request filtering - Page 613

Sending Outlook Invites

- by Daniel Moth

Sending an Outlook invite for a meeting (also referred to as S+ in Microsoft) is a simple thing to get right if you just run the quick mental check below, which is driven by visual cues in the Outlook UI. I know that some folks don’t do this often or are new to Outlook, so if you know one of those folks share this blog post with them and if they read nothing else ask them to read step 7. Add on the To line the folks that you want to be at the meeting. Indicate optional invitees. Click on the “To” button to bring up the dialog that lets you move folks to be Optional (you can also do this from the Scheduling Assistant). Set the Reminder according to the attendee that has to travel the most. 5 minutes is the minimum. Use the Response Options and uncheck the "Request Response" if your event is going ahead regardless of who can make it or not, i.e. if everyone is optional. Don’t force every recipient to make an extra click, instead make the extra click yourself - you are the organizer. Add a good subject Make the subject such that just by reading it folks know what the meeting is about. Examples, e.g. "Review…", "Finalize…", "XYZ sync up" If this is only between two people and what is commonly referred to as a one to one, the subject would be something like "MyName/YourName 1:1" Write the subject in such a way that when the recipient sees this on their calendar among all the other items, they know what this meeting is about without having to see location, recipients, or any other information about the invite. Add a location, typically a meeting room. If recipients are from different buildings, schedule it where the folks that are doing the other folks a favor live. Otherwise schedule it wherever the least amount of people will have to travel. If you send me an invite to come to your building, and there is more of us than you, you are silently sending me the message that you are doing me a favor so if you don’t want to do that, include a note of why this is in your building, e.g. "Sorry we are slammed with back to back meetings today so hope you can come over to our building". If this is in someone's office, the location would be something like "Moth's office (7/666)" where in parenthesis you see the office location. If some folks are remote in another building/country, or if you know you picked a time which wasn't free for everyone, add an Online option (click the Lync Meeting button). Add a date and time. This MUST be at a time that is showing on the recipients’ calendar as FREE or at worst TENTATIVE. You can check that on the Scheduling Assistant. The reality is that this is not always possible, so in that case you MUST say something about it in the Invite Body, e.g. "Sorry I can see X has a conflict, but I cannot find a better slot", or "With so many of us there are some conflicts and I cannot find a better slot so hope this works", or "Apologies but due to Y we must have this meeting at this time and I know there are some conflicts, hope you can make it anyway". When you do that, I better not be able to find a better slot myself for all of us, and of course when you do that you have implicitly designated the Busy folks as optional. Finally, the body of the invite. This has the agenda of the meeting and if applicable the courtesy apologies due to messing up steps 6 & 7. This should not be the introduction to the meeting, in other words the recipients should not be surprised when they see the invite and go to the body to read it. Notifying them of the meeting takes place via separate email where you explain the purpose and give them a heads up that you'll be sending an invite. That separate email is also your chance to attach documents, don’t do that as part of the invite. TIP: If you have sent mail about the meeting, you can then go to your sent folder to select the message and click the "Meeting" button (Ctrl+Alt+R). This will populate the body with the necessary background, auto select the mandatory and optional attendees as per the TO/CC line, and have a subject that may be good enough already (or you can tweak it). Long to write, but very quick to remember and enforce since most of it is common sense and the checklist is driven of the visual cues in the UI you use to send the invite. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

Read the article

Repeated disconnects on WPA PEAP network

- by exasperated

My school has a WPA PEAP network with GTC inner authentication. I am able to connect to the network, but once I load a website or two, the network become unresponsive (i.e. in Chromium, it gets stuck at "Sending request"), and I'm eventually disconnected. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Here's some log output. I can provide more if needed: Ubuntu 13.04 3.8.0-32-generic x86_64 lsusb: 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6235 (rev 24) lsmod: iwldvm 241872 0 mac80211 606457 1 iwldvm iwlwifi 173516 1 iwldvm cfg80211 511019 3 iwlwifi,mac80211,iwldvm dmesg: [ 3.501227] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: irq 46 for MSI/MSI-X [ 3.503541] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 18.168.6.1 [ 3.527153] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled [ 3.527162] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS enabled [ 3.527170] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING enabled [ 3.527178] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TESTMODE enabled [ 3.527186] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_P2P disabled [ 3.527192] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6235 AGN, REV=0xB0 [ 3.527240] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 3.551049] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs' [ 375.153065] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 375.159727] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 375.553201] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 375.559871] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 1892.110738] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 1892.117357] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 5227.235372] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 5227.242122] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 5817.817954] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 5817.824560] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 5824.571917] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT/VHT due to WEP/TKIP use [ 5824.571929] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [ 5824.571935] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [ 6956.290061] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 6956.296671] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 6963.080560] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT/VHT due to WEP/TKIP use [ 6963.080566] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [ 6963.080570] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [ 7613.469241] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 7613.475870] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 7620.201265] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT/VHT due to WEP/TKIP use [ 7620.201278] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [ 7620.201285] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [ 8232.762453] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [ 8232.769065] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [ 8239.581772] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT/VHT due to WEP/TKIP use [ 8239.581784] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [ 8239.581792] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP [13763.634808] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [13763.641427] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 [16955.598953] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: L1 Disabled; Enabling L0S [16955.605574] iwlwifi 0000:03:00.0: Radio type=0x2-0x1-0x0 lshw: *-network description: Wireless interface product: Centrino Advanced-N 6235 vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0 logical name: wlan0 version: 24 serial: b4:b6:76:a0:4b:3c width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=3.8.0-32-generic firmware=18.168.6.1 ip=10.250.169.96 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn resources: irq:46 memory:f7c00000-f7c01fff iwlist scan: Cell 02 - Address: 24:DE:C6:B0:C7:D9 Channel:36 Frequency:5.18 GHz (Channel 36) Quality=29/70 Signal level=-81 dBm Encryption key:on ESSID:"CatChat2x" Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s 36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Mode:Master Extra:tsf=0000004ff3fe419b Extra: Last beacon: 27820ms ago IE: Unknown: 0009436174436861743278 IE: Unknown: 01088C129824B048606C IE: Unknown: 030124 IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1 Group Cipher : CCMP Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP Authentication Suites (1) : 802.1x IE: Unknown: 2D1ACC011BFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: 3D1624001B000000FF000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101800003A4000027A4000042435E0062322F00 IE: Unknown: DD1E00904C33CC011BFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: DD1A00904C3424001B000000FF000000000000000000000000000000 Cell 04 - Address: 24:DE:C6:B0:C3:E9 Channel:149 Frequency:5.745 GHz Quality=28/70 Signal level=-82 dBm Encryption key:on ESSID:"CatChat2x" Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s 36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Mode:Master Extra:tsf=000000181f60e19c Extra: Last beacon: 28680ms ago IE: Unknown: 0009436174436861743278 IE: Unknown: 01088C129824B048606C IE: Unknown: 030195 IE: Unknown: 050400010000 IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1 Group Cipher : CCMP Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP Authentication Suites (1) : 802.1x IE: Unknown: 2D1ACC011BFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: 3D1695001B000000FF000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101800003A4000027A4000042435E0062322F00 IE: Unknown: DD1E00904C33CC011BFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: DD1A00904C3495001B000000FF000000000000000000000000000000 IE: Unknown: DD07000B8601040817 IE: Unknown: DD0E000B860103006170313930333032 Cell 09 - Address: 24:DE:C6:B0:C0:29 Channel:149 Frequency:5.745 GHz Quality=39/70 Signal level=-71 dBm Encryption key:on ESSID:"CatChat2x" Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s 36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Mode:Master Extra:tsf=00000112fb688ede Extra: Last beacon: 27716ms ago ifconfig (while connected): wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr b4:b6:76:a0:4b:3c inet addr:10.250.16.220 Bcast:10.250.31.255 Mask:255.255.240.0 inet6 addr: fe80::b6b6:76ff:fea0:4b3c/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:230023 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:130970 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:255999759 (255.9 MB) TX bytes:16652605 (16.6 MB) iwconfig (while connected): wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"CatChat2x" Mode:Managed Frequency:5.745 GHz Access Point: 24:DE:C6:B0:C0:29 Bit Rate=6 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off Link Quality=36/70 Signal level=-74 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:3 Missed beacon:0

Read the article

Silverlight Cream Monday WP7 App Review # 2

- by Dave Campbell

Today's Review (alphabetic order): GooNews, Grocery Shopping List, Need for Speed, SurfCube, and United Nations News. I'm a day late if these are going to be 'Monday' posts, but there are lots of apps, lots of goodness, and lots of email, so I might try to do 2 a week, we'll see. So once again I've got a small review of 5 apps that are either on my phone or have been. Disclaimers at the end. In this Issue: GooNews is a very cool app from Shawn Wildermuth (AgiliTrain). I don't know if he uses this as a demo during his instruction, but it definitely serves a purpose... wanna pick up the top news items from Google on a never-ending basis? ... this is it. You can add your own keyword searches, and send stories to InstaPaper or share via email. I like this because it brings me the news quickly and updated, and works great. GooNews is by AgiliTrain and is Free This was a request by the author, and actually surprised me. I'm a big one for lists, but I would have just done a OneNote list to SkyDrive and to my phone. This app is a lot more than that, but will take you some setup to make it be 'yours'. For obvious reasons, there are no unit prices on things, so you have to set that up to get some idea of the cost of what you're shopping for. But if you do that, you'll get a nice total. Lots of thought went into the various categories and you can add your own. There's a bit of animation on the category selection that's nice. He seems to have covered all the bases necessary to use this, even shopping 'plans' that can be saved, and emailing of lists. As I said, I'm more of a raw list person, but if you take the time to set this up, it should work very nicely for you. Grocery Shopping List is by Grocery Shopper and is $0.99 ($1.99 after Feb 1) with a free trial. This was my 2nd commercial game I bought, and the one I've played the most. I ran the trial, thought it worked great, and bought it. I've had a lot of fun with this... there's no gas pedal.. your foot is in the carbeurator from the GO!, and unless you wanna tap the screen and brake like a little girl, just hang onto the steering wheel (the phone), and guide your way through. Hours of fun and challenges here. I like this because it's got some challenge to it, and the cars seem to be very realistic in their reactions. Need for Speed Undercover is by Electronic Arts is $4.99 and has a free trial. SurfCube Browser is another app by the folks that did the GuitarTuner I reviewed on Monday. You have to see SurfCube to believe it. You've probably seen the YouTube video, if not check SilverlightCream number 1017. The app works very solid, and just as the video demonstrates. I downloaded and tried this, and it immediately did 2 things: bought it, and pinned it to my start page. I like this because it's fun to work with, and it works great as a browser. I'm about *this* close to replacing the IE tile on my front page with SurfCube. SurfCube Browser is by Kinabalu Innovation Limited and is $1.99 and has a free trial. Coming in with another News app is United Nations News by Justin Angel. This is definitely a news aggregator for 'grown ups'... news, photos, videos, and radio broadcsts from the international community all in one very slick app. This is an amazingly well thought-out and complete app. Even better yet, Justin has the code on CodePlex. A very well-done International news aggregator. United Nations News is by Justin Angel and is Free. A few disclaimers: Feel free to write me about your app and tell me about it. While it would be very cool to receive a whole bunch of xap files to review, at this point, for technical reasons, I'm unable to side-load my device. Since I plan on only doing this one day a week (twice if I find time), and only 5, I may never get caught up, so if you send me some info, be patient. Re: games ... remember I'm old... I'm from the era of Colossal Cave and Zork. Duke-Nukem 2D and Captain Comic were awesome. I don't own an XBOX or any other game system, so take game reviews from my perspective -- who knows, it may be refreshing :) I won't pay for an app or game just to try it. If you expect me to test-drive your app, it's going to have to have a Free Trial. I'm still playing with the format, comments are welcome. I decided I should alphabetize the list today... so there's no order implied Let me know what you think of the idea of doing reviews, or the layout/whatever, and Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

Read the article

Windows for IoT, continued

- by Valter Minute

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2014/08/05/windows-for-iot-continued.aspxI received many interesting feedbacks on my previous blog post and I tried to find some time to do some additional tests. Bert Kleinschmidt pointed out that pins 2,3 and 10 of the Galileo are connected directly to the SOC, while pin 13, the one used for the sample sketch is controlled via an I2C I/O expander. I changed my code to use pin 2 instead of 13 (just changing the variable assignment at the beginning of the code) and latency was greatly reduced. Now each pulse lasts for 1.44ms, 44% more than the expected time, but ways better that the result we got using pin 13. I also used SetThreadPriority to increase the priority of the thread that was running the sketch to THREAD_PRIORITY_HIGHEST but that didn't change the results. When I was using the I2C-controlled pin I tried the same and the timings got ways worse (increasing more than 10 times) and so I did not commented on that part, wanting to investigate the issua a bit more in detail. It seems that increasing the priority of the application thread impacts negatively the I2C communication. I tried to use also the Linux-based implementation (using a different Galileo board since the one provided by MS seems to use a different firmware) and the results of running the sample blink sketch modified to use pin 2 and blink the led for 1ms are similar to those we got on the same board running Windows. Here the difference between expected time and measured time is worse, getting around 3.2ms instead of 1 (320% compared to 150% using Windows but far from the 100.1% we got with the 8-bit Arduino). Both systems were not under load during the test, maybe loading some applications that use part of the CPU time would make those timings even less reliable, but I think that those numbers are enough to draw some conclusions. It may not be worth running a full OS if what you need is Arduino compatibility. The Arduino UNO is probably the best Arduino you can find to perform this kind of development. The Galileo running the Linux-based stack or running Windows for IoT is targeted to be a platform for "Internet of Things" devices, whatever that means. At the moment I don't see the "I" part of IoT. We have low level interfaces (SPI, I2C, the GPIO pins) that can be used to connect sensors but the support for connectivity is limited and the amount of work required to deliver some data to the cloud (using a secure HTTP request or a message queuing system like APMQS or MQTT) is still big and the rich OS underneath seems to not provide any help doing that.Why should I use sockets and can't access all the high level connectivity features we have on "full" Windows?I know that it's possible to use some third party libraries, try to build them using the Windows For IoT SDK etc. but this means re-inventing the wheel every time and can also lead to some IP concerns if used for products meant to be closed-source. I hope that MS and Intel (and others) will focus less on the "coolness" of running (some) Arduino sketches and more on providing a better platform to people that really want to design devices that leverage internet connectivity and the cloud processing power to deliver better products and services. Providing a reliable set of connectivity services would be a great start. Providing support for .NET would be even better, leaving native code available for hardware access etc. I know that those components may require additional storage and memory etc. So making the OS componentizable (or, at least, provide a way to install additional components) would be a great way to let developers pick the parts of the system they need to develop their solution, knowing that they will integrate well together. I can understand that the Arduino and Raspberry Pi* success may have attracted the attention of marketing departments worldwide and almost any new development board those days is promoted as "XXX response to Arduino" or "YYYY alternative to Raspberry Pi", but this is misleading and prevents companies from focusing on how to deliver good products and how to integrate "IoT" features with their existing offer to provide, at the end, a better product or service to their customers. Marketing is important, but can't decide the key features of a product (the OS) that is going to be used to develop full products for end customers integrating it with hardware and application software. I really like the "hackable" nature of open-source devices and like to see that companies are getting more and more open in releasing information, providing "hackable" devices and supporting developers with documentation, good samples etc. On the other side being able to run a sketch designed for an 8 bit microcontroller on a full-featured application processor may sound cool and an easy upgrade path for people that just experimented with sensors etc. on Arduino but it's not, in my humble opinion, the main path to follow for people who want to deliver real products. *Shameless self-promotion: if you are looking for a good book in Italian about the Raspberry Pi , try mine: http://www.amazon.it/Raspberry-Pi-alluso-Digital-LifeStyle-ebook/dp/B00GYY3OKO

Read the article

Best Practices - Dynamic Reconfiguration

- by jsavit

This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains) Overview of dynamic Reconfiguration Oracle VM Server for SPARC supports Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR), making it possible to add or remove resources to or from a domain (virtual machine) while it is running. This is extremely useful because resources can be shifted to or from virtual machines in response to load conditions without having to reboot or interrupt running applications. For example, if an application requires more CPU capacity, you can add CPUs to improve performance, and remove them when they are no longer needed. You can use even use Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) policies that automatically add and remove CPUs to domains based on load. How it works (in broad general terms) Dynamic Reconfiguration is done in coordination with Solaris, which recognises a hypervisor request to change its virtual machine configuration and responds appropriately. In essence, Solaris receives a message saying "you now have 16 more CPUs numbered 16 to 31" or "8GB more RAM starting at address X" or "here's a new network or disk device - have fun with it". These actions take very little time. Solaris then can start using the new resource. In the case of added CPUs, that means dispatching processes and potentially binding interrupts to the new CPUs. For memory, Solaris adds the new memory pages to its "free" list and starts using them. Comparable actions occur with network and disk devices: they are recognised by Solaris and then used. Removing is the reverse process: after receiving the DR message to free specific CPUs, Solaris unbinds interrupts assigned to the CPUs and stops dispatching process threads. That takes very little time. primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 1.0% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.9% 6h 59m primary # ldm set-core 5 ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.2% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 40 8G 0.1% 6h 59m primary # ldm set-core 2 ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 1.0% 6d 22h 29m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.9% 6h 59m Memory pages are vacated by copying their contents to other memory locations and wiping them clean. Solaris may have to swap memory contents to disk if the remaining RAM isn't enough to hold all the contents. For this reason, deallocating memory can take longer on a loaded system. Even on a lightly loaded system it took several 7 or 8 seconds to switch the domain below between 8GB and 24GB of RAM. primary # ldm set-mem 24g ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.1% 6d 22h 36m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 24G 0.2% 7h 6m primary # ldm set-mem 8g ldom1 primary # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-cv- SP 16 4G 0.7% 6d 22h 37m ldom1 active -n---- 5000 16 8G 0.3% 7h 7m What if the device is in use? (this is the anecdote that inspired this blog post) If CPU or memory is being removed, releasing it pretty straightforward, using the method described above. The resources are released, and Solaris continues with less capacity. It's not as simple with a network or I/O device: you don't want to yank a device out from underneath an application that might be using it. In the following example, I've added a virtual network device to ldom1 and want to take it away, even though it's been plumbed. primary # ldm rm-vnet vnet19 ldom1 Guest LDom returned the following reason for failing the operation: Resource Information ---------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- /devices/virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@1 Network interface net1 VIO operation failed because device is being used in LDom ldom1 Failed to remove VNET instance That's what I call a helpful error message - telling me exactly what was wrong. In this case the problem is easily solved. I know this NIC is seen in the guest as net1 so: ldom1 # ifconfig net1 down unplumb Now I can dispose of it, and even the virtual switch I had created for it: primary # ldm rm-vnet vnet19 ldom1 primary # ldm rm-vsw primary-vsw9 If I had to take away the device disruptively, I could have used ldm rm-vnet -f but that could disrupt whoever was using it. It's better if that can be avoided. Summary Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides dynamic reconfiguration, which lets you modify a guest domain's CPU, memory and I/O configuration on the fly without reboot. You can add and remove resources as needed, and even automate this for CPUs by setting up resource policies. Taking things away can be more complicated than giving, especially for devices like disks and networks that may contain application and system state or be involved in a transaction. LDoms and Solaris cooperative work together to coordinate resource allocation and de-allocation in a safe and effective way. For best practices, use dynamic reconfiguration to make the best use of your system's resources.

Read the article

Mark Hurd on the Customer Revolution: Oracle's Top 10 Insights

- by Richard Lefebvre

Reprint of an article from Forbes Businesses that fail to focus on customer experience will hear a giant sucking sound from their vanishing profitability. Because in today’s dynamic global marketplace, consumers now hold the power in the buyer-seller equation, and sellers need to revamp their strategy for this new world order. The ability to relentlessly deliver connected, personalized and rewarding customer experiences is rapidly becoming one of the primary sources of competitive advantage in today’s dynamic global marketplace. And the inability or unwillingness to realize that the customer is a company’s most important asset will lead, inevitably, to decline and failure. Welcome to the lifecycle of customer experience, in which consumers explore, engage, shop, buy, ask, compare, complain, socialize, exchange, and more across multiple channels with the unconditional expectation that each of those interactions will be completed in an efficient and personalized manner however, wherever, and whenever the customer wants. While many niche companies are offering point solutions within that sprawling and complex spectrum of needs and requirements, businesses looking to deliver superb customer experiences are still left having to do multiple product evaluations, multiple contract negotiations, multiple test projects, multiple deployments, and–perhaps most annoying of all–multiple and never-ending integration projects to string together all those niche products from all those niche vendors. With its new suite of customer-experience solutions, Oracle believes it can help companies unravel these challenges and move at the speed of their customers, anticipating their needs and desires and creating enduring and profitable relationships. Those solutions span the full range of marketing, selling, commerce, service, listening/insights, and social and collaboration tools for employees. When Oracle launched its suite of Customer Experience solutions at a recent event in New York City, president Mark Hurd analyzed the customer experience revolution taking place and presented Oracle’s strategy for empowering companies to capitalize on this important market shift. From Hurd’s presentation and related materials, I’ve extracted a list of Hurd’s Top 10 Insights into the Customer Revolution. 1. Please Don’t Feed the Competitor’s Pipeline!After enduring a poor experience, 89% of consumers say they would immediately take their business to your competitor. (Except where noted, the source for these findings is the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report including a survey commissioned by RightNow (acquired by Oracle in March 2012) and conducted by Harris Interactive.) 2. The Addressable Market Is Massive. Only 1% of consumers say their expectations were always met by their actual experiences. 3. They’re Willing to Pay More! In return for a great experience, 86% of consumers say they’ll pay up to 25% more. 4. The Social Media Microphone Is Always Live. After suffering through a poor experience, more than 25% of consumers said they posted a negative comment on Twitter or Facebook or other social media sites. Conversely, of those consumers who got a response after complaining, 22% posted positive comments about the company. 5. The New Deal Is Never Done: Embrace the Entire Customer Lifecycle. An appropriately active and engaged relationship, says Hurd, extends across every step of the entire processs: need, research, select, purchase, receive, use, maintain, and recommend. 6. The 360-Degree Commitment. Customers want to do business with companies that actively and openly demonstrate the desire to establish strong and seamless connections across employees, the company, and the customer, says research firm Temkin Group in its report called “The CX Competencies.” 7. Understand the Emotional Drivers Behind Brand Love. What makes consumers fall in love with a brand? Among the top factors are friendly employees and customer reps (73%), easy access to information and support (55%), and personalized experiences, such as when companies know precisely what products or services customers have purchased in the past and what issues those customers have raised (36%). 8. The Importance of Immediate Action. You’ve got one week to respond–and then the opportunity’s lost. If your company needs more than a week to answer a prospect’s question or request, most of those prospects will terminate the relationship. 9. Want More Revenue, Less Churn, and More Referrals? Then improve the overall customer experience: Forrester’s research says that approach put an extra $900 million in the pockets of wireless service providers, $800 million for hotels, and $400 million for airlines. 10. The Formula for CX Success. Hurd says it includes three elegantly interlaced factors: Connected Engagement, to personalize the experience; Actionable Insight, to maximize the engagement; and Optimized Execution, to deliver on the promise of value. RECOMMENDED READING: The Top 10 Strategic CIO Issues For 2013 Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay: Who’s the Speed King of Retail? Career Suicide and the CIO: 4 Deadly New Threats Memo to Marc Benioff: Social Is a Tool, Not an App

Read the article

Creating ADF Faces Comamnd Button at Runtime

- by Frank Nimphius

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} In ADF Faces, the command button is an instance of RichCommandButton and can be created at runtime. While creating the button is not difficult at all, adding behavior to it requires knowing about how to dynamically create and add an action listener reference. The example code below shows two methods: The first method, handleButtonPress is a public method exposed on a managed bean. public void handleButtonPress(ActionEvent event){ System.out.println("Event handled"); //optional: partially refresh changed components if command //issued as a partial submit } The second method is called in response to a user interaction or on page load and dynamically creates and adds a command button. When the button is pressed, the managed bean method – the action handler – defined above is called. The action handler is referenced using EL in the created MethodExpression instance. If the managed bean is in viewScope, backingBeanScope or pageFlowsScope, then you need to add these scopes as a prefix to the EL (as you would when configuring the managed bean reference at design time) //Create command button and add it as a child to the parent component that is passed as an //argument to this method private void reateCommandButton(UIComponent parent){ RichCommandButton edit = new RichCommandButton(); //make the request partial edit.setPartialSubmit(true); edit.setText("Edit"); //compose the method expression to invoke the event handler FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); Application application = fctx.getApplication(); ExpressionFactory elFactory = application.getExpressionFactory(); ELContext elContext = facesCtx.getELContext(); MethodExpression methodExpressio = null; //Make sure the EL expression references a valid managed bean method. Ensure //the bean scope is properly addressed methodExpression = elFactory.createMethodExpression( elContext,"#{myRequestScopeBean.handleButtonPress}", Object.class,new Class[] {ActionEvent.class}); //Create the command buttonaction listener reference MethodExpressionActionListener al = null; al= new MethodExpressionActionListener(methodExpression); edit.addActionListener(al); //add new command button to parent component and PPR the component for //the button to show parent.getChildren().add(edit); AdfFacesContext adfFacesContext = AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); adfFacesContext.addPartialTarget(parent); }

Read the article

Jersey 2 in GlassFish 4 - First Java EE 7 Implementation Now Integrated (TOTD #182)

- by arungupta

The JAX-RS 2.0 specification released their Early Draft 3 recently. One of my earlier blogs explained as the features were first introduced in the very first draft of the JAX-RS 2.0 specification. Last week was another milestone when the first Java EE 7 specification implementation was added to GlassFish 4 builds. Jakub blogged about Jersey 2 integration in GlassFish 4 builds. Most of the basic functionality is working but EJB, CDI, and Validation are still a TBD. Here is a simple Tip Of The Day (TOTD) sample to get you started with using that functionality. Create a Java EE 6-style Maven project mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.codehaus.mojo.archetypes -DarchetypeArtifactId=webapp-javaee6 -DgroupId=example -DartifactId=jersey2-helloworld -DarchetypeVersion=1.5 -DinteractiveMode=false Note, this is still a Java EE 6 archetype, at least for now. Open the project in NetBeans IDE as it makes it much easier to edit/add the files. Add the following <respositories> <repositories> <repository> <id>snapshot-repository.java.net</id> <name>Java.net Snapshot Repository for Maven</name> <url>https://maven.java.net/content/repositories/snapshots/</url> <layout>default</layout> </repository></repositories> Add the following <dependency>s <dependency> <groupId>junit</groupId> <artifactId>junit</artifactId> <version>4.10</version> <scope>test</scope></dependency><dependency> <groupId>javax.ws.rs</groupId> <artifactId>javax.ws.rs-api</artifactId> <version>2.0-m09</version> <scope>test</scope></dependency><dependency> <groupId>org.glassfish.jersey.core</groupId> <artifactId>jersey-client</artifactId> <version>2.0-m05</version> <scope>test</scope></dependency> The complete list of Maven coordinates for Jersey2 are available here. An up-to-date status of Jersey 2 can always be obtained from here. Here is a simple resource class: @Path("movies")public class MoviesResource { @GET @Path("list") public List<Movie> getMovies() { List<Movie> movies = new ArrayList<Movie>(); movies.add(new Movie("Million Dollar Baby", "Hillary Swank")); movies.add(new Movie("Toy Story", "Buzz Light Year")); movies.add(new Movie("Hunger Games", "Jennifer Lawrence")); return movies; }} This resource publishes a list of movies and is accessible at "movies/list" path with HTTP GET. The project is using the standard JAX-RS APIs. Of course, you need the trivial "Movie" and the "Application" class as well. They are available in the downloadable project anyway. Build the project mvn package And deploy to GlassFish 4.0 promoted build 43 (download, unzip, and start as "bin/asadmin start-domain") as asadmin deploy --force=true target/jersey2-helloworld.war Add a simple test case by right-clicking on the MoviesResource class, select "Tools", "Create Tests", and take defaults. Replace the function "testGetMovies" to @Testpublic void testGetMovies() { System.out.println("getMovies"); Client client = ClientFactory.newClient(); List<Movie> movieList = client.target("http://localhost:8080/jersey2-helloworld/webresources/movies/list") .request() .get(new GenericType<List<Movie>>() {}); assertEquals(3, movieList.size());} This test uses the newly defined JAX-RS 2 client APIs to access the RESTful resource. Run the test by giving the command "mvn test" and see the output as ------------------------------------------------------- T E S T S-------------------------------------------------------Running example.MoviesResourceTestgetMoviesTests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.561 secResults :Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0 GlassFish 4 contains Jersey 2 as the JAX-RS implementation. If you want to use Jersey 1.1 functionality, then Martin's blog provide more details on that. All JAX-RS 1.x functionality will be supported using standard APIs anyway. This workaround is only required if Jersey 1.x functionality needs to be accessed. The complete source code explained in this project can be downloaded from here. Here are some pointers to follow JAX-RS 2 Specification Early Draft 3 Latest status on specification (jax-rs-spec.java.net) Latest JAX-RS 2.0 Javadocs Latest status on Jersey (Reference Implementation of JAX-RS 2 - jersey.java.net) Latest Jersey API Javadocs Latest GlassFish 4.0 Promoted Build Follow @gf_jersey Provide feedback on Jersey 2 to [email protected] and JAX-RS specification to [email protected].

Read the article

Finding it Hard to Deliver Right Customer Experience: Think BPM!

- by Ajay Khanna

Our relationship with our customers is not a just a single interaction and we should not treat it like one. A customer’s relationship with a vendor is like a journey which starts way before customer makes a purchase and lasts long after that. The journey may start with customer researching a product that may lead to the eventual purchase and may continue with support or service needs for the product. A typical customer journey can be represented as shown below: As you may notice, customers tend to use multiple channels to interact with a company throughout their journey. They also expect that they should get consistent experience, no matter what interaction channel they may choose. Customers do not like to repeat the information they have already provided and expect companies to remember their preferences, and offer them relevant products and services. If the company fails to meet this expectation, customers not only will abandon the purchase and go to the competitor but may also influence others’ purchase decision. Gone are the days when word of mouth was the only medium, and the customer could influence “Six” others. This is the age of social media and customer’s good or bad experience, especially bad get highly amplified and may influence hundreds of others. Challenges that face B2C companies today include: Delivering consistent experience: The reason that delivering consistent experience is challenging is due to fragmented data, disjointed systems and siloed multichannel interactions. Customers tend to get different service quality if they use web vs. phone vs. store. They get different responses from different service agents or get inconsistent answers if they call sales vs. service group in the company. Such inconsistent experiences result in lower customer satisfaction or NPS (net promoter score) numbers. Increasing Revenue: To stay competitive companies frequently introduce new products and services. Delay in launching such offerings has a significant impact on revenue realization. In addition to new product revenue, there are multiple opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell that impact bottom line. If companies are not able to identify such opportunities, bring a product to market quickly, or not offer the right product to the right customer at the right time, significant loss of revenue may occur. Ensuring Compliance: Companies must be compliant to ever changing regulations, these could be about Know Your Customer (KYC), Export/Import regulations, or taxation policies. In addition to government agencies, companies also need to comply with the SLA that they have committed to their customers. Lapse in meeting any of these requirements may lead to serious fines, penalties and loss in business. Companies have to make sure that they are in compliance will all such regulations and SLA commitments, at any given time. With the advent of social networks and mobile technology, companies not only need to focus on process efficiency but also on customer engagement. Improving engagement means delivering the customer experience as the customer is expecting and interacting with the customer at right time using right channel. Customers expect to be able to contact you via any channel of their choice (web, email, chat, mobile, social media), purchase via any viable channel (web, phone, store, mobile). Customers expect companies to understand their particular needs and remember their preferences on repeated visits. To deliver such an integrated, consistent, and contextual experience, power of BPM in must. Your company may be organized in departments like Marketing, Sales, Service. You may hold prospect data in SFA, order information in ERP, customer issues in CRM. However, the experience delivered to the customer must not be constrained by your system legacy. BPM helps in designing the right experience for the right customer and integrates all the underlining channels, systems, applications to make sure right information will be delivered to the right knowledge worker or to the customer every single time. Orchestrating information across all systems (MDM, CRM, ERP), departments (commerce, merchandising, marketing service) and channels (Email, phone, web, social) is the key, and that’s what BPM delivers. In addition to orchestrating systems and channels for consistency, BPM also provides an ability for analysis and decision management. By using data from historical transactions, social media and from other systems, users can determine the customer preferences, customer value, and churn propensity. This information, in the context, is then used while making a decision at a process step. Working with real-time decision management system can also suggest right up-sell or cross-sell offers, discounts or next-best-action steps for a particular customer. Timely action on customer issues or request is also a key tenet of a good customer experience. BPM’s complex event processing capabilities help companies to take proactive actions before issues get escalated. BPM system can be designed to listen to a certain event patters then deduce from those customer situations (credit card stolen, baggage lost, change of address) and do a triage before situation goes out of control. If such a situation arises you can send alerts to right people or immediately invoke corrective actions. Last but not least one of BPM’s key values is to drive continuous improvement. Learning about customers past experiences, interactions and social conversations, provide valuable insight. Such insight can be used to improve products, customer facing processes, and customer experience. You may take these insights as an input to design better more efficient and customer friendly sales, contact center or self-service processes. If customer experience is important for your business, make sure you have incorporated BPM as a part of your strategy to design, orchestrate and improve your customer facing processes.

Read the article

What's My Problem? What's Your Problem?

- by Jacek Ziabicki

Software installers are not made for building demo environments. I can say this much after 12 years (on and off) of supporting my fellow sales consultants with environments for software demonstrations. When we release software, we include installation programs and procedures that are designed for use by our clients – to build a production environment and a limited number of testing, training and development environments. Different Objectives Your priorities when building an environment for client use vs. building a demo environment are very different. In a production environment, security, stability, and performance concerns are paramount. These environments are built on a specific server and rarely, if ever, moved to a different server or different network address. There is typically just one application running on a particular server (physical or virtual). Once built, the environment will be used for months or years at a time. Because of security considerations, the installation program wants to make these environments very specific to the organization using the software and the use case, encoding a fully qualified name of the server, or even the IP address on the network, in the configuration. So you either go through the installation procedure for each environment, or learn how to clone and reconfigure the software as a separate instance to build all your non-production environments. This may not matter much if the installation is as simple as clicking on the Setup program. But for enterprise applications, you have a number of configuration settings that you need to get just right – so whether you are installing from scratch or reconfiguring an existing installation, this requires both time and expertise in the particular piece of software. If you need a setup of several applications that are integrated to talk to one another, it is a whole new level of complexity. Now you need the expertise in all of the applications involved (plus the supporting technology products), and in addition to making each application work, you also have to configure the integration endpoints. Each application needs the URLs and credentials to call the integration layer, and the integration must be able to call each application. Then you have to make sure that each app has the right data so a business process initiated in one application can continue in the next. And, you will need to check that each application has the correct version and patch level for the integration to work. When building demo environments, your #1 concern is agility. If you can get away with a small number of long-running environments, you are lucky. More likely, you may get a request for a dedicated environment for a demonstration that is two weeks away: how quickly can you make this available so we still have the time to build the client-specific data? We are running a hands-on workshop next month, and we’ll need 15 instances of application X environment so each student can have a separate server for the exercises. We cannot connect to our data center from the client site, the client’s security policy won’t allow our VPN to go through – so we need a portable environment that we can bring with us. Our consultants need to be able to work at the hotel, airport, and the airplane, so we really want an environment that can run on a laptop. The client will need two playpen environments running in the cloud, accessible from their network, for a series of workshops that start two weeks from now. We have seen all of these scenarios and more. Here you would be much better served by a generic installation that would be easy to clone. Welcome to the Wonder Machine The reason I started this blog is to share a particular design of a demo environment, a special way to install software, that can address the above requirements, even for integrated setups. This design was created by a team at Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit, and we are using this setup for most of our demo environments. In a bout of modesty we called it the Wonder Machine. Over the next few posts – think of it as a novel in parts – I will tell you about the big idea, how it was implemented and what you can do with it. After we have laid down the groundwork, I would like to share some tips and tricks for users of our Wonder Machine implementation, as well as things I am learning about building portable, cloneable environments. The Wonder Machine is by no means a closed specification, it is under active development! I am hoping this blog will be of interest to two groups of readers – the users of the Wonder Machine we have built at Oracle Utilities, who want to get the most out of their demo environments and be able to reconfigure it to their needs – and to people who need to build environments for demonstration, testing, training, development and would like to make them cloneable and portable to maximize the reuse of their effort. Surely we are not the only ones facing this problem? If you can think of a better way to solve it, or if you can help us improve on our concept, I will appreciate your comments!

Read the article

Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in NetBeans IDE

- by Geertjan

When you need to connect to Amazon Web Services, NetBeans IDE gives you a nice start. You can drag and drop the "itemSearch" service into a Java source file and then various Amazon files are generated for you. From there, you need to do a little bit of work because the request to Amazon needs to be signed before it can be used. Here are some references and places that got me started: http://associates-amazon.s3.amazonaws.com/signed-requests/helper/index.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSGettingStartedGuide/AWSCredentials.html https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/flex/advertising/api/sign-in.html You definitely need to sign up to the Amazon Associates program and also register/create an Access Key ID, which will also get you a Secret Key, as well. Here's a simple Main class that I created that hooks into the generated RestConnection/RestResponse code created by NetBeans IDE: public static void main(String[] args) { try { String searchIndex = "Books"; String keywords = "Romeo and Juliet"; RestResponse result = AmazonAssociatesService.itemSearch(searchIndex, keywords); String dataAsString = result.getDataAsString(); int start = dataAsString.indexOf("<Author>")+8; int end = dataAsString.indexOf("</Author>"); System.out.println(dataAsString.substring(start,end)); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); }} Then I deleted the generated properties file and the authenticator and changed the generated AmazonAssociatesService.java file to the following: public class AmazonAssociatesService { private static void sleep(long millis) { try { Thread.sleep(millis); } catch (Throwable th) { } } public static RestResponse itemSearch(String searchIndex, String keywords) throws IOException { SignedRequestsHelper helper; RestConnection conn = null; Map queryMap = new HashMap(); queryMap.put("Service", "AWSECommerceService"); queryMap.put("AssociateTag", "myAssociateTag"); queryMap.put("AWSAccessKeyId", "myAccessKeyId"); queryMap.put("Operation", "ItemSearch"); queryMap.put("SearchIndex", searchIndex); queryMap.put("Keywords", keywords); try { helper = SignedRequestsHelper.getInstance( "ecs.amazonaws.com", "myAccessKeyId", "mySecretKey"); String sign = helper.sign(queryMap); conn = new RestConnection(sign); } catch (IllegalArgumentException | UnsupportedEncodingException | NoSuchAlgorithmException | InvalidKeyException ex) { } sleep(1000); return conn.get(null); }} Finally, I copied this class into my application, which you can see is referred to above: http://code.google.com/p/amazon-product-advertising-api-sample/source/browse/src/com/amazon/advertising/api/sample/SignedRequestsHelper.java Here's the completed app, mostly generated via the drag/drop shown at the start, but slightly edited as shown above: That's all, now everything works as you'd expect.

Read the article

Using Definition of Done to Drive Agile Maturity

- by Dylan Smith

I’ve been an Agile Coach at a lot of different clients over the years, and I want to share an approach I use to help them adopt and mature over time. It’s important to realize that “Agile” is not a black/white yes/no thing. Teams can be varying degrees of agile. I think of this as their agile maturity level. When I coach teams I want them to start out being a little agile, and get more agile as they mature. The approach I teach them is to use the definition of done as a technique to continuously improve their agile maturity over time. We’re probably all familiar with the concept of “Done Done” that represents what *actually* being done a feature means. Not just when a developer says he’s done right after he writes that last line of code that makes the feature kind-of work. Done Done means the coding is done, it’s been tested, installers and deployment packages have been created, user manuals have been updated, architecture docs have been updated, etc. To enable teams to internalize the concept of “Done Done”, they usually get together and come up with their Definition of Done (DoD) that defines all the activities that need to be completed before a feature is considered Done Done. The Done Done technique typically is applied only to features (aka User Stories). What I do is extend this to apply to several concepts such as User Stories, Sprints, Releases (and sometimes Check-Ins). During project kick-off I’ll usually sit down with the team and go through an exercise of creating DoD’s for each of these concepts (Stories/Sprints/Releases). We’ll usually start by just brainstorming a bunch of activities that could end up in these various DoD’s. Here’s some examples: Code Reviews StyleCop FxCop User Manuals Updated Architecture Docs Updated Tested by QA Tested by UAT Installers Created Support Knowledge Base Updated Deployment Instructions (for Ops) written Automated Unit Tests Run Automated Integration Tests Run Then we start by arranging these activities into the place they occur today (e.g. Do you do UAT testing only once per release? every sprint? every feature?). If the team was previously Waterfall most of these activities probably end up in the Release DoD. An extremely mature agile team would probably have most of these activities in the DoD for the User Stories (because an extremely mature agile team will probably do continuous deployment and release every story). So what we need to do as a team, is work to move these activities from their current home (Release DoD) down into the Sprint DoD and eventually into the User Story DoD (and maybe into the lower-level Check-In DoD if we decide to use that). We don’t have to move them all down to User Story immediately, but as a team we figure out what we think we’re capable of moving down to the Sprint cycle, and Story cycle immediately, and that becomes our starting DoD’s. Over time the team makes an effort to continue moving activities down from Release->Sprint->Story as they become more agile and more mature. I try to encourage them to envision a world in which they deploy to production as each User Story is completed. They would need to be updating User Manuals, creating installers, doing UAT testing (typical Release cycle activities) on every single User Story. They may never actually reach that point, but they should envision that, and strive to keep driving the activities down closer to the User Story cycle s they mature. This is a great technique to give a team an easy-to-follow roadmap to mature their agile practices over time. Sure there’s other aspects to maturity outside of this, but it’s a great technique, that’s easy to visualize, to drive agility into the team. Just keep moving those activities (aka “gates”) down the board from Release->Sprint->Story. I’ll try to give an example of what a recent client of mine had for their DoD’s (this is from memory, so probably not 100% accurate): Release Create/Update deployment Instructions For Ops Instructional Videos Updated Run manual regression test suite UAT Testing In this case that meant deploying to an environment shared across the enterprise that mirrored production and asking other business groups to test their own apps to ensure we didn’t break anything outside our system Sprint Deploy to UAT Environment But not necessarily actually request UAT testing occur User Guides updated Sprint Features Video Created In this case we decided to create a video each sprint showing off the progress (video version of Sprint Demo) User Story Manual Test scripts developed and run Tested by BA Deployed in shared QA environment Using automated deployment process Peer Code Review Code Check-In Compiled (warning-free) Passes StyleCop Passes FxCop Create installer packages Run Automated Tests Run Automated Integration Tests PS – One of my clients had a great question when we went through this activity. They said that if a Sprint is by definition done when the end-date rolls around (time-boxed), isn’t a DoD on a sprint meaningless – it’s done on the end-date regardless of whether those other activities are complete or not? My answer is that while that statement is true – the sprint is done regardless when the end date rolls around – if the DoD activities haven’t been completed I would consider the Sprint a failure (similar to not completing what was committed/planned – failure may be too strong a word but you get the idea). In the Retrospective that will become an agenda item to discuss and understand why we weren’t able to complete the activities we agreed would need to be completed each Sprint.

Read the article

LINQ and ArcObjects

- by Marko Apfel

Motivation LINQ (language integrated query) is a component of the Microsoft. NET Framework since version 3.5. It allows a SQL-like query to various data sources such as SQL, XML etc. Like SQL also LINQ to SQL provides a declarative notation of problem solving – i.e. you don’t need describe in detail how a task could be solved, you describe what to be solved at all. This frees the developer from error-prone iterator constructs. Ideally, of course, would be to access features with this way. Then this construct is conceivable: var largeFeatures = from feature in features where (feature.GetValue("SHAPE_Area").ToDouble() > 3000) select feature; or its equivalent as a lambda expression: var largeFeatures = features.Where(feature => (feature.GetValue("SHAPE_Area").ToDouble() > 3000)); This requires an appropriate provider, which manages the corresponding iterator logic. This is easier than you might think at first sight - you have to deliver only the desired entities as IEnumerable<IFeature>. LINQ automatically establishes a state machine in the background, whose execution is delayed (deferred execution) - when you are really request entities (foreach, Count (), ToList (), ..) an instantiation processing takes place, although it was already created at a completely different place. Especially in multiple iteration through entities in the first debuggings you are rubbing your eyes when the execution pointer jumps magically back in the iterator logic. Realization A very concise logic for constructing IEnumerable<IFeature> can be achieved by running through a IFeatureCursor. You return each feature via yield. For an easier usage I have put the logic in an extension method Getfeatures() for IFeatureClass: public static IEnumerable<IFeature> GetFeatures(this IFeatureClass featureClass, IQueryFilter queryFilter, RecyclingPolicy policy) { IFeatureCursor featureCursor = featureClass.Search(queryFilter, RecyclingPolicy.Recycle == policy); IFeature feature; while (null != (feature = featureCursor.NextFeature())) { yield return feature; } //this is skipped in unit tests with cursor-mock if (Marshal.IsComObject(featureCursor)) { Marshal.ReleaseComObject(featureCursor); } } So you can now easily generate the IEnumerable<IFeature>: IEnumerable<IFeature> features = _featureClass.GetFeatures(RecyclingPolicy.DoNotRecycle); You have to be careful with the recycling cursor. After a delayed execution in the same context it is not a good idea to re-iterated on the features. In this case only the content of the last (recycled) features is provided and all the features are the same in the second set. Therefore, this expression would be critical: largeFeatures.ToList(). ForEach(feature => Debug.WriteLine(feature.OID)); because ToList() iterates once through the list and so the the cursor was once moved through the features. So the extension method ForEach() always delivers the same feature. In such situations, you must not use a recycling cursor. Repeated executions of ForEach() is not a problem, because for every time the state machine is re-instantiated and thus the cursor runs again - that's the magic already mentioned above. Perspective Now you can also go one step further and realize your own implementation for the interface IEnumerable<IFeature>. This requires that only the method and property to access the enumerator have to be programmed. In the enumerator himself in the Reset() method you organize the re-executing of the search. This could be archived with an appropriate delegate in the constructor: new FeatureEnumerator<IFeatureclass>(_featureClass, featureClass => featureClass.Search(_filter, isRecyclingCursor)); which is called in Reset(): public void Reset() { _featureCursor = _resetCursor(_t); } In this manner, enumerators for completely different scenarios could be implemented, which are used on the client side completely identical like described above. Thus cursors, selection sets, etc. merge into a single matter and the reusability of code is increasing immensely. On top of that in automated unit tests an IEnumerable could be mocked very easily - a major step towards better software quality. Conclusion Nevertheless, caution should be exercised with these constructs in performance-relevant queries. Because of managing a state machine in the background, a lot of overhead is created. The processing costs additional time - about 20 to 100 percent. In addition, working without a recycling cursor is fast a performance gap. However declarative LINQ code is much more elegant, flawless and easy to maintain than manually iterating, compare and establish a list of results. The code size is reduced according to experience an average of 75 to 90 percent! So I like to wait a few milliseconds longer. As so often it has to be balanced between maintainability and performance - which for me is gaining in priority maintainability. In times of multi-core processors, the processing time of most business processes is anyway not dominated by code execution but by waiting for user input. Demo source code The source code for this prototype with several unit tests, you can download here: https://github.com/esride-apf/Linq2ArcObjects. .

Read the article

Right-Time Retail Part 2

- by David Dorf

This is part two of the three-part series. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Right-Time Integration Of course these real-time enabling technologies are only as good as the systems that utilize them, and it only takes one bottleneck to slow everyone else down. What good is an immediate stock-out notification if the supply chain can’t react until tomorrow? Since being formed in 2006, Oracle Retail has been not only adding more integrations between systems, but also modernizing integrations for appropriate speed. Notice I tossed in the word “appropriate.” Not everything needs to be real-time – again, we’re talking about Right-Time Retail. The speed of data capture, analysis, and execution must be synchronized or you’re wasting effort. Unfortunately, there isn’t an enterprise-wide dial that you can crank-up for your estate. You’ll need to improve things piecemeal, with people and processes as limiting factors while choosing the appropriate types of integrations. There are three integration styles we see in the retail industry. First is batch. I know, the word “batch” just sounds slow, but this pattern is less about velocity and more about volume. When there are large amounts of data to be moved, you’ll want to use batch processes. Our technology of choice here is Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), which provides a fast version of Extract-Transform-Load (ETL). Instead of the three-step process, the load and transform steps are combined to save time. ODI is a key technology for moving data into Retail Analytics where we can apply science. Performing analytics on each sale as it occurs doesn’t make any sense, so we batch up a statistically significant amount and submit all at once. The second style is fire-and-forget. For some types of data, we want the data to arrive ASAP but immediacy is not necessary. Speed is less important than guaranteed delivery, so we use message-oriented middleware available in both Weblogic and the Oracle database. For example, Point-of-Service transactions are queued for delivery to Central Office at corporate. If the network is offline, those transactions remain in the queue and will be delivered when the network returns. Transactions cannot be lost and they must be delivered in order. (Ever tried processing a return before the sale?) To enhance the standard queues, we offer the Retail Integration Bus (RIB) to help the management and monitoring of fire-and-forget messaging in the enterprise. The third style is request-response and is most commonly implemented as Web services. This is a synchronous message where the sender waits for a response. In this situation, the volume of data is small, guaranteed delivery is not necessary, but speed is very important. Examples include the website checking inventory, a price lookup, or processing a credit card authorization. The Oracle Service Bus (OSB) typically handles the routing of such messages, and we’ve enhanced its abilities with the Retail Service Backbone (RSB). To better understand these integration patterns and where they apply within the retail enterprise, we’re providing the Retail Reference Library (RRL) at no charge to Oracle Retail customers. The library is composed of a large number of industry business processes, including those necessary to support Commerce Anywhere, as well as detailed architectural diagrams. These diagrams allow implementers to understand the systems involved in integrations and the specific data payloads. Furthermore, with our upcoming release we’ll be providing a new tool called the Retail Integration Console (RIC) that allows IT to monitor and manage integrations from a single point. Using RIC, retailers can quickly discern where integration activity is occurring, volume statistics, average response times, and errors. The dashboards provide the ability to dive down into the architecture documentation to gather information all the way down to the specific payload. Retailers that want real-time integrations will also need real-time monitoring of those integrations to ensure service-level agreements are maintained. Part 3 looks at marketing.

Read the article

Separating text strings into a table of individual words in SQL via XML.

- by Phil Factor

p.MsoNormal {margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; } Nearly nine years ago, Mike Rorke of the SQL Server 2005 XML team blogged ‘Querying Over Constructed XML Using Sub-queries’. I remember reading it at the time without being able to think of a use for what he was demonstrating. Just a few weeks ago, whilst preparing my article on searching strings, I got out my trusty function for splitting strings into words and something reminded me of the old blog. I’d been trying to think of a way of using XML to split strings reliably into words. The routine I devised turned out to be slightly slower than the iterative word chop I’ve always used in the past, so I didn’t publish it. It was then I suddenly remembered the old routine. Here is my version of it. I’ve unwrapped it from its obvious home in a function or procedure just so it is easy to appreciate. What it does is to chop a text string into individual words using XQuery and the good old nodes() method. I’ve benchmarked it and it is quicker than any of the SQL ways of doing it that I know about. Obviously, you can’t use the trick I described here to do it, because it is awkward to use REPLACE() on 1…n characters of whitespace. I’ll carry on using my iterative function since it is able to tell me the location of each word as a character-offset from the start, and also because this method leaves punctuation in (removing it takes time!). However, I can see other uses for this in passing lists as input or output parameters, or as return values. if exists (Select * from sys.xml_schema_collections where name like 'WordList') drop XML SCHEMA COLLECTION WordList go create xml schema collection WordList as ' <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="words"> <xs:simpleType> <xs:list itemType="xs:string" /> </xs:simpleType> </xs:element> </xs:schema>' go DECLARE @string VARCHAR(MAX) –we'll get some sample data from the great Ogden Nash Select @String='This is a song to celebrate banks, Because they are full of money and you go into them and all you hear is clinks and clanks, Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills, Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills. Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals, And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it, Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don''t need it. I know you, you cautious conservative banks! If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks; Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle, And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had better go get the money from their wife''s aunt or ungle. But suppose people come in and they have a million and they want another million to pile on top of it, Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you urge them to accept every drop of it, And you lend them the million so then they have two million and this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four, So they already have two million as security so you have no hesitation in lending them two more, And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm, And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the money sent or do they want to take it withm. Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks, the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi- ness are everything and money isn''t essential, Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant money to maintain their health and happiness they starve to death so they can''t go around any more sneering at good old money, which is nothing short of providential. ' –we now turn it into XML declare @xml_data xml(WordList) set @xml_data='<words>'+ replace(@string,'&', '&')+'</words>' select T.ref.value('.', 'nvarchar(100)') from (Select @xml_data.query(' for $i in data(/words) return element li { $i } ')) A(list) cross apply A.List.nodes('/li') T(ref) …which gives (truncated, of course)…

Read the article

Joining on NULLs

- by Dave Ballantyne

A problem I see on a fairly regular basis is that of dealing with NULL values. Specifically here, where we are joining two tables on two columns, one of which is ‘optional’ ie is nullable. So something like this: i.e. Lookup where all the columns are equal, even when NULL. NULL’s are a tricky thing to initially wrap your mind around. Statements like “NULL is not equal to NULL and neither is it not not equal to NULL, it’s NULL” can cause a serious brain freeze and leave you a gibbering wreck and needing your mummy. Before we plod on, time to setup some data to demo against. Create table #SourceTable ( Id integer not null, SubId integer null, AnotherCol char(255) not null ) go create unique clustered index idxSourceTable on #SourceTable(id,subID) go with cteNums as ( select top(1000) number from master..spt_values where type ='P' ) insert into #SourceTable select Num1.number,nullif(Num2.number,0),'SomeJunk' from cteNums num1 cross join cteNums num2 go Create table #LookupTable ( Id integer not null, SubID integer null ) go insert into #LookupTable Select top(100) id,subid from #SourceTable where subid is not null order by newid() go insert into #LookupTable Select top(3) id,subid from #SourceTable where subid is null order by newid() If that has run correctly, you will have 1 million rows in #SourceTable and 103 rows in #LookupTable. We now want to join one to the other. First attempt – Lets just join select * from #SourceTable join #LookupTable on #LookupTable.id = #SourceTable.id and #LookupTable.SubID = #SourceTable.SubID OK, that’s a fail. We had 100 rows back, we didn’t correctly account for the 3 rows that have null values. Remember NULL <> NULL and the join clause specifies SUBID=SUBID, which for those rows is not true. Second attempt – Lets deal with those pesky NULLS select * from #SourceTable join #LookupTable on #LookupTable.id = #SourceTable.id and isnull(#LookupTable.SubID,0) = isnull(#SourceTable.SubID,0) OK, that’s the right result, well done and 99.9% of the time that is where its left. It is a relatively trivial CPU overhead to wrap ISNULL around both columns and compare that result, so no problems. But, although that’s true, this a relational database we are using here, not a procedural language. SQL is a declarative language, we are making a request to the engine to get the results we want. How we ask for them can make a ton of difference. Lets look at the plan for our second attempt, specifically the clustered index seek on the #SourceTable There are 2 predicates. The ‘seek predicate’ and ‘predicate’. The ‘seek predicate’ describes how SQLServer has been able to use an Index. Here, it has been able to navigate the index to resolve where ID=ID. So far so good, but what about the ‘predicate’ (aka residual probe) ? This is a row-by-row operation. For each row found in the index matching the Seek Predicate, the leaf level nodes have been scanned and tested using this logical condition. In this example [Expr1007] is the result of the IsNull operation on #LookupTable and that is tested for equality with the IsNull operation on #SourceTable. This residual probe is quite a high overhead, if we can express our statement slightly differently to take full advantage of the index and make the test part of the ‘Seek Predicate’. Third attempt – X is null and Y is null So, lets state the query in a slightly manner: select * from #SourceTable join #LookupTable on #LookupTable.id = #SourceTable.id and ( #LookupTable.SubID = #SourceTable.SubID or (#LookupTable.SubID is null and #SourceTable.SubId is null) ) So its slightly wordier and may not be as clear in its intent to the human reader, that is what comments are for, but the key point is that it is now clearer to the query optimizer what our intention is. Let look at the plan for that query, again specifically the index seek operation on #SourceTable No ‘predicate’, just a ‘Seek Predicate’ against the index to resolve both ID and SubID. A subtle difference that can be easily overlooked. But has it made a difference to the performance ? Well, yes , a perhaps surprisingly high one. Clever query optimizer well done. If you are using a scalar function on a column, you a pretty much guaranteeing that a residual probe will be used. By re-wording the query you may well be able to avoid this and use the index completely to resolve lookups. In-terms of performance and scalability your system will be in a much better position if you can.

Read the article

Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 6): 9i Query Performance

- by Simon Cooper

All throughout the EAP and beta versions of Schema Compare for Oracle, our main request was support for Oracle 9i. After releasing version 1.0 with support for 10g and 11g, our next step was then to get version 1.1 of SCfO out with support for 9i. However, there were some significant problems that we had to overcome first. This post will concentrate on query execution time. When we first tested SCfO on a 9i server, after accounting for various changes to the data dictionary, we found that database registration was taking a long time. And I mean a looooooong time. The same database that on 10g or 11g would take a couple of minutes to register would be taking upwards of 30 mins on 9i. Obviously, this is not ideal, so a poke around the query execution plans was required. As an example, let's take the table population query - the one that reads ALL_TABLES and joins it with a few other dictionary views to get us back our list of tables. On 10g, this query takes 5.6 seconds. On 9i, it takes 89.47 seconds. The difference in execution plan is even more dramatic - here's the (edited) execution plan on 10g: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 108K| 939 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 108K| 939 || 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 108K| 938 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 103K| 762 || 4 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 2058 | 3 ||* 20 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 73472 | 759 || 21 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 2097 | 3 ||* 34 | HASH JOIN RIGHT OUTER | | 39920 | 755 || 35 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 7 || 58 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 39104 | 748 || 59 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 6704 | 668 || 89 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2025 | 5 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 277 | 11 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the same query on 9i: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 16P| 55G|| 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 16P| 55G|| 2 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 16P| 862M|| 3 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 5251G| 992K|| 4 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 4243M| 2578 || 5 | NESTED LOOPS OUTER | | 2669K| 1440 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 ||* 50 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | ||* 66 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| ||* 80 | VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| ||* 96 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a look at the cost column. 10g's overall query cost is 939, and 9i is 55,000,000,000 (or more precisely, 55,496,472,769). It's also having to process far more data. What on earth could be causing this huge difference in query cost? After trawling through the '10g New Features' documentation, we found item 1.9.2.21. Before 10g, Oracle advised that you do not collect statistics on data dictionary objects. From 10g, it advised that you do collect statistics on the data dictionary; for our queries, Oracle therefore knows what sort of data is in the dictionary tables, and so can generate an efficient execution plan. On 9i, no statistics are present on the system tables, so Oracle has to use the Rule Based Optimizer, which turns most LEFT JOINs into nested loops. If we force 9i to use hash joins, like 10g, we get a much better plan: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Id | Operation | Name | Bytes | Cost |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 7587K| 3704 || 1 | SORT ORDER BY | | 7587K| 3704 ||* 2 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 7587K| 822 ||* 3 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 5262K| 616 ||* 4 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 2980K| 465 ||* 5 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 710K| 432 ||* 6 | HASH JOIN OUTER | | 398K| 302 || 7 | VIEW | ALL_TABLES | 342K| 276 || 29 | VIEW | ALL_MVIEWS | 51 | 20 || 50 | VIEW | ALL_PART_TABLES | 852K| 104 || 78 | VIEW | ALL_TAB_COMMENTS | 2043 | 14 || 93 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_LOCATIONS | 1744K| 31 || 106 | VIEW | ALL_EXTERNAL_TABLES | 1777K| 28 |------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's much more like it. This drops the execution time down to 24 seconds. Not as good as 10g, but still an improvement. There are still several problems with this, however. 10g introduced a new join method - a right outer hash join (used in the first execution plan). The 9i query optimizer doesn't have this option available, so forcing a hash join means it has to hash the ALL_TABLES table, and furthermore re-hash it for every hash join in the execution plan; this could be thousands and thousands of rows. And although forcing hash joins somewhat alleviates this problem on our test systems, there's no guarantee that this will improve the execution time on customers' systems; it may even increase the time it takes (say, if all their tables are partitioned, or they've got a lot of materialized views). Ideally, we would want a solution that provides a speedup whatever the input. To try and get some ideas, we asked some oracle performance specialists to see if they had any ideas or tips. Their recommendation was to add a hidden hook into the product that allowed users to specify their own query hints, or even rewrite the queries entirely. However, we would prefer not to take that approach; as well as a lot of new infrastructure & a rewrite of the population code, it would have meant that any users of 9i would have to spend some time optimizing it to get it working on their system before they could use the product. Another approach was needed. All our population queries have a very specific pattern - a base table provides most of the information we need (ALL_TABLES for tables, or ALL_TAB_COLS for columns) and we do a left join to extra subsidiary tables that fill in gaps (for instance, ALL_PART_TABLES for partition information). All the left joins use the same set of columns to join on (typically the object owner & name), so we could re-use the hash information for each join, rather than re-hashing the same columns for every join. To allow us to do this, along with various other performance improvements that could be done for the specific query pattern we were using, we read all the tables individually and do a hash join on the client. Fortunately, this 'pure' algorithmic problem is the kind that can be very well optimized for expected real-world situations; as well as storing row data we're not using in the hash key on disk, we use very specific memory-efficient data structures to store all the information we need. This allows us to achieve a database population time that is as fast as on 10g, and even (in some situations) slightly faster, and a memory overhead of roughly 150 bytes per row of data in the result set (for schemas with 10,000 tables in that means an extra 1.4MB memory being used during population). Next: fun with the 9i dictionary views.

Read the article

Reading the tea leaves from Windows Azure support

- by jamiet

A few idle thoughts… Three months ago I had an issue regarding Windows Azure where I was unable to login to the management portal. At the time I contacted Azure support, the issue was soon resolved and I thought no more about it. Until today that is when I received an email from Azure support providing a detailed analysis of the root cause, the fix and moreover precise details about when and where things occurred. The email itself is interesting and I have included the entirety of it below. A few things were interesting to me: The level of detail and the diligence in investigating and reporting the issue I found really rather impressive. They even outline the number of users that were affected (127 in case you can’t be bothered reading). Compare this to the quite pathetic support that another division within Microsoft, Skype, provided to Greg Low recently: Skype support and dead parrot sketches This line: “Windows Azure performed a planned change from using the Microsoft account service (formerly Windows Live ID) to the Azure Active Directory (AAD) as its primary authentication mechanism on August 24th. This change was made to enable future innovation in the area of authentication – particularly for organizationally owned identities, identity federation, stronger authentication methods and compliance certification. ” I also found to be particularly interesting. I have long thought that one of the reasons Microsoft has proved to be such a money-making machine in the enterprise is because they provide the infrastructure and then upsell on top of that – and nothing is more infrastructural than Active Directory. It has struck me of late that they are trying to make the same play of late in the cloud by tying all their services into Azure Active Directory and here we see a clear indication of that by making AAD the authentication mechanism for anyone using Windows Azure. I get the feeling that we’re going to hear much much more about AAD in the future; isn’t it about time we could log on to SQL Azure Windows Azure SQL Database without resorting to SQL authentication, for example? And why do Microsoft have two identity providers – Microsoft Account (aka Windows Live ID) and AAD – isn’t it about time those things were combined? As I said, just some idle thoughts. Below is the transcript of the email if you are interested. @Jamiet This is regarding the support request <redacted> where in you were not able to login into the windows azure management portal with live id. We are providing you with the summary, root cause analysis and information about permanent fix: Incident Title: You were unable to access Windows Azure Portal after Microsoft Account to Azure Active Directory account Migration. Service Impacted: Management Portal Incident Start Date and Time: 8/24/2012 4:30:00 PM Date and Time Service was Restored: 10/17/2012 12:00:00 AM Summary: Windows Azure performed a planned change from using the Microsoft account service (formerly Windows Live ID) to the Azure Active Directory (AAD) as its primary authentication mechanism on August 24th. This change was made to enable future innovation in the area of authentication – particularly for organizationally owned identities, identity federation, stronger authentication methods and compliance certification. While this migration was largely transparent to Windows Azure users, a small number of users whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domain were unable to login. This incompatibility was not discovered during the Quality Assurance testing phase prior to the migration. Customer Impact: Customers whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domain were unable to sign-in the Management Portal after ~4:00 p.m. PST on August 24th, 2012. We determined that the issue did impact at least 127 users in 98 of these Windows Live Custom Domains and had a maximum potential impact of 1,110 users in total. Root Cause: The root cause of the issue was an incompatibility in the AAD authentication service to handle logins from Microsoft accounts whose sign-in names were part of a Windows Live Custom Domains. This issue was not discovered during the Quality Assurance testing phase prior to the migration from Microsoft Account (MSA) to AAD. Mitigations: The issue was mitigated for the majority of affected users by 8:20 a.m. PST on August 25th, 2012 by running some internal scripts to correct many known Windows Live Custom Domains. The remaining affected domains fell into two categories: Windows Live Custom Domains that were not corrected by 8/25/2012. An additional 48 Windows Live Custom Domains were fixed in the weeks following the incident within 2 business days after the AAD team received an escalation from product support regarding those accounts. Windows Live Custom domains that were also provisioned in Office365. Some of the affected Windows Live Custom Domains had already been provisioned in AAD because their owners signed up for Office365 which is a service that also uses AAD. In these cases the Azure customers had to work around the issue by renaming their Microsoft Account or using a different Microsoft Account to administer their Azure subscription. Permanent Fix: The Azure Active Directory team permanently fixed the issue for all customers on 10/17/2012 in an upgraded release of the AAD service.

Read the article

Cloud Computing Forces Better Design Practices

- by Herve Roggero

Is cloud computing simply different than on premise development, or is cloud computing actually forcing you to create better applications than you normally would? In other words, is cloud computing merely imposing different design principles, or forcing better design principles? A little while back I got into a discussion with a developer in which I was arguing that cloud computing, and specifically Windows Azure in his case, was forcing developers to adopt better design principles. His opinion was that cloud computing was not yielding better systems; just different systems. In this blog, I will argue that cloud computing does force developers to use better design practices, and hence better applications. So the first thing to define, of course, is the word “better”, in the context of application development. Looking at a few definitions online, better means “superior quality”. As it relates to this discussion then, I stipulate that cloud computing can yield higher quality applications in terms of scalability, everything else being equal. Before going further I need to also outline the difference between performance and scalability. Performance and scalability are two related concepts, but they don’t mean the same thing. Scalability is the measure of system performance given various loads. So when developers design for performance, they usually give higher priority to a given load and tend to optimize for the given load. When developers design for scalability, the actual performance at a given load is not as important; the ability to ensure reasonable performance regardless of the load becomes the objective. This can lead to very different design choices. For example, if your objective is to obtains the fastest response time possible for a service you are building, you may choose the implement a TCP connection that never closes until the client chooses to close the connection (in other words, a tightly coupled service from a connectivity standpoint), and on which a connection session is established for faster processing on the next request (like SQL Server or other database systems for example). If you objective is to scale, you may implement a service that answers to requests without keeping session state, so that server resources are released as quickly as possible, like a REST service for example. This alternate design would likely have a slower response time than the TCP service for any given load, but would continue to function at very large loads because of its inherently loosely coupled design. An example of a REST service is the NO-SQL implementation in the Microsoft cloud called Azure Tables. Now, back to cloud computing… Cloud computing is designed to help you scale your applications, specifically when you use Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. However it’s not automatic. You can design a tightly-coupled TCP service as discussed above, and as you can imagine, it probably won’t scale even if you place the service in the cloud because it isn’t using a connection pattern that will allow it to scale [note: I am not implying that all TCP systems do not scale; I am just illustrating the scalability concepts with an imaginary TCP service that isn’t designed to scale for the purpose of this discussion]. The other service, using REST, will have a better chance to scale because, by design, it minimizes resource consumption for individual requests and doesn’t tie a client connection to a specific endpoint (which means you can easily deploy this service to hundreds of machines without much trouble, as long as your pockets are deep enough). The TCP and REST services discussed above are both valid designs; the TCP service is faster and the REST service scales better. So is it fair to say that one service is fundamentally better than the other? No; not unless you need to scale. And if you don’t need to scale, then you don’t need the cloud in the first place. However, it is interesting to note that if you do need to scale, then a loosely coupled system becomes a better design because it can almost always scale better than a tightly-coupled system. And because most applications grow overtime, with an increasing user base, new functional requirements, increased data and so forth, most applications eventually do need to scale. So in my humble opinion, I conclude that a loosely coupled system is not just different than a tightly coupled system; it is a better design, because it will stand the test of time. And in my book, if a system stands the test of time better than another, it is of superior quality. Because cloud computing demands loosely coupled systems so that its underlying service architecture can be leveraged, developers ultimately have no choice but to design loosely coupled systems for the cloud. And because loosely coupled systems are better… … the cloud forces better design practices. My 2 cents.

Read the article

Data Source Security Part 1

- by Steve Felts

I’ve written a couple of articles on how to store data source security credentials using the Oracle wallet. I plan to write a few articles on the various types of security available to WebLogic Server (WLS) data sources. There are more options than you might think! There have been several enhancements in this area in WLS 10.3.6. There are a couple of more enhancements planned for release WLS 12.1.2 that I will include here for completeness. This isn’t intended as a teaser. If you call your Oracle support person, you can get them now as minor patches to WLS 10.3.6. The current security documentation is scattered in a few places, has a few incorrect statements, and is missing a few topics. It also seems that the knowledge of how to apply some of these features isn’t written down. The goal of these articles is to talk about WLS data source security in a unified way and to introduce some approaches to using the available features. Introduction to WebLogic Data Source Security Options By default, you define a single database user and password for a data source. You can store it in the data source descriptor or make use of the Oracle wallet. This is a very simple and efficient approach to security. All of the connections in the connection pool are owned by this user and there is no special processing when a connection is given out. That is, it’s a homogeneous connection pool and any request can get any connection from a security perspective (there are other aspects like affinity). Regardless of the end user of the application, all connections in the pool use the same security credentials to access the DBMS. No additional information is needed when you get a connection because it’s all available from the data source descriptor (or wallet). java.sql.Connection conn = mydatasource.getConnection(); Note: You can enter the password as a name-value pair in the Properties field (this not permitted for production environments) or you can enter it in the Password field of the data source descriptor. The value in the Password field overrides any password value defined in the Properties passed to the JDBC Driver when creating physical database connections. It is recommended that you use the Password attribute in place of the password property in the properties string because the Password value is encrypted in the configuration file (stored as the password-encrypted attribute in the jdbc-driver-params tag in the module file) and is hidden in the administration console. The Properties and Password fields are located on the administration console Data Source creation wizard or Data Source Configuration tab. The JDBC API can also be used to programmatically specify a database user name and password as in the following. java.sql.Connection conn = mydatasource.getConnection(“user”, “password”); According to the JDBC specification, it’s supposed to take a database user and associated password but different vendors implement this differently. WLS, by default, treats this as an application server user and password. The pair is authenticated to see if it’s a valid user and that user is used for WLS security permission checks. By default, the user is then mapped to a database user and password using the data source credential mapper, so this API sort of follows the specification but database credentials are one-step removed from the application code. More details and the rationale are described later. While the default approach is simple, it does mean that only one database user is doing all of the work. You can’t figure out who actually did the update and you can’t restrict SQL operations by who is running the operation, at least at the database level. Any type of per-user logic will need to be in the application code instead of having the database do it. There are various WLS data source features that can be configured to provide some per-user information about the operations to the database. WebLogic Data Source Security Options This table describes the features available for WebLogic data sources to configure database security credentials and a brief description. It also captures information about the compatibility of these features with one another. Feature Description Can be used with Can’t be used with User authentication (default) Default getConnection(user, password) behavior – validate the input and use the user/password in the descriptor. Set client identifier Proxy Session, Identity pooling, Use database credentials Use database credentials Instead of using the credential mapper, use the supplied user and password directly. Set client identifier, Proxy session, Identity pooling User authentication, Multi Data Source Set Client Identifier Set a client identifier property associated with the connection (Oracle and DB2 only). Everything Proxy Session Set a light-weight proxy user associated with the connection (Oracle-only). Set client identifier, Use database credentials Identity pooling, User authentication Identity pooling Heterogeneous pool of connections owned by specified users. Set client identifier, Use database credentials Proxy session, User authentication, Labeling, Multi-datasource, Active GridLink Note that all of these features are available with both XA and non-XA drivers. Currently, the Proxy Session and Use Database Credentials options are on the Oracle tab of the Data Source Configuration tab of the administration console (even though the Use Database Credentials feature is not just for Oracle databases – oops). The rest of the features are on the Identity tab of the Data Source Configuration tab in the administration console (plan on seeing them all in one place in the future). The subsequent articles will describe these features in more detail. Keep referring back to this table to see the big picture.

Read the article

Access Control Service: Handling Errors

- by Your DisplayName here!

Another common problem with external authentication is how to deal with sign in errors. In active federation like WS-Trust there are well defined SOAP faults to communicate problem to a client. But with web applications, the error information is typically generated and displayed on the external sign in page. The relying party does not know about the error, nor can it help the user in any way. The Access Control Service allows to post sign in errors to a specified page. You setup this page in the relying party registration. That means that whenever an error occurs in ACS, the error information gets packaged up as a JSON string and posted to the page specified. This way you get structued error information back into you application so you can display a friendlier error message or log the error. I added error page support to my ACS2 sample, which can be downloaded here. How to turn the JSON error into CLR types The JSON schema is reasonably simple, the following class turns the JSON into an object: [DataContract] public class AcsErrorResponse { [DataMember(Name = "context", Order = 1)] public string Context { get; set; } [DataMember(Name = "httpReturnCode", Order = 2)] public string HttpReturnCode { get; set; } [DataMember(Name = "identityProvider", Order = 3)] public string IdentityProvider { get; set; } [DataMember(Name = "timeStamp", Order = 4)] public string TimeStamp { get; set; } [DataMember(Name = "traceId", Order = 5)] public string TraceId { get; set; } [DataMember(Name = "errors", Order = 6)] public List<AcsError> Errors { get; set; } public static AcsErrorResponse Read(string json) { var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer( typeof(AcsErrorResponse)); var response = serializer.ReadObject( new MemoryStream(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(json))) as AcsErrorResponse; if (response != null) { return response; } else { throw new ArgumentException("json"); } } } [DataContract] public class AcsError { [DataMember(Name = "errorCode", Order = 1)] public string Code { get; set; } [DataMember(Name = "errorMessage", Order = 2)] public string Message { get; set; } } Retrieving the error information You then need to provide a page that takes the POST and deserializes the information. My sample simply fills a view that shows all information. But that’s for diagnostic/sample purposes only. You shouldn’t show the real errors to your end users. public class SignInErrorController : Controller { [HttpPost] public ActionResult Index() { var errorDetails = Request.Form["ErrorDetails"]; var response = AcsErrorResponse.Read(errorDetails); return View("SignInError", response); } } Also keep in mind that the error page is an anonymous page and that you are taking external input. So all the usual input validation applies.

Read the article

Encrypt images before uploading to Dropbox [migrated]

- by Cherry

I want to encrypt a file first before the file will be uploaded to the dropbox. So i have implement the encryption inside the uploading of the codes. However, there is an error after i integrate the codes together. Where did my mistake go wrong? Error at putFileOverwriteRequest and it says The method putFileOverwriteRequest(String, InputStream, long, ProgressListener) in the type DropboxAPI is not applicable for the arguments (String, FileOutputStream, long, new ProgressListener(){}) Another problem is that this FileOutputStream fis = new FileOutputStream(new File("dont know what to put in this field")); i do not know where to put the file so that after i read the file, it will call the path and then upload to the Dropbox. Anyone is kind to help me in this? As time is running out for me and i still cant solve the problem. Thank you in advance. The full code is as below. public class UploadPicture extends AsyncTask<Void, Long, Boolean> { private DropboxAPI<?> mApi; private String mPath; private File mFile; private long mFileLen; private UploadRequest mRequest; private Context mContext; private final ProgressDialog mDialog; private String mErrorMsg; public UploadPicture(Context context, DropboxAPI<?> api, String dropboxPath, File file) { // We set the context this way so we don't accidentally leak activities mContext = context.getApplicationContext(); mFileLen = file.length(); mApi = api; mPath = dropboxPath; mFile = file; mDialog = new ProgressDialog(context); mDialog.setMax(100); mDialog.setMessage("Uploading " + file.getName()); mDialog.setProgressStyle(ProgressDialog.STYLE_HORIZONTAL); mDialog.setProgress(0); mDialog.setButton("Cancel", new OnClickListener() { public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) { // This will cancel the putFile operation mRequest.abort(); } }); mDialog.show(); } @Override protected Boolean doInBackground(Void... params) { try { KeyGenerator keygen = KeyGenerator.getInstance("DES"); SecretKey key = keygen.generateKey(); //generate key //encrypt file here first byte[] plainData; byte[] encryptedData; Cipher cipher = Cipher.getInstance("DES/ECB/PKCS5Padding"); cipher.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, key); //File f = new File(mFile); //read file FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream(mFile); //obtains input bytes from a file plainData = new byte[(int)mFile.length()]; in.read(plainData); //Read bytes of data into an array of bytes encryptedData = cipher.doFinal(plainData); //encrypt data FileOutputStream fis = new FileOutputStream(new File("dont know what to put in this field")); //upload to a path first then call the path so that it can be uploaded up to the dropbox //save encrypted file to dropbox // By creating a request, we get a handle to the putFile operation, // so we can cancel it later if we want to //FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(mFile); String path = mPath + mFile.getName(); mRequest = mApi.putFileOverwriteRequest(path, fis, mFile.length(), new ProgressListener() { @Override public long progressInterval() { // Update the progress bar every half-second or so return 500; } @Override public void onProgress(long bytes, long total) { publishProgress(bytes); } }); if (mRequest != null) { mRequest.upload(); return true; } } catch (DropboxUnlinkedException e) { // This session wasn't authenticated properly or user unlinked mErrorMsg = "This app wasn't authenticated properly."; } catch (DropboxFileSizeException e) { // File size too big to upload via the API mErrorMsg = "This file is too big to upload"; } catch (DropboxPartialFileException e) { // We canceled the operation mErrorMsg = "Upload canceled"; } catch (DropboxServerException e) { // Server-side exception. These are examples of what could happen, // but we don't do anything special with them here. if (e.error == DropboxServerException._401_UNAUTHORIZED) { // Unauthorized, so we should unlink them. You may want to // automatically log the user out in this case. } else if (e.error == DropboxServerException._403_FORBIDDEN) { // Not allowed to access this } else if (e.error == DropboxServerException._404_NOT_FOUND) { // path not found (or if it was the thumbnail, can't be // thumbnailed) } else if (e.error == DropboxServerException._507_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE) { // user is over quota } else { // Something else } // This gets the Dropbox error, translated into the user's language mErrorMsg = e.body.userError; if (mErrorMsg == null) { mErrorMsg = e.body.error; } } catch (DropboxIOException e) { // Happens all the time, probably want to retry automatically. mErrorMsg = "Network error. Try again."; } catch (DropboxParseException e) { // Probably due to Dropbox server restarting, should retry mErrorMsg = "Dropbox error. Try again."; } catch (DropboxException e) { // Unknown error mErrorMsg = "Unknown error. Try again."; } catch (FileNotFoundException e) { } return false; } @Override protected void onProgressUpdate(Long... progress) { int percent = (int)(100.0*(double)progress[0]/mFileLen + 0.5); mDialog.setProgress(percent); } @Override protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result) { mDialog.dismiss(); if (result) { showToast("Image successfully uploaded"); } else { showToast(mErrorMsg); } } private void showToast(String msg) { Toast error = Toast.makeText(mContext, msg, Toast.LENGTH_LONG); error.show(); } }

Read the article

Data Source Security Part 2

- by Steve Felts

In Part 1, I introduced the default security behavior and listed the various options available to change that behavior. One of the key topics to understand is the difference between directly using database user and password values versus mapping from WLS user and password to the associated database values. The direct use of database credentials is relatively new to WLS, based on customer feedback. Some of the trade-offs are covered in this article. Credential Mapping vs. Database Credentials Each WLS data source has a credential map that is a mechanism used to map a key, in this case a WLS user, to security credentials (user and password). By default, when a user and password are specified when getting a connection, they are treated as credentials for a WLS user, validated, and are converted to a database user and password using a credential map associated with the data source. If a matching entry is not found in the credential map for the data source, then the user and password associated with the data source definition are used. Because of this defaulting mechanism, you should be careful what permissions are granted to the default user. Alternatively, you can define an invalid default user to ensure that no one can accidentally get through (in this case, you would need to set the initial capacity for the pool to zero so that the pool is populated only by valid users). To create an entry in the credential map: 1) First create a WLS user. In the administration console, go to Security realms, select your realm (e.g., myrealm), select Users, and select New. 2) Second, create the mapping. In the administration console, go to Services, select Data sources, select your data source name, select Security, select Credentials, and select New. See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24329_01/apirefs.1211/e24401/taskhelp/jdbc/jdbc_datasources/ConfigureCredentialMappingForADataSource.html for more information. The advantages of using the credential mapping are that: 1) You don’t hard-code the database user/password into a program or need to prompt for it in addition to the WLS user/password and 2) It provides a layer of abstraction between WLS security and database settings such that many WLS identities can be mapped to a smaller set of DB identities, thereby only requiring middle-tier configuration updates when WLS users are added/removed. You can cut down the number of users that have access to a data source to reduce the user maintenance overhead. For example, suppose that a servlet has the one pre-defined, special WLS user/password for data source access, hard-wired in its code in a getConnection(user, password) call. Every WebLogic user can reap the specific DBMS access coded into the servlet, but none has to have general access to the data source. For instance, there may be a ‘Sales’ DBMS which needs to be protected from unauthorized eyes, but it contains some day-to-day data that everyone needs. The Sales data source is configured with restricted access and a servlet is built that hard-wires the specific data source access credentials in its connection request. It uses that connection to deliver only the generally needed day-to-day information to any caller. The servlet cannot reveal any other data, and no WebLogic user can get any other access to the data source. This is the approach that many large applications take and is the reasoning behind the default mapping behavior in WLS. The disadvantages of using the credential map are that: 1) It is difficult to manage (create, update, delete) with a large number of users; it is possible to use WLST scripts or a custom JMX client utility to manage credential map entries. 2) You can’t share a credential map between data sources so they must be duplicated. Some applications prefer not to use the credential map. Instead, the credentials passed to getConnection(user, password) should be treated as database credentials and used to authenticate with the database for the connection, avoiding going through the credential map. This is enabled by setting the “use-database-credentials” to true. See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24329_01/apirefs.1211/e24401/taskhelp/jdbc/jdbc_datasources/ConfigureOracleParameters.html "Configure Oracle parameters" in Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Help. Use Database Credentials is not currently supported for Multi Data Source configurations. When enabled, it turns off credential mapping on Generic and Active GridLink data sources for the following attributes: 1. identity-based-connection-pooling-enabled (this interaction is available by patch in 10.3.6.0). 2. oracle-proxy-session (this interaction is first available in 10.3.6.0). 3. set client identifier (this interaction is available by patch in 10.3.6.0). Note that in the data source schema, the set client identifier feature is poorly named “credential-mapping-enabled”. The documentation and the console refer to it as Set Client Identifier. To review the behavior of credential mapping and using database credentials: - If using the credential map, there needs to be a mapping for each WLS user to database user for those users that will have access to the database; otherwise the default user for the data source will be used. If you always specify a user/password when getting a connection, you only need credential map entries for those specific users. - If using database credentials without specifying a user/password, the default user and password in the data source descriptor are always used. If you specify a user/password when getting a connection, that user will be used for the credentials. WLS users are not involved at all in the data source connection process.

Read the article

Web optimization

- by hmloo

1. CSS Optimization Organize your CSS code Good CSS organization helps with future maintainability of the site, it helps you and your team member understand the CSS more quickly and jump to specific styles. Structure CSS code For small project, you can break your CSS code in separate blocks according to the structure of the page or page content. for example you can break your CSS document according the content of your web page(e.g. Header, Main Content, Footer) Structure CSS file For large project, you may feel having too much CSS code in one place, so it's the best to structure your CSS into more CSS files, and use a master style sheet to import these style sheets. this solution can not only organize style structure, but also reduce server request./*--------------Master style sheet--------------*/ @import "Reset.css"; @import "Structure.css"; @import "Typography.css"; @import "Forms.css"; Create index for your CSS Another important thing is to create index at the beginning of your CSS file, index can help you quickly understand the whole CSS structure./*---------------------------------------- 1. Header 2. Navigation 3. Main Content 4. Sidebar 5. Footer ------------------------------------------*/ Writing efficient CSS selectors keep in mind that browsers match CSS selectors from right to left and the order of efficiency for selectors 1. id (#myid) 2. class (.myclass) 3. tag (div, h1, p) 4. adjacent sibling (h1 + p) 5. child (ul > li) 6. descendent (li a) 7. universal (*) 8. attribute (a[rel="external"]) 9. pseudo-class and pseudo element (a:hover, li:first) the rightmost selector is called "key selector", so when you write your CSS code, you should choose more efficient key selector. Here are some best practice: Don't tag-qualify Never do this:div#myid div.myclass .myclass#myid IDs are unique, classes are more unique than a tag so they don't need a tag. Doing so makes the selector less efficient. Avoid overqualifying selectors for example#nav a is more efficient thanul#nav li a Don't repeat declarationExample: body {font-size:12px;}h1 {font-size:12px;font-weight:bold;} since h1 is already inherited from body, so you don't need to repeate atrribute. Using 0 instead of 0px Always using #selector { margin: 0; } There’s no need to include the px after 0, removing all those superfluous px can reduce the size of your CSS file. Group declaration Example: h1 { font-size: 16pt; } h1 { color: #fff; } h1 { font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } it’s much better to combine them:h1 { font-size: 16pt; color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } Group selectorsExample: h1 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } it would be much better if setup as:h1, h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } Group attributeExample: h1 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; } you can set different rules for specific elements after setting a rule for a grouph1, h2 { color: #fff; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; } h2 { font-size: 16pt; } Using Shorthand PropertiesExample: #selector { margin-top: 8px; margin-right: 4px; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 4px; }Better: #selector { margin: 8px 4px 8px 4px; }Best: #selector { margin: 8px 4px; } a good diagram illustrated how shorthand declarations are interpreted depending on how many values are specified for margin and padding property. instead of using:#selector { background-image: url(”logo.png”); background-position: top left; background-repeat: no-repeat; } is used:#selector { background: url(logo.png) no-repeat top left; } 2. Image Optimization Image Optimizer Image Optimizer is a free Visual Studio2010 extension that optimizes PNG, GIF and JPG file sizes without quality loss. It uses SmushIt and PunyPNG for the optimization. Just right click on any folder or images in Solution Explorer and choose optimize images, then it will automatically optimize all PNG, GIF and JPEG files in that folder. CSS Image Sprites CSS Image Sprites are a way to combine a collection of images to a single image, then use CSS background-position property to shift the visible area to show the required image, many images can take a long time to load and generates multiple server requests, so Image Sprite can reduce the number of server requests and improve site performance. You can use many online tools to generate your image sprite and CSS, and you can also try the Sprite and Image Optimization framework released by The ASP.NET team.

Read the article

Unable to install Xdebug

- by burnt1ce

I've registered xdebug in php.ini (as per http://xdebug.org/docs/install) but it's not showing up when i run "php -m" or when i get a test page to run "phpinfo()". I've just installed the latest version of XAMPP. Can anyone provide any suggestions in getting xdebug to show up? This is what i get when i run phpinfo(). **PHP Version 5.3.1** System Windows NT ANDREW_LAPTOP 5.1 build 2600 (Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3) i586 Build Date Nov 20 2009 17:20:57 Compiler MSVC6 (Visual C++ 6.0) Architecture x86 Configure Command cscript /nologo configure.js "--enable-snapshot-build" Server API Apache 2.0 Handler Virtual Directory Support enabled Configuration File (php.ini) Path no value Loaded Configuration File C:\xampp\php\php.ini Scan this dir for additional .ini files (none) Additional .ini files parsed (none) PHP API 20090626 PHP Extension 20090626 Zend Extension 220090626 Zend Extension Build API220090626,TS,VC6 PHP Extension Build API20090626,TS,VC6 Debug Build no Thread Safety enabled Zend Memory Manager enabled Zend Multibyte Support disabled IPv6 Support enabled Registered PHP Streams https, ftps, php, file, glob, data, http, ftp, compress.zlib, compress.bzip2, phar, zip Registered Stream Socket Transports tcp, udp, ssl, sslv3, sslv2, tls Registered Stream Filters convert.iconv.*, string.rot13, string.toupper, string.tolower, string.strip_tags, convert.*, consumed, dechunk, zlib.*, bzip2.* This program makes use of the Zend Scripting Language Engine: Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2009 Zend Technologies PHP Credits Configuration apache2handler Apache Version Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.3.1 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.7.1 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 Apache API Version 20051115 Server Administrator postmaster@localhost Hostname:Port localhost:80 Max Requests Per Child: 0 - Keep Alive: on - Max Per Connection: 100 Timeouts Connection: 300 - Keep-Alive: 5 Virtual Server No Server Root C:/xampp/apache Loaded Modules core mod_win32 mpm_winnt http_core mod_so mod_actions mod_alias mod_asis mod_auth_basic mod_auth_digest mod_authn_default mod_authn_file mod_authz_default mod_authz_groupfile mod_authz_host mod_authz_user mod_cgi mod_dav mod_dav_fs mod_dav_lock mod_dir mod_env mod_headers mod_include mod_info mod_isapi mod_log_config mod_mime mod_negotiation mod_rewrite mod_setenvif mod_ssl mod_status mod_autoindex_color mod_php5 mod_perl mod_apreq2 Directive Local Value Master Value engine 1 1 last_modified 0 0 xbithack 0 0 Apache Environment Variable Value MIBDIRS C:/xampp/php/extras/mibs MYSQL_HOME C:\xampp\mysql\bin OPENSSL_CONF C:/xampp/apache/bin/openssl.cnf PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR C:\xampp\php PHPRC C:\xampp\php TMP C:\xampp\tmp HTTP_HOST localhost HTTP_CONNECTION keep-alive HTTP_USER_AGENT Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.342.8 Safari/533.2 HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL max-age=0 HTTP_ACCEPT application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING gzip,deflate,sdch HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE en-US,en;q=0.8 HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 PATH C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn\;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\DivX Shared\;C:\Program Files\WiTopia.Net\bin SystemRoot C:\WINDOWS COMSPEC C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe PATHEXT .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH WINDIR C:\WINDOWS SERVER_SIGNATURE <address>Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.3.1 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.7.1 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 Server at localhost Port 80</address> SERVER_SOFTWARE Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.3.1 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.7.1 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 SERVER_NAME localhost SERVER_ADDR 127.0.0.1 SERVER_PORT 80 REMOTE_ADDR 127.0.0.1 DOCUMENT_ROOT C:/xampp/htdocs SERVER_ADMIN postmaster@localhost SCRIPT_FILENAME C:/xampp/htdocs/test.php REMOTE_PORT 3275 GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1 SERVER_PROTOCOL HTTP/1.1 REQUEST_METHOD GET QUERY_STRING no value REQUEST_URI /test.php SCRIPT_NAME /test.php HTTP Headers Information HTTP Request Headers HTTP Request GET /test.php HTTP/1.1 Host localhost Connection keep-alive User-Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.342.8 Safari/533.2 Cache-Control max-age=0 Accept application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate,sdch Accept-Language en-US,en;q=0.8 Accept-Charset ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 HTTP Response Headers X-Powered-By PHP/5.3.1 Keep-Alive timeout=5, max=80 Connection Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding chunked Content-Type text/html bcmath BCMath support enabled Directive Local Value Master Value bcmath.scale 0 0 bz2 BZip2 Support Enabled Stream Wrapper support compress.bz2:// Stream Filter support bzip2.decompress, bzip2.compress BZip2 Version 1.0.5, 10-Dec-2007 calendar Calendar support enabled com_dotnet COM support enabled DCOM support disabled .Net support enabled Directive Local Value Master Value com.allow_dcom 0 0 com.autoregister_casesensitive 1 1 com.autoregister_typelib 0 0 com.autoregister_verbose 0 0 com.code_page no value no value com.typelib_file no value no value Core PHP Version 5.3.1 Directive Local Value Master Value allow_call_time_pass_reference On On allow_url_fopen On On allow_url_include Off Off always_populate_raw_post_data Off Off arg_separator.input & & arg_separator.output & & asp_tags Off Off auto_append_file no value no value auto_globals_jit On On auto_prepend_file no value no value browscap C:\xampp\php\extras\browscap.ini C:\xampp\php\extras\browscap.ini default_charset no value no value default_mimetype text/html text/html define_syslog_variables Off Off disable_classes no value no value disable_functions no value no value display_errors On On display_startup_errors On On doc_root no value no value docref_ext no value no value docref_root no value no value enable_dl On On error_append_string no value no value error_log no value no value error_prepend_string no value no value error_reporting 22519 22519 exit_on_timeout Off Off expose_php On On extension_dir C:\xampp\php\ext C:\xampp\php\ext file_uploads On On highlight.bg #FFFFFF #FFFFFF highlight.comment #FF8000 #FF8000 highlight.default #0000BB #0000BB highlight.html #000000 #000000 highlight.keyword #007700 #007700 highlight.string #DD0000 #DD0000 html_errors On On ignore_repeated_errors Off Off ignore_repeated_source Off Off ignore_user_abort Off Off implicit_flush Off Off include_path .;C:\xampp\php\PEAR .;C:\xampp\php\PEAR log_errors Off Off log_errors_max_len 1024 1024 magic_quotes_gpc Off Off magic_quotes_runtime Off Off magic_quotes_sybase Off Off mail.add_x_header Off Off mail.force_extra_parameters no value no value mail.log no value no value max_execution_time 60 60 max_file_uploads 20 20 max_input_nesting_level 64 64 max_input_time 60 60 memory_limit 128M 128M open_basedir no value no value output_buffering no value no value output_handler no value no value post_max_size 128M 128M precision 14 14 realpath_cache_size 16K 16K realpath_cache_ttl 120 120 register_argc_argv On On register_globals Off Off register_long_arrays Off Off report_memleaks On On report_zend_debug On On request_order no value no value safe_mode Off Off safe_mode_exec_dir no value no value safe_mode_gid Off Off safe_mode_include_dir no value no value sendmail_from no value no value sendmail_path no value no value serialize_precision 100 100 short_open_tag Off Off SMTP localhost localhost smtp_port 25 25 sql.safe_mode Off Off track_errors Off Off unserialize_callback_func no value no value upload_max_filesize 128M 128M upload_tmp_dir C:\xampp\tmp C:\xampp\tmp user_dir no value no value user_ini.cache_ttl 300 300 user_ini.filename .user.ini .user.ini variables_order GPCS GPCS xmlrpc_error_number 0 0 xmlrpc_errors Off Off y2k_compliance On On zend.enable_gc On On ctype ctype functions enabled date date/time support enabled "Olson" Timezone Database Version 2009.18 Timezone Database internal Default timezone America/New_York Directive Local Value Master Value date.default_latitude 31.7667 31.7667 date.default_longitude 35.2333 35.2333 date.sunrise_zenith 90.583333 90.583333 date.sunset_zenith 90.583333 90.583333 date.timezone America/New_York America/New_York dom DOM/XML enabled DOM/XML API Version 20031129 libxml Version 2.7.6 HTML Support enabled XPath Support enabled XPointer Support enabled Schema Support enabled RelaxNG Support enabled ereg Regex Library System library enabled exif EXIF Support enabled EXIF Version 1.4 $Id: exif.c 287372 2009-08-16 14:32:32Z iliaa $ Supported EXIF Version 0220 Supported filetypes JPEG,TIFF Directive Local Value Master Value exif.decode_jis_intel JIS JIS exif.decode_jis_motorola JIS JIS exif.decode_unicode_intel UCS-2LE UCS-2LE exif.decode_unicode_motorola UCS-2BE UCS-2BE exif.encode_jis no value no value exif.encode_unicode ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-15 fileinfo fileinfo support enabled version 1.0.5-dev filter Input Validation and Filtering enabled Revision $Revision: 289434 $ Directive Local Value Master Value filter.default unsafe_raw unsafe_raw filter.default_flags no value no value ftp FTP support enabled gd GD Support enabled GD Version bundled (2.0.34 compatible) FreeType Support enabled FreeType Linkage with freetype FreeType Version 2.3.11 T1Lib Support enabled GIF Read Support enabled GIF Create Support enabled JPEG Support enabled libJPEG Version 7 PNG Support enabled libPNG Version 1.2.40 WBMP Support enabled XBM Support enabled JIS-mapped Japanese Font Support enabled Directive Local Value Master Value gd.jpeg_ignore_warning 0 0 gettext GetText Support enabled hash hash support enabled Hashing Engines md2 md4 md5 sha1 sha224 sha256 sha384 sha512 ripemd128 ripemd160 ripemd256 ripemd320 whirlpool tiger128,3 tiger160,3 tiger192,3 tiger128,4 tiger160,4 tiger192,4 snefru snefru256 gost adler32 crc32 crc32b salsa10 salsa20 haval128,3 haval160,3 haval192,3 haval224,3 haval256,3 haval128,4 haval160,4 haval192,4 haval224,4 haval256,4 haval128,5 haval160,5 haval192,5 haval224,5 haval256,5 iconv iconv support enabled iconv implementation "libiconv" iconv library version 1.13 Directive Local Value Master Value iconv.input_encoding ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1 iconv.internal_encoding ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1 iconv.output_encoding ISO-8859-1 ISO-8859-1 imap IMAP c-Client Version 2007e SSL Support enabled json json support enabled json version 1.2.1 libxml libXML support active libXML Compiled Version 2.7.6 libXML Loaded Version 20706 libXML streams enabled mbstring Multibyte Support enabled Multibyte string engine libmbfl HTTP input encoding translation disabled mbstring extension makes use of "streamable kanji code filter and converter", which is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1. Multibyte (japanese) regex support enabled Multibyte regex (oniguruma) version 4.7.1 Directive Local Value Master Value mbstring.detect_order no value no value mbstring.encoding_translation Off Off mbstring.func_overload 0 0 mbstring.http_input pass pass mbstring.http_output pass pass mbstring.http_output_conv_mimetypes ^(text/|application/xhtml\+xml) ^(text/|application/xhtml\+xml) mbstring.internal_encoding no value no value mbstring.language neutral neutral mbstring.strict_detection Off Off mbstring.substitute_character no value no value mcrypt mcrypt support enabled Version 2.5.8 Api No 20021217 Supported ciphers cast-128 gost rijndael-128 twofish arcfour cast-256 loki97 rijndael-192 saferplus wake blowfish-compat des rijndael-256 serpent xtea blowfish enigma rc2 tripledes Supported modes cbc cfb ctr ecb ncfb nofb ofb stream Directive Local Value Master Value mcrypt.algorithms_dir no value no value mcrypt.modes_dir no value no value mhash MHASH support Enabled MHASH API Version Emulated Support ming Ming SWF output library enabled Version 0.4.3 mysql MySQL Support enabled Active Persistent Links 0 Active Links 0 Client API version 5.1.41 Directive Local Value Master Value mysql.allow_local_infile On On mysql.allow_persistent On On mysql.connect_timeout 60 60 mysql.default_host no value no value mysql.default_password no value no value mysql.default_port 3306 3306 mysql.default_socket MySQL MySQL mysql.default_user no value no value mysql.max_links Unlimited Unlimited mysql.max_persistent Unlimited Unlimited mysql.trace_mode Off Off mysqli MysqlI Support enabled Client API library version 5.1.41 Active Persistent Links 0 Inactive Persistent Links 0 Active Links 0 Client API header version 5.1.41 MYSQLI_SOCKET MySQL Directive Local Value Master Value mysqli.allow_local_infile On On mysqli.allow_persistent On On mysqli.default_host no value no value mysqli.default_port 3306 3306 mysqli.default_pw no value no value mysqli.default_socket MySQL MySQL mysqli.default_user no value no value mysqli.max_links Unlimited Unlimited mysqli.max_persistent Unlimited Unlimited mysqli.reconnect Off Off mysqlnd mysqlnd enabled Version mysqlnd 5.0.5-dev - 081106 - $Revision: 289630 $ Command buffer size 4096 Read buffer size 32768 Read timeout 31536000 Collecting statistics Yes Collecting memory statistics No Client statistics bytes_sent 0 bytes_received 0 packets_sent 0 packets_received 0 protocol_overhead_in 0 protocol_overhead_out 0 bytes_received_ok_packet 0 bytes_received_eof_packet 0 bytes_received_rset_header_packet 0 bytes_received_rset_field_meta_packet 0 bytes_received_rset_row_packet 0 bytes_received_prepare_response_packet 0 bytes_received_change_user_packet 0 packets_sent_command 0 packets_received_ok 0 packets_received_eof 0 packets_received_rset_header 0 packets_received_rset_field_meta 0 packets_received_rset_row 0 packets_received_prepare_response 0 packets_received_change_user 0 result_set_queries 0 non_result_set_queries 0 no_index_used 0 bad_index_used 0 slow_queries 0 buffered_sets 0 unbuffered_sets 0 ps_buffered_sets 0 ps_unbuffered_sets 0 flushed_normal_sets 0 flushed_ps_sets 0 ps_prepared_never_executed 0 ps_prepared_once_executed 0 rows_fetched_from_server_normal 0 rows_fetched_from_server_ps 0 rows_buffered_from_client_normal 0 rows_buffered_from_client_ps 0 rows_fetched_from_client_normal_buffered 0 rows_fetched_from_client_normal_unbuffered 0 rows_fetched_from_client_ps_buffered 0 rows_fetched_from_client_ps_unbuffered 0 rows_fetched_from_client_ps_cursor 0 rows_skipped_normal 0 rows_skipped_ps 0 copy_on_write_saved 0 copy_on_write_performed 0 command_buffer_too_small 0 connect_success 0 connect_failure 0 connection_reused 0 reconnect 0 pconnect_success 0 active_connections 0 active_persistent_connections 0 explicit_close 0 implicit_close 0 disconnect_close 0 in_middle_of_command_close 0 explicit_free_result 0 implicit_free_result 0 explicit_stmt_close 0 implicit_stmt_close 0 mem_emalloc_count 0 mem_emalloc_ammount 0 mem_ecalloc_count 0 mem_ecalloc_ammount 0 mem_erealloc_count 0 mem_erealloc_ammount 0 mem_efree_count 0 mem_malloc_count 0 mem_malloc_ammount 0 mem_calloc_count 0 mem_calloc_ammount 0 mem_realloc_count 0 mem_realloc_ammount 0 mem_free_count 0 proto_text_fetched_null 0 proto_text_fetched_bit 0 proto_text_fetched_tinyint 0 proto_text_fetched_short 0 proto_text_fetched_int24 0 proto_text_fetched_int 0 proto_text_fetched_bigint 0 proto_text_fetched_decimal 0 proto_text_fetched_float 0 proto_text_fetched_double 0 proto_text_fetched_date 0 proto_text_fetched_year 0 proto_text_fetched_time 0 proto_text_fetched_datetime 0 proto_text_fetched_timestamp 0 proto_text_fetched_string 0 proto_text_fetched_blob 0 proto_text_fetched_enum 0 proto_text_fetched_set 0 proto_text_fetched_geometry 0 proto_text_fetched_other 0 proto_binary_fetched_null 0 proto_binary_fetched_bit 0 proto_binary_fetched_tinyint 0 proto_binary_fetched_short 0 proto_binary_fetched_int24 0 proto_binary_fetched_int 0 proto_binary_fetched_bigint 0 proto_binary_fetched_decimal 0 proto_binary_fetched_float 0 proto_binary_fetched_double 0 proto_binary_fetched_date 0 proto_binary_fetched_year 0 proto_binary_fetched_time 0 proto_binary_fetched_datetime 0 proto_binary_fetched_timestamp 0 proto_binary_fetched_string 0 proto_binary_fetched_blob 0 proto_binary_fetched_enum 0 proto_binary_fetched_set 0 proto_binary_fetched_geometry 0 proto_binary_fetched_other 0 init_command_executed_count 0 init_command_failed_count 0 odbc ODBC Support enabled Active Persistent Links 0 Active Links 0 ODBC library Win32 Directive Local Value Master Value odbc.allow_persistent On On odbc.check_persistent On On odbc.default_cursortype Static cursor Static cursor odbc.default_db no value no value odbc.default_pw no value no value odbc.default_user no value no value odbc.defaultbinmode return as is return as is odbc.defaultlrl return up to 4096 bytes return up to 4096 bytes odbc.max_links Unlimited Unlimited odbc.max_persistent Unlimited Unlimited openssl OpenSSL support enabled OpenSSL Library Version OpenSSL 0.9.8l 5 Nov 2009 OpenSSL Header Version OpenSSL 0.9.8l 5 Nov 2009 pcre PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) Support enabled PCRE Library Version 8.00 2009-10-19 Directive Local Value Master Value pcre.backtrack_limit 100000 100000 pcre.recursion_limit 100000 100000 pdf PDF Support enabled PDFlib GmbH Version 7.0.4p4 PECL Version 2.1.6 Revision $Revision: 277110 $ PDO PDO support enabled PDO drivers mysql, odbc, sqlite, sqlite2 pdo_mysql PDO Driver for MySQL enabled Client API version 5.1.41 PDO_ODBC PDO Driver for ODBC (Win32) enabled ODBC Connection Pooling Enabled, strict matching pdo_sqlite PDO Driver for SQLite 3.x enabled SQLite Library 3.6.20 Phar Phar: PHP Archive support enabled Phar EXT version 2.0.1 Phar API version 1.1.1 CVS revision $Revision: 286338 $ Phar-based phar archives enabled Tar-based phar archives enabled ZIP-based phar archives enabled gzip compression enabled bzip2 compression enabled Native OpenSSL support enabled Phar based on pear/PHP_Archive, original concept by Davey Shafik. Phar fully realized by Gregory Beaver and Marcus Boerger. Portions of tar implementation Copyright (c) 2003-2009 Tim Kientzle. Directive Local Value Master Value phar.cache_list no value no value phar.readonly On On phar.require_hash On On Reflection Reflection enabled Version $Revision: 287991 $ session Session Support enabled Registered save handlers files user sqlite Registered serializer handlers php php_binary wddx Directive Local Value Master Value session.auto_start Off Off session.bug_compat_42 On On session.bug_compat_warn On On session.cache_expire 180 180 session.cache_limiter nocache nocache session.cookie_domain no value no value session.cookie_httponly Off Off session.cookie_lifetime 0 0 session.cookie_path / / session.cookie_secure Off Off session.entropy_file no value no value session.entropy_length 0 0 session.gc_divisor 100 100 session.gc_maxlifetime 1440 1440 session.gc_probability 1 1 session.hash_bits_per_character 5 5 session.hash_function 0 0 session.name PHPSESSID PHPSESSID session.referer_check no value no value session.save_handler files files session.save_path C:\xampp\tmp C:\xampp\tmp session.serialize_handler php php session.use_cookies On On session.use_only_cookies Off Off session.use_trans_sid 0 0 SimpleXML Simplexml support enabled Revision $Revision: 281953 $ Schema support enabled soap Soap Client enabled Soap Server enabled Directive Local Value Master Value soap.wsdl_cache 1 1 soap.wsdl_cache_dir /tmp /tmp soap.wsdl_cache_enabled 1 1 soap.wsdl_cache_limit 5 5 soap.wsdl_cache_ttl 86400 86400 sockets Sockets Support enabled SPL SPL support enabled Interfaces Countable, OuterIterator, RecursiveIterator, SeekableIterator, SplObserver, SplSubject Classes AppendIterator, ArrayIterator, ArrayObject, BadFunctionCallException, BadMethodCallException, CachingIterator, DirectoryIterator, DomainException, EmptyIterator, FilesystemIterator, FilterIterator, GlobIterator, InfiniteIterator, InvalidArgumentException, IteratorIterator, LengthException, LimitIterator, LogicException, MultipleIterator, NoRewindIterator, OutOfBoundsException, OutOfRangeException, OverflowException, ParentIterator, RangeException, RecursiveArrayIterator, RecursiveCachingIterator, RecursiveDirectoryIterator, RecursiveFilterIterator, RecursiveIteratorIterator, RecursiveRegexIterator, RecursiveTreeIterator, RegexIterator, RuntimeException, SplDoublyLinkedList, SplFileInfo, SplFileObject, SplFixedArray, SplHeap, SplMinHeap, SplMaxHeap, SplObjectStorage, SplPriorityQueue, SplQueue, SplStack, SplTempFileObject, UnderflowException, UnexpectedValueException SQLite SQLite support enabled PECL Module version 2.0-dev $Id: sqlite.c 289598 2009-10-12 22:37:52Z pajoye $ SQLite Library 2.8.17 SQLite Encoding iso8859 Directive Local Value Master Value sqlite.assoc_case 0 0 sqlite3 SQLite3 support enabled SQLite3 module version 0.7-dev SQLite Library 3.6.20 Directive Local Value Master Value sqlite3.extension_dir no value no value standard Dynamic Library Support enabled Internal Sendmail Support for Windows enabled Directive Local Value Master Value assert.active 1 1 assert.bail 0 0 assert.callback no value no value assert.quiet_eval 0 0 assert.warning 1 1 auto_detect_line_endings 0 0 default_socket_timeout 60 60 safe_mode_allowed_env_vars PHP_ PHP_ safe_mode_protected_env_vars LD_LIBRARY_PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH url_rewriter.tags a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=,fieldset= a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=,fieldset= user_agent no value no value tokenizer Tokenizer Support enabled wddx WDDX Support enabled WDDX Session Serializer enabled xml XML Support active XML Namespace Support active libxml2 Version 2.7.6 xmlreader XMLReader enabled xmlrpc core library version xmlrpc-epi v. 0.54 php extension version 0.51 author Dan Libby homepage http://xmlrpc-epi.sourceforge.net open sourced by Epinions.com xmlwriter XMLWriter enabled xsl XSL enabled libxslt Version 1.1.26 libxslt compiled against libxml Version 2.7.6 EXSLT enabled libexslt Version 1.1.26 zip Zip enabled Extension Version $Id: php_zip.c 276389 2009-02-24 23:55:14Z iliaa $ Zip version 1.9.1 Libzip version 0.9.0 zlib ZLib Support enabled Stream Wrapper support compress.zlib:// Stream Filter support zlib.inflate, zlib.deflate Compiled Version 1.2.3 Linked Version 1.2.3 Directive Local Value Master Value zlib.output_compression Off Off zlib.output_compression_level -1 -1 zlib.output_handler no value no value Additional Modules Module Name Environment Variable Value no value ::=::\ no value C:=C:\xampp ALLUSERSPROFILE C:\Documents and Settings\All Users APPDATA C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew\Application Data CHROME_RESTART Google Chrome|Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?|LEFT_TO_RIGHT CHROME_VERSION 5.0.342.8 CLASSPATH .;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\QTJava.zip CommonProgramFiles C:\Program Files\Common Files COMPUTERNAME ANDREW_LAPTOP ComSpec C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe FP_NO_HOST_CHECK NO HOMEDRIVE C: HOMEPATH \Documents and Settings\Andrew LOGONSERVER \\ANDREW_LAPTOP NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS 2 OS Windows_NT PATH C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn\;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\DivX Shared\;C:\Program Files\WiTopia.Net\bin PATHEXT .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE x86 PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 10, GenuineIntel PROCESSOR_LEVEL 6 PROCESSOR_REVISION 0f0a ProgramFiles C:\Program Files PROMPT $P$G QTJAVA C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\QTJava.zip SESSIONNAME Console sfxcmd "C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew\My Documents\Downloads\xampp-win32-1.7.3.exe" sfxname C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew\My Documents\Downloads\xampp-win32-1.7.3.exe SystemDrive C: SystemRoot C:\WINDOWS TEMP C:\DOCUME~1\Andrew\LOCALS~1\Temp TMP C:\DOCUME~1\Andrew\LOCALS~1\Temp USERDOMAIN ANDREW_LAPTOP USERNAME Andrew USERPROFILE C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew VS100COMNTOOLS C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\Tools\ windir C:\WINDOWS AP_PARENT_PID 2216 PHP Variables Variable Value _SERVER["MIBDIRS"] C:/xampp/php/extras/mibs _SERVER["MYSQL_HOME"] C:\xampp\mysql\bin _SERVER["OPENSSL_CONF"] C:/xampp/apache/bin/openssl.cnf _SERVER["PHP_PEAR_SYSCONF_DIR"] C:\xampp\php _SERVER["PHPRC"] C:\xampp\php _SERVER["TMP"] C:\xampp\tmp _SERVER["HTTP_HOST"] localhost _SERVER["HTTP_CONNECTION"] keep-alive _SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"] Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.342.8 Safari/533.2 _SERVER["HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL"] max-age=0 _SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT"] application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5 _SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING"] gzip,deflate,sdch _SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"] en-US,en;q=0.8 _SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET"] ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 _SERVER["PATH"] C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\;c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Binn\;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\DivX Shared\;C:\Program Files\WiTopia.Net\bin _SERVER["SystemRoot"] C:\WINDOWS _SERVER["COMSPEC"] C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe _SERVER["PATHEXT"] .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH _SERVER["WINDIR"] C:\WINDOWS _SERVER["SERVER_SIGNATURE"] <address>Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.3.1 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.7.1 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 Server at localhost Port 80</address> _SERVER["SERVER_SOFTWARE"] Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.3.1 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.7.1 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 _SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] localhost _SERVER["SERVER_ADDR"] 127.0.0.1 _SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] 80 _SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] 127.0.0.1 _SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] C:/xampp/htdocs _SERVER["SERVER_ADMIN"] postmaster@localhost _SERVER["SCRIPT_FILENAME"] C:/xampp/htdocs/test.php _SERVER["REMOTE_PORT"] 3275 _SERVER["GATEWAY_INTERFACE"] CGI/1.1 _SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"] HTTP/1.1 _SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] GET _SERVER["QUERY_STRING"] no value _SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] /test.php _SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"] /test.php _SERVER["PHP_SELF"] /test.php _SERVER["REQUEST_TIME"] 1270600868 _SERVER["argv"] Array ( ) _SERVER["argc"] 0 PHP License This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the PHP License as published by the PHP Group and included in the distribution in the file: LICENSE This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. If you did not receive a copy of the PHP license, or have any questions about PHP licensing, please contact [email protected].

Search Results

Search found 16467 results on 659 pages for 'request filtering'.

Page 613/659 | < Previous Page | 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 | Next Page >

- by Daniel Moth

- by exasperated

- by Dave Campbell

- by Valter Minute

- by jsavit

- by Richard Lefebvre

- by Frank Nimphius

- by arungupta

- by Ajay Khanna

- by Jacek Ziabicki

- by Geertjan

- by Dylan Smith

- by Marko Apfel

- by David Dorf

- by Phil Factor

- by Dave Ballantyne

- by Simon Cooper

- by jamiet

- by Herve Roggero

- by Steve Felts

- by Your DisplayName here!

- by Cherry

- by Steve Felts

- by hmloo

- by burnt1ce

< Previous Page | 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 | Next Page >