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Amazon Web Services (AWS) Plug-in for Oracle Enterprise Manager

- by Anand Akela

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Contributed by Sunil Kunisetty and Daniel Chan Introduction and ArchitectureAs more and more enterprises deploy some of their non-critical workload on Amazon Web Services (AWS), it’s becoming critical to monitor those public AWS resources along side with their on-premise resources. Oracle recently announced Oracle Enterprise Manager Plug-in for Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows you to achieve that goal. The on-premise Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM12c) acts as a single tool to get a comprehensive view of your public AWS resources as well as your private cloud resources. By deploying the plug-in within your Cloud Control environment, you gain the following management features: Monitor EBS, EC2 and RDS instances on Amazon Web Services Gather performance metrics and configuration details for AWS instances Raise alerts and violations based on thresholds set on monitoring Generate reports based on the gathered data Users of this Plug-in can leverage the rich Enterprise Manager features such as system promotion, incident generation based on thresholds, integration with 3rd party ticketing applications etc. AWS Monitoring via this Plug-in is enabled via Amazon CloudWatch API and the users of this Plug-in are responsible for supplying credentials for accessing AWS and the CloudWatch API. This Plug-in can only be deployed on an EM12C R2 platform and agent version should be at minimum 12c R2.Here is a pictorial view of the overall architecture: Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Here are a few key features: Rich and exhaustive list of metrics. Metrics can be gathered from an Agent running outside AWS. Critical configuration information. Custom Home Pages with charts and AWS configuration information. Generate incidents based on thresholds set on monitoring data. Discovery and Monitoring AWS instances can be added to EM12C either via the EM12c User Interface (UI) or the EM12c Command Line Interface ( EMCLI) by providing the AWS credentials (Secret Key and Access Key Id) as well as resource specific properties as target properties. Here is a quick mapping of target types and properties for each AWS resources AWS Resource Type Target Type Resource specific properties EBS Resource Amazon EBS Service CloudWatch base URI, EC2 Base URI, Period, Volume Id, Proxy Server and Port EC2 Resource Amazon EC2 Service CloudWatch base URI, EC2 Base URI, Period, Instance Id, Proxy Server and Port RDS Resource Amazon RDS Service CloudWatch base URI, RDS Base URI, Period, Instance Id, Proxy Server and Port Proxy server and port are optional and are only needed if the agent is within the firewall. Here is an emcli example to add an EC2 target. Please read the Installation and Readme guide for more details and step-by-step instructions to deploy the plugin and adding the AWS the instances. ./emcli add_target \ -name="<target name>" \ -type="AmazonEC2Service" \ -host="<host>" \ -properties="ProxyHost=<proxy server>;ProxyPort=<proxy port>;EC2_BaseURI=http://ec2.<region>.amazonaws.com;BaseURI=http://monitoring.<region>.amazonaws.com;InstanceId=<EC2 instance Id>;Period=<data point periond>" \ -subseparator=properties="=" ./emcli set_monitoring_credential \ -set_name="AWSKeyCredentialSet" \ -target_name="<target name>" \ -target_type="AmazonEC2Service" \ -cred_type="AWSKeyCredential" \ -attributes="AccessKeyId:<access key id>;SecretKey:<secret key>" Emcli utility is found under the ORACLE_HOME of EM12C install. Once the instance is discovered, the target will show up under the ‘All Targets’ list under “Amazon EC2 Service’. Once the instances are added, one can navigate to the custom homepages for these resource types. The custom home pages not only include critical metrics, but also vital configuration parameters and incidents raised for these instances. By mapping the configuration parameters as instance properties, we can slice-and-dice and group various AWS instance by leveraging the EM12C Config search feature. The following configuration properties and metrics are collected for these Resource types. Resource Type Configuration Properties Metrics EBS Resource Volume Id, Volume Type, Device Name, Size, Availability Zone Response: Status Utilization: QueueLength, IdleTime Volume Statistics: ReadBrandwith, WriteBandwidth, ReadThroughput, WriteThroughput Operation Statistics: ReadSize, WriteSize, ReadLatency, WriteLatency EC2 Resource Instance ID, Owner Id, Root Device type, Instance Type. Availability Zone Response: Status CPU Utilization: CPU Utilization Disk I/O: DiskReadBytes, DiskWriteBytes, DiskReadOps, DiskWriteOps, DiskReadRate, DiskWriteRate, DiskIOThroughput, DiskReadOpsRate, DiskWriteOpsRate, DiskOperationThroughput Network I/O : NetworkIn, NetworkOut, NetworkInRate, NetworkOutRate, NetworkThroughput RDS Resource Instance ID, Database Engine Name, Database Engine Version, Database Instance Class, Allocated Storage Size, Availability Zone Response: Status Disk I/O: ReadIOPS, WriteIOPS, ReadLatency, WriteLatency, ReadThroughput, WriteThroughput DB Utilization: BinLogDiskUsage, CPUUtilization, DatabaseConnections, FreeableMemory, ReplicaLag, SwapUsage Custom Home Pages As mentioned above, we have custom home pages for these target types that include basic configuration information, last 24 hours availability, top metrics and the incidents generated. Here are few snapshots. EBS Instance Home Page: EC2 Instance Home Page: RDS Instance Home Page: Further Reading: 1) AWS Plugin download 2) Installation and Read Me. 3) Screenwatch on SlideShare 4) Extensibility Programmer's Guide 5) Amazon Web Services

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readonly keyword

- by nmarun

This is something new that I learned about the readonly keyword. Have a look at the following class: 1: public class MyClass 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public int Age { get; set; } 5: 6: private readonly double Delta; 7: 8: public MyClass() 9: { 10: Initializer(); 11: } 12: 13: public MyClass(string name = "", int age = 0) 14: { 15: Name = name; 16: Age = age; 17: Initializer(); 18: } 19: 20: private void Initializer() 21: { 22: Delta = 0.2; 23: } 24: } I have a couple of public properties and a private readonly member. There are two constructors – one that doesn’t take any parameters and the other takes two parameters to initialize the public properties. I’m also calling the Initializer method in both constructors to initialize the readonly member. Now when I build this, the code breaks and the Error window says: “A readonly field cannot be assigned to (except in a constructor or a variable initializer)” Two things after I read this message: It’s such a negative statement. I’d prefer something like: “A readonly field can be assigned to (or initialized) only in a constructor or through a variable initializer” But in my defense, I AM assigning it in a constructor (only indirectly). All I’m doing is creating a method that does it and calling it in a constructor. Turns out, .net was not ‘frameworked’ this way. We need to have the member initialized directly in the constructor. If you have multiple constructors, you can just use the ‘this’ keyword on all except the default constructors to call the default constructor. This default constructor can then initialize your readonly members. This will ensure you’re not repeating the code in multiple places. A snippet of what I’m talking can be seen below: 1: public class Person 2: { 3: public int UniqueNumber { get; set; } 4: public string Name { get; set; } 5: public int Age { get; set; } 6: public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } 7: public string InvoiceNumber { get; set; } 8: 9: private readonly string Alpha; 10: private readonly int Beta; 11: private readonly double Delta; 12: private readonly double Gamma; 13: 14: public Person() 15: { 16: Alpha = "FDSA"; 17: Beta = 2; 18: Delta = 3.0; 19: Gamma = 0.0989; 20: } 21: 22: public Person(int uniqueNumber) : this() 23: { 24: UniqueNumber = uniqueNumber; 25: } 26: } See the syntax in line 22 and you’ll know what I’m talking about. So the default constructor gets called before the one in line 22. These are known as constructor initializers and they allow one constructor to call another. The other ‘myth’ I had about readonly members is that you can set it’s value only once. This was busted as well (I recall Adam and Jamie’s show). Say you’ve initialized the readonly member through a variable initializer. You can over-write this value in any of the constructors any number of times. 1: public class Person 2: { 3: public int UniqueNumber { get; set; } 4: public string Name { get; set; } 5: public int Age { get; set; } 6: public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } 7: public string InvoiceNumber { get; set; } 8: 9: private readonly string Alpha = "asdf"; 10: private readonly int Beta = 15; 11: private readonly double Delta = 0.077; 12: private readonly double Gamma = 1.0; 13: 14: public Person() 15: { 16: Alpha = "FDSA"; 17: Beta = 2; 18: Delta = 3.0; 19: Gamma = 0.0989; 20: } 21: 22: public Person(int uniqueNumber) : this() 23: { 24: UniqueNumber = uniqueNumber; 25: Beta = 3; 26: } 27: 28: public Person(string name, DateTime dob) : this() 29: { 30: Name = name; 31: DateOfBirth = dob; 32: 33: Alpha = ";LKJ"; 34: Gamma = 0.0898; 35: } 36: 37: public Person(int uniqueNumber, string name, int age, DateTime dob, string invoiceNumber) : this() 38: { 39: UniqueNumber = uniqueNumber; 40: Name = name; 41: Age = age; 42: DateOfBirth = dob; 43: InvoiceNumber = invoiceNumber; 44: 45: Alpha = "QWER"; 46: Beta = 5; 47: Delta = 1.0; 48: Gamma = 0.0; 49: } 50: } In the above example, every constructor over-writes the values for the readonly members. This is perfectly valid. There is a possibility that based on the way the object is instantiated, the readonly member will have a different value. Well, that’s all I have for today and read this as it’s on a related topic.

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Replication Services as ETL extraction tool

- by jorg

In my last blog post I explained the principles of Replication Services and the possibilities it offers in a BI environment. One of the possibilities I described was the use of snapshot replication as an ETL extraction tool: “Snapshot Replication can also be useful in BI environments, if you don’t need a near real-time copy of the database, you can choose to use this form of replication. Next to an alternative for Transactional Replication it can be used to stage data so it can be transformed and moved into the data warehousing environment afterwards. In many solutions I have seen developers create multiple SSIS packages that simply copies data from one or more source systems to a staging database that figures as source for the ETL process. The creation of these packages takes a lot of (boring) time, while Replication Services can do the same in minutes. It is possible to filter out columns and/or records and it can even apply schema changes automatically so I think it offers enough features here. I don’t know how the performance will be and if it really works as good for this purpose as I expect, but I want to try this out soon!” Well I have tried it out and I must say it worked well. I was able to let replication services do work in a fraction of the time it would cost me to do the same in SSIS. What I did was the following: Configure snapshot replication for some Adventure Works tables, this was quite simple and straightforward. Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication on demand and waits for its completion. This is something that you can’t do with out of the box functionality. While configuring the snapshot replication two SQL Agent Jobs are created, one for the creation of the snapshot and one for the distribution of the snapshot. Unfortunately these jobs are asynchronous which means that if you execute them they immediately report back if the job started successfully or not, they do not wait for completion and report its result afterwards. So I had to create an SSIS package that executes the jobs and waits for their completion before the rest of the ETL process continues. Fortunately I was able to create the SSIS package with the desired functionality. I have made a step-by-step guide that will help you configure the snapshot replication and I have uploaded the SSIS package you need to execute it. Configure snapshot replication The first step is to create a publication on the database you want to replicate. Connect to SQL Server Management Studio and right-click Replication, choose for New.. Publication… The New Publication Wizard appears, click Next Choose your “source” database and click Next Choose Snapshot publication and click Next You can now select tables and other objects that you want to publish Expand Tables and select the tables that are needed in your ETL process In the next screen you can add filters on the selected tables which can be very useful. Think about selecting only the last x days of data for example. Its possible to filter out rows and/or columns. In this example I did not apply any filters. Schedule the Snapshot Agent to run at a desired time, by doing this a SQL Agent Job is created which we need to execute from a SSIS package later on. Next you need to set the Security Settings for the Snapshot Agent. Click on the Security Settings button. In this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. This is not recommended as a security best practice. Fortunately there is an excellent article on TechNet which tells you exactly how to set up the security for replication services. Read it here and make sure you follow the guidelines! On the next screen choose to create the publication at the end of the wizard Give the publication a name (SnapshotTest) and complete the wizard The publication is created and the articles (tables in this case) are added Now the publication is created successfully its time to create a new subscription for this publication. Expand the Replication folder in SSMS and right click Local Subscriptions, choose New Subscriptions The New Subscription Wizard appears Select the publisher on which you just created your publication and select the database and publication (SnapshotTest) You can now choose where the Distribution Agent should run. If it runs at the distributor (push subscriptions) it causes extra processing overhead. If you use a separate server for your ETL process and databases choose to run each agent at its subscriber (pull subscriptions) to reduce the processing overhead at the distributor. Of course we need a database for the subscription and fortunately the Wizard can create it for you. Choose for New database Give the database the desired name, set the desired options and click OK You can now add multiple SQL Server Subscribers which is not necessary in this case but can be very useful. You now need to set the security settings for the Distribution Agent. Click on the …. button Again, in this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. Read the security best practices here Click Next Make sure you create a synchronization job schedule again. This job is also necessary in the SSIS package later on. Initialize the subscription at first synchronization Select the first box to create the subscription when finishing this wizard Complete the wizard by clicking Finish The subscription will be created In SSMS you see a new database is created, the subscriber. There are no tables or other objects in the database available yet because the replication jobs did not ran yet. Now expand the SQL Server Agent, go to Jobs and search for the job that creates the snapshot: Rename this job to “CreateSnapshot” Now search for the job that distributes the snapshot: Rename this job to “DistributeSnapshot” Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication We now need an SSIS package that will take care of the execution of both jobs. The CreateSnapshot job needs to execute and finish before the DistributeSnapshot job runs. After the DistributeSnapshot job has started the package needs to wait until its finished before the package execution finishes. The Execute SQL Server Agent Job Task is designed to execute SQL Agent Jobs from SSIS. Unfortunately this SSIS task only executes the job and reports back if the job started succesfully or not, it does not report if the job actually completed with success or failure. This is because these jobs are asynchronous. The SSIS package I’ve created does the following: It runs the CreateSnapshot job It checks every 5 seconds if the job is completed with a for loop When the CreateSnapshot job is completed it starts the DistributeSnapshot job And again it waits until the snapshot is delivered before the package will finish successfully Quite simple and the package is ready to use as standalone extract mechanism. After executing the package the replicated tables are added to the subscriber database and are filled with data: Download the SSIS package here (SSIS 2008) Conclusion In this example I only replicated 5 tables, I could create a SSIS package that does the same in approximately the same amount of time. But if I replicated all the 70+ AdventureWorks tables I would save a lot of time and boring work! With replication services you also benefit from the feature that schema changes are applied automatically which means your entire extract phase wont break. Because a snapshot is created using the bcp utility (bulk copy) it’s also quite fast, so the performance will be quite good. Disadvantages of using snapshot replication as extraction tool is the limitation on source systems. You can only choose SQL Server or Oracle databases to act as a publisher. So if you plan to build an extract phase for your ETL process that will invoke a lot of tables think about replication services, it would save you a lot of time and thanks to the Extract SSIS package I’ve created you can perfectly fit it in your usual SSIS ETL process.

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General monitoring for SQL Server Analysis Services using Performance Monitor

- by Testas

A recent customer engagement required a setup of a monitoring solution for SSAS, due to the time restrictions placed upon this, native Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon) and SQL Server Profiler Monitoring Tools was used as using a third party tool would have meant the customer providing an additional monitoring server that was not available.I wanted to outline the performance monitoring counters that was used to monitor the system on which SSAS was running. Due to the slow query performance that was occurring during certain scenarios, perfmon was used to establish if any pressure was being placed on the Disk, CPU or Memory subsystem when concurrent connections access the same query, and Profiler to pinpoint how the query was being managed within SSAS, profiler I will leave for another blogThis guide is not designed to provide a definitive list of what should be used when monitoring SSAS, different situations may require the addition or removal of counters as presented by the situation. However I hope that it serves as a good basis for starting your monitoring of SSAS. I would also like to acknowledge Chris Webb’s awesome chapters from “Expert Cube Development” that also helped shape my monitoring strategy:http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B84B0F2C239489A!6657.entrySimulating ConnectionsTo simulate the additional connections to the SSAS server whilst monitoring, I used ascmd to simulate multiple connections to the typical and worse performing queries that were identified by the customer. A similar sript can be downloaded from codeplex at http://www.codeplex.com/SQLSrvAnalysisSrvcs. File name: ASCMD_StressTestingScripts.zip. Performance MonitorWithin performance monitor, a counter log was created that contained the list of counters below. The important point to note when running the counter log is that the RUN AS property within the counter log properties should be changed to an account that has rights to the SSAS instance when monitoring MSAS counters. Failure to do so means that the counter log runs under the system account, no errors or warning are given while running the counter log, and it is not until you need to view the MSAS counters that they will not be displayed if run under the default account that has no right to SSAS. If your connection simulation takes hours, this could prove quite frustrating if not done beforehand JThe counters used…… Object Counter Instance Justification System Processor Queue legnth N/A Indicates how many threads are waiting for execution against the processor. If this counter is consistently higher than around 5 when processor utilization approaches 100%, then this is a good indication that there is more work (active threads) available (ready for execution) than the machine's processors are able to handle. System Context Switches/sec N/A Measures how frequently the processor has to switch from user- to kernel-mode to handle a request from a thread running in user mode. The heavier the workload running on your machine, the higher this counter will generally be, but over long term the value of this counter should remain fairly constant. If this counter suddenly starts increasing however, it may be an indicating of a malfunctioning device, especially if the Processor\Interrupts/sec\(_Total) counter on your machine shows a similar unexplained increase Process % Processor Time sqlservr Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process % Processor Time msmdsrv Definately should be used if Processor\% Processor Time\(_Total) is maxing at 100% to assess the effect of the SQL Server process on the processor Process Working Set sqlservr If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Process Working Set msmdsrv If the Memory\Available bytes counter is decreaing this counter can be run to indicate if the process is consuming larger and larger amounts of RAM. Process(instance)\Working Set measures the size of the working set for each process, which indicates the number of allocated pages the process can address without generating a page fault. Processor % Processor Time _Total and individual cores measures the total utilization of your processor by all running processes. If multi-proc then be mindful only an average is provided Processor % Privileged Time _Total To see how the OS is handling basic IO requests. If kernel mode utilization is high, your machine is likely underpowered as it's too busy handling basic OS housekeeping functions to be able to effectively run other applications. Processor % User Time _Total To see how the applications is interacting from a processor perspective, a high percentage utilisation determine that the server is dealing with too many apps and may require increasing thje hardware or scaling out Processor Interrupts/sec _Total The average rate, in incidents per second, at which the processor received and serviced hardware interrupts. Shoulr be consistant over time but a sudden unexplained increase could indicate a device malfunction which can be confirmed using the System\Context Switches/sec counter Memory Pages/sec N/A Indicates the rate at which pages are read from or written to disk to resolve hard page faults. This counter is a primary indicator of the kinds of faults that cause system-wide delays, this is the primary counter to watch for indication of possible insufficient RAM to meet your server's needs. A good idea here is to configure a perfmon alert that triggers when the number of pages per second exceeds 50 per paging disk on your system. May also want to see the configuration of the page file on the Server Memory Available Mbytes N/A is the amount of physical memory, in bytes, available to processes running on the computer. if this counter is greater than 10% of the actual RAM in your machine then you probably have more than enough RAM. monitor it regularly to see if any downward trend develops, and set an alert to trigger if it drops below 2% of the installed RAM. Physical Disk Disk Transfers/sec for each physical disk If it goes above 10 disk I/Os per second then you've got poor response time for your disk. Physical Disk Idle Time _total If Disk Transfers/sec is above 25 disk I/Os per second use this counter. which measures the percent time that your hard disk is idle during the measurement interval, and if you see this counter fall below 20% then you've likely got read/write requests queuing up for your disk which is unable to service these requests in a timely fashion. Physical Disk Disk queue legnth For the OLAP and SQL physical disk A value that is consistently less than 2 means that the disk system is handling the IO requests against the physical disk Network Interface Bytes Total/sec For the NIC Should be monitored over a period of time to see if there is anb increase/decrease in network utilisation Network Interface Current Bandwidth For the NIC is an estimate of the current bandwidth of the network interface in bits per second (BPS). MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit High KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the high memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Limit Low KB N/A Shows (as a percentage) the low memory limit configured for SSAS in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Config\msmdsrv.ini MSAS 2005: Memory Memory Usage KB N/A Displays the memory usage of the server process. MSAS 2005: Memory File Store KB N/A Displays the amount of memory that is reserved for the Cache. Note if total memory limit in the msmdsrv.ini is set to 0, no memory is reserved for the cache MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Direct / sec N/A Displays the rate of queries answered from the cache directly MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from Cache Filtered / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered by filtering existing cache entry. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Queries from File / Sec N/A Displays the Rate of queries answered from files. MSAS 2005: Storage Engine Query Average time /query N/A Displays the average time of a query MSAS 2005: Connection Current connections N/A Displays the number of connections against the SSAS instance MSAS 2005: Connection Requests / sec N/A Displays the rate of query requests per second MSAS 2005: Locks Current Lock Waits N/A Displays thhe number of connections waiting on a lock MSAS 2005: Threads Query Pool job queue Length N/A The number of queries in the job queue MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file bytes written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file MSAS 2005:Proc Aggregations Temp file rows written/sec N/A Shows the number of bytes of data processed in a temporary file

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ASP.NET MVC 2 throws exception for ‘favicon.ico’

- by nmarun

I must be on fire or something – third blog in 2 days… awesome! Before I begin, in case you’re wondering, favicon.ico is the small image that appears to the left of your web address, once the page loads. In order to learn more about MVC or any thing for that matter, it’s better to look at the source itself. Since MVC is open source (at least some part of it is), I started looking at the source code that’s available for download. While doing so, I hit Steve Sanderson’s blog site where he explains in great detail the way to debug your app using ASP.NET MVC source code. For those who are not aware, Steve Sanderson’s book - Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework, is one of the best books to learn about MVC. Alrighty, I followed the article and I hit F5 to debug the default / unchanged MVC project. I put a breakpoint in the DefaultControllerFactory.cs, CreateController() method. To know a little more about this class and the method, read this. Sure enough, the control stopped at the breakpoint and I hit F5 again and the page rendered just fine. But then what’s this? The breakpoint was hit again, as if something else was being requested. I now hovered my mouse over the ‘controllerName’ parameter and it says – favicon.ico. This by itself was more than enough for me to raise my eye-brows, but what happened next just took the ground below my feet. Oh, oh, I’m sorry I’m just typing, no code, no image, so here are a couple of screen captures. The first one shows the request for the Home controller; I get ‘Home’ when I hover over the parameter: And here’s the one that shows the same for call for ‘favicon.ico’. So, I step through the code and when the control reaches line 91 – GetControllerInstance() method, I step in. This is when I had the ‘ground-losing’ experience. Wow, an exception is being thrown for this file and that too in RTM. For some reason MVC thinks, this as a controller and tries to run it through the MvcHandler and it hits this snag. So it seems like this will happen for any MVC 2 site and this did not happen for me in the previous version of MVC. Before I get to how to resolve it, here’s another way of reproducing this exception. Revert back all your changes that you did as mentioned in Steve’s blog above. Now, add a class to your MVC project and call it say, MyControllerFactory and let this inherit from DefaultControllerFactory class. (Read this for details on the DefaultControllerFactory class is and how it is used in a different context). Add an override for the CreateController() method and for the sake of this blog, just copy the same content from the DefaultControllerFactory class. The last step is to tell your MVC app to use the MyControllerFactory class instead of the default one. To do this, go to your Global.asax.cs file and add line 6 of the snippet below: 1: protected void Application_Start() 2: { 3: AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); 4: 5: RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); 6: ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new MyControllerFactory()); 7: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now, you’re ready to reproduce the issue. Just F5 the project and when you hit the overridden CreateController() method for the second time, this is what it looks like for me: And continuing further gives me the same exception. I believe this is something that MS should fix, as not having ‘favicon.ico’ file will be common for most of the applications. So I think the when you create an MVC project, line 6 should be added by default by Visual Studio itself: 1: public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication 2: { 3: public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) 4: { 5: routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); 6: routes.IgnoreRoute("favicon.ico"); 7: 8: routes.MapRoute( 9: "Default", // Route name 10: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters 11: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults 12: ); 13: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } There it is, that’s the solution to avoid the exception altogether. I tried this both IE8 and Firefox browsers and was able to successfully reproduce the error. Hope someone will look at this issue and find a fix. Just before I finish up, I found another ‘bug’, if you want to call it, with Visual Studio 2008. Remember how you could change what browser you want your application to run in by just right clicking on the .aspx file and choosing ‘Browse with…’? Seems like that’s missing when you’re working with an MVC project. In order to test the above bug in the other browser, I had to load a classic ASP.NET project, change the settings and then run my MVC project. Felt kinda ‘icky’, for lack of a better word.

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Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

- by Mark Virtue

There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program? Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually. There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually: Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted) The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit. It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer). Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns. We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program. Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer. It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below). This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive. When you start Autoruns for the first time on a computer, you are presented with the license agreement: After agreeing to the terms, the main Autoruns window opens, showing you the complete list of all software that will run when your computer starts, when you log in, or when you open Internet Explorer: To temporarily disable a program from launching, uncheck the box next to it’s entry. Note: This does not terminate the program if it is running at the time – it merely prevents it from starting next time. To permanently prevent a program from launching, delete the entry altogether (use the Delete key, or right-click and choose Delete from the context-menu)). Note: This does not remove the program from your computer – to remove it completely you need to uninstall the program (or otherwise delete it from your hard disk). Suspicious Software It can take a fair bit of experience (read “trial and error”) to become adept at identifying what is malware and what is not. Most of the entries presented in Autoruns are legitimate programs, even if their names are unfamiliar to you. Here are some tips to help you differentiate the malware from the legitimate software: If an entry is digitally signed by a software publisher (i.e. there’s an entry in the Publisher column) or has a “Description”, then there’s a good chance that it’s legitimate If you recognize the software’s name, then it’s usually okay. Note that occasionally malware will “impersonate” legitimate software, but adopting a name that’s identical or similar to software you’re familiar with (e.g. “AcrobatLauncher” or “PhotoshopBrowser”). Also, be aware that many malware programs adopt generic or innocuous-sounding names, such as “Diskfix” or “SearchHelper” (both mentioned below). Malware entries usually appear on the Logon tab of Autoruns (but not always!) If you open up the folder that contains the EXE or DLL file (more on this below), an examine the “last modified” date, the dates are often from the last few days (assuming that your infection is fairly recent) Malware is often located in the C:\Windows folder or the C:\Windows\System32 folder Malware often only has a generic icon (to the left of the name of the entry) If in doubt, right-click the entry and select Search Online… The list below shows two suspicious looking entries: Diskfix and SearchHelper These entries, highlighted above, are fairly typical of malware infections: They have neither descriptions nor publishers They have generic names The files are located in C:\Windows\System32 They have generic icons The filenames are random strings of characters If you look in the C:\Windows\System32 folder and locate the files, you’ll see that they are some of the most recently modified files in the folder (see below) Double-clicking on the items will take you to their corresponding registry keys: Removing the Malware Once you’ve identified the entries you believe to be suspicious, you now need to decide what you want to do with them. Your choices include: Temporarily disable the Autorun entry Permanently delete the Autorun entry Locate the running process (using Task Manager or similar) and terminating it Delete the EXE or DLL file from your disk (or at least move it to a folder where it won’t be automatically started) or all of the above, depending upon how certain you are that the program is malware. To see if your changes succeeded, you will need to reboot your machine, and check any or all of the following: Autoruns – to see if the entry has returned Task Manager (or similar) – to see if the program was started again after the reboot Check the behavior that led you to believe that your PC was infected in the first place. If it’s no longer happening, chances are that your PC is now clean Conclusion This solution isn’t for everyone and is most likely geared to advanced users. Usually using a quality Antivirus application does the trick, but if not Autoruns is a valuable tool in your Anti-Malware kit. Keep in mind that some malware is harder to remove than others. Sometimes you need several iterations of the steps above, with each iteration requiring you to look more carefully at each Autorun entry. Sometimes the instant that you remove the Autorun entry, the malware that is running replaces the entry. When this happens, we need to become more aggressive in our assassination of the malware, including terminating programs (even legitimate programs like Explorer.exe) that are infected with malware DLLs. Shortly we will be publishing an article on how to identify, locate and terminate processes that represent legitimate programs but are running infected DLLs, in order that those DLLs can be deleted from the system. Download Autoruns from SysInternals Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using Autoruns Tool to Track Startup Applications and Add-onsHow To Get Detailed Information About Your PCSUPERAntiSpyware Portable is the Must-Have Spyware Removal Tool You NeedQuick Tip: Windows Vista Temp Files DirectoryClear Recent Commands From the Run Dialog in Windows XP 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 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #035

- by Pinal Dave

Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Row Overflow Data Explanation In SQL Server 2005 one table row can contain more than one varchar(8000) fields. One more thing, the exclusions has exclusions also the limit of each individual column max width of 8000 bytes does not apply to varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary(max), text, image or xml data type columns. Comparison Index Fragmentation, Index De-Fragmentation, Index Rebuild – SQL SERVER 2000 and SQL SERVER 2005 An old but like a gold article. Talks about lots of concepts related to Index and the difference from earlier version to the newer version. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this article just to understand how SQL Server has moved forward with the technology. Improvements in TempDB SQL Server 2005 had come up with quite a lots of improvements and this blog post describes them and explains the same. If you ask me what is my the most favorite article from early career. I must point out to this article as when I wrote this one I personally have learned a lot of new things. Recompile All The Stored Procedure on Specific TableI prefer to recompile all the stored procedure on the table, which has faced mass insert or update. sp_recompiles marks stored procedures to recompile when they execute next time. This blog post explains the same with the help of a script. 2008 SQLAuthority Download – SQL Server Cheatsheet You can download and print this cheat sheet and use it for your personal reference. If you have any suggestions, please let me know and I will see if I can update this SQL Server cheat sheet. Difference Between DBMS and RDBMS What is the difference between DBMS and RDBMS? DBMS – Data Base Management System RDBMS – Relational Data Base Management System or Relational DBMS High Availability – Hot Add Memory Hot Add CPU and Hot Add Memory are extremely interesting features of the SQL Server, however, personally I have not witness them heavily used. These features also have few restriction as well. I blogged about them in detail. 2009 Delete Duplicate Rows I have demonstrated in this blog post how one can identify and delete duplicate rows. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers – Solution The question I put forth in my previous article was – In single login why the trigger fires multiple times; it should be fired only once. I received numerous answers in thread as well as in my MVP private news group. Now, let us discuss the answer for the same. The answer is – It happens because multiple SQL Server services are running as well as intellisense is turned on. Blog post demonstrates how we can do the same with the help of SQL scripts. Management Studio New Features I have selected my favorite 5 features and blogged about it. IntelliSense for Query Editing Multi Server Query Query Editor Regions Object Explorer Enhancements Activity Monitors Maximum Number of Index per Table One of the questions I asked in my user group was – What is the maximum number of Index per table? I received lots of answers to this question but only two answers are correct. Let us now take a look at them in this blog post. 2010 Default Statistics on Column – Automatic Statistics on Column The truth is, Statistics can be in a table even though there is no Index in it. If you have the auto- create and/or auto-update Statistics feature turned on for SQL Server database, Statistics will be automatically created on the Column based on a few conditions. Please read my previously posted article, SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update, for the specific conditions when Statistics is updated. 2011 T-SQL Scripts to Find Maximum between Two Numbers In this blog post there are two different scripts listed which demonstrates way to find the maximum number between two numbers. I need your help, which one of the script do you think is the most accurate way to find maximum number? Find Details for Statistics of Whole Database – DMV – T-SQL Script I was recently asked is there a single script which can provide all the necessary details about statistics for any database. This question made me write following script. I was initially planning to use sp_helpstats command but I remembered that this is marked to be deprecated in future. 2012 Introduction to Function SIGN SIGN Function is very fundamental function. It will return the value 1, -1 or 0. If your value is negative it will return you negative -1 and if it is positive it will return you positive +1. Let us start with a simple small example. Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. An invalid floating point operation occurred If you run any of the above functions they will give you an error related to invalid floating point. Honestly there is no workaround except passing the function appropriate values. SQRT of a negative number will give you result in real numbers which is not supported at this point of time as well LOG of a negative number is not possible (because logarithm is the inverse function of an exponential function and the exponential function is NEVER negative). Validating Spatial Object with IsValidDetailed Function SQL Server 2012 has introduced the new function IsValidDetailed(). This function has made my life very easy. In simple words, this function will check if the spatial object passed is valid or not. If it is valid it will give information that it is valid. If the spatial object is not valid it will return the answer that it is not valid and the reason for the same. This makes it very easy to debug the issue and make the necessary correction. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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C#: LINQ vs foreach - Round 1.

- by James Michael Hare

So I was reading Peter Kellner's blog entry on Resharper 5.0 and its LINQ refactoring and thought that was very cool. But that raised a point I had always been curious about in my head -- which is a better choice: manual foreach loops or LINQ? The answer is not really clear-cut. There are two sides to any code cost arguments: performance and maintainability. The first of these is obvious and quantifiable. Given any two pieces of code that perform the same function, you can run them side-by-side and see which piece of code performs better. Unfortunately, this is not always a good measure. Well written assembly language outperforms well written C++ code, but you lose a lot in maintainability which creates a big techncial debt load that is hard to offset as the application ages. In contrast, higher level constructs make the code more brief and easier to understand, hence reducing technical cost. Now, obviously in this case we're not talking two separate languages, we're comparing doing something manually in the language versus using a higher-order set of IEnumerable extensions that are in the System.Linq library. Well, before we discuss any further, let's look at some sample code and the numbers. First, let's take a look at the for loop and the LINQ expression. This is just a simple find comparison: // find implemented via LINQ public static bool FindViaLinq(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { return list.Any(item => item == target); } // find implemented via standard iteration public static bool FindViaIteration(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { foreach (var i in list) { if (i == target) { return true; } } return false; } Okay, looking at this from a maintainability point of view, the Linq expression is definitely more concise (8 lines down to 1) and is very readable in intention. You don't have to actually analyze the behavior of the loop to determine what it's doing. So let's take a look at performance metrics from 100,000 iterations of these methods on a List<int> of varying sizes filled with random data. For this test, we fill a target array with 100,000 random integers and then run the exact same pseudo-random targets through both searches. List<T> On 100,000 Iterations Method Size Total (ms) Per Iteration (ms) % Slower Any 10 26 0.00046 30.00% Iteration 10 20 0.00023 - Any 100 116 0.00201 18.37% Iteration 100 98 0.00118 - Any 1000 1058 0.01853 16.78% Iteration 1000 906 0.01155 - Any 10,000 10,383 0.18189 17.41% Iteration 10,000 8843 0.11362 - Any 100,000 104,004 1.8297 18.27% Iteration 100,000 87,941 1.13163 - The LINQ expression is running about 17% slower for average size collections and worse for smaller collections. Presumably, this is due to the overhead of the state machine used to track the iterators for the yield returns in the LINQ expressions, which seems about right in a tight loop such as this. So what about other LINQ expressions? After all, Any() is one of the more trivial ones. I decided to try the TakeWhile() algorithm using a Count() to get the position stopped like the sample Pete was using in his blog that Resharper refactored for him into LINQ: // Linq form public static int GetTargetPosition1(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { return list.TakeWhile(item => item != target).Count(); } // traditionally iterative form public static int GetTargetPosition2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { int count = 0; foreach (var i in list) { if(i == target) { break; } ++count; } return count; } Once again, the LINQ expression is much shorter, easier to read, and should be easier to maintain over time, reducing the cost of technical debt. So I ran these through the same test data: List<T> On 100,000 Iterations Method Size Total (ms) Per Iteration (ms) % Slower TakeWhile 10 41 0.00041 128% Iteration 10 18 0.00018 - TakeWhile 100 171 0.00171 88% Iteration 100 91 0.00091 - TakeWhile 1000 1604 0.01604 94% Iteration 1000 825 0.00825 - TakeWhile 10,000 15765 0.15765 92% Iteration 10,000 8204 0.08204 - TakeWhile 100,000 156950 1.5695 92% Iteration 100,000 81635 0.81635 - Wow! I expected some overhead due to the state machines iterators produce, but 90% slower? That seems a little heavy to me. So then I thought, well, what if TakeWhile() is not the right tool for the job? The problem is TakeWhile returns each item for processing using yield return, whereas our for-loop really doesn't care about the item beyond using it as a stop condition to evaluate. So what if that back and forth with the iterator state machine is the problem? Well, we can quickly create an (albeit ugly) lambda that uses the Any() along with a count in a closure (if a LINQ guru knows a better way PLEASE let me know!), after all , this is more consistent with what we're trying to do, we're trying to find the first occurence of an item and halt once we find it, we just happen to be counting on the way. This mostly matches Any(). // a new method that uses linq but evaluates the count in a closure. public static int TakeWhileViaLinq2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target) { int count = 0; list.Any(item => { if(item == target) { return true; } ++count; return false; }); return count; } Now how does this one compare? List<T> On 100,000 Iterations Method Size Total (ms) Per Iteration (ms) % Slower TakeWhile 10 41 0.00041 128% Any w/Closure 10 23 0.00023 28% Iteration 10 18 0.00018 - TakeWhile 100 171 0.00171 88% Any w/Closure 100 116 0.00116 27% Iteration 100 91 0.00091 - TakeWhile 1000 1604 0.01604 94% Any w/Closure 1000 1101 0.01101 33% Iteration 1000 825 0.00825 - TakeWhile 10,000 15765 0.15765 92% Any w/Closure 10,000 10802 0.10802 32% Iteration 10,000 8204 0.08204 - TakeWhile 100,000 156950 1.5695 92% Any w/Closure 100,000 108378 1.08378 33% Iteration 100,000 81635 0.81635 - Much better! It seems that the overhead of TakeAny() returning each item and updating the state in the state machine is drastically reduced by using Any() since Any() iterates forward until it finds the value we're looking for -- for the task we're attempting to do. So the lesson there is, make sure when you use a LINQ expression you're choosing the best expression for the job, because if you're doing more work than you really need, you'll have a slower algorithm. But this is true of any choice of algorithm or collection in general. Even with the Any() with the count in the closure it is still about 30% slower, but let's consider that angle carefully. For a list of 100,000 items, it was the difference between 1.01 ms and 0.82 ms roughly in a List<T>. That's really not that bad at all in the grand scheme of things. Even running at 90% slower with TakeWhile(), for the vast majority of my projects, an extra millisecond to save potential errors in the long term and improve maintainability is a small price to pay. And if your typical list is 1000 items or less we're talking only microseconds worth of difference. It's like they say: 90% of your performance bottlenecks are in 2% of your code, so over-optimizing almost never pays off. So personally, I'll take the LINQ expression wherever I can because they will be easier to read and maintain (thus reducing technical debt) and I can rely on Microsoft's development to have coded and unit tested those algorithm fully for me instead of relying on a developer to code the loop logic correctly. If something's 90% slower, yes, it's worth keeping in mind, but it's really not until you start get magnitudes-of-order slower (10x, 100x, 1000x) that alarm bells should really go off. And if I ever do need that last millisecond of performance? Well then I'll optimize JUST THAT problem spot. To me it's worth it for the readability, speed-to-market, and maintainability.

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C#: Does an IDisposable in a Halted Iterator Dispose?

- by James Michael Hare

If that sounds confusing, let me give you an example. Let's say you expose a method to read a database of products, and instead of returning a List<Product> you return an IEnumerable<Product> in iterator form (yield return). This accomplishes several good things: The IDataReader is not passed out of the Data Access Layer which prevents abstraction leak and resource leak potentials. You don't need to construct a full List<Product> in memory (which could be very big) if you just want to forward iterate once. If you only want to consume up to a certain point in the list, you won't incur the database cost of looking up the other items. This could give us an example like: 1: // a sample data access object class to do standard CRUD operations. 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: private DbProviderFactory _factory = SqlClientFactory.Instance 5: 6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: // must create the connection 10: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 11: { 12: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 13: con.Open(); 14: 15: // create the command 16: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 17: { 18: cmd.Connection = con; 19: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 20: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 21: 22: // get a reader and pass back all results 23: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 24: { 25: while(reader.Read()) 26: { 27: yield return new Product 28: { 29: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 30: ... 31: }; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: } The database details themselves are irrelevant. I will say, though, that I'm a big fan of using the System.Data.Common classes instead of your provider specific counterparts directly (SqlCommand, OracleCommand, etc). This lets you mock your data sources easily in unit testing and also allows you to swap out your provider in one line of code. In fact, one of the shared components I'm most proud of implementing was our group's DatabaseUtility library that simplifies all the database access above into one line of code in a thread-safe and provider-neutral way. I went with my own flavor instead of the EL due to the fact I didn't want to force internal company consumers to use the EL if they didn't want to, and it made it easy to allow them to mock their database for unit testing by providing a MockCommand, MockConnection, etc that followed the System.Data.Common model. One of these days I'll blog on that if anyone's interested. Regardless, you often have situations like the above where you are consuming and iterating through a resource that must be closed once you are finished iterating. For the reasons stated above, I didn't want to return IDataReader (that would force them to remember to Dispose it), and I didn't want to return List<Product> (that would force them to hold all products in memory) -- but the first time I wrote this, I was worried. What if you never consume the last item and exit the loop? Are the reader, command, and connection all disposed correctly? Of course, I was 99.999999% sure the creators of C# had already thought of this and taken care of it, but inspection in Reflector was difficult due to the nature of the state machines yield return generates, so I decided to try a quick example program to verify whether or not Dispose() will be called when an iterator is broken from outside the iterator itself -- i.e. before the iterator reports there are no more items. So I wrote a quick Sequencer class with a Dispose() method and an iterator for it. Yes, it is COMPLETELY contrived: 1: // A disposable sequence of int -- yes this is completely contrived... 2: internal class Sequencer : IDisposable 3: { 4: private int _i = 0; 5: private readonly object _mutex = new object(); 6: 7: // Constructs an int sequence. 8: public Sequencer(int start) 9: { 10: _i = start; 11: } 12: 13: // Gets the next integer 14: public int GetNext() 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: return _i++; 19: } 20: } 21: 22: // Dispose the sequence of integers. 23: public void Dispose() 24: { 25: // force output immediately (flush the buffer) 26: Console.WriteLine("Disposed with last sequence number of {0}!", _i); 27: Console.Out.Flush(); 28: } 29: } And then I created a generator (infinite-loop iterator) that did the using block for auto-Disposal: 1: // simply defines an extension method off of an int to start a sequence 2: public static class SequencerExtensions 3: { 4: // generates an infinite sequence starting at the specified number 5: public static IEnumerable<int> GetSequence(this int starter) 6: { 7: // note the using here, will call Dispose() when block terminated. 8: using (var seq = new Sequencer(starter)) 9: { 10: // infinite loop on this generator, means must be bounded by caller! 11: while(true) 12: { 13: yield return seq.GetNext(); 14: } 15: } 16: } 17: } This is really the same conundrum as the database problem originally posed. Here we are using iteration (yield return) over a large collection (infinite sequence of integers). If we cut the sequence short by breaking iteration, will that using block exit and hence, Dispose be called? Well, let's see: 1: // The test program class 2: public class IteratorTest 3: { 4: // The main test method. 5: public static void Main() 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Going to consume 10 of infinite items"); 8: Console.Out.Flush(); 9: 10: foreach(var i in 0.GetSequence()) 11: { 12: // could use TakeWhile, but wanted to output right at break... 13: if(i >= 10) 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Breaking now!"); 16: Console.Out.Flush(); 17: break; 18: } 19: 20: Console.WriteLine(i); 21: Console.Out.Flush(); 22: } 23: 24: Console.WriteLine("Done with loop."); 25: Console.Out.Flush(); 26: } 27: } So, what do we see? Do we see the "Disposed" message from our dispose, or did the Dispose get skipped because from an "eyeball" perspective we should be locked in that infinite generator loop? Here's the results: 1: Going to consume 10 of infinite items 2: 0 3: 1 4: 2 5: 3 6: 4 7: 5 8: 6 9: 7 10: 8 11: 9 12: Breaking now! 13: Disposed with last sequence number of 11! 14: Done with loop. Yes indeed, when we break the loop, the state machine that C# generates for yield iterate exits the iteration through the using blocks and auto-disposes the IDisposable correctly. I must admit, though, the first time I wrote one, I began to wonder and that led to this test. If you've never seen iterators before (I wrote a previous entry here) the infinite loop may throw you, but you have to keep in mind it is not a linear piece of code, that every time you hit a "yield return" it cedes control back to the state machine generated for the iterator. And this state machine, I'm happy to say, is smart enough to clean up the using blocks correctly. I suspected those wily guys and gals at Microsoft engineered it well, and I wasn't disappointed. But, I've been bitten by assumptions before, so it's good to test and see. Yes, maybe you knew it would or figured it would, but isn't it nice to know? And as those campy 80s G.I. Joe cartoon public service reminders always taught us, "Knowing is half the battle...". Technorati Tags: C#,.NET

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Writing the tests for FluentPath

- by Bertrand Le Roy

Writing the tests for FluentPath is a challenge. The library is a wrapper around a legacy API (System.IO) that wasn’t designed to be easily testable. If it were more testable, the sensible testing methodology would be to tell System.IO to act against a mock file system, which would enable me to verify that my code is doing the expected file system operations without having to manipulate the actual, physical file system: what we are testing here is FluentPath, not System.IO. Unfortunately, that is not an option as nothing in System.IO enables us to plug a mock file system in. As a consequence, we are left with few options. A few people have suggested me to abstract my calls to System.IO away so that I could tell FluentPath – not System.IO – to use a mock instead of the real thing. That in turn is getting a little silly: FluentPath already is a thin abstraction around System.IO, so layering another abstraction between them would double the test surface while bringing little or no value. I would have to test that new abstraction layer, and that would bring us back to square one. Unless I’m missing something, the only option I have here is to bite the bullet and test against the real file system. Of course, the tests that do that can hardly be called unit tests. They are more integration tests as they don’t only test bits of my code. They really test the successful integration of my code with the underlying System.IO. In order to write such tests, the techniques of BDD work particularly well as they enable you to express scenarios in natural language, from which test code is generated. Integration tests are being better expressed as scenarios orchestrating a few basic behaviors, so this is a nice fit. The Orchard team has been successfully using SpecFlow for integration tests for a while and I thought it was pretty cool so that’s what I decided to use. Consider for example the following scenario: Scenario: Change extension Given a clean test directory When I change the extension of bar\notes.txt to foo Then bar\notes.txt should not exist And bar\notes.foo should exist This is human readable and tells you everything you need to know about what you’re testing, but it is also executable code. What happens when SpecFlow compiles this scenario is that it executes a bunch of regular expressions that identify the known Given (set-up phases), When (actions) and Then (result assertions) to identify the code to run, which is then translated into calls into the appropriate methods. Nothing magical. Here is the code generated by SpecFlow: [NUnit.Framework.TestAttribute()] [NUnit.Framework.DescriptionAttribute("Change extension")] public virtual void ChangeExtension() { TechTalk.SpecFlow.ScenarioInfo scenarioInfo = new TechTalk.SpecFlow.ScenarioInfo("Change extension", ((string[])(null))); #line 6 this.ScenarioSetup(scenarioInfo); #line 7 testRunner.Given("a clean test directory"); #line 8 testRunner.When("I change the extension of " + "bar\\notes.txt to foo"); #line 9 testRunner.Then("bar\\notes.txt should not exist"); #line 10 testRunner.And("bar\\notes.foo should exist"); #line hidden testRunner.CollectScenarioErrors();} The #line directives are there to give clues to the debugger, because yes, you can put breakpoints into a scenario: The way you usually write tests with SpecFlow is that you write the scenario first, let it fail, then write the translation of your Given, When and Then into code if they don’t already exist, which results in running but failing tests, and then you write the code to make your tests pass (you implement the scenario). In the case of FluentPath, I built a simple Given method that builds a simple file hierarchy in a temporary directory that all scenarios are going to work with: [Given("a clean test directory")] public void GivenACleanDirectory() { _path = new Path(SystemIO.Path.GetTempPath()) .CreateSubDirectory("FluentPathSpecs") .MakeCurrent(); _path.GetFileSystemEntries() .Delete(true); _path.CreateFile("foo.txt", "This is a text file named foo."); var bar = _path.CreateSubDirectory("bar"); bar.CreateFile("baz.txt", "bar baz") .SetLastWriteTime(DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(-2)); bar.CreateFile("notes.txt", "This is a text file containing notes."); var barbar = bar.CreateSubDirectory("bar"); barbar.CreateFile("deep.txt", "Deep thoughts"); var sub = _path.CreateSubDirectory("sub"); sub.CreateSubDirectory("subsub"); sub.CreateFile("baz.txt", "sub baz") .SetLastWriteTime(DateTime.Now); sub.CreateFile("binary.bin", new byte[] {0x00, 0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0xFF}); } Then, to implement the scenario that you can read above, I had to write the following When: [When("I change the extension of (.*) to (.*)")] public void WhenIChangeTheExtension( string path, string newExtension) { var oldPath = Path.Current.Combine(path.Split('\\')); oldPath.Move(p => p.ChangeExtension(newExtension)); } As you can see, the When attribute is specifying the regular expression that will enable the SpecFlow engine to recognize what When method to call and also how to map its parameters. For our scenario, “bar\notes.txt” will get mapped to the path parameter, and “foo” to the newExtension parameter. And of course, the code that verifies the assumptions of the scenario: [Then("(.*) should exist")] public void ThenEntryShouldExist(string path) { Assert.IsTrue(_path.Combine(path.Split('\\')).Exists); } [Then("(.*) should not exist")] public void ThenEntryShouldNotExist(string path) { Assert.IsFalse(_path.Combine(path.Split('\\')).Exists); } These steps should be written with reusability in mind. They are building blocks for your scenarios, not implementation of a specific scenario. Think small and fine-grained. In the case of the above steps, I could reuse each of those steps in other scenarios. Those tests are easy to write and easier to read, which means that they also constitute a form of documentation. Oh, and SpecFlow is just one way to do this. Rob wrote a long time ago about this sort of thing (but using a different framework) and I highly recommend this post if I somehow managed to pique your interest: http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/make-bdd-your-bff-2/ And this screencast (Rob always makes excellent screencasts): http://blog.wekeroad.com/mvc-storefront/kona-3/ (click the “Download it here” link)

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The blocking nature of aggregates

- by Rob Farley

I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here. In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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The blocking nature of aggregates

- by Rob Farley

I wrote a post recently about how query tuning isn’t just about how quickly the query runs – that if you have something (such as SSIS) that is consuming your data (and probably introducing a bottleneck), then it might be more important to have a query which focuses on getting the first bit of data out. You can read that post here. In particular, we looked at two operators that could be used to ensure that a query returns only Distinct rows. and The Sort operator pulls in all the data, sorts it (discarding duplicates), and then pushes out the remaining rows. The Hash Match operator performs a Hashing function on each row as it comes in, and then looks to see if it’s created a Hash it’s seen before. If not, it pushes the row out. The Sort method is quicker, but has to wait until it’s gathered all the data before it can do the sort, and therefore blocks the data flow. But that was my last post. This one’s a bit different. This post is going to look at how Aggregate functions work, which ties nicely into this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. I’ve frequently explained about the fact that DISTINCT and GROUP BY are essentially the same function, although DISTINCT is the poorer cousin because you have less control over it, and you can’t apply aggregate functions. Just like the operators used for Distinct, there are different flavours of Aggregate operators – coming in blocking and non-blocking varieties. The example I like to use to explain this is a pile of playing cards. If I’m handed a pile of cards and asked to count how many cards there are in each suit, it’s going to help if the cards are already ordered. Suppose I’m playing a game of Bridge, I can easily glance at my hand and count how many there are in each suit, because I keep the pile of cards in order. Moving from left to right, I could tell you I have four Hearts in my hand, even before I’ve got to the end. By telling you that I have four Hearts as soon as I know, I demonstrate the principle of a non-blocking operation. This is known as a Stream Aggregate operation. It requires input which is sorted by whichever columns the grouping is on, and it will release a row as soon as the group changes – when I encounter a Spade, I know I don’t have any more Hearts in my hand. Alternatively, if the pile of cards are not sorted, I won’t know how many Hearts I have until I’ve looked through all the cards. In fact, to count them, I basically need to put them into little piles, and when I’ve finished making all those piles, I can count how many there are in each. Because I don’t know any of the final numbers until I’ve seen all the cards, this is blocking. This performs the aggregate function using a Hash Match. Observant readers will remember this from my Distinct example. You might remember that my earlier Hash Match operation – used for Distinct Flow – wasn’t blocking. But this one is. They’re essentially doing a similar operation, applying a Hash function to some data and seeing if the set of values have been seen before, but before, it needs more information than the mere existence of a new set of values, it needs to consider how many of them there are. A lot is dependent here on whether the data coming out of the source is sorted or not, and this is largely determined by the indexes that are being used. If you look in the Properties of an Index Scan, you’ll be able to see whether the order of the data is required by the plan. A property called Ordered will demonstrate this. In this particular example, the second plan is significantly faster, but is dependent on having ordered data. In fact, if I force a Stream Aggregate on unordered data (which I’m doing by telling it to use a different index), a Sort operation is needed, which makes my plan a lot slower. This is all very straight-forward stuff, and information that most people are fully aware of. I’m sure you’ve all read my good friend Paul White (@sql_kiwi)’s post on how the Query Optimizer chooses which type of aggregate function to apply. But let’s take a look at SQL Server Integration Services. SSIS gives us a Aggregate transformation for use in Data Flow Tasks, but it’s described as Blocking. The definitive article on Performance Tuning SSIS uses Sort and Aggregate as examples of Blocking Transformations. I’ve just shown you that Aggregate operations used by the Query Optimizer are not always blocking, but that the SSIS Aggregate component is an example of a blocking transformation. But is it always the case? After all, there are plenty of SSIS Performance Tuning talks out there that describe the value of sorted data in Data Flow Tasks, describing the IsSorted property that can be set through the Advanced Editor of your Source component. And so I set about testing the Aggregate transformation in SSIS, to prove for sure whether providing Sorted data would let the Aggregate transform behave like a Stream Aggregate. (Of course, I knew the answer already, but it helps to be able to demonstrate these things). A query that will produce a million rows in order was in order. Let me rephrase. I used a query which produced the numbers from 1 to 1000000, in a single field, ordered. The IsSorted flag was set on the source output, with the only column as SortKey 1. Performing an Aggregate function over this (counting the number of rows per distinct number) should produce an additional column with 1 in it. If this were being done in T-SQL, the ordered data would allow a Stream Aggregate to be used. In fact, if the Query Optimizer saw that the field had a Unique Index on it, it would be able to skip the Aggregate function completely, and just insert the value 1. This is a shortcut I wouldn’t be expecting from SSIS, but certainly the Stream behaviour would be nice. Unfortunately, it’s not the case. As you can see from the screenshots above, the data is pouring into the Aggregate function, and not being released until all million rows have been seen. It’s not doing a Stream Aggregate at all. This is expected behaviour. (I put that in bold, because I want you to realise this.) An SSIS transformation is a piece of code that runs. It’s a physical operation. When you write T-SQL and ask for an aggregation to be done, it’s a logical operation. The physical operation is either a Stream Aggregate or a Hash Match. In SSIS, you’re telling the system that you want a generic Aggregation, that will have to work with whatever data is passed in. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be possible to make a sometimes-blocking aggregation component in SSIS. A Custom Component could be created which could detect whether the SortKeys columns of the input matched the Grouping columns of the Aggregation, and either call the blocking code or the non-blocking code as appropriate. One day I’ll make one of those, and publish it on my blog. I’ve done it before with a Script Component, but as Script components are single-use, I was able to handle the data knowing everything about my data flow already. As per my previous post – there are a lot of aspects in which tuning SSIS and tuning execution plans use similar concepts. In both situations, it really helps to have a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. Considering whether an operation is blocking or not is extremely relevant to performance, and that it’s not always obvious from the surface. In a future post, I’ll show the impact of blocking v non-blocking and synchronous v asynchronous components in SSIS, using some of LobsterPot’s Script Components and Custom Components as examples. When I get that sorted, I’ll make a Stream Aggregate component available for download.

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Creating an SMF service for mercurial web server

- by Chris W Beal

I'm working on a project at the moment, which has a number of contributers. We're managing the project gate (which is stand alone) with mercurial. We want to have an easy way of seeing the changelog, so we can show management what is going on. Luckily mercurial provides a basic web server which allows you to see the changes, and drill in to change sets. This can be run as a daemon, but as it was running on our build server, every time it was rebooted, someone needed to remember to start the process again. This is of course a classic usage of SMF. Now I'm not an experienced person at writing SMF services, so it took me 1/2 an hour or so to figure it out the first time. But going forward I should know what I'm doing a bit better. I did reference this doc extensively. Taking a step back, the command to start the mercurial web server is $ hg serve -p <port number> -d So we somehow need to get SMF to run that command for us. In the simplest form, SMF services are really made up of two components. The manifest Usually lives in /var/svc/manifest somewhere Can be imported from any location The method Usually live in /lib/svc/method I simply put the script straight in that directory. Not very repeatable, but it worked Can take an argument of start, stop, or refresh Lets start with the manifest. This looks pretty complex, but all it's doing is describing the service name, the dependencies, the start and stop methods, and some properties. The properties can be by instance, that is to say I could have multiple hg serve processes handling different mercurial projects, on different ports simultaneously Here is the manifest I wrote. I stole extensively from the examples in the Documentation. So my manifest looks like this $ cat hg-serve.xml <?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type='manifest' name='hg-serve'> <service name='application/network/hg-serve' type='service' version='1'> <dependency name='network' grouping='require_all' restart_on='none' type='service'> <service_fmri value='svc:/milestone/network:default' /> </dependency> <exec_method type='method' name='start' exec='/lib/svc/method/hg-serve %m' timeout_seconds='2' /> <exec_method type='method' name='stop' exec=':kill' timeout_seconds='2'> </exec_method> <instance name='project-gate' enabled='true'> <method_context> <method_credential user='root' group='root' /> </method_context> <property_group name='hg-serve' type='application'> <propval name='path' type='astring' value='/src/project-gate'/> <propval name='port' type='astring' value='9998' /> </property_group> </instance> <stability value='Evolving' /> <template> <common_name> <loctext xml:lang='C'>hg-serve</loctext> </common_name> <documentation> <manpage title='hg' section='1' /> </documentation> </template> </service> </service_bundle> So the only things I had to decide on in this are the service name "application/network/hg-serve" the start and stop methods (more of which later) and the properties. This is the information I need to pass to the start method script. In my case the port I want to start the web server on "9998", and the path to the source gate "/src/project-gate". These can be read in to the start method. So now lets look at the method scripts $ cat /lib/svc/method/hg-serve #!/sbin/sh # # # Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. # # Standard prolog # . /lib/svc/share/smf_include.sh if [ -z $SMF_FMRI ]; then echo "SMF framework variables are not initialized." exit $SMF_EXIT_ERR fi # # Build the command line flags # # Get the port and directory from the SMF properties port=`svcprop -c -p hg-serve/port $SMF_FMRI` dir=`svcprop -c -p hg-serve/path $SMF_FMRI` echo "$1" case "$1" in 'start') cd $dir /usr/bin/hg serve -d -p $port ;; *) echo "Usage: $0 {start|refresh|stop}" exit 1 ;; esac exit $SMF_EXIT_OK This is all pretty self explanatory, we read the port and directory using svcprop, and use those simply to run a command in the start case. We don't need to implement a stop case, as the manifest says to use "exec=':kill'for the stop method. Now all we need to do is import the manifest and start the service, but first verify the manifest # svccfg verify /path/to/hg-serve.xml If that doesn't give an error try importing it # svccfg import /path/to/hg-serve.xml If like me you originally put the hg-serve.xml file in /var/svc/manifest somewhere you'll get an error and told to restart the import service svccfg: Restarting svc:/system/manifest-import The manifest being imported is from a standard location and should be imported with the command : svcadm restart svc:/system/manifest-import # svcadm restart svc:/system/manifest-import and you're nearly done. You can look at the service using svcs -l # svcs -l hg-serve fmri svc:/application/network/hg-serve:project-gate name hg-serve enabled false state disabled next_state none state_time Thu May 31 16:11:47 2012 logfile /var/svc/log/application-network-hg-serve:project-gate.log restarter svc:/system/svc/restarter:default contract_id 15749 manifest /var/svc/manifest/network/hg/hg-serve.xml dependency require_all/none svc:/milestone/network:default (online) And look at the interesting properties # svcprop hg-serve hg-serve/path astring /src/project-gate hg-serve/port astring 9998 ...stuff deleted.... Then simply enable the service and if every things gone right, you can point your browser at http://server:9998 and get a nice graphical log of project activity. # svcadm enable hg-serve # svcs -l hg-serve fmri svc:/application/network/hg-serve:project-gate name hg-serve enabled true state online next_state none state_time Thu May 31 16:18:11 2012 logfile /var/svc/log/application-network-hg-serve:project-gate.log restarter svc:/system/svc/restarter:default contract_id 15858 manifest /var/svc/manifest/network/hg/hg-serve.xml dependency require_all/none svc:/milestone/network:default (online) None of this is rocket science, but a bit fiddly. Hence I thought I'd blog it. It might just be you see this in google and it clicks with you more than one of the many other blogs or how tos about it. Plus I can always refer back to it myself in 3 weeks, when I want to add another project to the server, and I've forgotten how to do it.

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MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release – Foreign Keys Are In!

- by Mat Keep

0 0 1 1097 6254 Homework 52 14 7337 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} Summary (aka TL/DR): Support for Foreign Key constraints has been one of the most requested feature enhancements for MySQL Cluster. We are therefore extremely excited to announce that Foreign Keys are part of the first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 – available for download, evaluation and feedback now! (Select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) In this blog, I will attempt to discuss the design rationale, implementation, configuration and steps to get started in evaluating the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release. Pace of Innovation It was only a couple of months ago that we announced the General Availability (GA) of MySQL Cluster 7.2, delivering 1 billion Queries per Minute, with 70x higher cross-shard JOIN performance, Memcached NoSQL key-value API and cross-data center replication. This release has been a huge hit, with downloads and deployments quickly reaching record levels. The announcement of the first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Early Access lab release at today's MySQL Innovation Day event demonstrates the continued pace in Cluster development, and provides an opportunity for the community to evaluate and feedback on new features they want to see. What’s the Plan for MySQL Cluster 7.3? Well, Foreign Keys, as you may have gathered by now (!), and this is the focus of this first Labs Release. As with MySQL Cluster 7.2, we plan to publish a series of preview releases for 7.3 that will incrementally add new candidate features for a final GA release (subject to usual safe harbor statement below*), including: - New NoSQL APIs; - Features to automate the configuration and provisioning of multi-node clusters, on premise or in the cloud; - Performance and scalability enhancements; - Taking advantage of features in the latest MySQL 5.x Server GA. Design Rationale MySQL Cluster is designed as a “Not-Only-SQL” database. It combines attributes that enable users to blend the best of both relational and NoSQL technologies into solutions that deliver web scalability with 99.999% availability and real-time performance, including: Concurrent NoSQL and SQL access to the database; Auto-sharding with simple scale-out across commodity hardware; Multi-master replication with failover and recovery both within and across data centers; Shared-nothing architecture with no single point of failure; Online scaling and schema changes; ACID compliance and support for complex queries, across shards. Native support for Foreign Key constraints enables users to extend the benefits of MySQL Cluster into a broader range of use-cases, including: - Packaged applications in areas such as eCommerce and Web Content Management that prescribe databases with Foreign Key support. - In-house developments benefiting from Foreign Key constraints to simplify data models and eliminate the additional application logic needed to maintain data consistency and integrity between tables. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within MySQL Cluster’s data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether using SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA or HTTP/REST.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation. An important difference to note with the Foreign Key implementation in InnoDB is that MySQL Cluster does not support the updating of Primary Keys from within the Data Nodes themselves - instead the UPDATE is emulated with a DELETE followed by an INSERT operation. Therefore an UPDATE operation will return an error if the parent reference is using a Primary Key, unless using CASCADE action, in which case the delete operation will result in the corresponding rows in the child table being deleted. The Engineering team plans to change this behavior in a subsequent preview release. Also note that when using InnoDB "NO ACTION" is identical to "RESTRICT". In the case of MySQL Cluster “NO ACTION” means “deferred check”, i.e. the constraint is checked before commit, allowing user-defined triggers to automatically make changes in order to satisfy the Foreign Key constraints. Configuration There is nothing special you have to do here – Foreign Key constraint checking is enabled by default. If you intend to migrate existing tables from another database or storage engine, for example from InnoDB, there are a couple of best practices to observe: 1. Analyze the structure of the Foreign Key graph and run the ALTER TABLE ENGINE=NDB in the correct sequence to ensure constraints are enforced 2. Alternatively drop the Foreign Key constraints prior to the import process and then recreate when complete. Getting Started Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster. You can download MySQL Cluster 7.3 Labs Release with Foreign Keys today - (select the mysql-cluster-7.3-labs-June-2012 build) If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3) Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section of this blog. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. This first Labs Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 gives you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases. * Safe Harbor Statement This information is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – June 2013

- by JuergenKress

Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity. Please feel free to send us your news! Lucas Jellema ?Getting started with Java EE 7: The Tutorial http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/tutorial/doc/home.htm … Simon Haslam I'm looking forward to starting a "WLS on ODA" proof of concept - some ideas for testing: http://www.veriton.co.uk/roller/fmw/entry/virtualised_oda_proof_of_concept … Frank Munz ?It's not too late - I just submitted two presentations about #OracleWebLogic and #Coherence for the @DOAGeV conference in Nürnberg. Did you? Arun Gupta ?Tyrus 1.0 User Guide: https://tyrus.java.net/documentation/1.0/user-guide.html … #WebSocket #JavaEE7 #GlassFish Arun Gupta #JavaEE7 Launch Webinar Technical Breakout replays on Youtube: http://bit.ly/12uUicT JSON 1.0 , EJB .2, Batch 1.0 more coming! OracleBlogs ?FREE Virtual Developer Day: Java SE, Java EE, Java Emebedded on Jun 19th and 25th http://ow.ly/2xBkwV Markus Eisele #Oracle #JavaSE Critical Patch Update Pre-Release Announcement - June 2013 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/javacpujun2013-1899847.html … #security OracleSupport_WLS ?Simple Custom #JMX MBeans with #WebLogic 12c and #Spring http://pub.vitrue.com/3kEr Oracle Technet Building Java HTML5/WebSocket Applications with JSR 356 - 4pm - Grand Ballroom Salon A/B #qconnewyork WebLogic Community Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) 11g (11.1.1.7) Starter Kit available & Customizable Demos http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BK Oracle Technet #Java EE 7: Moving Java Forward for the Enterprise | @java http://pub.vitrue.com/tHiM OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Forms to ADF Modernization Reference - Convero (AMEC) Project | @AndrejusB http://pub.vitrue.com/lZPR WebLogic Community ?ExaLogic In Memory Applications & Whitepapers Building Large Scale E-Commerce Platforms & Rethink the Entire Application Lifecycle… WebLogic Community ?Coherence YouTube videos http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BG Arun Gupta ?WARNING: Next 2 days are going to be loaded with #JavaEE7 launch related tweets, and offline next week! JDeveloper & ADF Using Contextual Event in Oracle ADF http://dlvr.it/3Vpybr Oracle WebLogic Check out new blog on #hybrid_cloud & why choice is important http://bit.ly/1b1QGhL Andrejus Baranovskis Oracle Forms to ADF Modernization Reference - Convero (AMEC) Project http://fb.me/1M9iWNmAw WebLogic Community WebLogic on Oracle Database Appliance by Frances Zhao http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BE OTNArchBeat ?New: A-Team Chronicles >> A great resource for technical content covering Oracle Fusion Middleware / Fusion Apps http://pub.vitrue.com/qbzS Oracle for Partners ?Take Java To The Edge: Java Virtual Developer Day – June 19 & June 25 http://bit.ly/19fGlSX Adam Bien ?Looking forward to tomorrow's #javaee7 + #angularjs #html5 marriage at #jpoint. See you there: http://www.jpoint.nl/meetingpoint/editie-2013#sessie-1 … shay shmeltzer ?There is a new patch for the #Oracle #ADF Mobile extension - use help->check for updates to get it. Frank Munz ?Not using @OracleWebLogic 12c yet? Australia does! Reviews from my @AUSOUG workshops in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. http://goo.gl/BfVc4 Arun Gupta ?WebSocket, Server-Sent Events, #JavaEE7 sessions accepted at #jaxlondon ... that's gonna be at least third trip to London this year! WebLogic Community SPARC T5-8 Delivers Best Single System SPECjEnterprise2010 Benchmark running WebLogic 12c http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BC WebLogic Community The Ultimate Java EE Event - 16 Power Workshops mit allen wichtigen Java-EE-Themen http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BY Oracle WebLogic ?@OracleWebLogic 7 Jun New Blog Post: Using try-with-resources with JDBC objects http://ow.ly/2xryb5 JDeveloper & ADF Switching Lists of Values http://dlvr.it/3PbCkw WebLogic Community ?YouTube channel Learning Oracle's ADF http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zA Markus Eisele [GER] RT @heisedc: #Java-Entwicklung in #Oracles Public #Cloud http://heise.de/-1866388/ftw OracleBlogs ?Coherence Incubator & Community Source Code & Release Documentation http://ow.ly/2x2fXK chriscmuir ?New blog post: Migrating ADF Mobile apps from 1.0 to 1.1 https://blogs.oracle.com/onesizedoesntfitall/entry/migrating_adf_mobile_apps_from … JDeveloper & ADF ?ADF JavaScript Partitioning for Performance http://dlvr.it/3Trw15 WebLogic Community WebLogic Server Security Workshop June 27th 2013 Germany http://wp.me/p1LMIb-C7 WebLogic Community Oracle Optimized Solution for WebLogic Server 12c http://wp.me/p1LMIb-BA WebLogic Community Virtualize and Run Your Forms Applications in the Cloud - Now On Demand http://wp.me/p1LMIb-By Lucas Jellema Innteresting presentation on various aspects of end user assistance in Fusion Applications (ADF based): http://www.slideshare.net/uobroin/ouag-ireland-final2012slideshare … Adam Bien ?Summer Of JavaEE Workshops And Gigs: Free Hacking night:11.06.2013, Utrecht JavaEE 7 Meets HTML 5 and AngularJ... http://bit.ly/11XRjt4 WebLogic Community ?Real World ADF Design & Architecture Principles Trainings Germany, Poland & Portugal http://wp.me/p1LMIb-Bw Oracle for Partners ?JAVA Virtual Developer Day – June 19 & June 25 - Watch educational content and engage with Oracle experts online https://oracle.6connex.com/portal/java2013/login/?langR=en_US&mcc=OPNNSL … Markus Eisele ?[blog] Java EE 7 is final. Thoughts, Insights and further Pointers. http://dlvr.it/3SrxnB #javaee7 WebLogic Community Oracle takes the top spot for market share in the Application Server Market Segment for 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-Bu OTNArchBeat ?Oracle ACE Director @LucasJellema is "very pleasantly surprised" with the new ADF Academy. http://pub.vitrue.com/8fad chriscmuir ?Sell out crowd for our ADF architecture course in Munich #adfarch pic.twitter.com/zhNtQJ25JV Markus Eisele ?[blog] New German Article: Java 7 Update 21 Security Improvements http://dlvr.it/3Sc8V9 #java #heise #security Markus Eisele ?[blog] New German Article: Oracle Java Cloud Service http://dlvr.it/3Sc20V #java #heise #OracleCloud OracleSupport_WLS ?Troubleshooting and Tuning with #WebLogic - Developer Webcast now available on #Youtube http://pub.vitrue.com/GSOy Andrejus Baranovskis New ADF Academy - Impressive Concept for ADF eLearning http://fb.me/2kYSMKKR5 OracleSupport_WLS ?Removing a #weblogic domain properly http://pub.vitrue.com/ZndM WebLogic Community WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter May 2013 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-Bp Oracle WebLogic ?Blog: Troubleshooting tools Part 3- Heap Dumps #Oracle #WebLogic Read the series http://bit.ly/14CQSD2 Oracle WebLogic ?Blog: #WebLogic_Server on #Oracle_Database_Appliance- How to conjure a WebLogic cluster- http://bit.ly/11fciHA Oracle WebLogic ?Check out new cool features in Oracle Traffic Director- http://bit.ly/11fbz9h WebLogic Community Additional new material WebLogic Community April 2013 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zM WebLogic Community New WebLogic references - we want yours http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zK OracleSupport_WLS ?#Weblogic Session Replication jsession ID and F5 http://pub.vitrue.com/dWZp OracleBlogs ?top tweets WebLogic Partner Community May 2013 http://ow.ly/2xc8M5 WebLogic Community Welcome to the Spring edition of Oracle Scene http://wp.me/p1LMIb-zE Andreas Koop ?[blog post] ADF: Static Values View Object does not show any values (solved) http://bit.ly/14RDZ8p OracleBlogs ?ADF Mobile - accessing the SQLite database http://ow.ly/2x85r0 OracleSupport_WLS Youtube channel- Troubleshooting and Tuning with #WebLogic.#JRockit #SOAP #JRF http://pub.vitrue.com/qMxu Arun Gupta Next Java Magazine is all about #JavaEE7...productivity, HTML5, WebSocket, Batch & more. Subscribe http://ow.ly/lkD5D (@Oraclejavamag) Oracle WebLogic How to configure a #WebLogic cluster on #Oracle_Database_Appliance? It’s easy, read how. http://bit.ly/11fciHA Oracle WebLogic ?Blog: How to use Heap Dumps to troubleshooting memory leaks- #Oracle #WebLogic_Server http://bit.ly/14CQSD2 OracleBlogs ?Over 100 Images To Be Added to NetBeans Platform Showcase http://ow.ly/2x7Fvp Lucas Jellema A new release of the ADF EMG Task Flow Tester is now available for both JDeveloper 11 R1 and R2. https://java.net/projects/adf-task-flow-tester/pages/GettingStarted … WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #050

- by Pinal Dave

Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Executing Remote Stored Procedure – Calling Stored Procedure on Linked Server In this example we see two different methods of how to call Stored Procedures remotely. Connection Property of SQL Server Management Studio SSMS A very simple example of the how to build connection properties for SQL Server with the help of SSMS. Sample Example of RANKING Functions – ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, NTILE SQL Server has a total of 4 ranking functions. Ranking functions return a ranking value for each row in a partition. All the ranking functions are non-deterministic. T-SQL Script to Add Clustered Primary Key Jr. DBA asked me three times in a day, how to create Clustered Primary Key. I gave him following sample example. That was the last time he asked “How to create Clustered Primary Key to table?” 2008 2008 – TRIM() Function – User Defined Function SQL Server does not have functions which can trim leading or trailing spaces of any string at the same time. SQL does have LTRIM() and RTRIM() which can trim leading and trailing spaces respectively. SQL Server 2008 also does not have TRIM() function. User can easily use LTRIM() and RTRIM() together and simulate TRIM() functionality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-hhApy6MHM 2009 Earlier I have written two different articles on the subject Remove Bookmark Lookup. This article is as part 3 of original article. Please read the first two articles here before continuing reading this article. Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 2 Query Optimization – Remove Bookmark Lookup – Remove RID Lookup – Remove Key Lookup – Part 3 Interesting Observation – Query Hint – FORCE ORDER SQL Server never stops to amaze me. As regular readers of this blog already know that besides conducting corporate training, I work on large-scale projects on query optimizations and server tuning projects. In one of the recent projects, I have noticed that a Junior Database Developer used the query hint Force Order; when I asked for details, I found out that the basic concept was not properly understood by him. Queries Waiting for Memory Allocation to Execute In one of the recent projects, I was asked to create a report of queries that are waiting for memory allocation. The reason was that we were doubtful regarding whether the memory was sufficient for the application. The following query can be useful in similar cases. Queries that do not have to wait on a memory grant will not appear in the result set of following query. 2010 Quickest Way to Identify Blocking Query and Resolution – Dirty Solution As the title suggests, this is quite a dirty solution; it’s not as elegant as you expect. However, it works totally fine. Simple Explanation of Data Type Precedence While I was working on creating a question for SQL SERVER – SQL Quiz – The View, The Table and The Clustered Index Confusion, I had actually created yet another question along with this question. However, I felt that the one which is posted on the SQL Quiz is much better than this one because what makes that more challenging question is that it has a multiple answer. Encrypted Stored Procedure and Activity Monitor I recently had received questionable if any stored procedure is encrypted can we see its definition in Activity Monitor.Answer is - No. Let us do a quick test. Let us create following Stored Procedure and then launch the Activity Monitor and check the text. Indexed View always Use Index on Table A single table can have maximum 249 non clustered indexes and 1 clustered index. In SQL Server 2008, a single table can have maximum 999 non clustered indexes and 1 clustered index. It is widely believed that a table can have only 1 clustered index, and this belief is true. I have some questions for all of you. Let us assume that I am creating view from the table itself and then create a clustered index on it. In my view, I am selecting the complete table itself. 2011 Detecting Database Case Sensitive Property using fn_helpcollations() I received a question on how to determine the case sensitivity of the database. The quick answer to this is to identify the collation of the database and check the properties of the collation. I have previously written how one can identify database collation. Once you have figured out the collation of the database, you can put that in the WHERE condition of the following T-SQL and then check the case sensitivity from the description. Server Side Paging in SQL Server CE (Compact Edition) SQL Server Denali is coming up with new T-SQL of Paging. I have written about the same earlier.SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali – A Better Alternative, SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali Performance Comparison, SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server Denali – Part2 What is very interesting is that SQL Server CE 4.0 have the same feature introduced. Here is the quick example of the same. To run the script in the example, you will have to do installWebmatrix 4.0 and download sample database. Once done you can run following script. Why I am Going to Attend PASS Summit Unite 2011 The four-day event will be marked by a lot of learning, sharing, and networking, which will help me increase both my knowledge and contacts. Every year, PASS Summit provides me a golden opportunity to build my network as well as to identify and meet potential customers or employees. 2012 Manage Help Settings – CTRL + ALT + F1 This is very interesting read as my daughter once accidently came across a screen in SQL Server Management Studio. It took me 2-3 minutes to figure out how she has created the same screen. Recover the Accidentally Renamed Table “I accidentally renamed table in my SSMS. I was scrolling very fast and I made mistakes. It was either because I double clicked or clicked on F2 (shortcut key for renaming). However, I have made the mistake and now I have no idea how to fix this. If you have renamed the table, I think you pretty much is out of luck. Here are few things which you can do which can give you an idea about what your table name can be if you are lucky. Identify Numbers of Non Clustered Index on Tables for Entire Database Here is the script which will give you numbers of non clustered indexes on any table in entire database. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #029 – Video Here is the complete complete script which I have used in the SQL in Sixty Seconds Video. Thanks Harsh for important Tip in the comment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kDHC_Tjrns Advanced Data Quality Services with Melissa Data – Azure Data Market For the purposes of the review, I used a database I had in an Excel spreadsheet with name and address information. Upon a cursory inspection, there are miscellaneous problems with these records; some addresses are missing ZIP codes, others missing a city, and some records are slightly misspelled or have unparsed suites. With DQS, I can easily add a knowledge base to help standardize my values, such as for state abbreviations. But how do I know that my address is correct? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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SQL SERVER – Using expressor Composite Types to Enforce Business Rules

- by pinaldave

One of the features that distinguish the expressor Data Integration Platform from other products in the data integration space is its concept of composite types, which provide an effective and easily reusable way to clearly define the structure and characteristics of data within your application. An important feature of the composite type approach is that it allows you to easily adjust the content of a record to its ultimate purpose. For example, a record used to update a row in a database table is easily defined to include only the minimum set of columns, that is, a value for the key column and values for only those columns that need to be updated. Much like a class in higher level programming languages, you can also use the composite type as a way to enforce business rules onto your data by encapsulating a datum’s name, data type, and constraints (for example, maximum, minimum, or acceptable values) as a single entity, which ensures that your data can not assume an invalid value. To what extent you use this functionality is a decision you make when designing your application; the expressor design paradigm does not force this approach on you. Let’s take a look at how these features are used. Suppose you want to create a group of applications that maintain the employee table in your human resources database. Your table might have a structure similar to the HumanResources.Employee table in the AdventureWorks database. This table includes two columns, EmployeID and rowguid, that are maintained by the relational database management system; you cannot provide values for these columns when inserting new rows into the table. Additionally, there are columns such as VacationHours and SickLeaveHours that you might choose to update for all employees on a monthly basis, which justifies creation of a dedicated application. By creating distinct composite types for the read, insert and update operations against this table, you can more easily manage this table’s content. When developing this application within expressor Studio, your first task is to create a schema artifact for the database table. This process is completely driven by a wizard, only requiring that you select the desired database schema and table. The resulting schema artifact defines the mapping of result set records to a record within the expressor data integration application. The structure of the record within the expressor application is a composite type that is given the default name CompositeType1. As you can see in the following figure, all columns from the table are included in the result set and mapped to an identically named attribute in the default composite type. If you are developing an application that needs to read this table, perhaps to prepare a year-end report of employees by department, you would probably not be interested in the data in the rowguid and ModifiedDate columns. A typical approach would be to drop this unwanted data in a downstream operator. But using an alternative composite type provides a better approach in which the unwanted data never enters your application. While working in expressor Studio’s schema editor, simply create a second composite type within the same schema artifact, which you could name ReadTable, and remove the attributes corresponding to the unwanted columns. The value of an alternative composite type is even more apparent when you want to insert into or update the table. In the composite type used to insert rows, remove the attributes corresponding to the EmployeeID primary key and rowguid uniqueidentifier columns since these values are provided by the relational database management system. And to update just the VacationHours and SickLeaveHours columns, use a composite type that includes only the attributes corresponding to the EmployeeID, VacationHours, SickLeaveHours and ModifiedDate columns. By specifying this schema artifact and composite type in a Write Table operator, your upstream application need only deal with the four required attributes and there is no risk of unintentionally overwriting a value in a column that does not need to be updated. Now, what about the option to use the composite type to enforce business rules? If you review the composition of the default composite type CompositeType1, you will note that the constraints defined for many of the attributes mirror the table column specifications. For example, the maximum number of characters in the NationaIDNumber, LoginID and Title attributes is equivalent to the maximum width of the target column, and the size of the MaritalStatus and Gender attributes is limited to a single character as required by the table column definition. If your application code leads to a violation of these constraints, an error will be raised. The expressor design paradigm then allows you to handle the error in a way suitable for your application. For example, a string value could be truncated or a numeric value could be rounded. Moreover, you have the option of specifying additional constraints that support business rules unrelated to the table definition. Let’s assume that the only acceptable values for marital status are S, M, and D. Within the schema editor, double-click on the MaritalStatus attribute to open the Edit Attribute window. Then click the Allowed Values checkbox and enter the acceptable values into the Constraint Value text box. The schema editor is updated accordingly. There is one more option that the expressor semantic type paradigm supports. Since the MaritalStatus attribute now clearly specifies how this type of information should be represented (a single character limited to S, M or D), you can convert this attribute definition into a shared type, which will allow you to quickly incorporate this definition into another composite type or into the description of an output record from a transform operator. Again, double-click on the MaritalStatus attribute and in the Edit Attribute window, click Convert, which opens the Share Local Semantic Type window that you use to name this shared type. There’s no requirement that you give the shared type the same name as the attribute from which it was derived. You should supply a name that makes it obvious what the shared type represents. In this posting, I’ve overviewed the expressor semantic type paradigm and shown how it can be used to make your application development process more productive. The beauty of this feature is that you choose when and to what extent you utilize the functionality, but I’m certain that if you opt to follow this approach your efforts will become more efficient and your work will progress more quickly. As always, I encourage you to download and evaluate expressor Studio for your current and future data integration needs. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: CodeProject, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Documentation, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 for Custom Code Exception Logging?

- by venkatx5

What is ULS in SharePoint 2010? ULS stands for Unified Logging Service which captures and writes Exceptions/Logs in Log File(A Plain Text File with .log extension). SharePoint logs Each and every exceptions with ULS. SharePoint Administrators should know ULS and it's very useful when anything goes wrong. but when you ask any SharePoint 2007 Administrator to check log file then most of them will Kill you. Because read and understand the log file is not so easy. Imagine open a plain text file of 20 MB in NotePad and go thru line by line. Now Microsoft developed a tool "ULS Viewer" to view those Log files in easily readable format. This tools also helps to filter events based on exception priority. You can read on this blog to know in details about ULS Viewer . Where to get ULS Viewer? ULS Viewer is developed by Microsoft and available to download for free. URL : http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=3308 Note: Eventhought this tool developed by Microsoft, it's not supported by Microsoft. Means you can't support for this tool from Microsoft and use it on your own Risk. By the way what's the risk in viewing Log Files?! How to use ULS in SharePoint 2010 Custom Code? ULS can be extended to use in user solutions to log exceptions. In Detail, Developer can use ULS to log his own application errors and exceptions on SharePoint Log files. So now all in Single Place (That's why it's called "Unified Logging"). Well in this article I am going to use Waldek's Code (Reference Link). However the article is core and am writing container for that (Basically how to implement the code in Detail). Let's see the steps. Open Visual Studio 2010 -> File -> New Project -> Visual C# -> Windows -> Class Library -> Name : ULSLogger (Make sure you've selected .net Framework 3.5) In Solution Explorer Panel, Rename the Class1.cs to LoggingService.cs Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint" Right Click on the Project -> Properties. Select "Signing" Tab -> Check "Sign the Assembly". In the below drop down select <New> and enter "ULSLogger", uncheck the "Protect my key with a Password" option. Now copy the below code and paste. (Or Just refer.. :-) ) using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace ULSLogger { public class LoggingService : SPDiagnosticsServiceBase { public static string vsDiagnosticAreaName = "Venkats SharePoint Logging Service"; public static string CategoryName = "vsProject"; public static uint uintEventID = 700; // Event ID private static LoggingService _Current; public static LoggingService Current { get { if (_Current == null) { _Current = new LoggingService(); } return _Current; } }private LoggingService() : base("Venkats SharePoint Logging Service", SPFarm.Local) {}protected override IEnumerable<SPDiagnosticsArea> ProvideAreas() { List<SPDiagnosticsArea> areas = new List<SPDiagnosticsArea> { new SPDiagnosticsArea(vsDiagnosticAreaName, new List<SPDiagnosticsCategory> { new SPDiagnosticsCategory(CategoryName, TraceSeverity.Medium, EventSeverity.Error) }) }; return areas; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try { SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName]; LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, TraceSeverity.Unexpected, errorMessage); strExecutionResult = "Message Logged"; } catch (Exception ex) { strExecutionResult += ex.Message; } return strExecutionResult; }public static string LogErrorInULS(string errorMessage, TraceSeverity tsSeverity) { string strExecutionResult = "Message Not Logged in ULS. "; try { SPDiagnosticsCategory category = LoggingService.Current.Areas[vsDiagnosticAreaName].Categories[CategoryName]; LoggingService.Current.WriteTrace(uintEventID, category, tsSeverity, errorMessage); strExecutionResult = "Message Logged"; } catch (Exception ex) { strExecutionResult += ex.Message; } return strExecutionResult; } } } Just build the solution and it's ready to use now. This ULS solution can be used in SharePoint Webparts or Console Application. Lets see how to use it in a Console Application. SharePoint Server 2010 must be installed in the same Server or the application must be hosted in SharPoint Server 2010 environment. The console application must be set to "x64" Platform target. Create a New Console Application. (Visual Studio -> File -> New Project -> C# -> Windows -> Console Application) Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under .Net tab select "Microsoft.SharePoint" Open Program.cs add "using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration;" Right Click on References -> Add Reference -> Under "Browse" tab select the "ULSLogger.dll" which we created first. (Path : ULSLogger\ULSLogger\bin\Debug\) Right Click on Project -> Properties -> Select "Build" Tab -> Under "Platform Target" option select "x64". Open the Program.cs and paste the below code. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration; using ULSLogger; namespace ULSLoggerClient { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Started."); string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application is Working Fine."); Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Info. Result : " + strResult); string strResult = LoggingService.LogErrorInULS("My Application got an Exception.", TraceSeverity.High); Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Waring Result : " + strResult); Console.WriteLine("ULS Logging Completed."); Console.ReadLine(); } } } Just build the solution and execute. It'll log the message on the log file. Make sure you are using Farm Administrator User ID. You can play with Message and TraceSeverity as required. Now Open ULS Viewer -> File -> Open From -> ULS -> Select First Option to open the default ULS Log. It's Uls RealTime and will show all log entries in readable table format. Right Click on a row and select "Filter By This Item". Select "Event ID" and enter value "700" that we used in the application. Click Ok and now you'll see the Exceptions/Logs which logged by our application. If you want to see High Priority Messages only then Click Icons except Red Cross Icon on the Toolbar. The tooltip will tell what's the icons used for.

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ASP.NET MVC: Using ProfileRequiredAttribute to restrict access to pages

- by DigiMortal

If you are using AppFabric Access Control Services to authenticate users when they log in to your community site using Live ID, Google or some other popular identity provider, you need more than AuthorizeAttribute to make sure that users can access the content that is there for authenticated users only. In this posting I will show you hot to extend the AuthorizeAttribute so users must also have user profile filled. Semi-authorized users When user is authenticated through external identity provider then not all identity providers give us user name or other information we ask users when they join with our site. What all identity providers have in common is unique ID that helps you identify the user. Example. Users authenticated through Windows Live ID by AppFabric ACS have no name specified. Google’s identity provider is able to provide you with user name and e-mail address if user agrees to publish this information to you. They both give you unique ID of user when user is successfully authenticated in their service. There is logical shift between ASP.NET and my site when considering user as authorized. For ASP.NET MVC user is authorized when user has identity. For my site user is authorized when user has profile and row in my users table. Having profile means that user has unique username in my system and he or she is always identified by this username by other users. My solution is simple: I created my own action filter attribute that makes sure if user has profile to access given method and if user has no profile then browser is redirected to join page. Illustrating the problem Usually we restrict access to page using AuthorizeAttribute. Code is something like this. [Authorize] public ActionResult Details(string id) { var profile = _userRepository.GetUserByUserName(id); return View(profile); } If this page is only for site users and we have user profiles then all users – the ones that have profile and all the others that are just authenticated – can access the information. It is okay because all these users have successfully logged in in some service that is supported by AppFabric ACS. In my site the users with no profile are in grey spot. They are on half way to be users because they have no username and profile on my site yet. So looking at the image above again we need something that adds profile existence condition to user-only content. [ProfileRequired] public ActionResult Details(string id) { var profile = _userRepository.GetUserByUserName(id); return View(profile); } Now, this attribute will solve our problem as soon as we implement it. ProfileRequiredAttribute: Profiles are required to be fully authorized Here is my implementation of ProfileRequiredAttribute. It is pretty new and right now it is more like working draft but you can already play with it. public class ProfileRequiredAttribute : AuthorizeAttribute { private readonly string _redirectUrl; public ProfileRequiredAttribute() { _redirectUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["JoinUrl"]; if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(_redirectUrl)) _redirectUrl = "~/"; } public override void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) { base.OnAuthorization(filterContext); var httpContext = filterContext.HttpContext; var identity = httpContext.User.Identity; if (!identity.IsAuthenticated || identity.GetProfile() == null) if(filterContext.Result == null) httpContext.Response.Redirect(_redirectUrl); } } All methods with this attribute work as follows: if user is not authenticated then he or she is redirected to AppFabric ACS identity provider selection page, if user is authenticated but has no profile then user is by default redirected to main page of site but if you have application setting with name JoinUrl then user is redirected to this URL. First case is handled by AuthorizeAttribute and the second one is handled by custom logic in ProfileRequiredAttribute class. GetProfile() extension method To get user profile using less code in places where profiles are needed I wrote GetProfile() extension method for IIdentity interface. There are some more extension methods that read out user and identity provider identifier from claims and based on this information user profile is read from database. If you take this code with copy and paste I am sure it doesn’t work for you but you get the idea. public static User GetProfile(this IIdentity identity) { if (identity == null) return null; var context = HttpContext.Current; if (context.Items["UserProfile"] != null) return context.Items["UserProfile"] as User; var provider = identity.GetIdentityProvider(); var nameId = identity.GetNameIdentifier(); var rep = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<IUserRepository>(); var profile = rep.GetUserByProviderAndNameId(provider, nameId); context.Items["UserProfile"] = profile; return profile; } To avoid round trips to database I cache user profile to current request because the chance that profile gets changed meanwhile is very minimal. The other reason is maybe more tricky – profile objects are coming from Entity Framework context and context has also HTTP request as lifecycle. Conclusion This posting gave you some ideas how to finish user profiles stuff when you use AppFabric ACS as external authentication provider. Although there was little shift between us and ASP.NET MVC with interpretation of “authorized” we were easily able to solve the problem by extending AuthorizeAttribute to get all our requirements fulfilled. We also write extension method for IIdentity that returns as user profile based on username and caches the profile in HTTP request scope.

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SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

- by Mladen Prajdic

This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way. Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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Set Context User Principal for Customized Authentication in SignalR

- by Shaun

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2014/05/27/set-context-user-principal-for-customized-authentication-in-signalr.aspxCurrently I'm working on a single page application project which is built on AngularJS and ASP.NET WebAPI. When I need to implement some features that needs real-time communication and push notifications from server side I decided to use SignalR. SignalR is a project currently developed by Microsoft to build web-based, read-time communication application. You can find it here. With a lot of introductions and guides it's not a difficult task to use SignalR with ASP.NET WebAPI and AngularJS. I followed this and this even though it's based on SignalR 1. But when I tried to implement the authentication for my SignalR I was struggled 2 days and finally I got a solution by myself. This might not be the best one but it actually solved all my problem. In many articles it's said that you don't need to worry about the authentication of SignalR since it uses the web application authentication. For example if your web application utilizes form authentication, SignalR will use the user principal your web application authentication module resolved, check if the principal exist and authenticated. But in my solution my ASP.NET WebAPI, which is hosting SignalR as well, utilizes OAuth Bearer authentication. So when the SignalR connection was established the context user principal was empty. So I need to authentication and pass the principal by myself. Firstly I need to create a class which delivered from "AuthorizeAttribute", that will takes the responsible for authenticate when SignalR connection established and any method was invoked. 1: public class QueryStringBearerAuthorizeAttribute : AuthorizeAttribute 2: { 3: public override bool AuthorizeHubConnection(HubDescriptor hubDescriptor, IRequest request) 4: { 5: } 6: 7: public override bool AuthorizeHubMethodInvocation(IHubIncomingInvokerContext hubIncomingInvokerContext, bool appliesToMethod) 8: { 9: } 10: } The method "AuthorizeHubConnection" will be invoked when any SignalR connection was established. And here I'm going to retrieve the Bearer token from query string, try to decrypt and recover the login user's claims. 1: public override bool AuthorizeHubConnection(HubDescriptor hubDescriptor, IRequest request) 2: { 3: var dataProtectionProvider = new DpapiDataProtectionProvider(); 4: var secureDataFormat = new TicketDataFormat(dataProtectionProvider.Create()); 5: // authenticate by using bearer token in query string 6: var token = request.QueryString.Get(WebApiConfig.AuthenticationType); 7: var ticket = secureDataFormat.Unprotect(token); 8: if (ticket != null && ticket.Identity != null && ticket.Identity.IsAuthenticated) 9: { 10: // set the authenticated user principal into environment so that it can be used in the future 11: request.Environment["server.User"] = new ClaimsPrincipal(ticket.Identity); 12: return true; 13: } 14: else 15: { 16: return false; 17: } 18: } In the code above I created "TicketDataFormat" instance, which must be same as the one I used to generate the Bearer token when user logged in. Then I retrieve the token from request query string and unprotect it. If I got a valid ticket with identity and it's authenticated this means it's a valid token. Then I pass the user principal into request's environment property which can be used in nearly future. Since my website was built in AngularJS so the SignalR client was in pure JavaScript, and it's not support to set customized HTTP headers in SignalR JavaScript client, I have to pass the Bearer token through request query string. This is not a restriction of SignalR, but a restriction of WebSocket. For security reason WebSocket doesn't allow client to set customized HTTP headers from browser. Next, I need to implement the authentication logic in method "AuthorizeHubMethodInvocation" which will be invoked when any SignalR method was invoked. 1: public override bool AuthorizeHubMethodInvocation(IHubIncomingInvokerContext hubIncomingInvokerContext, bool appliesToMethod) 2: { 3: var connectionId = hubIncomingInvokerContext.Hub.Context.ConnectionId; 4: // check the authenticated user principal from environment 5: var environment = hubIncomingInvokerContext.Hub.Context.Request.Environment; 6: var principal = environment["server.User"] as ClaimsPrincipal; 7: if (principal != null && principal.Identity != null && principal.Identity.IsAuthenticated) 8: { 9: // create a new HubCallerContext instance with the principal generated from token 10: // and replace the current context so that in hubs we can retrieve current user identity 11: hubIncomingInvokerContext.Hub.Context = new HubCallerContext(new ServerRequest(environment), connectionId); 12: return true; 13: } 14: else 15: { 16: return false; 17: } 18: } Since I had passed the user principal into request environment in previous method, I can simply check if it exists and valid. If so, what I need is to pass the principal into context so that SignalR hub can use. Since the "User" property is all read-only in "hubIncomingInvokerContext", I have to create a new "ServerRequest" instance with principal assigned, and set to "hubIncomingInvokerContext.Hub.Context". After that, we can retrieve the principal in my Hubs through "Context.User" as below. 1: public class DefaultHub : Hub 2: { 3: public object Initialize(string host, string service, JObject payload) 4: { 5: var connectionId = Context.ConnectionId; 6: ... ... 7: var domain = string.Empty; 8: var identity = Context.User.Identity as ClaimsIdentity; 9: if (identity != null) 10: { 11: var claim = identity.FindFirst("Domain"); 12: if (claim != null) 13: { 14: domain = claim.Value; 15: } 16: } 17: ... ... 18: } 19: } Finally I just need to add my "QueryStringBearerAuthorizeAttribute" into the SignalR pipeline. 1: app.Map("/signalr", map => 2: { 3: // Setup the CORS middleware to run before SignalR. 4: // By default this will allow all origins. You can 5: // configure the set of origins and/or http verbs by 6: // providing a cors options with a different policy. 7: map.UseCors(CorsOptions.AllowAll); 8: var hubConfiguration = new HubConfiguration 9: { 10: // You can enable JSONP by uncommenting line below. 11: // JSONP requests are insecure but some older browsers (and some 12: // versions of IE) require JSONP to work cross domain 13: // EnableJSONP = true 14: EnableJavaScriptProxies = false 15: }; 16: // Require authentication for all hubs 17: var authorizer = new QueryStringBearerAuthorizeAttribute(); 18: var module = new AuthorizeModule(authorizer, authorizer); 19: GlobalHost.HubPipeline.AddModule(module); 20: // Run the SignalR pipeline. We're not using MapSignalR 21: // since this branch already runs under the "/signalr" path. 22: map.RunSignalR(hubConfiguration); 23: }); On the client side should pass the Bearer token through query string before I started the connection as below. 1: self.connection = $.hubConnection(signalrEndpoint); 2: self.proxy = self.connection.createHubProxy(hubName); 3: self.proxy.on(notifyEventName, function (event, payload) { 4: options.handler(event, payload); 5: }); 6: // add the authentication token to query string 7: // we cannot use http headers since web socket protocol doesn't support 8: self.connection.qs = { Bearer: AuthService.getToken() }; 9: // connection to hub 10: self.connection.start(); Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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Thoughts on Build 2013

- by D'Arcy Lussier

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2013/06/30/153294.aspxAnd so another Build conference has come to an end. Below are my thoughts/perspectives on various aspects of the event. I’ll do a separate blog post on my thoughts of the Build message for developers. The Good Moscone center was a great venue for Build! Easy to get around, easy to get to, and well maintained, it was a very comfortable conference venue. Yeah, the free swag was nice. Build has built up an expectation that attendees will always get something; it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft maintains this expectation over the next few Build events. I still maintain that free swag should never be the main reason one attends an event, and for me this was definitely just an added bonus. I’m planning on trying to use the Surface as a dedicated 2nd device at work for meetings, I’ll share my experiences over the next few months. The hackathon event was a great idea, although personally I couldn’t justify spending the money on a conference registration just to spend the entire conference coding. Still, the apps that were created were really great and there was a lot of passion and excitement around the hackathon. I wonder if they couldn’t have had the hackathon on the Monday/Tuesday for those that wanted to participate so they didn’t miss any of the actual conference over Wed/Thurs. San Francisco was a great city to host Build. Getting from hotels to the conference center was very easy (well especially for me, I was only 3 blocks away) and the city itself felt very safe. However, if I never have to fly into SFO again I’ll be alright with that! Delays going into and out of SFO and both apparently were due to the airport itself. The Bad Build is one of those oddities on the conference landscape where people will pay to commit to attending an event without knowing anything about the sessions. We got our list of conference sessions when we registered on Tuesday, not before. And even then, we only got titles and not descriptions (those were eventually made available via the conference’s mobile application). I get it…they’re going to make announcements and they don’t want to give anything away through the session titles. But honestly, there wasn’t anything in the session titles that I would have considered a surprise. Breakfasts were brutal. High-carb pastries, donuts, and muffins with fruit and hard boiled eggs does not a conference breakfast make. I can’t believe that the difference between a continental breakfast per person and a hot breakfast buffet would have been a huge impact to a conference fee that was already around $2000. The vendor area was anemic. I don’t know why Microsoft forces the vendors into cookie-cutter booth areas (this year they were all made of plywood material). WPC, TechEd – booth areas there allow the vendors to be creative with their displays. Not so much for Build. Really odd was the lack of Microsoft’s own representation around Bing. In the day 1 keynote Microsoft made a big deal about Bing as an API. Yet there was nobody in the vendor area set up to provide more information or have discussions with about the Bing API. The Ugly Our name badges were NFC enabled. The purpose of this, beyond the vendors being able to scan your info, wasn’t really made clear. An attendee I talked to showed how you could get a reader app on your phone so you can scan other members cards and collect their contact info – which is a kewl idea; business cards are so 1990’s. But I was *shocked* at the amount of information that was on our name badges! Here’s what’s displayed on our name badge: - Name - Company - Twitter Handle I’m ok with that. But here’s what actually gets read: - Name - Company - Address Used for Registration - Phone Number Used for Registration So sharing that info with another attendee, they get way more of my info than just how to find me on Twitter! Microsoft, you need to fix this for the future. If vendors want to collect information on attendees, they should be able to collect an ID from the badge, then get a report with corresponding records afterwards. My personal information should not be so readily available, and without my knowledge! Final Verdict Maybe its my older age, maybe its where I’m at in life with family, maybe its where I’m at in my career, but when I consider whether a conference experience was valuable I get to the core reason I attend: opportunities to learn, opportunities to network, opportunities to engage with Microsoft. Opportunities to Learn: Sessions I attended were generally OK, with some really stand out ones on Day 2. I would love to see Microsoft adopt the Dojo format for a portion of their sessions. Hands On Labs are dull, lecture style sessions are great for information sharing. But a guided hands-on coding session (Read: Dojo) provides the best of both worlds. Being that all content is publically available online to everyone (Build attendee or not), the value of attending the conference sessions is decreased. The value though is in the discussions that take part in person afterwards, which leads to… Opportunities to Network: I enjoyed getting together with old friends and connecting with Twitter friends in person for the first time. I also had an opportunity to meet total strangers. So from a networking perspective, Build was fantastic! I still think it would have been great to have an area for ad-hoc discussions – where speakers could announce they’d be available for more questions after their sessions, or attendees who wanted to discuss more in depth on a topic with other attendees could arrange space. Some people have no problems being outgoing and making these things happen, but others are not and a structured model is more attractive. Opportunities to Engage with Microsoft: Hit and miss on this one. Outside of the vendor area, unless you cornered or reached out to a speaker, there wasn’t any defined way to connect with blue badges. And as I mentioned above, Microsoft didn’t have full representation in the vendor area (no Bing). All in all, Build was a fun party where I was informed about some new stuff and got some free swag. Was it worth the time away from home and the hit to my PD budget? I’d say Somewhat. Build is a great informational conference, but I wouldn’t call it a learning conference. Considering that TechEd seems to be moving to more of an IT Pro focus, independent developer conferences seem to be the best value for those looking to learn and not just be informed. With the rapid development cycle Microsoft is embracing, we’re already seeing Build happening twice within a 12 month period. If that continues, the value of attending Build in person starts to diminish – especially with so much content available online. If Microsoft wants Build to be a must-attend event in the future, they need to start incorporating aspects of Tech Ed, past PDCs, and other conferences so those that want to leave with more than free swag have something to attract them.

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How to configure TATA Photon+ EC1261 HUAWEI

- by user3215

I'm running ubuntu 10.04. I have a newly purchased TATA Photon+ Internet connection which supports Windows and Mac. On the Internet I found a article saying that it could be configured on Linux. I followed the steps to install it on Ubuntu from this link. I am still not able to get online, and need some help. Also, it is very slow, but I was told that I would see speeds up to 3.1MB. I dont have wvdial installed and cannot install it from apt as I'm not connected to internet Booting from windows I dowloaded "wvdial" .deb package and tried to install on ubuntu but it's ended with dependency problem. Automatically, don't know how, I got connected to internet only for once. Immediately I installed wvdial package after this I followed the tutorials(I could not browse and upload the files here) . From then it's showing that the device is connected in the network connections but no internet connection. Once I disable the device, it won't show as connected again and I'll have to restart my system. Sometimes the device itself not detected(wondering if there is any command to re-read the all devices). output of wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.cof: #wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf Editing `/etc/wvdial.conf'. Scanning your serial ports for a modem. ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 115200 baud ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. Modem Port Scan<*1>: S1 S2 S3 WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 Z -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: Modem Identifier: ATI -- Manufacturer: +GMI: HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD ttyUSB2<*1>: Speed 9600: AT -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: Max speed is 9600; that should be safe. ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 -- OK Found a modem on /dev/ttyUSB2. Modem configuration written to /etc/wvdial.conf. ttyUSB2<Info>: Speed 9600; init "ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0" output of wvdial: #wvdial --> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60 --> Cannot get information for serial port. --> Initializing modem. --> Sending: ATZ ATZ OK --> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 OK --> Sending: AT+CRM=1 AT+CRM=1 OK --> Modem initialized. --> Sending: ATDT#777 --> Waiting for carrier. ATDT#777 CONNECT --> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately. --> Starting pppd at Sat Oct 16 15:30:47 2010 --> Pid of pppd: 5681 --> Using interface ppp0 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> local IP address 14.96.147.104 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> remote IP address 172.29.161.223 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> primary DNS address 121.40.152.90 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> secondary DNS address 121.40.152.100 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] Output of log message /var/log/messages: Oct 16 15:29:44 avyakta-desktop pppd[5119]: secondary DNS address 121.242.190.180 Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Terminating on signal 15 Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Connect time 0.3 minutes. Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Sent 0 bytes, received 177 bytes. Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Connection terminated. Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB2 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: CHAP authentication succeeded Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: CHAP authentication succeeded Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: local IP address 14.96.147.104 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: remote IP address 172.29.161.223 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: primary DNS address 121.40.152.90 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: secondary DNS address 121.40.152.100 EDIT 1 : I tried the following sudo stop network-manager sudo killall modem-manager sudo /usr/sbin/modem-manager --debug > ~/mm.log 2>&1 & sudo /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon > ~/nm.log 2>&1 & Output of mm.log: #vim ~/mm.log: ** Message: Loaded plugin Option High-Speed ** Message: Loaded plugin Option ** Message: Loaded plugin Huawei ** Message: Loaded plugin Longcheer ** Message: Loaded plugin AnyData ** Message: Loaded plugin ZTE ** Message: Loaded plugin Ericsson MBM ** Message: Loaded plugin Sierra ** Message: Loaded plugin Generic ** Message: Loaded plugin Gobi ** Message: Loaded plugin Novatel ** Message: Loaded plugin Nokia ** Message: Loaded plugin MotoC Output of nm.log: #vim ~/nm.log: NetworkManager: <info> starting... NetworkManager: <info> modem-manager is now available NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: init! NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: update_system_hostname NetworkManager: SCPluginIfupdown: guessed connection type (eth0) = 802-3-ethernet NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: update_connection_setting_from_if_block: name:eth0, type:802-3-ethernet, id:Ifupdown (eth0), uuid: 681b428f-beaf-8932-dce4-678ed5bae28e NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: addresses count: 1 NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: No dns-nameserver configured in /etc/network/interfaces NetworkManager: nm-ifupdown-connection.c.119 - invalid connection read from /etc/network/interfaces: (1) addresses NetworkManager: SCPluginIfupdown: management mode: unmanaged NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices added (path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.4/0000:02:02.0/net/eth1, iface: eth1) NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: device added (path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.4/0000:02:02.0/net/eth1, iface: eth1): no ifupdown configuration found. NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices added (path: /sys/devices/virtual/net/lo, iface: lo) @

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Finally, upgrade from Nokia X3 to Samsung Galaxy S III

This time, something slightly different but nonetheless not less interesting, hopefully. Living on a remote island like Mauritius, ill-praised 'Cyber Island' in the Indian Ocean, has its advantages in life style and relaxed environment to life in but in terms of technological aspects it can be quite a nightmare. Well, I guess this might be different story to report about... one day. Cyber Island Mauritius Despite it's shiny advertisement as Cyber Island and business in ICT hub to Africa, Mauritius is not on the latest track of available models in computer hardware or, in the context of this article, cellulars or smart-phone, or communication technology in general. Okay, I have to admit that this statement is only partly true. Money can buy, even here in Mauritius. Luckily, there are ways and ways to deal with this outcry of modern, read: technological, civilisation issues. Online shopping you might think? Yes, for sure, until you discover in your checkout procedure that a small island in the Indian Ocean isn't a preferred destination for delivery and the precious time you spent on putting your items into your cart and feeding your personal level of anticipation gets ruined on the last stint. Ordering from abroad saves you money Anyway, I got in touch with my personal courier and luckily there were some extra-kilos left in the luggage. First obstacle sorted, we have a Transporter! Okay, on the next occasion off to Amazon online and using their Prime service for fast delivery. Actually, the order was placed on Saturday evening and everything got delivered on Tuesday morning - nice job in less than 72 hours. Okay, among the items of that shopping rush I ordered a shiny Samsung Galaxy S III 16GB in oceanic blue - did I mention, that you hardly get a blue model in Mauritius? - for my BWE. Interesting side-notes: First, Amazon Germany dropped the prices for roughly 30% on the S3, and we got the 16GB model for less than 500 Euro (or approx. Rs. 19.500,-) compared to the usual Rs. 27.000,- on the local market. It even varies whether the local price is inclusive or exclusive VAT (15%). Second, since a while she was bothering me to get an iPhone and an iPad for her, fair enough I thought, decent hardware, posh design and reliable services. Until we watched the 'magical' introduction of Samsung's new models at the IFA exhibition, she read the bashing comments on Google+ on the iPhone 5 and I gave her a brief summary on the law suit between Apple and Samsung in the USA. So, yes, Samsung USA is right, the next big thing is already here - literally. My BWE loves the look and touch of the Galaxy S3. And for me it was more cost-effective in terms of purchases done at the App Store, ups, Play Store. Transfer of contacts, text messages and media files Okay, now that the hardware is in place, how to transfer all those contacts, text messages, media files, etc. between those two devices? In the past, I used to use the Nokia Communication Suite between various models but now for Android? Well, as usual Google and Bing are reliable friends and among the first hits I came across an article about How to Transfer Contacts from Nokia to Android. Couldn't be easier, right? Well, sort of... my main Windows systems are already running on Windows 8, and this actually caused problems with the mobile/smart-phone device drivers. The article provides the download for an older version 1.10 which upgrades to 2.11 (as time of writing this entry) but both couldn't get the Galaxy S3 and the Nokia connected. Shame on me... the product page clearly doesn't mention Windows 8 (for now) and Windows 8 isn't available for the general audience at all... After I took a spare machine running on Windows Vista everything went smooth. Software installed, upgrade done, device drivers for Android automatically downloaded and installed, and the same painless routine for the Nokia part. I think, I rebooted the system twice during the whole setup procedure but hey, it was more or less a distraction while coding some stuff in ASP.NET MVC and Telerik Kendo UI. The transfer of contacts and text messages was done via Wondershare MobileGo for Android, and all media files by moving the additional microSD card from one device to the other. But even without an external SD card, it would have been very easy to copy the files via Windows Explorer directly. Little catch and excellent service Fine, we are almost done and the only step left is to shift the SIM card... Ouch, gotcha! The X3 uses a standard size SIM card while the S III only accepts microSIM form factor. What an irony, bigger smartphone needs smaller SIM card. Luckily, the next showroom of Emtel is just 5 mins away up the road, and the service staff over there know their job. Finally, after roughly 10 mins of paper work, activation and small chit-chat, the S3 came to life on the mobile network. Owning a smart-phone now and knowing that my BWE would like to interact more on social networks away from home, especially to upload pictures and provide local 'check-ins', I activated a data package for her in advance, too. Even that it is Saturday, everything was already done and ready to be used. Nice bonus: The Emtel clerk directly offered me to set up the configuration for the Emtel data services, yes sure, go ahead, this saves me to search for that in the settings. Okay, spoiler-alert here, setting a static APN to access the Emtel network and the internet wouldn't be a challenge. But hey, she already had the phone in her hands and I could keep my eyes on the children. Well done, Emtel! Resume Thanks to the useful software package by Wondershare is was a hands-free experience to transfer all the data from a Nokia mobile on Symbian S60 to a Samsung Galaxy S III on Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). In the future, this wont be a serious issue at all anymore thanks to synchronisation services and cloud storage. And for now, I'm only waiting for the official upgrades for Jelly Bean.

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PASS: Election Changes for 2011

- by Bill Graziano

Last year after the election, the PASS Board created an Election Review Committee. This group was charged with reviewing our election procedures and making suggestions to improve the process. You can read about the formation of the group and review some of the intermediate work on the site – especially in the forums. I was one of the members of the group along with Joe Webb (Chair), Lori Edwards, Brian Kelley, Wendy Pastrick, Andy Warren and Allen White. This group worked from October to April on our election process. Along the way we: Interviewed interested parties including former NomCom members, Board candidates and anyone else that came forward. Held a session at the Summit to allow interested parties to discuss the issues Had numerous conference calls and worked through the various topics I can’t thank these people enough for the work they did. They invested a tremendous number of hours thinking, talking and writing about our elections. I’m proud to say I was a member of this group and thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone (even if I did finally get tired of all the calls.) The ERC delivered their recommendations to the PASS Board prior to our May Board meeting. We reviewed those and made a few modifications. I took their recommendations and rewrote them as procedures while incorporating those changes. Their original recommendations as well as our final document are posted at the ERC documents page. Please take a second and read them BEFORE we start the elections. If you have any questions please post them in the forums on the ERC site. (My final document includes a change log at the end that I decided to leave in. If you want to know which areas to pay special attention to that’s a good start.) Many of those recommendations were already posted in the forums or in the blogs of individual ERC members. Hopefully nothing in the ERC document is too surprising. In this post I’m going to walk through some of the key changes and talk about what I remember from both ERC and Board discussions. I’ll pay a little extra attention to things the Board changed from the ERC. I’d also encourage any of the Board or ERC members to blog their thoughts on this. The Nominating Committee will continue to exist. Personally, I was curious to see what the non-Board ERC members would think about the NomCom. There was broad agreement that a group to vet candidates had value to the organization. The NomCom will be composed of five members. Two will be Board members and three will be from the membership at large. The only requirement for the three community members is that you’ve volunteered in some way (and volunteering is defined very broadly). We expect potential at-large NomCom members to participate in a forum on the PASS site to answer questions from the other PASS members. We’re going to hold an election to determine the three community members. It will be closer to voting for Summit sessions than voting for Board members. That means there won’t be multiple dedicated emails. If you’re at all paying attention it will be easy to participate. Personally I wanted it easy for those that cared to participate but not overwhelm those that didn’t care. I think this strikes a good balance. There’s also a clause that in order to be considered a winner in this NomCom election, you must receive 10 votes. This is something I suggested. I have no idea how popular the NomCom election is going to be. I just wanted a fallback that if no one participated and some random person got in with one or two votes. Any open slots will be filled by the NomCom chair (usually the PASS Immediate Past President). My assumption is that they would probably take the next highest vote getters unless they were throwing flames in the forums or clearly unqualified. As a final check, the Board still approves the final NomCom. The NomCom is going to rank candidates instead of rating them. This has interesting implications. This was championed by another ERC member and I’m hoping they write something about it. This will really force the NomCom to make decisions between candidates. You can’t just rate everyone a 3 and be done with it. It may also make candidates appear further apart than they actually are. I’m looking forward talking with the NomCom after this election and getting their feedback on this. The PASS Board added an option to remove a candidate with a unanimous vote of the NomCom. This was primarily put in place to handle people that lied on their application or had a criminal background or some other unusual situation and we figured it out. We list an explicit goal of three candidate per open slot. We also wanted an easy way to find the NomCom candidate rankings from the ballot. Hopefully this will satisfy those that want a broad candidate pool and those that want the NomCom to identify the most qualified candidates. The primary spokesperson for the NomCom is the committee chair. After the issues around the election last year we didn’t have a good communication plan in place. We should have and that was a failure on the part of the Board. If there is criticism of the election this year I hope that falls squarely on the Board. The community members of the NomCom shouldn’t be fielding complaints over the election process. That said, the NomCom is ranking candidates and we are forcing them to rank some lower than others. I’m sure you’ll each find someone that you think should have been ranked differently. I also want to highlight one other change to the process that we started last year and isn’t included in these documents. I think the candidate forums on the PASS site were tremendously helpful last year in helping people to find out more about candidates. That gives our members a way to ask hard questions of the candidates and publicly see their answers. This year we have two important groups to fill. The first is the NomCom. We need three people from our membership to step up and fill this role. It won’t be easy. You will have to make subjective rankings of your fellow community members. Your actions will be important in deciding who the future leaders of PASS will be. There’s a 50/50 chance that one of the people you interview will be the President of PASS someday. This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The second is the slate of candidates. If you’ve ever thought about running for the Board this is the year. We’ve never had nine candidates on the ballot before. Your chance of making it through the NomCom are higher than in any previous year. Unfortunately the more of you that run, the more of you that will lose in the election. And hopefully that competition will mean more community involvement and better Board members for PASS. Is this the end of changes to the election process? It isn’t. Every year that I’ve been on the Board the election process has changed. Some years there have been small changes and some years there have been large changes. After this election we’ll look at how the process worked and decide what steps to take – just like we do every year.

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