea. If you search around, you will find references to the ServiceIdentityCredentialProvider which is referenced in this article. I had no luck with this method and it all looked too hard since it required an extra KB article and other magic sauce. So I hope that helps. This article certainly would have helped me save a boat load of time and frustration.

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• Displaying text letter by letter

  - by Evi

  I am planing to Write a Text adventure and I don't know how to make the text draw letter by letter in any other way than changing the variable from h to he to hel to hell to hello That would be a terrible amount of work since there are tons of dialogue. Here is the source code so far { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Texture2D sampleBG; Texture2D TextBG; SpriteFont defaultfont; KeyboardState keyboardstate; public bool spacepress = false; public bool mspress = false; public int textheight = 425; public int rowspace = 40; public string namebox = "(null)"; public string Row1 = "(null)"; public string Row2 = "(null)"; public string Row3 = "(null)"; public string Row4 = "(null)"; public int Dialogue = 0; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 600; graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 800; IsMouseVisible = true; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); // TODO: use this.Content to load your game content here sampleBG = Content.Load <Texture2D>("SampleBG"); defaultfont = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("SpriteFont1"); TextBG = Content.Load<Texture2D>("textbg"); } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // TODO: Unload any non ContentManager content here } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { KeyboardState keyboardstate = Keyboard.GetState(); MouseState mousestate = Mouse.GetState(); // Changes Dialgue by pressing Left Mouse Button or Space #region Dialogue changer if (mousestate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && mspress == false) { mspress = true; Dialogue = Dialogue + 1; } if (mousestate.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released && mspress == true) { mspress = false; } if (keyboardstate.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space) && spacepress == false) { spacepress = true; Dialogue = Dialogue + 1; } if (keyboardstate.IsKeyUp(Keys.Space) && spacepress == true) { spacepress = false; } #endregion // ------------------------------------------------------ // Dialgue Content #region Dialgue if (Dialogue == 1) { Row1 = "Input Text 1 Here."; Row2 = "Input Text 2 Here."; Row3 = "Input Text 3 Here."; Row4 = "Input Text 4 Here."; } if (Dialogue == 2) { Row1 = "Text 1"; Row2 = "Text 2"; Row3 = "Text 3"; Row4 = "Text 4"; } #endregion // ------------------------------------------------------ base.Update(gameTime); } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); // TODO: Add your drawing code here spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(sampleBG, new Rectangle(0, 0, 800, 600), Color.White); spriteBatch.Draw(TextBG, new Rectangle(0, 400, 800, 200), Color.White); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row1, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 0))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row2, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 1))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row3, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 2))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.DrawString(defaultfont, Row4, new Vector2(10, (textheight + (rowspace * 3))), Color.Black); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } }

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• Subterranean IL: Generics and array covariance

  - by Simon Cooper

  Arrays in .NET are curious beasts. They are the only built-in collection types in the CLR, and SZ-arrays (single dimension, zero-indexed) have their own commands and IL syntax. One of their stranger properties is they have a kind of built-in covariance long before generic variance was added in .NET 4. However, this causes a subtle but important problem with generics. First of all, we need to briefly recap on array covariance. SZ-array covariance To demonstrate, I'll tweak the classes I introduced in my previous posts: public class IncrementableClass { public int Value; public virtual void Increment(int incrementBy) { Value += incrementBy; } } public class IncrementableClassx2 : IncrementableClass { public override void Increment(int incrementBy) { base.Increment(incrementBy); base.Increment(incrementBy); } } In the CLR, SZ-arrays of reference types are implicitly convertible to arrays of the element's supertypes, all the way up to object (note that this does not apply to value types). That is, an instance of IncrementableClassx2[] can be used wherever a IncrementableClass[] or object[] is required. When an SZ-array could be used in this fashion, a run-time type check is performed when you try to insert an object into the array to make sure you're not trying to insert an instance of IncrementableClass into an IncrementableClassx2[]. This check means that the following code will compile fine but will fail at run-time: IncrementableClass[] array = new IncrementableClassx2[1]; array[0] = new IncrementableClass(); // throws ArrayTypeMismatchException These checks are enforced by the various stelem* and ldelem* il instructions in such a way as to ensure you can't insert a IncrementableClass into a IncrementableClassx2[]. For the rest of this post, however, I'm going to concentrate on the ldelema instruction. ldelema This instruction pops the array index (int32) and array reference (O) off the stack, and pushes a pointer (&) to the corresponding array element. However, unlike the ldelem instruction, the instruction's type argument must match the run-time array type exactly. This is because, once you've got a managed pointer, you can use that pointer to both load and store values in that array element using the ldind* and stind* (load/store indirect) instructions. As the same pointer can be used for both input and output to the array, the type argument to ldelema must be invariant. At the time, this was a perfectly reasonable restriction, and maintained array type-safety within managed code. However, along came generics, and with it the constrained callvirt instruction. So, what happens when we combine array covariance and constrained callvirt? .method public static void CallIncrementArrayValue() { // IncrementableClassx2[] arr = new IncrementableClassx2[1] ldc.i4.1 newarr IncrementableClassx2 // arr[0] = new IncrementableClassx2(); dup newobj instance void IncrementableClassx2::.ctor() ldc.i4.0 stelem.ref // IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>(arr, 0) // here, we're treating an IncrementableClassx2[] as IncrementableClass[] dup ldc.i4.0 call void IncrementArrayValue<class IncrementableClass>(!!0[],int32) // ... ret } .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } And the result: Unhandled Exception: System.ArrayTypeMismatchException: Attempted to access an element as a type incompatible with the array. at IncrementArrayValue[T](T[] arr, Int32 index) at CallIncrementArrayValue() Hmm. We're instantiating the generic method as IncrementArrayValue<IncrementableClass>, but passing in an IncrementableClassx2[], hence the ldelema instruction is failing as it's expecting an IncrementableClass[]. On features and feature conflicts What we've got here is a conflict between existing behaviour (ldelema ensuring type safety on covariant arrays) and new behaviour (managed pointers to object references used for every constrained callvirt on generic type instances). And, although this is an edge case, there is no general workaround. The generic method could be hidden behind several layers of assemblies, wrappers and interfaces that make it a requirement to use array covariance when calling the generic method. Furthermore, this will only fail at runtime, whereas compile-time safety is what generics were designed for! The solution is the readonly. prefix instruction. This modifies the ldelema instruction to ignore the exact type check for arrays of reference types, and so it lets us take the address of array elements using a covariant type to the actual run-time type of the array: .method public static void IncrementArrayValue<(IncrementableClass) T>( !!T[] arr, int32 index) { // arr[index].Increment(1) ldarg.0 ldarg.1 readonly. ldelema !!T ldc.i4.1 constrained. !!T callvirt instance void IIncrementable::Increment(int32) ret } But what about type safety? In return for ignoring the type check, the resulting controlled mutability pointer can only be used in the following situations: As the object parameter to ldfld, ldflda, stfld, call and constrained callvirt instructions As the pointer parameter to ldobj or ldind* As the source parameter to cpobj In other words, the only operations allowed are those that read from the pointer; stind* and similar that alter the pointer itself are banned. This ensures that the array element we're pointing to won't be changed to anything untoward, and so type safety within the array is maintained. This is a typical example of the maxim that whenever you add a feature to a program, you have to consider how that feature interacts with every single one of the existing features. Although an edge case, the readonly. prefix instruction ensures that generics and array covariance work together and that compile-time type safety is maintained. Tune in next time for a look at the .ctor generic type constraint, and what it means.

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• To Bit or Not To Bit

  - by Johnm

  'Twas a long day of troubleshooting and firefighting and now, with most of the office vacant, you face a blank scripting window to create a new table in his database. Many questions circle your mind like dirty water gurgling down the bathtub drain: "How normalized should this table be?", "Should I use an identity column?", "NVarchar or Varchar?", "Should this column be NULLABLE?", "I wonder what apple blue cheese bacon cheesecake tastes like?" Well, there are times when the mind goes it's own direction. A Bit About Bit At some point during your table creation efforts you will encounter the decision of whether to use the bit data type for a column. The bit data type is an integer data type that recognizes only the values of 1, 0 and NULL as valid. This data type is often utilized to store yes/no or true/false values. An example of its use would be a column called [IsGasoline] which would be intended to contain the value of 1 if the row's subject (a car) had a gasoline engine and a 0 if the subject did not have a gasoline engine. The bit data type can even be found in some of the system tables of SQL Server. For example, the sysssispackages table in the msdb database which contains SQL Server Integration Services Package information for the packages stored in SQL Server. This table contains a column called [IsEncrypted]. A value of 1 indicates that the package has been encrypted while the value of 0 indicates that it is not. I have learned that the most effective way to disperse the crowd that surrounds the office coffee machine is to engage into SQL Server debates. The bit data type has been one of the most reoccurring, as well as the most enjoyable, of these topics. It contains a practical side and a philosophical side. Practical Consideration This data type certainly has its place and is a valuable option for database design; but it is often used in situations where the answer is really not a pure true/false response. In addition, true/false values are not very informative or scalable. Let's use the previously noted [IsGasoline] column for illustration. While on the surface it appears to be a rather simple question when evaluating a car: "Does the car have a gasoline engine?" If the person entering data is entering a row for a Jeep Liberty, the response would be a 1 since it has a gasoline engine. If the person is entering data is entering a row for a Chevrolet Volt, the response would be a 0 since it is an electric engine. What happens when a person is entering a row for the gasoline/electric hybrid Toyota Prius? Would one person's conclusion be consistent with another person's conclusion? The argument could be made that the current intent for the database is to be used only for pure gasoline and pure electric engines; but this is where the scalability issue comes into play. With the use of a bit data type a database modification and data conversion would be required if the business decided to take on hybrid engines. Whereas, alternatively, if the int data type were used as a foreign key to a reference table containing the engine type options, the change to include the hybrid option would only require an entry into the reference table. Philosophical Consideration Since the bit data type is often used for true/false or yes/no data (also called Boolean) it presents a philosophical conundrum of what to do about the allowance of the NULL value. The inclusion of NULL in a true/false or yes/no response simply violates the logical principle of bivalence which states that "every proposition is either true or false". If NULL is not true, then it must be false. The mathematical laws of Boolean logic support this concept by stating that the only valid values of this scenario are 1 and 0. There is another way to look at this conundrum: NULL is also considered to be the absence of a response. In other words, it is the equivalent to "undecided". Anyone who watches the news can tell you that polls always include an "undecided" option. This could be considered a valid option in the world of yes/no/dunno. Through out all of these considerations I have discovered one absolute certainty: When you have found a person, or group of persons, who are willing to entertain a philosophical debate of the bit data type, you have found some true friends.

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• What's new in Solaris 11.1?

  - by Karoly Vegh

  Solaris 11.1 is released. This is the first release update since Solaris 11 11/11, the versioning has been changed from MM/YY style to 11.1 highlighting that this is Solaris 11 Update 1.  Solaris 11 itself has been great. What's new in Solaris 11.1? Allow me to pick some new features from the What's New PDF that can be found in the official Oracle Solaris 11.1 Documentation. The updates are very numerous, I really can't include all.  I. New AI Automated Installer RBAC profiles have been introduced to enable delegation of installation tasks. II. The interactive installer now supports installing the OS to iSCSI targets. III. ASR (Auto Service Request) and OCM (Oracle Configuration Manager) have been enabled by default to proactively provide support information and create service requests to speed up support processes. This is optional and can be disabled but helps a lot in supportcases. For further information, see: http://oracle.com/goto/solarisautoreg IV. The new command svcbundle helps you to create SMF manifests without having to struggle with XML editing. (btw, do you know the interactive editprop subcommand in svccfg? The listprop/setprop subcommands are great for scripting and automating, but for an interactive property editing session try, for example, this: svccfg -s svc:/application/pkg/system-repository:default editprop )  V. pfedit: Ever wondered how to delegate editing permissions to certain files? It is well known "sudo /usr/bin/vi /etc/hosts" is not the right way, for sudo elevates the complete vi process to admin levels, and the user can "break" out of the session as root with simply starting a shell from that vi. Now, the new pfedit command provides a solution exactly to this challenge - an auditable, secure, per-user configurable editing possibility. See the pfedit man page for examples.   VI. rsyslog, the popular logging daemon (filters, SSL, formattable output, SQL collect...) has been included in Solaris 11.1 as an alternative to syslog.  VII: Zones: Solaris Zones - as a major Solaris differentiator - got lots of love in terms of new features: ZOSS - Zones on Shared Storage: Placing your zones to shared storage (FC, iSCSI) has never been this easy - via zonecfg.  parallell updates - with S11's bootenvironments updating zones was no problem and meant no downtime anyway, but still, now you can update them parallelly, a way faster update action if you are running a large number of zones. This is like parallell patching in Solaris 10, but with all the IPS/ZFS/S11 goodness.  per-zone fstype statistics: Running zones on a shared filesystems complicate the I/O debugging, since ZFS collects all the random writes and delivers them sequentially to boost performance. Now, over kstat you can find out which zone's I/O has an impact on the other ones, see the examples in the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29024/gmheh.html#scrolltoc Zones got RDSv3 protocol support for InfiniBand, and IPoIB support with Crossbow's anet (automatic vnic creation) feature.  NUMA I/O support for Zones: customers can now determine the NUMA I/O topology of the system from within zones.  VIII: Security got a lot of attention too:  Automated security/audit reporting, with builtin reporting templates e.g. for PCI (payment card industry) audits.  PAM is now configureable on a per-user basis instead of system wide, allowing different authentication requirements for different users  SSH in Solaris 11.1 now supports running in FIPS 140-2 mode, that is, in a U.S. government security accredited fashion.  SHA512/224 and SHA512/256 cryptographic hash functions are implemented in a FIPS-compliant way - and on a T4 implemented in silicon! That is, goverment-approved cryptography at HW-speed.  Generally, Solaris is currently under evaluation to be both FIPS and Common Criteria certified.  IX. Networking, as one of the core strengths of Solaris 11, has been extended with:  Data Center Bridging (DCB) - not only setups where network and storage share the same fabric (FCoE, anyone?) can have Quality-of-Service requirements. DCB enables peers to distinguish traffic based on priorities. Your NICs have to support DCB, see the documentation, and additional information on Wikipedia. DataLink MultiPathing, DLMP, enables link aggregation to span across multiple switches, even between those of different vendors. But there are essential differences to the good old bandwidth-aggregating LACP, see the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E28993/gmdlu.html#scrolltoc VNIC live migration is now supported from one physical NIC to another on-the-fly  X. Data management:  FedFS, (Federated FileSystem) is new, it relies on Solaris 11's NFS referring mechanism to join separate shares of different NFS servers into a single filesystem namespace. The referring system has been there since S11 11/11, in Solaris 11.1 FedFS uses a LDAP - as the one global nameservice to bind them all.  The iSCSI initiator now uses the T4 CPU's HW-implemented CRC32 algorithm - thus improving iSCSI throughput while reducing CPU utilization on a T4 Storage locking improvements are now RAC aware, speeding up throughput with better locking-communication between nodes up to 20%!  XI: Kernel performance optimizations: The new Virtual Memory subsystem ("VM2") scales now to 100+ TB Memory ranges.  The memory predictor monitors large memory page usage, and adjust memory page sizes to applications' needs OSM, the Optimized Shared Memory allows Oracle DBs' SGA to be resized online XII: The Power Aware Dispatcher in now by default enabled, reducing power consumption of idle CPUs. Also, the LDoms' Power Management policies and the poweradm settings in Solaris 11 OS will cooperate. XIII: x86 boot: upgrade to the (Grand Unified Bootloader) GRUB2. Because grub2 differs in the configuration syntactically from grub1, one shall not edit the new grub configuration (grub.cfg) but use the new bootadm features to update it. GRUB2 adds UEFI support and also support for disks over 2TB. XIV: Improved viewing of per-CPU statistics of mpstat. This one might seem of less importance at first, but nowadays having better sorting/filtering possibilities on a periodically updated mpstat output of 256+ vCPUs can be a blessing. XV: Support for Solaris Cluster 4.1: The What's New document doesn't actually mention this one, since OSC 4.1 has not been released at the time 11.1 was. But since then it is available, and it requires Solaris 11.1. And it's only a "pkg update" away. ...aand I seriously need to stop here. There's a lot I missed, Edge Virtual Bridging, lofi tuning, ZFS sharing and crypto enhancements, USB3.0, pulseaudio, trusted extensions updates, etc - but if I mention all those then I effectively copy the What's New document. Which I recommend reading now anyway, it is a great extract of the 300+ new projects and RFE-followups in S11.1. And this blogpost is a summary of that extract.  For closing words, allow me to come back to Request For Enhancements, RFEs. Any customer can request features. Open up a Support Request, explain that this is an RFE, describe the feature you/your company desires to have in S11 implemented. The more SRs are collected for an RFE, the more chance it's got to get implemented. Feel free to provide feedback about the product, as well as about the Solaris 11.1 Documentation using the "Feedback" button there. Both the Solaris engineers and the documentation writers are eager to hear your input.Feel free to comment about this post too. Except that it's too long ;)  wbr,charlie

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 02, 2014Popular ReleasesPortable Class Library for SQLite: Portable Class Library for SQLite - 3.8.4.4: This pull request from mattleibow addresses an issue with custom function creation (define functions in C# code and invoke them from SQLite as id they where regular SQL functions). Impact: Xamarin iOSTweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Tweetinvi 0.9.3.x: Timelines- Added all the parameters available from the Timeline Endpoints in Tweetinvi. - This is available for HomeTimeline, UserTimeline, MentionsTimeline // Simple query var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(); // Create a parameter for queries with specific parameters var timelineParameter = Timeline.GenerateHomeTimelineRequestParameter(); timelineParameter.ExcludeReplies = true; timelineParameter.TrimUser = true; var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(timelineParameter); Tweets- Add mis...Sandcastle Help File Builder: Help File Builder and Tools v2014.5.31.0: General InformationIMPORTANT: On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. This release completes removal of the branding transformations and implements the new VS2013 presentation style that utilizes the new lightweight website format. Several breaking cha...Tooltip Web Preview: ToolTip Web Preview: Version 1.0Database Helper: Release 1.0.0.0: First Release of Database HelperCoMaSy: CoMaSy1.0.2: !Contact Management SystemImage View Slider: Image View Slider: This is a .NET component. We create this using VB.NET. Here you can use an Image Viewer with several properties to your application form. We wish somebody to improve freely. Try this out! Author : Steven Renaldo Antony Yustinus Arjuna Purnama Putra Andre Wijaya P Martin Lidau PBK GENAP 2014 - TI UKDWAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI WP SDK in Comparison with Aspose.Words for dealing with Microsoft Word. What's New ?Following Examples: Insert Picture in Word Document Insert Comments Set Page Borders Mail Merge from XML Data Source Moving the Cursor Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.SEToolbox: 01.032.014 Release 1: Added fix when loading game Textures for icons causing 'Unable to read beyond the end of the stream'. Added new Resource Report, that displays all in game resources in a concise report. Added in temp directory cleaner, to keep excess files from building up. Fixed use of colors on the windows, to work better with desktop schemes. Adding base support for multilingual resources. This will allow loading of the Space Engineers resources to show localized names, and display localized date a...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.71.2: More memory and performance improvements. Fixed an issue with pivot table field order.Vi-AIO SearchBar: Vi – AIO Search Bar: Version 1.0Top Verses ( Ayat Emas ): Binary Top Verses: This one is the bin folder of the component. the .dll component is inside.Traditional Calendar Component: Traditional Calender Converter: Duta Wacana Christian University This file containing Traditional Calendar Component and Demo Aplication that using Traditional Calendar Component. This component made with .NET Framework 4 and the programming language is C# .SQLSetupHelper: 1.0.0.0: First Stable Version of SQL SetupComposite Iconote: Composite Iconote: This is a composite has been made by Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Requirement: To develop this composite or use this component in your application, your computer must have .NET framework 4.5 or newer.Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.1. Breaking changes: - Int/short Set methods of WritablePixelCollection are now unsigned. - The Q16 build no longer uses HDRI, switch to the new Q16-HDRI build if you need HDRI.fnr.exe - Find And Replace Tool: 1.7: Bug fixes Refactored logic for encoding text values to command line to handle common edge cases where find/replace operation works in GUI but not in command line Fix for bug where selection in Encoding drop down was different when generating command line in some cases. It was reported in: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/workitem/34 Fix for "Backslash inserted before dot in replacement text" reported here: https://findandreplace.codeplex.com/discussions/541024 Fix for finding replacing...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.59: changes NEW: Added Support for 'GokoImage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ViperII.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixxxView.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgRex.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'PixLiv.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'imgsee.me' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgS.it' linksToolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013: XrmToolBox (v1.2014.5.28): XrmToolbox improvement XrmToolBox updates (v1.2014.5.28)Fix connecting to a connection with custom authentication without saved password Tools improvement New tool!Solution Components Mover (v1.2014.5.22) Transfer solution components from one solution to another one Import/Export NN relationships (v1.2014.3.7) Allows you to import and export many to many relationships Tools updatesAttribute Bulk Updater (v1.2014.5.28) Audit Center (v1.2014.5.28) View Layout Replicator (v1.2014.5.28) Scrip...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.10: Fix for Issue #20875 - echo switch doesn't work for CSS CSS should honor the SASS source-file comments JS should allow multi-line comment directivesNew Projects[ISEN] Rendu de projet Naughty3Dogs - Pong3D: Pong3D est un jeu qui reprend le principe classique du Pong en le portant dans un environnement 3D à l'aide du langage c# et du moteur Unity3DBootstrap for MVC: Bootstrap for MVC.F. A. Q. - Najczesciej zadawane pytania: FAQForuMvc: Technifutur short projecthomework456: no.iStoody: Studies organize solution, available through app for Windows and Windows Phone.liaoliao: ???????????Price Tracker: Allows a user to track prices based on parsed emailsRoslynEval: RoslynRx Hub: Rx Hub provides server side computation which initiate by subscriber requestSharepoint Online AppCache Reset: We are an IT resource company providing Virtual IT services and custom and opensource programs for everyday needs. UnitConversionLib : Smart Unit Conversion Library in C#: Conversion of units, arithmetic operation and parsing quantities with their units on run time. Smart unit converter and conversion lib for physical quantities,

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• The Linux powered LAN Gaming House

  - by sachinghalot

  LAN parties offer the enjoyment of head to head gaming in a real-life social environment. In general, they are experiencing decline thanks to the convenience of Internet gaming, but Kenton Varda is a man who takes his LAN gaming very seriously. His LAN gaming house is a fascinating project, and best of all, Linux plays a part in making it all work.Varda has done his own write ups (short, long), so I'm only going to give an overview here. The setup is a large house with 12 gaming stations and a single server computer.The client computers themselves are rack mounted in a server room, and they are linked to the gaming stations on the floor above via extension cables (HDMI for video and audio and USB for mouse and keyboard). Each client computer, built into a 3U rack mount case, is a well specced gaming rig in its own right, sporting an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 560 along with a 60GB SSD drive.Originally, the client computers ran Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows and the games executed under WINE, but Varda had to abandon this scheme. As he explains on his site:"Amazingly, a majority of games worked fine, although many had minor bugs (e.g. flickering mouse cursor, minor rendering artifacts, etc.). Some games, however, did not work, or had bad bugs that made them annoying to play."Subsequently, the gaming computers have been moved onto a more conventional gaming choice, Windows 7. It's a shame that WINE couldn't be made to work, but I can sympathize as it's rare to find modern games that work perfectly and at full native speed. Another problem with WINE is that it tends to suffer from regressions, which is hardly surprising when considering the difficulty of constantly improving the emulation of the Windows API. Varda points out that he preferred working with Linux clients as they were easier to modify and came with less licensing baggage.Linux still runs the server and all of the tools used are open source software. The hardware here is a Intel Xeon E3-1230 with 4GB of RAM. The storage hanging off this machine is a bit more complex than the clients. In addition to the 60GB SSD, it also has 2x1TB drives and a 240GB SDD.When the clients were running Linux, they booted over PXE using a toolchain that will be familiar to anyone who has setup Linux network booting. DHCP pointed the clients to the server which then supplied PXELINUX using TFTP. When booted, file access was accomplished through network block device (NBD). This is a very easy to use system that allows you to serve the contents of a file as a block device over the network. The client computer runs a user mode device driver and the device can be mounted within the file system using the mount command.One snag with offering file access via NBD is that it's difficult to impose any security restrictions on different areas of the file system as the server only sees a single file. The advantage is perfomance as the client operating system simply sees a block device, and besides, these security issues aren't relevant in this setup.Unfortunately, Windows 7 can't use NBD, so, Varda had to switch to iSCSI (which works in both server and client mode under Linux). His network cards are not compliant with this standard when doing a netboot, but fortunately, gPXE came to the rescue, and he boostraps it over PXE. gPXE is also available as an ISO image and is worth knowing about if you encounter an awkward machine that can't manage a network boot. It can also optionally boot from a HTTP server rather than the more traditional TFTP server.According to Varda, booting all 12 machines over the Gigabit Ethernet network is surprisingly fast, and once booted, the machines don't seem noticeably slower than if they were using local storage. Once loaded, most games attempt to load in as much data as possible, filling the RAM, and the the disk and network bandwidth required is small. It's worth noting that these are aspects of this project that might differ from some other thin client scenarios.At time of writing, it doesn't seem as though the local storage of the client machines is being utilized. Instead, the clients boot into Windows from an image on the server that contains the operating system and the games themselves. It uses the copy on write feature of LVM so that any writes from a client are added to a differencing image allocated to that client. As the administrator, Varda can log into the Linux server and authorize changes to the master image for updates etc.SummaryOverall, Varda estimates the total cost of the project at about $40,000, and of course, he needed a property that offered a large physical space in order to house the computers and the gaming workstations. Obviously, this project has stark differences to most thin client projects. The balance between storage, network usage, GPU power and security would not be typical of an office installation, for example. The only letdown is that WINE proved to be insufficiently compatible to run a wide variety of modern games, but that is, perhaps, asking too much of it, and hats off to Varda for trying to make it work.

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• IRM Item Codes &ndash; what are they for?

  - by martin.abrahams

  A number of colleagues have been asking about IRM item codes recently – what are they for, when are they useful, how can you control them to meet some customer requirements? This is quite a big topic, but this article provides a few answers. An item code is part of the metadata of every sealed document – unless you define a custom metadata model. The item code is defined when a file is sealed, and usually defaults to a timestamp/filename combination. This time/name combo tends to make item codes unique for each new document, but actually item codes are not necessarily unique, as will become clear shortly. In most scenarios, item codes are not relevant to the evaluation of a user’s rights - the context name is the critical piece of metadata, as a user typically has a role that grants access to an entire classification of information regardless of item code. This is key to the simplicity and manageability of the Oracle IRM solution. Item codes are occasionally exposed to users in the UI, but most users probably never notice and never care. Nevertheless, here is one example of where you can see an item code – when you hover the mouse pointer over a sealed file. As you see, the item code for this freshly created file combines a timestamp with the file name. But what are item codes for? The first benefit of item codes is that they enable you to manage exceptions to the policy defined for a context. Thus, I might have access to all oracle – internal files - except for 2011_03_11 13:33:29 Board Minutes.sdocx. This simple mechanism enables Oracle IRM to provide file-by-file control where appropriate, whilst offering the scalability and manageability of classification-based control for the majority of users and content. You really don’t want to be managing each file individually, but never say never. Item codes can also be used for the opposite effect – to include a file in a user’s rights when their role would ordinarily deny access. So, you can assign a role that allows access only to specified item codes. For example, my role might say that I have access to precisely one file – the one shown above. So how are item codes set? In the vast majority of scenarios, item codes are set automatically as part of the sealing process. The sealing API uses the timestamp and filename as shown, and the user need not even realise that this has happened. This automatically creates item codes that are for all practical purposes unique - and that are also intelligible to users who might want to refer to them when viewing or assigning rights in the management UI. It is also possible for suitably authorised users and applications to set the item code manually or programmatically if required. Setting the item code manually using the IRM Desktop The manual process is a simple extension of the sealing task. An authorised user can select the Advanced… sealing option, and will see a dialog that offers the option to specify the item code. To see this option, the user’s role needs the Set Item Code right – you don’t want most users to give any thought at all to item codes, so by default the option is hidden. Setting the item code programmatically A more common scenario is that an application controls the item code programmatically. For example, a document management system that seals documents as part of a workflow might set the item code to match the document’s unique identifier in its repository. This offers the option to tie IRM rights evaluation directly to the security model defined in the document management system. Again, the sealing application needs to be authorised to Set Item Code. The Payslip Scenario To give a concrete example of how item codes might be used in a real world scenario, consider a Human Resources workflow such as a payslips. The goal might be to allow the HR team to have access to all payslips, but each employee to have access only to their own payslips. To enable this, you might have an IRM classification called Payslips. The HR team have a role in the normal way that allows access to all payslips. However, each employee would have an Item Reader role that only allows them to access files that have a particular item code – and that item code might match the employee’s payroll number. So, employee number 123123123 would have access to items with that code. This shows why item codes are not necessarily unique – you can deliberately set the same code on many files for ease of administration. The employees might have the right to unseal or print their payslip, so the solution acts as a secure delivery mechanism that allows payslips to be distributed via corporate email without any fear that they might be accessed by IT administrators, or forwarded accidentally to anyone other than the intended recipient. All that remains is to ensure that as each user’s payslip is sealed, it is assigned the correct item code – something that is easily managed by a simple IRM sealing application. Each month, an employee’s payslip is sealed with the same item code, so you do not need to keep amending the list of items that the user has access to – they have access to all documents that carry their employee code.

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• Using Delegates in C# (Part 1)

  - by rajbk

  This post provides a very basic introduction of delegates in C#. Part 2 of this post can be read here. A delegate is a class that is derived from System.Delegate.  It contains a list of one or more methods called an invocation list. When a delegate instance is “invoked” with the arguments as defined in the signature of the delegate, each of the methods in the invocation list gets invoked with the arguments. The code below shows example with static and instance methods respectively: Static Methods 1: using System; 2: using System.Linq; 3: using System.Collections.Generic; 4: 5: public delegate void SayName(string name); 6: 7: public class Program 8: { 9: [STAThread] 10: static void Main(string[] args) 11: { 12: SayName englishDelegate = new SayName(SayNameInEnglish); 13: SayName frenchDelegate = new SayName(SayNameInFrench); 14: SayName combinedDelegate =(SayName)Delegate.Combine(englishDelegate, frenchDelegate); 15: 16: combinedDelegate.Invoke("Tom"); 17: Console.ReadLine(); 18: } 19: 20: static void SayNameInFrench(string name) { 21: Console.WriteLine("J'ai m'appelle " + name); 22: } 23: 24: static void SayNameInEnglish(string name) { 25: Console.WriteLine("My name is " + name); 26: } 27: } We have declared a delegate of type SayName with return type of void and taking an input parameter of name of type string. On line 12, we create a new instance of this delegate which refers to a static method - SayNameInEnglish.  SayNameInEnglish has the same return type and parameter list as the delegate declaration.  Once a delegate is instantiated, the instance will always refer to the same target. Delegates are immutable. On line 13, we create a new instance of the delegate but point to a different static method. As you may recall, a delegate instance encapsulates an invocation list. You create an invocation list by combining delegates using the Delegate.Combine method (there is an easier syntax as you will see later). When two non null delegate instances are combined, their invocation lists get combined to form a new invocation list. This is done in line 14.  On line 16, we invoke the delegate with the Invoke method and pass in the required string parameter. Since the delegate has an invocation list with two entries, each of the method in the invocation list is invoked. If an unhandled exception occurs during the invocation of one of these methods, the exception gets bubbled up to the line where the invocation was made (line 16). If a delegate is null and you try to invoke it, you will get a System.NullReferenceException. We see the following output when the method is run: My name is TomJ'ai m'apelle Tom Instance Methods The code below outputs the same results as before. The only difference here is we are creating delegates that point to a target object (an instance of Translator) and instance methods which have the same signature as the delegate type. The target object can never be null. We also use the short cut syntax += to combine the delegates instead of Delegate.Combine. 1: public delegate void SayName(string name); 2: 3: public class Program 4: { 5: [STAThread] 6: static void Main(string[] args) 7: { 8: Translator translator = new Translator(); 9: SayName combinedDelegate = new SayName(translator.SayNameInEnglish); 10: combinedDelegate += new SayName(translator.SayNameInFrench); 11:  12: combinedDelegate.Invoke("Tom"); 13: Console.ReadLine(); 14: } 15: } 16: 17: public class Translator { 18: public void SayNameInFrench(string name) { 19: Console.WriteLine("J'ai m'appelle " + name); 20: } 21: 22: public void SayNameInEnglish(string name) { 23: Console.WriteLine("My name is " + name); 24: } 25: } A delegate can be removed from a combination of delegates by using the –= operator. Removing a delegate from an empty list or removing a delegate that does not exist in a non empty list will not result in an exception. Delegates are invoked synchronously using the Invoke method. We can also invoke them asynchronously using the BeginInvoke and EndInvoke methods which are compiler generated.

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• How to Recover From a Virus Infection: 3 Things You Need to Do

  - by Chris Hoffman

  If your computer becomes infected with a virus or another piece of malware, removing the malware from your computer is only the first step. There’s more you need to do to ensure you’re secure. Note that not every antivirus alert is an actual infection. If your antivirus program catches a virus before it ever gets a chance to run on your computer, you’re safe. If it catches the malware later, you have a bigger problem. Change Your Passwords You’ve probably used your computer to log into your email, online banking websites, and other important accounts. Assuming you had malware on your computer, the malware could have logged your passwords and uploaded them to a malicious third party. With just your email account, the third party could reset your passwords on other websites and gain access to almost any of your online accounts. To prevent this, you’ll want to change the passwords for your important accounts — email, online banking, and whatever other important accounts you’ve logged into from the infected computer. You should probably use another computer that you know is clean to change the passwords, just to be safe. When changing your passwords, consider using a password manager to keep track of strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication to prevent people from logging into your important accounts even if they know your password. This will help protect you in the future. Ensure the Malware Is Actually Removed Once malware gets access to your computer and starts running, it has the ability to do many more nasty things to your computer. For example, some malware may install rootkit software and attempt to hide itself from the system. Many types of Trojans also “open the floodgates” after they’re running, downloading many different types of malware from malicious web servers to the local system. In other words, if your computer was infected, you’ll want to take extra precautions. You shouldn’t assume it’s clean just because your antivirus removed what it found. It’s probably a good idea to scan your computer with multiple antivirus products to ensure maximum detection. You may also want to run a bootable antivirus program, which runs outside of Windows. Such bootable antivirus programs will be able to detect rootkits that hide themselves from Windows and even the software running within Windows. avast! offers the ability to quickly create a bootable CD or USB drive for scanning, as do many other antivirus programs. You may also want to reinstall Windows (or use the Refresh feature on Windows 8) to get your computer back to a clean state. This is more time-consuming, especially if you don’t have good backups and can’t get back up and running quickly, but this is the only way you can have 100% confidence that your Windows system isn’t infected. It’s all a matter of how paranoid you want to be. Figure Out How the Malware Arrived If your computer became infected, the malware must have arrived somehow. You’ll want to examine your computer’s security and your habits to prevent more malware from slipping through in the same way. Windows is complex. For example, there are over 50 different types of potentially dangerous file extensions that can contain malware to keep track of. We’ve tried to cover many of the most important security practices you should be following, but here are some of the more important questions to ask: Are you using an antivirus? – If you don’t have an antivirus installed, you should. If you have Microsoft Security Essentials (known as Windows Defender on Windows 8), you may want to switch to a different antivirus like the free version of avast!. Microsoft’s antivirus product has been doing very poorly in tests. Do you have Java installed? – Java is a huge source of security problems. The majority of computers on the Internet have an out-of-date, vulnerable version of Java installed, which would allow malicious websites to install malware on your computer. If you have Java installed, uninstall it. If you actually need Java for something (like Minecraft), at least disable the Java browser plugin. If you’re not sure whether you need Java, you probably don’t. Are any browser plugins out-of-date? – Visit Mozilla’s Plugin Check website (yes, it also works in other browsers, not just Firefox) and see if you have any critically vulnerable plugins installed. If you do, ensure you update them — or uninstall them. You probably don’t need older plugins like QuickTime or RealPlayer installed on your computer, although Flash is still widely used. Are your web browser and operating system set to automatically update? – You should be installing updates for Windows via Windows Update when they appear. Modern web browsers are set to automatically update, so they should be fine — unless you went out of your way to disable automatic updates. Using out-of-date web browsers and Windows versions is dangerous. Are you being careful about what you run? – Watch out when downloading software to ensure you don’t accidentally click sketchy advertisements and download harmful software. Avoid pirated software that may be full of malware. Don’t run programs from email attachments. Be careful about what you run and where you get it from in general. If you can’t figure out how the malware arrived because everything looks okay, there’s not much more you can do. Just try to follow proper security practices. You may also want to keep an extra-close eye on your credit card statement for a while if you did any online-shopping recently. As so much malware is now related to organized crime, credit card numbers are a popular target.     

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• ODI 12c - Aggregating Data

  - by David Allan

  This posting will look at the aggregation component that was introduced in ODI 12c. For many ETL tool users this shouldn't be a big surprise, its a little different than ODI 11g but for good reason. You can use this component for composing data with relational like operations such as sum, average and so forth. Also, Oracle SQL supports special functions called Analytic SQL functions, you can use a specially configured aggregation component or the expression component for these now in ODI 12c. In database systems an aggregate transformation is a transformation where the values of multiple rows are grouped together as input on certain criteria to form a single value of more significant meaning - that's exactly the purpose of the aggregate component. In the image below you can see the aggregate component in action within a mapping, for how this and a few other examples are built look at the ODI 12c Aggregation Viewlet here - the viewlet illustrates a simple aggregation being built and then some Oracle analytic SQL such as AVG(EMP.SAL) OVER (PARTITION BY EMP.DEPTNO) built using both the aggregate component and the expression component. In 11g you used to just write the aggregate expression directly on the target, this made life easy for some cases, but it wan't a very obvious gesture plus had other drawbacks with ordering of transformations (agg before join/lookup. after set and so forth) and supporting analytic SQL for example - there are a lot of postings from creative folks working around this in 11g - anything from customizing KMs, to bypassing aggregation analysis in the ODI code generator. The aggregate component has a few interesting aspects. 1. Firstly and foremost it defines the attributes projected from it - ODI automatically will perform the grouping all you do is define the aggregation expressions for those columns aggregated. In 12c you can control this automatic grouping behavior so that you get the code you desire, so you can indicate that an attribute should not be included in the group by, that's what I did in the analytic SQL example using the aggregate component. 2. The component has a few other properties of interest; it has a HAVING clause and a manual group by clause. The HAVING clause includes a predicate used to filter rows resulting from the GROUP BY clause. Because it acts on the results of the GROUP BY clause, aggregation functions can be used in the HAVING clause predicate, in 11g the filter was overloaded and used for both having clause and filter clause, this is no longer the case. If a filter is after an aggregate, it is after the aggregate (not sometimes after, sometimes having).  3. The manual group by clause let's you use special database grouping grammar if you need to. For example Oracle has a wealth of highly specialized grouping capabilities for data warehousing such as the CUBE function. If you want to use specialized functions like that you can manually define the code here. The example below shows the use of a manual group from an example in the Oracle database data warehousing guide where the SUM aggregate function is used along with the CUBE function in the group by clause. The SQL I am trying to generate looks like the following from the data warehousing guide; SELECT channel_desc, calendar_month_desc, countries.country_iso_code,       TO_CHAR(SUM(amount_sold), '9,999,999,999') SALES$ FROM sales, customers, times, channels, countries WHERE sales.time_id=times.time_id AND sales.cust_id=customers.cust_id AND   sales.channel_id= channels.channel_id  AND customers.country_id = countries.country_id  AND channels.channel_desc IN   ('Direct Sales', 'Internet') AND times.calendar_month_desc IN   ('2000-09', '2000-10') AND countries.country_iso_code IN ('GB', 'US') GROUP BY CUBE(channel_desc, calendar_month_desc, countries.country_iso_code); I can capture the source datastores, the filters and joins using ODI's dataset (or as a traditional flow) which enables us to incrementally design the mapping and the aggregate component for the sum and group by as follows; In the above mapping you can see the joins and filters declared in ODI's dataset, allowing you to capture the relationships of the datastores required in an entity-relationship style just like ODI 11g. The mix of ODI's declarative design and the common flow design provides for a familiar design experience. The example below illustrates flow design (basic arbitrary ordering) - a table load where only the employees who have maximum commission are loaded into a target. The maximum commission is retrieved from the bonus datastore and there is a look using employees as the driving table and only those with maximum commission projected. Hopefully this has given you a taster for some of the new capabilities provided by the aggregate component in ODI 12c. In summary, the actions should be much more consistent in behavior and more easily discoverable for users, the use of the components in a flow graph also supports arbitrary designs and the tool (rather than the interface designer) takes care of the realization using ODI's knowledge modules. Interested to know if a deep dive into each component is interesting for folks. Any thoughts? 

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• Override an IOCTL Handler in PQOAL

  - by Kate Moss' Big Fan

  When porting or creating a BSP to a new platform, we often need to make change to OEMIoControl or HAL IOCTL handler for more specific. Since Microsoft introduced PQOAL in CE 5.0 and more and more BSP today leverages PQOAL to simplify the OAL, we no longer define the OEMIoControl directly. It is somehow analogous to migrate from pure Windows SDK to MFC; people starts to define those MFC handlers and forgot the WinMain and the big message loop. If you ever take a look at the interface between OAL and Kernel, PUBLIC\COMMON\OAK\INC\oemglobal.h, the pfnOEMIoctl is still there just as the entry point of Windows Program is WinMain since day one. (For those may argue about pfnOEMIoctl is not OEMIoControl, I will encourage you to dig into PRIVATE\WINCEOS\COREOS\NK\OEMMAIN\oemglobal.c which initialized pfnOEMIoctl to OEMIoControl. The interface is just to split OAL and Kernel which no longer linked to one executable file in CE 6, all of the function signature is still identical) So let's trace into PQOAL to realize how it implements OEMIoControl and how can we override an IOCTL handler we interest. First thing to know is the entry point (just as finding the WinMain in MFC), OEMIoControl is defined in PLATFORM\COMMON\SRC\COMMON\IOCTL\ioctl.c. Basically, it does nothing special but scan a pre-defined IOCTL table, g_oalIoCtlTable, and then execute the handler. (The highlight part) Other than that is just for error handling and the use of critical section to serialize the function. BOOL OEMIoControl(     DWORD code, VOID *pInBuffer, DWORD inSize, VOID *pOutBuffer, DWORD outSize,     DWORD *pOutSize ) {     BOOL rc = FALSE;     UINT32 i; ...     // Search the IOCTL table for the requested code.     for (i = 0; g_oalIoCtlTable[i].pfnHandler != NULL; i++) {         if (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].code == code) break;     }     // Indicate unsupported code     if (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].pfnHandler == NULL) {         NKSetLastError(ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED);         OALMSG(OAL_IOCTL, (             L"OEMIoControl: Unsupported Code 0x%x - device 0x%04x func %d\r\n",             code, code >> 16, (code >> 2)&0x0FFF         ));         goto cleanUp;     }            // Take critical section if required (after postinit & no flag)     if (         g_ioctlState.postInit &&         (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].flags & OAL_IOCTL_FLAG_NOCS) == 0     ) {         // Take critical section                    EnterCriticalSection(&g_ioctlState.cs);     }     // Execute the handler     rc = g_oalIoCtlTable[i].pfnHandler(         code, pInBuffer, inSize, pOutBuffer, outSize, pOutSize     );     // Release critical section if it was taken above     if (         g_ioctlState.postInit &&         (g_oalIoCtlTable[i].flags & OAL_IOCTL_FLAG_NOCS) == 0     ) {         // Release critical section                    LeaveCriticalSection(&g_ioctlState.cs);     } cleanUp:     OALMSG(OAL_IOCTL&&OAL_FUNC, (L"-OEMIoControl(rc = %d)\r\n", rc ));     return rc; }   Where is the g_oalIoCtlTable? It is defined in your BSP. Let's use DeviceEmulator BSP as an example. The PLATFORM\DEVICEEMULATOR\SRC\OAL\OALLIB\ioctl.c defines the table as const OAL_IOCTL_HANDLER g_oalIoCtlTable[] = { #include "ioctl_tab.h" }; And that leads to PLATFORM\DEVICEEMULATOR\SRC\INC\ioctl_tab.h which defined some of IOCTL handler but others are defined in oal_ioctl_tab.h which is under PLATFORM\COMMON\SRC\INC\. Finally, we got the full table body! (Just like tracing MFC, always jumping back and forth). The format of table is very straight forward, IOCTL code, Flags and Handler Function // IOCTL CODE,                          Flags   Handler Function //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ { IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY,                   0,  OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry     }, { IOCTL_HAL_INIT_RTC,                       0,  OALIoCtlHalInitRTC          }, { IOCTL_HAL_REBOOT,                         0,  OALIoCtlHalReboot           }, The PQOAL scans through the table until it find a matched IOCTL code, then invokes the handler function. Since it scans the table from the top which means if we define TWO handler with same IOCTL code, the first one is always invoked with no exception. Now back to the PLATFORM\DEVICEEMULATOR\SRC\INC\ioctl_tab.h, with the following table { IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY,                   0,  OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry     }, ... #include <oal_ioctl_tab.h> Note the IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY handler are defined in both BSP's local ioctl_tab.h and the common oal_ioctl_tab.h, but due to BSP's local handler comes before "#include <oal_ioctl_tab.h>" so we know the OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry always get called. In this example, the DeviceEmulator BSP overrides the IOCTL_HAL_INITREGISTRY handler from OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry to OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry by manipulating the g_oalIoCtlTable table. (In some point of view, it is similar to message map in MFC) Please be aware, when you override an IOCTL handler in PQOAL, you may want to clone the original implementation to your BSP and change to meet your need. It is recommended and save you the redundant works but remember to rename the handler function (Just like the DeviceEmulator it changes the name of OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry to OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry). If you don't change the name, linker may not be happy (due to name conflict) and the more important is by using different handler name, you could always redirect the handler back to original one. (It is like the concept of OOP that calling a function in base class; still not so clear? I am goinf to show you soon!) The OALIoCtlDeviceEmulatorHalInitRegistry setups DeviceEmulator specific registry settings and in the end, if everything goes well, it calls the OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry (PLATFORM\COMMON\SRC\COMMON\IOCTL\reginit.c) to do the rest.     if(fOk) {         fOk = OALIoCtlHalInitRegistry(code, pInpBuffer, inpSize, pOutBuffer,             outSize, pOutSize);     } Now you got the picture, whenever you want to override an IOCTL hadnler that is implemented in PQOAL just Clone the handler function to your BSP as a template. Simple name change for the handler function, and a name change in the IOCTL table header file that maps the IOCTL with the function Implement your IOCTL handler and whenever you need to redirect it back just calling the original handler function. It is the standard way of implementing a custom IOCTL and most Microsoft developers prefer. The mapping of IOCTL routine to IOCTL code is platform specific - you control the header file that does that mapping.

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• Maximize Performance and Availability with Oracle Data Integration

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Alert: Oracle is hosting the 12c Launch Webcast for Oracle Data Integration and Oracle Golden Gate on Tuesday, November 12 (tomorrow) to discuss the new capabilities in detail and share customer perspectives. Hear directly from customer experts and executives from SolarWorld Industries America, British Telecom and Rittman Mead and get your questions answered live by product experts. Register for this complimentary webcast today and join in the discussion tomorrow. Author: Irem Radzik, Senior Principal Product Director, Oracle Organizations that want to use IT as a strategic point of differentiation prefer Oracle’s complete application offering to drive better business performance and optimize their IT investments. These enterprise applications are in the center of business operations and they contain critical data that needs to be accessed continuously, as well as analyzed and acted upon in a timely manner. These systems also need to operate with high-performance and availability, which means analytical functions should not degrade applications performance, and even system maintenance and upgrades should not interrupt availability. Oracle’s data integration products, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, and Oracle Enterprise Data Quality, provide the core foundation for bringing data from various business-critical systems to gain a broader, unified view. As a more advance offering to 3rd party products, Oracle’s data integration products facilitate real-time reporting for Oracle Applications without impacting application performance, and provide ability to upgrade and maintain the system without taking downtime. Oracle GoldenGate is certified for Oracle Applications, including E-Business Suite, Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards, for moving transactional data in real-time to a dedicated operational reporting environment. This solution allows the app users to offload the resource-heavy queries to the reporting instance(s), reducing CPU utilization, improving OLTP performance, and extending the lifetime of existing IT assets. In addition, having a dedicated reporting instance with up-to-the-second transactional data allows optimizing the reporting environment and even decreasing costs as GoldenGate can move only the required data from expensive mainframe environments to cost-efficient open system platforms.  With real-time data replication capabilities GoldenGate is also certified to enable application upgrades and database/hardware/OS migration without impacting business operations. GoldenGate is certified for Siebel CRM, Communications Billing and Revenue Management and JD Edwards for supporting zero downtime upgrades to the latest app version. GoldenGate synchronizes a parallel, upgraded system with the old version in real time, thus enables continuous operations during the process. Oracle GoldenGate is also certified for minimal downtime database migrations for Oracle E-Business Suite and other key applications. GoldenGate’s solution also minimizes the risk by offering a failback option after the switchover to the new environment. Furthermore, Oracle GoldenGate’s bidirectional active-active data replication is certified for Oracle ATG Web Commerce to enable geographically load balancing and high availability for ATG customers. For enabling better business insight, Oracle Data Integration products power Oracle BI Applications with high performance bulk and real-time data integration. Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) is embedded in Oracle BI Applications version 11.1.1.7.1 and helps to integrate data end-to-end across the full BI Applications architecture, supporting capabilities such as data-lineage, which helps business users identify report-to-source capabilities. ODI is integrated with Oracle GoldenGate and provides Oracle BI Applications customers the option to use real-time transactional data in analytics, and do so non-intrusively. By using Oracle GoldenGate with the latest release of Oracle BI Applications, organizations not only leverage fresh data in analytics, but also eliminate the need for an ETL batch window and minimize the impact on OLTP systems. You can learn more about Oracle Data Integration products latest 12c version in our upcoming launch webcast and access the app-specific free resources in the new Data Integration for Oracle Applications Resource Center.

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• Implement Tree/Details With Taskflow Regions Using EJB

  - by Deepak Siddappa

  This article describes on Display Tree/Details using taskflow regions.Use Case DescriptionLet us take scenario where we need to display Tree/Details, left region contains category hierarchy with items listed in a tree structure (ex:- Region-Countries-Locations-Departments in tree format) and right region contains the Employees list.In detail, Here User may drills down through categories using a tree until Employees are listed. Clicking the tree node name displays Employee list in the adjacent pane related to particular tree node. Implementation StepsThe script for creating the tables and inserting the data required for this application CreateSchema.sql Lets create a Java EE Web Application with Entities based on Regions, Countries, Locations, Departments and Employees table. Create a Stateless Session Bean and data control for the Stateless Session Bean. Add the below code to the session bean and expose the method in local/remote interface and generate a data control for that.Note:- Here in the below code "em" is a EntityManager. public List<Employees> empFilteredByTreeNode(String treeNodeType, String paramValue) { String queryString = null; try { if (treeNodeType == "null") { queryString = "select * from Employees emp ORDER BY emp.employee_id ASC"; } else if (Pattern.matches("[a-zA-Z]+[_]+[a-zA-Z]+[_]+[[0-9]+]+", treeNodeType)) { queryString = "select * from employees emp INNER JOIN departments dept\n" + "ON emp.department_id = dept.department_id JOIN locations loc\n" + "ON dept.location_id = loc.location_id JOIN countries cont\n" + "ON loc.country_id = cont.country_id JOIN regions reg\n" + "ON cont.region_id = reg.region_id and reg.region_name = '" + paramValue + "' ORDER BY emp.employee_id ASC"; } else if (treeNodeType.contains("regionsFindAll_bc_countriesList_1")) { queryString = "select * from employees emp INNER JOIN departments dept \n" + "ON emp.department_id = dept.department_id JOIN locations loc \n" + "ON dept.location_id = loc.location_id JOIN countries cont \n" + "ON loc.country_id = cont.country_id and cont.country_name = '" + paramValue + "' ORDER BY emp.employee_id ASC"; } else if (treeNodeType.contains("regionsFindAll_bc_locationsList_1")) { queryString = "select * from employees emp INNER JOIN departments dept ON emp.department_id = dept.department_id JOIN locations loc ON dept.location_id = loc.location_id and loc.city = '" + paramValue + "' ORDER BY emp.employee_id ASC"; } else if (treeNodeType.trim().contains("regionsFindAll_bc_departmentsList_1")) { queryString = "select * from Employees emp INNER JOIN Departments dept ON emp.DEPARTMENT_ID = dept.DEPARTMENT_ID and dept.DEPARTMENT_NAME = '" + paramValue + "'"; } } catch (NullPointerException e) { System.out.println(e.getMessage()); } return em.createNativeQuery(queryString, Employees.class).getResultList(); } In the ViewController project, create two ADF taskflow with page Fragments and name them as FirstTaskflow and SecondTaskflow respectively. Open FirstTaskflow,from component palette drop view(Page Fragment) name it as TreeList.jsff. Open SeconfTaskflow, from component palette drop view(Page Fragment) name it as EmpList.jsff and create two paramters in its overview parameters tab as shown in below image. Open TreeList.jsff , from data control palette drop regionsFindAll->Tree as ADF Tree. In Edit Tree Binding dialog, for Tree Level Rules select the display attributes as follows:-model.Regions - regionNamemodel.Countries - countryNamemodel.Locations - citymodel.Departments - departmentName In structure panel, click on af:Tree - t1 and select selectionListener with edit property. Create a "TreeBean" managed bean with scope as "session" as shown in below Image. Create new method as getTreeNodeSelectedValue and click ok. Open TreeBean managed bean and add the below code: private String treeNodeType; private String paramValue; public void getTreeNodeSelectedValue(SelectionEvent selectionEvent) { RichTree tree = (RichTree)selectionEvent.getSource(); RowKeySet addedSet = selectionEvent.getAddedSet(); Iterator i = addedSet.iterator(); TreeModel model = (TreeModel)tree.getValue(); model.setRowKey(i.next()); JUCtrlHierNodeBinding node = (JUCtrlHierNodeBinding)tree.getRowData(); //oracle.jbo.Row Row rw = node.getRow(); Object selectedTreeNode = node.getAttribute(0); Object treeListType = node.getBindings(); String treeNodeType = treeListType.toString(); this.setParamValue(selectedTreeNode.toString()); this.setTreeNodeType(treeNodeType); } public void setTreeNodeType(String treeNodeType) { this.treeNodeType = treeNodeType; } public String getTreeNodeType() { return treeNodeType; } public void setParamValue(String paramValue) { this.paramValue = paramValue; } public String getParamValue() { return paramValue; }<br /> Open EmpList.jsff , from data control palette drop empFilteredByTreeNode->Employees->Table as ADF Read-only Table. After selecting the  Employees result set, in Edit Action Binding dialog window pass the pageFlowScope parameters as shown in below Image. In empList.jsff page, click Binding tab and click on Create Executable binding and select Invoke action and follow as shown in below image. Edit executeEmpFiltered invoke action properties and set the Refresh to ifNeeded, So when ever the page needs the method will be executed. Create Main.jspx page with page template as Oracle Three Column Layout. Drop FirstTaskflow as Region in start facet and drop SecondTaskflow as Region in center facet, Edit task Flow Binding dialog window pass the Input Paramters as shown in below Image. Run the Main.jspx, tree will be displayed in left region and emp details will displyaed on the right region. Click on the Americas in tree node, all emp related to the Americas related will be displayed. Click on Americas->United States of America->South San Francisco->Accounting, only employee belongs to the Accounting department will be displayed.

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• Combining Shared Secret and Username Token – Azure Service Bus

  - by Michael Stephenson

  As discussed in the introduction article this walkthrough will explain how you can implement WCF security with the Windows Azure Service Bus to ensure that you can protect your endpoint in the cloud with a shared secret but also flow through a username token so that in your listening WCF service you will be able to identify who sent the message. This could either be in the form of an application or a user depending on how you want to use your token. Prerequisites Before going into the walk through I want to explain a few assumptions about the scenario we are implementing but to keep the article shorter I am not going to walk through all of the steps in how to setup some of this. In the solution we have a simple console application which will represent the client application. There is also the services WCF application which contains the WCF service we will expose via the Windows Azure Service Bus. The WCF Service application in this example was hosted in IIS 7 on Windows 2008 R2 with AppFabric Server installed and configured to auto-start the WCF listening services. I am not going to go through significant detail around the IIS setup because it should not matter in relation to this article however if you want to understand more about how to configure WCF and IIS for such a scenario please refer to the following paper which goes into a lot of detail about how to configure this. The link is: http://tinyurl.com/8s5nwrz   The Service Component To begin with let's look at the service component and how it can be configured to listen to the service bus using a shared secret but to also accept a username token from the client. In the sample the service component is called Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.UN.Services. It has a single service which is the Visual Studio template for a WCF service when you add a new WCF Service Application so we have a service called Service1 with its Echo method. Nothing special so far!.... The next step is to look at the web.config file to see how we have configured the WCF service. In the services section of the WCF configuration you can see I have created my service and I have created a local endpoint which I simply used to do a little bit of diagnostics and to check it was working, but more importantly there is the Windows Azure endpoint which is using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding (note that this should also work just the same if your using netTcpRelayBinding). The key points to note on the above picture are the service behavior called MyServiceBehaviour and the service bus endpoints behavior called MyEndpointBehaviour. We will go into these in more detail later.   The Relay Binding The relay binding for the service has been configured to use the TransportWithMessageCredential security mode. This is the important bit where the transport security really relates to the interaction between the service and listening to the Azure Service Bus and the message credential is where we will use our username token like we have specified in the message/clientCrentialType attribute. Note also that we have left the relayClientAuthenticationType set to RelayAccessToken. This means that authentication will be made against ACS for accessing the service bus and messages will not be accepted from any sender who has not been authenticated by ACS.   The Endpoint Behaviour In the below picture you can see the endpoint behavior which is configured to use the shared secret client credential for accessing the service bus and also for diagnostic purposes I have included the service registry element. Hopefully if you are familiar with using Windows Azure Service Bus relay feature the above is very familiar to you and this is a very common setup for this section. There is nothing specific to the username token implementation here. The Service Behaviour Now we come to the bit with most of the username token bits in it. When you configure the service behavior I have included the serviceCredentials element and then setup to use userNameAuthentication and you can see that I have created my own custom username token validator.   This setup means that WCF will hand off to my class for validating the username token details. I have also added the serviceSecurityAudit element to give me a simple auditing of access capability. My UsernamePassword Validator The below picture shows you the details of the username password validator class I have implemented. WCF will hand off to this class when validating the token and give me a nice way to check the token credentials against an on-premise store. You have all of the validation features with a non-service bus WCF implementation available such as validating the username password against active directory or ASP.net membership features or as in my case above something much simpler.   The Client Now let's take a look at the client side of this solution and how we can configure the client to authenticate against ACS but also send a username token over to the service component so it can implement additional security checks on-premise. I have a console application and in the program class I want to use the proxy generated with Add Service Reference to send a message via the Azure Service Bus. You can see in my WCF client configuration below I have setup my details for the azure service bus url and am using the ws2007HttpRelayBinding. Next is my configuration for the relay binding. You can see below I have configured security to use TransportWithMessageCredential so we will flow the username token with the message and also the RelayAccessToken relayClientAuthenticationType which means the component will validate against ACS before being allowed to access the relay endpoint to send a message.     After the binding we need to configure the endpoint behavior like in the below picture. This is the normal configuration to use a shared secret for accessing a Service Bus endpoint.   Finally below we have the code of the client in the console application which will call the service bus. You can see that we have created our proxy and then made a normal call to a WCF service but this time we have also set the ClientCredentials to use the appropriate username and password which will be flown through the service bus and to our service which will validate them.     Conclusion As you can see from the above walkthrough it is not too difficult to configure a service to use both a shared secret and username token at the same time. This gives you the power and protection offered by the access control service in the cloud but also the ability to flow additional tokens to the on-premise component for additional security features to be implemented. Sample The sample used in this post is available at the following location: https://s3.amazonaws.com/CSCBlogSamples/Acme.Azure.ServiceBus.Poc.UN.zip

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• Database Owner Conundrum

  - by Johnm

  Have you ever restored a database from a production environment on Server A into a development environment on Server B and had some items, such as Service Broker, mysteriously cease functioning? You might want to consider reviewing the database owner property of the database. The Scenario Recently, I was developing some messaging functionality that utilized the Service Broker feature of SQL Server in a development environment. Within the instance of the development environment resided two databases: One was a restored version of a production database that we will call "RestoreDB". The second database was a brand new database that has yet to exist in the production environment that we will call "DevDB". The goal is to setup a communication path between RestoreDB and DevDB that will later be implemented into the production database. After implementing all of the Service Broker objects that are required to communicate within a database as well as between two databases on the same instance I found myself a bit confounded. My testing was showing that the communication was successful when it was occurring internally within DevDB; but the communication between RestoreDB and DevDB did not appear to be working. Profiler to the rescue After carefully reviewing my code for any misspellings, missing commas or any other minor items that might be a syntactical cause of failure, I decided to launch Profiler to aid in the troubleshooting. After simulating the cross database messaging, I noticed the following error appearing in Profiler: An exception occurred while enqueueing a message in the target queue. Error: 33009, State: 2. The database owner SID recorded in the master database differs from the database owner SID recorded in database '[Database Name Here]'. You should correct this situation by resetting the owner of database '[Database Name Here]' using the ALTER AUTHORIZATION statement. Now, this error message is a helpful one. Not only does it identify the issue in plain language, it also provides a potential solution. An execution of the following query that utilizes the catalog view sys.transmission_queue revealed the same error message for each communication attempt: SELECT     * FROM        sys.transmission_queue; Seeing the situation as a learning opportunity I dove a bit deeper. Reviewing the database properties  The owner of a specific database can be easily viewed by right-clicking the database in SQL Server Management Studio and selecting the "properties" option. The owner is listed on the "General" page of the properties screen. In my scenario, the database in the production server was created by Frank the DBA; therefore his server login appeared as the owner: "ServerName\Frank". While this is interesting information, it certainly doesn't tell me much in regard to the SID (security identifier) and its existence, or lack thereof, in the master database as the error suggested. I pulled together the following query to gather more interesting information: SELECT     a.name     , a.owner_sid     , b.sid     , b.name     , b.type_desc FROM        master.sys.databases a     LEFT OUTER JOIN master.sys.server_principals b         ON a.owner_sid = b.sid WHERE     a.name not in ('master','tempdb','model','msdb'); This query also helped identify how many other user databases in the instance were experiencing the same issue. In this scenario, I saw that there were no matching SIDs in server_principals to the owner SID for my database. What login should be used as the database owner instead of Frank's? The system stored procedure sp_helplogins will provide a list of the valid logins that can be used. Here is an example of its use, revealing all available logins: EXEC sp_helplogins;  Fixing a hole The error message stated that the recommended solution was to execute the ALTER AUTHORIZATION statement. The full statement for this scenario would appear as follows: ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON DATABASE:: [Database Name Here] TO [Login Name]; Another option is to execute the following statement using the sp_changedbowner system stored procedure; but please keep in mind that this stored procedure has been deprecated and will likely disappear in future versions of SQL Server: EXEC dbo.sp_changedbowner @loginname = [Login Name]; .And They Lived Happily Ever After Upon changing the database owner to an existing login and simulating the inner and cross database messaging the errors have ceased. More importantly, all messages sent through this feature now successfully complete their journey. I have added the ownership change to my restoration script for the development environment.

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