variable names - Page 636

T-SQL Tuesday #005 : SSRS Parameters and MDX Data Sets

- by blakmk

Well it this weeks T-SQL Tuesday #005 topic seems quite fitting. Having spent the past few weeks creating reports and dashboards in SSRS and SSAS 2008, I was frustrated by how difficult it is to use custom datasets to generate parameter drill downs. It also seems Reporting Services can be quite unforgiving when it comes to renaming things like datasets, so I want to share a couple of techniques that I found useful. One of the things I regularly do is to add parameters to the querys. However doing this causes Reporting Services to generate a hidden dataset and parameter name for you. One of the things I like to do is tweak these hidden datasets removing the ‘ALL’ level which is a tip I picked up from Devin Knight in his blog: There are some rules i’ve developed for myself since working with SSRS and MDX, they may not be the best or only way but they work for me. Rule 1 – Never trust the automatically generated hidden datasets Or even ANY, automatically generated MDX queries for that matter.... I’ve previously blogged about this here. If you examine the MDX generated in the hidden dataset you will see that it generates the MDX in the context of the originiating query by building a subcube, this mean it may NOT be appropriate to use this in a subsequent query which has a different context. Make sure you always understand what is going on. Often when i’m developing a dashboard or a report there are several parameter oriented datasets that I like to manually create. It can be that I have different datasets using the same dimension but in a different context. One example of this, is that I often use a dataset for last month and a dataset for the last 6 months. Both use the same date hierarchy. However Reporting Services seems not to be too smart when it comes to generating unique datasets when working with and renaming parameters and datasets. Very often I have come across this error when it comes to refactoring parameter names and default datasets. "an item with the same key has already been added" The only way I’ve found to reliably avoid this is to obey to rule 2. Rule 2 – Follow this sequence when it comes to working with Parameters and DataSets: 1. Create Lookup and Default Datasets in advance 2. Create parameters (set the datasets for available and default values) 3. Go into query and tick parameter check box 4. On dataset properties screen, select the parameter defined earlier from the parameter value defined earlier. Rule 3 – Dont tear your hair out when you have just renamed objects and your report doesn’t build Just use XML notepad on the original report file. I found I gained a good understanding of the structure of the underlying XML document just by using XML notepad. From this you can do a search and find references of the missing object. You can also just do a wholesale search and replace (after taking a backup copy of course ;-) So I hope the above help to save the sanity of anyone who regularly works with SSRS and MDX. @Blakmk

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Why SQL Developer Rocks for the Advanced User Too

- by thatjeffsmith

While SQL Developer may be ‘perfect for Oracle beginners,’ that doesn’t preclude advanced and intermediate users from getting their fair share of toys! I’ve been working with Oracle since the 7.3.4 days, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that the WAY an ‘old timer’ uses a tool like SQL Developer is radically different than the ‘beginner.’ If you’ve been reluctant to use SQL Developer because it’s a GUI, give me a few minutes to try to convince you it’s worth a second (or third) look. 1. Help when you want it, and only when you want it One of the biggest gripes any user has with a piece of software is when said software can’t get out of it’s own way. When you’re typing in a word processor, sometimes you can do without the grammar and spelling checks, the offer to auto-complete your words, and all of the additional mark-up. This drives folks to programs like Notepad++ and vi. You can disable the code insight feature so you can type unmolested by SQL Developer’s attempt to auto-complete your object names. Now, if you happen to come across a long or hard to spell object name, you can still invoke the feature on demand using Ctrl+Spacebar Code Editor – Completion Insight – Enable Completion Auto-Popup (Keyword being Auto) 2. Automatic File Tracking SQL*Minus is nice. Vi is cool. Notepad++ has a lot of features I like. But not too many editors offer automatic logging of changes to your files without having to setup a source control system. I was doing some work on my login.sql. I’m not doing anything crazy, but seeing what I had done in previous iterations was helpful. Now imagine how nice it would be to have this available for your l,000+ line scripts! Track your scripts as they change, no setup required! 3. Extend the Functionality Know SQL and XML? Wish SQL Developer did JUST a little bit more? Build your own extensions. You can have custom context menus and object pages in just a few minutes. This is an example of lazy developers writing code that write code. 4. Get Your Money’s Worth You’ve licensed Enterprise Edition. You got your Diagnostic and Tuning packs. Now start using them! Not everyone has access to Enterprise Manager, especially developers. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need help with troubleshooting and optimizing poorly performing SQL statements. ASH, AWR, Real-Time SQL Monitoring and the SQL Tuning Advisor are built into the Reports and Worksheet. Yes you could make the package calls, but that’s a whole lot of typing, and I’d rather just get to the results. 5. Profile, Debug, & Unit Testing PLSQL An Interactive Development Environment (IDE) built by the same folks that own the programming language (Hello – Oracle PLSQL!) should be complete. It should ‘hug’ the developer and empower them to churn out programs that work, run fast, and are easy to maintain. Write it, test it, debug it, and tune it. When you’re running your programs and you just want to see the data that’s returned, that shouldn’t require any special settings or workaround to make it happen either. Magic! And a whole lot more… I could go on and talk about the support for things like DataPump, RMAN, and DBMS_SCHEDULER, but you’re experts and you’re plenty busy. If you think SQL Developer is falling short somewhere, I want you to let us know about it.

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Bash completion doesn't work, or is ignoring what I've typed; but works for commands

- by Neil Traft

Bash completion seems to be ignoring what I've typed (it tries to complete, but acts as if there's nothing under the cursor). I know I saw it work on this machine earlier today, but I'm not sure what has changed. Some examples: cd shows all directories under my current folder: $ cd co<tab><tab> cmake/ config/ doc/ examples/ include/ programs/ sandbox/ src/ .svn/ tests/ Commands like ls and less show all files and directories under my current folder: $ ls co<tab><tab> cmake/ config/ .cproject Doxyfile.in include/ programs/ README.txt src/ tests/ CMakeLists.txt COPYING.txt doc/ examples/ mainpage.dox .project sandbox/ .svn/ Even when I try to complete things from a different folder, it gives me only the results for my current folder (telling me that it is completely ignoring what I've typed): $ cd ~/D<tab><tab> cmake/ config/ doc/ examples/ include/ programs/ sandbox/ src/ .svn/ tests/ But it seems to be working fine for commands and variables: $ if<tab><tab> if ifconfig ifdown ifnames ifquery ifup $ echo $P<tab><tab> $PATH $PIPESTATUS $PPID $PS1 $PS2 $PS4 $PWD $PYTHONPATH I do have this bit in my .bashrc, and I have confirmed that my .bashrc is indeed getting sourced: if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then . /etc/bash_completion fi I've even tried manually executing that file, but it doesn't fix the problem: $ . /etc/bash_completion There was even one point in time where it was working for ls, but was not working for cd ... but I can't replicate that result now. Update: I also just discovered that I have terminals open from earlier that still work. I ran source .bashrc in one of them and afterwards completion was broken. Here is my .bashrc: # ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells. # see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files (in the package bash-doc) # for examples # # Modified by Neil Traft #source ~/.profile # Allow globs to expand hidden files shopt -s dotglob nullglob # If not running interactively, don't do anything [ -z "$PS1" ] && return # don't put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history. # See bash(1) for more options HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth # append to the history file, don't overwrite it shopt -s histappend # for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1) HISTSIZE=1000 HISTFILESIZE=2000 # check the window size after each command and, if necessary, # update the values of LINES and COLUMNS. shopt -s checkwinsize # If set, the pattern "**" used in a pathname expansion context will # match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. #shopt -s globstar # make less more friendly for non-text input files, see lesspipe(1) [ -x /usr/bin/lesspipe ] && eval "$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)" # set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below) if [ -z "$debian_chroot" ] && [ -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot) fi # Color the prompt export PS1="\[$(tput setaf 2)\]\u@\h:\[$(tput setaf 5)\]\W\[$(tput setaf 2)\] $\[$(tput sgr0)\] " # enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases if [ -x /usr/bin/dircolors ]; then test -r ~/.dircolors && eval "$(dircolors -b ~/.dircolors)" || eval "$(dircolors -b)" alias ls='ls --color=auto' #alias dir='dir --color=auto' #alias vdir='vdir --color=auto' alias grep='grep --color=auto' alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto' alias egrep='egrep --color=auto' fi # Add an "alert" alias for long running commands. Use like so: # sleep 10; alert alias alert='notify-send --urgency=low -i "$([ $? = 0 ] && echo terminal || echo error)" "$(history|tail -n1|sed -e '\''s/^\s*[0-9]\+\s*//;s/[;&|]\s*alert$//'\'')"' # Alias definitions. # You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like # ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly. # See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package. if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then . ~/.bash_aliases fi # enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable # this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile # sources /etc/bash.bashrc). if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then . /etc/bash_completion fi

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Why you need to tag your build servers in TFS

- by Martin Hinshelwood

At SSW we use gated check-in for all of our projects. The benefits are based on the number of developers you have working on your project. Lets say you have 30 developers and each developer breaks the build once per month. That could mean that you have a broken build every day! Gated check-ins help, but they have a down side that manifests as queued builds and moaning developers. The way to combat this is to have more build servers, but with that comes complexity. Inevitably you will need to install components that you would expect to be installed on target computers, but how do you keep track of which build servers have which bits? What about a geographically diverse team? If you have a centrally controlled infrastructure you might have build servers in multiple regions and you don’t want teams in Sydney copying files from Beijing and vice a versa on a regular basis. So, what is the answer. Its Tags. You can add a set of Tags to your agents and then set which tags to look for in the build definition. Figure: Open up your Build Controller Manager Select “Build | Manage Build Controllers…” to get a list of all of your controllers and he build agents that are associated with them. Figure: the list of build agents and their controllers Each of these Agents might be subtly different. For example only one of these agents has FTP software installed. This software is required for only one of the many builds we have set up. My ethos for build servers is to keep them as clean as possible and not to install anything that is not absolutely necessary. For me that means anything that does not add a *.target file is suspect, and should really be under version control and called via the command line from there. So, some of the things you may install are: Silverlight 4 SDK Visual Studio 2010 Visual Studio 2008 WIX etc You should not install things that will not end up on the target users computer. For a website that means something different to a client than to a server, but I am sure you get the idea. One thing you can do to make things easier is to create a tag for each of the things that you install. that way developers can find the things they need. We may change to using a more generic tagging structure (Like “Web Application” or “WinForms Application”) if this gets too unwieldy, but for now the list of tags is limited. Figure: Tags associated with one of our build agents Once you have your Build Agents all tagged up ALL your builds will start to fail This is because the default setting for a build is to look for an Agent that exactly matches the tags for the build, and we have not added any yet. The quick way to fix this is to change the “Tag Comparison Operator” from “ExactMatch” to “MatchAtLease” to get your build immediately working. Figure: Tag Comparison Operator changes to MatchAtLeast to get builds to run. The next thing to do is look for specific tags. You just select from the list of available tags and the controller will make sure you get to a build agent that uses them. Figure: I want Silverlight, VS2010 and WIX, but do not care about Location. And there you go, you can now have build agents for different purposes and regions within the same environment. You can also use name filtering, so if you have a good Agent naming convention you can filter by that for regions. For example, your Agents might be “SYDVMAPTFSBP01” and “SYDVMAPTFSBP02” so a name filter of “SYD*” would target all of the Sydney build agents. Figure: Agent names can be used for filtering as well This flexibility will allow you to build better software by reducing the likelihood of not having a certain dependency on the target machines. Figure: Setting the name filter based on server location Used in combination there is a lot of power here to coordinate tens of build servers for multiple projects across multiple regions so your developers get the most out of your environment. Technorati Tags: ALM,TFBS,TFS 2010,TFS Admin

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Will You Accept This Rose?

- by user715249

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Ashley, Bentley and the Masked Man. If these names mean anything to you we know where you’ll be on Monday night – planted in front of your television awaiting the villain’s return and what is sure to be the most dramatic rose ceremony yet on the Bachelorette. If you’re the Oracle PartnerNetwork Communications Team you’ll be spending your Monday night putting the final touches on the most exciting Partner Kickoff Event yet. Listen in as Judson tells you more. Starting at 6:00 AM PT on Tuesday, June 29th partners – and potential partners – can tune in to watch the excitement unfold at partner.oracle.com. The storyline for FY12 will continue to unfold with a special role being outlined for our ISV partners. SPOILER ALERT: OPN has made an investment in how we’ll go to market together – trust us - you don’t want to get this news from the highlight reel. While we won’t be sending anyone home from the show, we do promise an exciting hour which will gear you up to go to market with Oracle in the new fiscal year. The Oracle PartnerNetwork FY12 Kickoff is being held live 5 times and will include a ‘date card’ message for each region. EMEA Kickoff - Tuesday, June 29, at 6 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. BT LAD Kickoff – Tuesday, June 29, at 8 a.m. PT / noon DT North America Kickoff – Tuesday, June 29, at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET Japan Kickoff – Tuesday, June 29, at 6 p.m. PT / Wednesday, June 30, at 10 a.m. JT (Tokyo) APAC Kickoff– Tuesday, June 29, at 8 p.m. PT / Wednesday, June 30, at 11 a.m. SGT (Singapore) / 1 p.m. AET (Sydney) We’ll be taking your questions live throughout the show – we hope you’ll “accept our rose” and join us on this amazing journey. The OPN Communications Team

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How to store a shmup level?

- by pek

I am developing a 2D shmup (i.e. Aero Fighters) and I was wondering what are the various ways to store a level. Assuming that enemies are defined in their own xml file, how would you define when an enemy spawns in the level? Would it be based on time? Updates? Distance? Currently I do this based on "level time" (the amount of time the level is running - pausing doesn't update the time). Here is an example (the serialization was done by XNA): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <XnaContent xmlns:level="pekalicious.xanor.XanorContentShared.content.level"> <Asset Type="level:Level"> <Enemies> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/smallenemy</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT0S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>60</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0.2S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/secondenemy</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT0S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>10</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0.5S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/secondenemy</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT20S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>10</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0.5S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> <Enemy> <EnemyType>data/enemies/boss1</EnemyType> <SpawnTime>PT30S</SpawnTime> <NumberOfSpawns>1</NumberOfSpawns> <SpawnOffset>PT0S</SpawnOffset> </Enemy> </Enemies> </Asset> </XnaContent> Each Enemy element is basically a wave of specific enemy types. The type is defined in EnemyType while SpawnTime is the "level time" this wave should appear. NumberOfSpawns and SpawnOffset is the number of enemies that will show up and the time it takes between each spawn respectively. This could be a good idea or there could be better ones out there. I'm not sure. I would like to see some opinions and ideas. I have two problems with this: spawning an enemy correctly and creating a level editor. The level editor thing is an entirely different problem (which I will probably post in the future :P). As for spawning correctly, the problem lies in the fact that I have a variable update time and so I need to make sure I don't miss an enemy spawn because the spawn offset is too small, or because the update took a little more time. I kinda fixed it for the most part, but it seems to me that the problem is with how I store the level. So, any ideas? Comments? Thank you in advance.

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SPARC T4-2 Produces World Record Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Benchmark Result

- by Brian

Significance of Results Oracle's SPARC T4-2 server configured with a Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array and running Oracle Solaris 10 with Oracle Database 11g has achieved exceptional performance for the Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Option benchmark. The benchmark has upwards of 1 billion records, 15 dimensions and millions of members. Oracle Essbase is a multi-dimensional online analytical processing (OLAP) server and is well-suited to work well with SPARC T4 servers. The SPARC T4-2 server (2 cpus) running Oracle Essbase 11.1.2.2.100 outperformed the previous published results on Oracle's SPARC Enterprise M5000 server (4 cpus) with Oracle Essbase 11.1.1.3 on Oracle Solaris 10 by 80%, 32% and 2x performance improvement on Data Loading, Default Aggregation and Usage Based Aggregation, respectively. The SPARC T4-2 server with Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array and Oracle Essbase running on Oracle Solaris 10 achieves sub-second query response times for 20,000 users in a 15 dimension database. The SPARC T4-2 server configured with Oracle Essbase was able to aggregate and store values in the database for a 15 dimension cube in 398 minutes with 16 threads and in 484 minutes with 8 threads. The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array provides more than a 20% improvement out-of-the-box compared to a mid-size fiber channel disk array for default aggregation and user-based aggregation. The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array with Oracle Essbase provides the best combination for large Oracle Essbase databases leveraging Oracle Solaris ZFS and taking advantage of high bandwidth for faster load and aggregation. Oracle Fusion Middleware provides a family of complete, integrated, hot pluggable and best-of-breed products known for enabling enterprise customers to create and run agile and intelligent business applications. Oracle Essbase's performance demonstrates why so many customers rely on Oracle Fusion Middleware as their foundation for innovation. Performance Landscape System Data Size(millions of items) Database Load(minutes) Default Aggregation(minutes) Usage Based Aggregation(minutes) SPARC T4-2, 2 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz 1000 149 398* 55 Sun M5000, 4 x SPARC64 VII 2.53 GHz 1000 269 526 115 Sun M5000, 4 x SPARC64 VII 2.4 GHz 400 120 448 18 * – 398 mins with CALCPARALLEL set to 16; 484 mins with CALCPARALLEL threads set to 8 Configuration Summary Hardware Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-2 2 x 2.85 GHz SPARC T4 processors 128 GB memory 2 x 300 GB 10000 RPM SAS internal disks Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array 40 x 24 GB flash modules SAS HBA with 2 SAS channels Data Storage Scheme Striped - RAID 0 Oracle Solaris ZFS Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 Installer V 11.1.2.2.100 Oracle Essbase Client v 11.1.2.2.100 Oracle Essbase v 11.1.2.2.100 Oracle Essbase Administration services 64-bit Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) HP's Mercury Interactive QuickTest Professional 9.5.0 Benchmark Description The objective of the Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Option benchmark is to showcase the ability of Oracle Essbase to scale in terms of user population and data volume for large enterprise deployments. Typical administrative and end-user operations for OLAP applications were simulated to produce benchmark results. The benchmark test results include: Database Load: Time elapsed to build a database including outline and data load. Default Aggregation: Time elapsed to build aggregation. User Based Aggregation: Time elapsed of the aggregate views proposed as a result of tracked retrieval queries. Summary of the data used for this benchmark: 40 flat files, each of size 1.2 GB, 49.4 GB in total 10 million rows per file, 1 billion rows total 28 columns of data per row Database outline has 15 dimensions (five of them are attribute dimensions) Customer dimension has 13.3 million members 3 rule files Key Points and Best Practices The Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array has been used to accelerate the application performance. Setting data load threads (DLTHREADSPREPARE) to 64 and Load Buffer to 6 improved dataloading by about 9%. Factors influencing aggregation materialization performance are "Aggregate Storage Cache" and "Number of Threads" (CALCPARALLEL) for parallel view materialization. The optimal values for this workload on the SPARC T4-2 server were: Aggregate Storage Cache: 32 GB CALCPARALLEL: 16 See Also Oracle Essbase Aggregate Storage Option Benchmark on Oracle's SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com Oracle Essbase oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 28 August 2012.

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Welcome to the Oracle Retail International Blog

- by sarah.taylor(at)oracle.com

Welcome to the first post of the new Oracle Retail International Blog. Retail is an international business and today's successful retailers view themselves in the context of a global market. A niche fashion business in Tokyo will learn marketing strategies from the luxury brands of Milan, an independent grocer in Oslo will source the same global brands as a supermarket in Oklahoma, and every retailer in the world will measure their multi-channel operation against the international e-commerce giant Amazon. Why? Because today's customer is a global customer with unparalleled expectations on choice, price and service. Today's consumers have access to more information on retail than ever before. Technology allows people to shop from their home, their office or from the phone in their pocket, wherever they are and at whatever time suits them. Customers are using the web to search for products and promotions. They are also using the web to develop their voice in commenting on products and services that have delighted or disappointed. In an information rich industry, this customer element creates a new world of data. The best retailers are developing eagle eyes for reading customer activity and turning it into profitable decisions. Ultimately, whether you choose to compete or shop on price, service, product innovation, excellent operations or all of the above - the international world of retail has become an inspiration for all - retailer and consumer alike. Retail as an industry is growing and diversifying at a faster rate than ever before. Yet it is still the customer who picks the winners and the losers on the retail field. Economic circumstances transform the rules, but it is still the customer who dictates the game, the pace, the price, and the perception of the brand. Wise retailers never rest on their laurels. They are always shopping for ideas on how to improve and differentiate the offer at every touch point to meet the customer's needs better than anyone else and to gain each customer's loyalty at a time when loyalty can be cheap. With this blog, I hope that we might provide a hub for discussion around what unifies retail and how technology supports both the retailer and customer experience. Despite the competitive nature of this market, we hope that this will provide an opportunity to share experiences and lessons learnt with a view that knowledge can only help this industry to grow and develop. At Oracle we've been supporting retailers for many years. Many of us have worked within retail organisations all over the world, myself included. With this in mind, I don't feel it is too bold a statement to say that Oracle understands retail. We wouldn't be so heavily integrated in some of the biggest and most well-known names in retail if we didn't. With this blog, we intend to create a community of international retailers that can exchange ideas and experiences, debate collective challenges and drive a better understanding of this continually evolving industry. Events such as the World Retail Congress and NRF's Big Show bring enormous value to the retail industry providing platforms for discussion and learning but they happen once a year. We wanted to create a platform for discussion on a different level and that like retail, is always on. We hope not only to bring commitment to being not only the infrastructure that brings all of their systems together within a retail business, but an infrastructure that supports the industry internationally to grow and flourish through creating a platform for networking, discussion, creativity, vision and strategy. Please feel free to ask questions or comment using the comments functionality. You might also want to visit our other Oracle Retail social media sites: Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/oracleretail YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/oracleretail Twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/oracleretailInsight-Driven Retailing Blog - http://blogs.oracle.com/retail/

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SSRS Parameters and MDX Data Sets

- by blakmk

Having spent the past few weeks creating reports and dashboards in SSRS and SSAS 2008, I was frustrated by how difficult it is to use custom datasets to generate parameter drill downs. It also seems Reporting Services can be quite unforgiving when it comes to renaming things like datasets, so I want to share a couple of techniques that I found useful. One of the things I regularly do is to add parameters to the querys. However doing this causes Reporting Services to generate a hidden dataset and parameter name for you. One of the things I like to do is tweak these hidden datasets removing the ‘ALL’ level which is a tip I picked up from Devin Knight in his blog: There are some rules i’ve developed for myself since working with SSRS and MDX, they may not be the best or only way but they work for me. Rule 1 – Never trust the automatically generated hidden datasets Or even ANY, automatically generated MDX queries for that matter.... I’ve previously blogged about this here. If you examine the MDX generated in the hidden dataset you will see that it generates the MDX in the context of the originiating query by building a subcube, this mean it may NOT be appropriate to use this in a subsequent query which has a different context. Make sure you always understand what is going on. Often when i’m developing a dashboard or a report there are several parameter oriented datasets that I like to manually create. It can be that I have different datasets using the same dimension but in a different context. One example of this, is that I often use a dataset for last month and a dataset for the last 6 months. Both use the same date hierarchy. However Reporting Services seems not to be too smart when it comes to generating unique datasets when working with and renaming parameters and datasets. Very often I have come across this error when it comes to refactoring parameter names and default datasets. "an item with the same key has already been added" The only way I’ve found to reliably avoid this is to obey to rule 2. Rule 2 – Follow this sequence when it comes to working with Parameters and DataSets: 1. Create Lookup and Default Datasets in advance 2. Create parameters (set the datasets for available and default values) 3. Go into query and tick parameter check box 4. On dataset properties screen, select the parameter defined earlier from the parameter value defined earlier. Rule 3 – Dont tear your hair out when you have just renamed objects and your report doesn’t build Just use XML notepad on the original report file. I found I gained a good understanding of the structure of the underlying XML document just by using XML notepad. From this you can do a search and find references of the missing object. You can also just do a wholesale search and replace (after taking a backup copy of course ;-) So I hope the above help to save the sanity of anyone who regularly works with SSRS and MDX.

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Achieve Named Criteria with multiple tables in EJB Data control

- by Deepak Siddappa

In EJB create a named criteria using sparse xml and in named criteria wizard, only attributes related to the that particular entities will be displayed. So here we can filter results only on particular entity bean. Take a scenario where we need to create Named Criteria based on multiple tables using EJB. In BC4J we can achieve this by creating view object based on multiple tables. So in this article, we will try to achieve named criteria based on multiple tables using EJB.Implementation StepsCreate Java EE Web Application with entity based on Departments and Employees, then create a session bean and data control for the session bean.Create a Java Bean, name as CustomBean and add below code to the file. Here in java bean from both Departments and Employees tables three fields are taken. public class CustomBean { private BigDecimal departmentId; private String departmentName; private BigDecimal locationId; private BigDecimal employeeId; private String firstName; private String lastName; public CustomBean() { super(); } public void setDepartmentId(BigDecimal departmentId) { this.departmentId = departmentId; } public BigDecimal getDepartmentId() { return departmentId; } public void setDepartmentName(String departmentName) { this.departmentName = departmentName; } public String getDepartmentName() { return departmentName; } public void setLocationId(BigDecimal locationId) { this.locationId = locationId; } public BigDecimal getLocationId() { return locationId; } public void setEmployeeId(BigDecimal employeeId) { this.employeeId = employeeId; } public BigDecimal getEmployeeId() { return employeeId; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } } Open the sessionEJb file and add the below code to the session bean and expose the method in local/remote interface and generate a data control for that. Note:- Here in the below code "em" is a EntityManager. public List<CustomBean> getCustomBeanFindAll() { String queryString = "select d.department_id, d.department_name, d.location_id, e.employee_id, e.first_name, e.last_name from departments d, employees e\n" + "where e.department_id = d.department_id"; Query genericSearchQuery = em.createNativeQuery(queryString, "CustomQuery"); List resultList = genericSearchQuery.getResultList(); Iterator resultListIterator = resultList.iterator(); List<CustomBean> customList = new ArrayList(); while (resultListIterator.hasNext()) { Object col[] = (Object[])resultListIterator.next(); CustomBean custom = new CustomBean(); custom.setDepartmentId((BigDecimal)col[0]); custom.setDepartmentName((String)col[1]); custom.setLocationId((BigDecimal)col[2]); custom.setEmployeeId((BigDecimal)col[3]); custom.setFirstName((String)col[4]); custom.setLastName((String)col[5]); customList.add(custom); } return customList; } Open the DataControls.dcx file and create sparse xml for customBean. In sparse xml navigate to Named criteria tab -> Bind Variable section, create two binding variables deptId,fName. In sparse xml navigate to Named criteria tab ->Named criteria, create a named criteria and map the query attributes to the bind variables. In the ViewController create a file jspx page, from data control palette drop customBeanFindAll->Named Criteria->CustomBeanCriteria->Query as ADF Query Panel with Table. Run the jspx page and enter values in search form with departmentId as 50 and firstName as "M". Named criteria will filter the query of a data source and display the result like below.

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TechEd Israel 2010 may only accept speakers from sponsors

- by RoyOsherove

A month or so ago, Microsoft Israel started sending out emails to its partners and registered event users to “Save the date!” – Micraoft Teched Israel is coming, and it’s going to be this november! “Great news” I thought to myself. I’d been to a couple of the MS teched events, as a speaker and as an attendee, and it was lovely and professionally done. Israel is an amazing place for technology and development and TechEd hosted some big names in the world of MS software. A couple of weeks ago, I was shocked to hear from a couple of people that Microsoft Israel plans to only accept non-MS teched speakers, only from sponsors of the event. That means that according to the amount that you have paid, you get to insert one or more of your own selected speakers as part of teched. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to gather more evidence of this, and have gotten some input from within MS about this information. It looks like that is indeed the case, though no MS rep. was prepared to answer any email I had publicly. If they approach me now I’d be happy to print their response. What does this mean? If this is true, it means that Microsoft Israel is making a grave mistake – They are diluting the quality of the speakers for pure money factors. That means, that as a teched attendee, who paid good money, you might be sitting down to watch nothing more that a bunch of infomercials, or sub-standard speakers – since speakers are no longer selected on quality or interest in their topic. They are turning the conference from a learning event to a commercial driven event They are closing off the stage to the community of speakers who may not be associated with any organization willing to be a sponsor They are losing speakers (such as myself) who will not want to be part of such an event. (yes – even if my company ends up sponsoring the event, I will not take part in it, Sorry Eli!) They are saying “F&$K you” to the community of MVPs who should be the people to be approached first about technical talks (my guess is many MVPs wouldn’t want to talk at an event driven that way anyway ) I do hope this ends up not being true, but it looks like it is. MS Israel had already done such a thing with the Developer Days event previouly held in Israel – only sponsors were allowed to insert speakers into the event. If this turns out to be true I would urge the MS community in Israel to NOT TAKE PART AT THIS EVENT in any form (attendee, speaker, sponsor or otherwise). by taking part, you will be telling MS Israel it’s OK to piss all over the community that they are quietly suffocating anyway. The MVP case MS Israel has managed to screw the MVP program as well. MS MVPs (I’m one) have had a tough time here in Israel the past couple of years. ever since yosi taguri left the blue badge ranks, there was not real community leader left. Whoever runs things right now has their eyes and minds set elsewhere, with the software MVP community far from mind and heart. No special MVP events (except a couple of small ones this year). No real MVP leadership happens here, with the MVP MEA lead (Ruari) being on a remote line, is not really what’s needed. “MVP? What’s that?” I’m sure many MS Israel employees would say. Exactly my point. Last word I’ve been disappointed by the MS machine for a while now, but their slowness to realize what real community means in the past couple of years really turns me off. Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe I shouldn’t be chasing people at MS Israel begging for a room to host the Agile Israel user group. Maybe it’s time to say a big bye bye and start looking at a life a bit more disconnected.

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F1 Pit Pragmatics

- by mikef

"I hate computers. No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life. but I actually hate the computers themselves." - Scott Merrill, 'I hate computers: confessions of a Sysadmin' If Scott's goal was to polarize opinion and trigger raging arguments over the 'real reasons why computers suck', then he certainly succeeded. Impassioned vitriol sits side-by-side with rational debate. Yet Scott's fundamental point is absolutely on the money - Computers are a means to an end. The IT industry is finally starting to put weight behind the notion that good User Experience is an absolutely crucial goal, a cause championed by the likes of Microsoft's Bill Buxton, and which Apple's increasingly ubiquitous touch screen interface exemplifies. However, that doesn't change the fact that, occasionally, you just have to man up and deal with complex systems. In fact, sometimes you just need to sacrifice everything else in the name of performance. You'll find a perfect example of this Faustian bargain in Trevor Clarke's fascinating look into the (diabolical) IT infrastructure of modern F1 racing - high performance, high availability. high everything. To paraphrase, each car has up to 100 sensors, transmitting around 30Gb of data over the course of a race (70% in real-time). This data is then processed by no less than 3 servers (per car) so that the engineers in the pit have access to telemetry, strategy information, timing feeds, a connection back to the operations room in the team's home base - the list goes on. All of this while the servers are exposed "to carbon dust, oil, vibration, rain, heat, [and] variable power". Now, this is admittedly an extreme context where there's no real choice but to use complex systems where ease-of-use is, at best, a secondary concern. The flip-side is seen in small-scale personal computing such as that seen in Apple's iDevices, which are incredibly intuitive but limited in their scope. In terms of what kinds of systems they prefer to use, I suspect that most SysAdmins find themselves somewhere along this axis of Power vs. Usability, and which end of this axis you resonate with also hints at where you think the IT industry should focus its energy. Do you see yourself in the F1 pit, making split-second decisions, wrestling with information flows and reticent hardware to bend them to your will? If so, I imagine you feel that computers are subtle tools which need to be tuned and honed, using the advanced knowledge possessed only by responsible SysAdmins (If you have an iPhone, I suspect it's jail-broken). If the machines throw enigmatic errors, it's the price of flexibility and raw power. Alternatively, would you prefer to have your role more accessible, with users empowered by knowledge, spreading the load of managing IT environments? In that case, then you want hardware and software to have User Experience as their primary focus, and are of the "means to an end" school of thought (you're probably also fed up with users not listening to you when you try and help). At its heart, the dichotomy is between raw power (which might be difficult to use) and ease-of-use (which might have some limitations, but you can be up and running immediately). Of course, the ultimate goal is a fusion of flexibility, power and usability all in one system. It's achievable in specific software environments, and Red Gate considers it a target worth aiming for, but in other cases it's a goal right up there with cold fusion. I think it'll be a long time before we see it become ubiquitous. In the meantime, are you Power-Hungry or a Champion of Usability? Cheers, Michael Francis Simple Talk SysAdmin Editor

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Flash Actionscript 3.0 Game Projectile Creation

- by Christian Basar

I have been creating a side-scrolling Actionscript 3.0 game. In this game I want the Player to be able to shoot blow darts as weapons. I had some trouble getting the darts to be created in the right place (in front of the player), but eventually got it working with some help from this page (please look at it for background information on this problem): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8031553/flash-actionscript-3-0-game-projectile-creation I got the darts to be created in the right place (near the player) and a 'movePlayerDarts()' function moves them. But I actually have a new problem. When the player moves after firing a dart, the dart tries to follow him! If the player jumps, the dart rises up. If the player moves to the left, the dart moves slightly to the left. Obviously, there is some code somewhere which is telling the darts to follow the player. I do not see how, unless the 'playerDartContainer' has something to do with that. But the container is always at position (0,0) and it does not move. Also, as a test I traced a dart's 'y' coordinate within the constantly-running 'movePlayerDarts()' function. As you can see, that function constantly moves the dart down the y axis by increasing its y-coordinate value. But when I jump, the 'y' coordinate being traced is never reduced, even though the dart clearly looks like it's rising! If anybody has any suggestions, I'd appreciate them! Here is the code I use to create the darts: // This function creates a dart public function createDart():void { if (playerDartContainer.numChildren <= 4) { // Play dart shooting sound sndDartShootIns.play(); // Create a new 'PlayerDart' object playerDart = new PlayerDart(); // Set the new dart's initial position and direction depending on the player's direction // Player's facing right if (player.scaleX == 1) { // Create dart in front of player's dart gun playerDart.x = player.x + 12; playerDart.y = player.y - 85; // Dart faces right, too playerDart.scaleX = 1; } // Player's facing left else if (player.scaleX == -1) { // Create dart in front of player's dart gun playerDart.x = player.x - 12; playerDart.y = player.y - 85; // Dart faces left, too playerDart.scaleX = -1; } playerDartContainer.addChild(playerDart); } } // End of 'createDart()' function This code is the EnterFrameHandler for the player darts: // In every frame, call 'movePlayerDarts()' to move the darts within the 'playerDartContainer' public function playerDartEnterFrameHandler(event:Event):void { // Only move the Player's darts if their container has at least one dart within if (playerDartContainer.numChildren > 0) { movePlayerDarts(); } } And finally, this is the code that actually moves all of the player's darts: // Move all of the Player's darts public function movePlayerDarts():void { for (var pdIns:int = 0; pdIns < playerDartContainer.numChildren; pdIns++) { // Set the Player Dart 'instance' variable to equal the current PlayerDart playerDartIns = PlayerDart(playerDartContainer.getChildAt(pdIns)); // Move the current dart in the direction it was shot. The dart's 'x-scale' // factor is multiplied by its speed (5) to move the dart in its correct // direction. If the 'x-scale' factor is -1, the dart is pointing left (as // seen in the 'createDart()' function. (-1 * 5 = -5), so the dart will go // to left at a rate of 5. The opposite is true for the right-ward facing // darts playerDartIns.x += playerDartIns.scaleX * 1; // Make gravity work on the dart playerDartIns.y += 0.7; //playerDartIns.y += 1; // What if the dart hits the ground? if (HitTest.intersects(playerDartIns, floor, this)) { playerDartContainer.removeChild(playerDartIns); } //trace("Dart x: " + playerDartIns.x); trace("Dart y: " + playerDartIns.y); } }

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NetBeans PHP Community Council

- by Tomas Mysik

Hi all, today we would like to inform all of you that now you have a chance to improve NetBeans via NetBeans PHP Community Council. The author of this activity is Timur Poperecinii and he would like to tell you a few words about it. Hello passionate technical people, First of all let me introduce myself: my name is Timur, I’m a developer from Moldova (that little country between Romania and Ukraine), I develop mostly in .NET and JQuery, but I love to learn more, not being an expert I am familiar with Java (Struts2, Play), PHP (Symfony2), Ruby (Rails), Sencha Touch 2 and other technologies. I was “introduced” in PHP recently by a client of mine who requested to make the work specifically in PHP. Let me tell you a little story about my experience with open source and IDEs: when I was studying in university in 2007 I think, I did a simple little application in PHP and thought “Damn, if only there was a good IDE for PHP so I could relax and no having to remember all the function names”, then when I searched on internet pretty much everyone was using Vim or Emacs on Linux, but it had no autocomplete anyway, just syntax highlighting. I remember using some tool like Notepad++ I think. Nowadays everything changed, we have highlighting and autocomplete for about all standard things in PHP in many IDEs. I use NetBeans for PHP, and I really am happy with the experience I have there with standard PHP code, but for frameworks I still think there is lots of room for improvements. For example we have some Symfony 2 and Twig support. But I’d love to see more of that coming, for example I’m a big fan of file templates, where the main goal is to not waste time on writing over and over again something that can be generated, and it counts even more when you don’t have a lot of autocomplete. So what I thought, “Hey I know Java a little, and NetBeans has plugins, so may be it worth trying to do a file templates plugin”, and so I did, you can find details about my Unified Udevi Symfony2 Plugin for NetBeans 7.2 on my blog. It wasn’t hard, and it even was fun! Give back to open source Now think a little, NetBeans is an open source project and PHP support is just a part of it, so the resources are pretty limited in this area. But we as a community that uses this product, want to have the best possible experience with PHP and frameworks(!!!). So why don’t we GIVE BACK TO OPENSOURCE ? Imagine an IDE that can do all the things you wanted + it is free. Now how far is NetBeans from that point? I guess not so far – you might miss a little niche thing that you use on a daily basis, but then the question appears why don’t you make it happen on your own? NetBeans PHP Community Council What I proposed is to create a NetBeans PHP Community Council that will be formed of people willing to change something, willing to create plugins for their own needs and for the needs of the community, test the plugins created by them too, and basically evolve NetBeans in direction they want to reach. I already talked with the NetBeans PHP team. They are only happy to help this Council, with technical advises, opening some APIs we might need to have access to, and other things. One important thing to mention is that this Council is a Community project, so though we’ll have direct discussions with NetBeans PHP Dev team, NetBeans is not the leading force here, it is the community. You can see more details about the goals and structure I proposed at NetBeans PHP Community Council wiki page. We use this mail list: [email protected] for discussions and topics related to the Council. How can I join To join the NetBeans PHP Community Council please send an email to [email protected] with the subject of the mail starting with [Council New Member]. You can subscribe to this mail list here:http://netbeans.org/projects/php/lists. in your mail please indicate your location, age and experience both in Java and PHP. I need these data to assign you to a team. A response will be send to you with your next assignment and some people to contact. I really hope that you’ll make a step forward and try to make your everyday use of NetBeans even more fun.

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T-SQL Tuesday #025 – CHECK Constraint Tricks

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

Allen White (blog | twitter), marathoner, SQL Server MVP and presenter, and all-around awesome author is hosting this month's T-SQL Tuesday on sharing SQL Server Tips and Tricks. And for those of you who have attended my Revenge: The SQL presentation, you know that I have 1 or 2 of them. You'll also know that I don't recommend using anything I talk about in a production system, and will continue that advice here…although you might be sorely tempted. Suffice it to say I'm not using these examples myself, but I think they're worth sharing anyway. Some of you have seen or read about SQL Server constraints and have applied them to your table designs…unless you're a vendor ;)…and may even use CHECK constraints to limit numeric values, or length of strings, allowable characters and such. CHECK constraints can, however, do more than that, and can even provide enhanced security and other restrictions. One tip or trick that I didn't cover very well in the presentation is using constraints to do unusual things; specifically, limiting or preventing inserts into tables. The idea was to use a CHECK constraint in a way that didn't depend on the actual data: -- create a table that cannot accept data CREATE TABLE dbo.JustTryIt(a BIT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, CONSTRAINT chk_no_insert CHECK (GETDATE()=GETDATE()+1)) INSERT dbo.JustTryIt VALUES(1) I'll let you run that yourself, but I'm sure you'll see that this is a pretty stupid table to have, since the CHECK condition will always be false, and therefore will prevent any data from ever being inserted. I can't remember why I used this example but it was for some vague and esoteric purpose that applies to about, maybe, zero people. I come up with a lot of examples like that. However, if you realize that these CHECKs are not limited to column references, and if you explore the SQL Server function list, you could come up with a few that might be useful. I'll let the names describe what they do instead of explaining them all: CREATE TABLE NoSA(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sa CHECK (SUSER_SNAME()<>'sa')) CREATE TABLE NoSysAdmin(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sysadmin CHECK (IS_SRVROLEMEMBER('sysadmin')=0)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc CHECK (OBJECT_NAME(@@PROCID) IS NOT NULL)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc2(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc2 CHECK (@@NESTLEVEL>0)) CREATE TABLE NoCursors(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_Cursors CHECK (@@CURSOR_ROWS=0)) CREATE TABLE ANSI_PADDING_ON(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_ANSI_PADDING_ON CHECK (@@OPTIONS & 16=16)) CREATE TABLE TimeOfDay(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_TimeOfDay CHECK (DATEPART(hour,GETDATE()) BETWEEN 0 AND 1)) GO -- log in as sa or a sysadmin server role member, and try this: INSERT NoSA VALUES(1) INSERT NoSysAdmin VALUES(1) -- note the difference when using sa vs. non-sa -- then try it again with a non-sysadmin login -- see if this works: INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(1) GO -- then try this: CREATE PROCEDURE NotAdHoc @val1 int, @val2 int AS SET NOCOUNT ON; INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(@val1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(@val2) GO EXEC NotAdHoc 2,2 -- which values got inserted? SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc2 -- and this one just makes me happy :) INSERT NoCursors VALUES(1) DECLARE curs CURSOR FOR SELECT 1 OPEN curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(2) CLOSE curs DEALLOCATE curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(3) SELECT * FROM NoCursors I'll leave the ANSI_PADDING_ON and TimeOfDay tables for you to test on your own, I think you get the idea. (Also take a look at the NoCursors example, notice anything interesting?) The real eye-opener, for me anyway, is the ability to limit bad coding practices like cursors, ad-hoc SQL, and sa use/abuse by using declarative SQL objects. I'm sure you can see how and why this would come up when discussing Revenge: The SQL.;) And the best part IMHO is that these work on pretty much any version of SQL Server, without needing Policy Based Management, DDL/login triggers, or similar tools to enforce best practices. All seriousness aside, I highly recommend that you spend some time letting your mind go wild with the possibilities and see how far you can take things. There are no rules! (Hmmmm, what can I do with rules?) #TSQL2sDay

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SQL SERVER – What are Actions in SSAS and How to Make a Reporting Action

- by Pinal Dave

Actions are used for customized browsing and drilling of data for the end-user. It’s an event that a user can raise while accessing the cube data. They are used in cube browsers like excel and are triggered when a user in a client tool clicks on a particular member, level, dimension, cells or may be the cube itself. For example a user might be able to see a reporting services report, open a web page or drill through to detailed information related to the cube data. Analysis server supports 3 types of actions :- Report Drill-through Standard Actions In this blog post, I will explain the Reporting action. The objective of this action is to return a report with details of the product where the sales amount is greater than 1000 in cube browser analysis. You need to create a basic cube first with the facts and dimensions you want in the analysis. Following are the steps to create reporting action. Go to SQL server data tools and open the analysis services project. Navigate to actions and click on new reporting action. 2.) Specify the name of the action and choose target type as attribute members since we have to create the action on members for a attribute. 3.) Specify the Target object of your report action. Target object would be the dimension or attribute on which you want the report to appear. In our case it is product name. 4.) Next you have to define the condition on which you want the report link to appear. However, this is an optional feature. In this example we are specifying a condition, which will check if the sales amount is greater than 10,000. So, that the link appears only for those products where the defined condition is met. 5.) Next you have to specify the server name on which the report is present, report path and the report format in which you want the report to appear. 6.) Additionally you can specify the parameters. As with conditional expression, the parameters should be a valid MDX expression. The parameter name should be same as the one defined in the report. 7.) Deploy your solution after you are done with specifying parameters and go to the cube browser. 8.) Click on the analyze in excel button, this will open your cube in excel 9.) Make an analysis which shows product names and their sales amount. 10.) Right click on a product where sales amount is greater than 10000 you will see the reporting action link. Click on that and you will be taken to your reporting services report. 11.) Clicking on the link will take you to the URL of the report. I created this report using report project wizard in SQL server data tools. So, this is how we can launch reports from a cube browser. Similarly you can open web pages, run applications and a number of other tasks. Koenig Solutions offers SSAS training which contains all Analysis Services including Reporting in great detail. In my next blog post I will talk about drill-through actions. Author: Namita Sharma, Senior Corporate Trainer at Koenig Solutions. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SSAS

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virtual host not working in windows7 xampp

- by K.B Panamaldeniya-littletipz

hi i am using windows7 and xampp , i want to create a virtual host . so i added 127.0.0.1 myawesomeproject to my C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts like this # Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp. # # This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows. # # This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each # entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should # be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name. # The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one # space. # # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual # lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol. # # For example: # # 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server # 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself. 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 myawesomeproject ::1 localhost and i added some lines to C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf like this # # Virtual Hosts # # If you want to maintain multiple domains/hostnames on your # machine you can setup VirtualHost containers for them. Most configurations # use only name-based virtual hosts so the server doesn't need to worry about # IP addresses. This is indicated by the asterisks in the directives below. # # Please see the documentation at # <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/> # for further details before you try to setup virtual hosts. # # You may use the command line option '-S' to verify your virtual host # configuration. # # Use name-based virtual hosting. # NameVirtualHost *:80 # # VirtualHost example: # Almost any Apache directive may go into a VirtualHost container. # The first VirtualHost section is used for all requests that do not # match a ServerName or ServerAlias in any <VirtualHost> block. # ##<VirtualHost *:80> ##ServerAdmin [email protected] ##DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/dummy-host.localhost" ##ServerName dummy-host.localhost ##ServerAlias www.dummy-host.localhost ##ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host.localhost-error.log" ##CustomLog "logs/dummy-host.localhost-access.log" combined ##</VirtualHost> ##<VirtualHost *:80> ##ServerAdmin [email protected] ##DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/dummy-host2.localhost" ##ServerName dummy-host2.localhost ##ServerAlias www.dummy-host2.localhost ##ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.localhost-error.log" ##CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.localhost-access.log" combined ##</VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *> DocumentRoot "C:\xampp\htdocs" ServerName localhost </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot c:\myawesomeproject ServerName localhost <Directory "c:\myawesomeproject"> Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> </VirtualHost> i created a folder called myawesomeproject in my c drive . when i type http://myawesomeproject it is rederecting to http://myawesomeproject/xampp i added another folder 'test' inside myawesomeproject . so the path to 'test' is C:/myawesomeproject/test . the problem is when i type http://myawesomeproject/test it gives an error. it says Object not found! The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again. If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster. Error 404 myawesomeproject 8/22/2011 4:30:29 PM Apache/2.2.17 (Win32) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/0.9.8o PHP/5.3.4 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 why is this . how can i create a virtual host........................ :(

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Copy New Files Only in .NET

- by psheriff

Recently I had a client that had a need to copy files from one folder to another. However, there was a process that was running that would dump new files into the original folder every minute or so. So, we needed to be able to copy over all the files one time, then also be able to go back a little later and grab just the new files. After looking into the System.IO namespace, none of the classes within here met my needs exactly. Of course I could build it out of the various File and Directory classes, but then I remembered back to my old DOS days (yes, I am that old!). The XCopy command in DOS (or the command prompt for you pure Windows people) is very powerful. One of the options you can pass to this command is to grab only newer files when copying from one folder to another. So instead of writing a ton of code I decided to simply call the XCopy command using the Process class in .NET. The command I needed to run at the command prompt looked like this: XCopy C:\Original\*.* D:\Backup\*.* /q /d /y What this command does is to copy all files from the Original folder on the C drive to the Backup folder on the D drive. The /q option says to do it quitely without repeating all the file names as it copies them. The /d option says to get any newer files it finds in the Original folder that are not in the Backup folder, or any files that have a newer date/time stamp. The /y option will automatically overwrite any existing files without prompting the user to press the "Y" key to overwrite the file. To translate this into code that we can call from our .NET programs, you can write the CopyFiles method presented below. C# using System.Diagnostics public void CopyFiles(string source, string destination){ ProcessStartInfo si = new ProcessStartInfo(); string args = @"{0}\*.* {1}\*.* /q /d /y"; args = string.Format(args, source, destination); si.FileName = "xcopy"; si.Arguments = args; Process.Start(si);} VB.NET Imports System.Diagnostics Public Sub CopyFiles(source As String, destination As String) Dim si As New ProcessStartInfo() Dim args As String = "{0}\*.* {1}\*.* /q /d /y" args = String.Format(args, source, destination) si.FileName = "xcopy" si.Arguments = args Process.Start(si)End Sub The CopyFiles method first creates a ProcessStartInfo object. This object is where you fill in name of the command you wish to run and also the arguments that you wish to pass to the command. I created a string with the arguments then filled in the source and destination folders using the string.Format() method. Finally you call the Start method of the Process class passing in the ProcessStartInfo object. That's all there is to calling any command in the operating system. Very simple, and much less code than it would have taken had I coded it using the various File and Directory classes. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free video on Silverlight entitled Silverlight XAML for the Complete Novice - Part 1.

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SPARC T5-4 LDoms for RAC and WebLogic Clusters

- by Jeff Taylor-Oracle

I wanted to use two Oracle SPARC T5-4 servers to simultaneously host both Oracle RAC and a WebLogic Server Cluster. I chose to use Oracle VM Server for SPARC to create a cluster like this: There are plenty of trade offs and decisions that need to be made, for example: Rather than configuring the system by hand, you might want to use an Oracle SuperCluster T5-8 My configuration is similar to jsavit's: Availability Best Practices - Example configuring a T5-8 but I chose to ignore some of the advice. Maybe I should have included an alternate service domain, but I decided that I already had enough redundancy Both Oracle SPARC T5-4 servers were to be configured like this: Cntl 0.25 4 64GB App LDom 2.75 CPU's 44 cores 704 GB DB LDom One CPU 16 cores 256 GB The systems started with everything in the primary domain: # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL NORM UPTIME primary active -n-c-- UART 512 1023G 0.0% 0.0% 11m # ldm list-spconfig factory-default [current] primary # ldm list -o core,memory,physio NAME primary CORE CID CPUSET 0 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) 1 (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) 2 (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23) -- SNIP 62 (496, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503) 63 (504, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x30000000 0x30000000 255G 0x80000000000 0x80000000000 256G 0x100000000000 0x100000000000 256G 0x180000000000 0x180000000000 256G # Give this memory block to the DB LDom IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@300 pci_0 pci@340 pci_1 pci@380 pci_2 pci@3c0 pci_3 pci@400 pci_4 pci@440 pci_5 pci@480 pci_6 pci@4c0 pci_7 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE1 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE2 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA0 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RIO/NET0 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE3 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE4 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE9 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE10 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE11 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE12 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE5 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE6 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE7 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE8 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE13 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE14 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE15 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE16 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA1 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RIO/NET2 Added an additional service processor configuration: # ldm add-spconfig split # ldm list-spconfig factory-default primary split [current] And removed many of the resources from the primary domain: # ldm start-reconf primary # ldm set-core 4 primary # ldm set-memory 32G primary # ldm rm-io pci@340 primary # ldm rm-io pci@380 primary # ldm rm-io pci@3c0 primary # ldm rm-io pci@400 primary # ldm rm-io pci@440 primary # ldm rm-io pci@480 primary # ldm rm-io pci@4c0 primary # init 6 Needed to add resources to the guest domains: # ldm add-domain db # ldm set-core cid=`seq -s"," 48 63` db # ldm add-memory mblock=0x180000000000:256G db # ldm add-io pci@480 db # ldm add-io pci@4c0 db # ldm add-domain app # ldm set-core 44 app # ldm set-memory 704G app # ldm add-io pci@340 app # ldm add-io pci@380 app # ldm add-io pci@3c0 app # ldm add-io pci@400 app # ldm add-io pci@440 app Needed to set up services: # ldm add-vds primary-vds0 primary # ldm add-vcc port-range=5000-5100 primary-vcc0 primary Needed to add a virtual network port for the WebLogic application domain: # ipadm NAME CLASS/TYPE STATE UNDER ADDR lo0 loopback ok -- -- lo0/v4 static ok -- ... lo0/v6 static ok -- ... net0 ip ok -- ... net0/v4 static ok -- xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/24 net0/v6 addrconf ok -- .... net0/v6 addrconf ok -- ... net8 ip ok -- -- net8/v4 static ok -- ... # dladm show-phys LINK MEDIA STATE SPEED DUPLEX DEVICE net1 Ethernet unknown 0 unknown ixgbe1 net0 Ethernet up 1000 full ixgbe0 net8 Ethernet up 10 full usbecm2 # ldm add-vsw net-dev=net0 primary-vsw0 primary # ldm add-vnet vnet1 primary-vsw0 app Needed to add a virtual disk to the WebLogic application domain: # format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c0t5000CCA02505F874d0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca02505f874 /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD0/disk 1. c0t5000CCA02506C468d0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca02506c468 /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD1/disk 2. c0t5000CCA025067E5Cd0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca025067e5c /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD2/disk 3. c0t5000CCA02506C258d0 <HITACHI-H106060SDSUN600G-A2B0-558.91GB> /scsi_vhci/disk@g5000cca02506c258 /dev/chassis/SPARC_T5-4.AK00084038/SYS/SASBP0/HDD3/disk Specify disk (enter its number): ^C # ldm add-vdsdev /dev/dsk/c0t5000CCA02506C468d0s2 HDD1@primary-vds0 # ldm add-vdisk HDD1 HDD1@primary-vds0 app Add some additional spice to the pot: # ldm set-variable auto-boot\\?=false db # ldm set-variable auto-boot\\?=false app # ldm set-var boot-device=HDD1 app Bind the logical domains: # ldm bind db # ldm bind app At the end of the process, the system is set up like this: # ldm list -o core,memory,physio NAME primary CORE CID CPUSET 0 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) 1 (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) 2 (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23) 3 (24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x30000000 0x30000000 32G IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@300 pci_0 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE1 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE2 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA0 pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RIO/NET0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NAME app CORE CID CPUSET 4 (32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39) 5 (40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47) 6 (48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55) 7 (56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63) 8 (64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71) 9 (72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79) 10 (80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87) 11 (88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95) 12 (96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103) 13 (104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111) 14 (112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119) 15 (120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127) 16 (128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135) 17 (136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143) 18 (144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151) 19 (152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159) 20 (160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167) 21 (168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175) 22 (176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183) 23 (184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191) 24 (192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199) 25 (200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207) 26 (208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215) 27 (216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223) 28 (224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231) 29 (232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239) 30 (240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247) 31 (248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255) 32 (256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263) 33 (264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271) 34 (272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279) 35 (280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287) 36 (288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295) 37 (296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303) 38 (304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311) 39 (312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319) 40 (320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327) 41 (328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335) 42 (336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343) 43 (344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351) 44 (352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359) 45 (360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367) 46 (368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375) 47 (376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x30000000 0x830000000 192G 0x4000000000 0x80000000000 256G 0x8080000000 0x100000000000 256G IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@340 pci_1 pci@380 pci_2 pci@3c0 pci_3 pci@400 pci_4 pci@440 pci_5 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE3 pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/RCSA/PCIE4 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE9 pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE10 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE11 pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE12 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE5 pci@400/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE6 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@e /SYS/RCSA/PCIE7 pci@440/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NAME db CORE CID CPUSET 48 (384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391) 49 (392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399) 50 (400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407) 51 (408, 409, 410, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415) 52 (416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423) 53 (424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 431) 54 (432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 438, 439) 55 (440, 441, 442, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447) 56 (448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455) 57 (456, 457, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463) 58 (464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471) 59 (472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479) 60 (480, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487) 61 (488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 494, 495) 62 (496, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501, 502, 503) 63 (504, 505, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511) MEMORY RA PA SIZE 0x80000000 0x180000000000 256G IO DEVICE PSEUDONYM OPTIONS pci@480 pci_6 pci@4c0 pci_7 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@a /SYS/RCSA/PCIE13 pci@480/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE14 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@8 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE15 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RCSA/PCIE16 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c /SYS/MB/SASHBA1 pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4 /SYS/RIO/NET2 Start the domains: # ldm start app LDom app started # ldm start db LDom db started Make sure to start the vntsd service that was created, above. # svcs -a | grep ldo disabled 8:38:38 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default online 8:38:58 svc:/ldoms/agents:default online 8:39:25 svc:/ldoms/ldmd:default # svcadm enable vntsd Now use the MAC address to configure the Solaris 11 Automated Installation. Database Logical Domain # telnet localhost 5000 {0} ok devalias screen /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@7/display@0 disk7 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p3 disk6 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p2 disk5 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p1 disk4 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0/disk@p0 scsi1 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@c/scsi@0 net3 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4/network@0,1 net2 /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4/network@0 virtual-console /virtual-devices/console@1 name aliases {0} ok boot net2 Boot device: /pci@4c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@c/pci@0/pci@4/network@0 File and args: 1000 Mbps full duplex Link up Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx WLS Logical Domain # telnet localhost 5001 {0} ok devalias hdd1 /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@0 vnet1 /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 net /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 disk /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/disk@0 virtual-console /virtual-devices/console@1 name aliases {0} ok boot net Boot device: /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/network@0 File and args: Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Requesting Internet Address for xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Repeat the process for the second SPARC T5-4, install Solaris, RAC and WebLogic Cluster, and you are ready to go. Maybe buying a SuperCluster would have been easier.

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Unit Testing Framework for XQuery

- by Knut Vatsendvik

This posting provides a unit testing framework for XQuery using Oracle Service Bus. It allows you to write a test case to run your XQuery transformations in an automated fashion. When the test case is run, the framework returns any differences found in the response. The complete code sample with install instructions can be downloaded from here. Writing a Unit Test You start a new Test Case by creating a Proxy Service from Workshop that comes with Oracle Service Bus. In the General Configuration page select Service Type to be Messaging Service In the Message Type Configuration page link both the Request & Response Message Type to the TestCase element of the UnitTest.xsd schema The TestCase element consists of the following child elements The ID and optional Name element is simply used for reference. The Transformation element is the XQuery resource to be executed. The Input elements represents the input to run the XQuery with. The Output element represents the expected output. These XML documents are “also” represented as an XQuery resource where the XQuery function takes no arguments and returns the XML document. Why not pass the test data with the TestCase? Passing an XML structure in another XML structure is not very easy or at least not very human readable. Therefore it was chosen to represent the test data as an loadable resource in the OSB. However you are free to go ahead with another approach on this if wanted. The XMLDiff elements represents any differences found. A sample on input is shown here. Modeling the Message Flow Then the next step is to model the message flow of the Proxy Service. In the Request Pipeline create a stage node that loads the test case input data. For this, specify a dynamic XQuery expression that evaluates at runtime to the name of a pre-registered XQuery resource. The expression is of course set by the input data from the test case. Add a Run stage node. Assign the result of the XQuery, that is to be run, to a context variable. Define a mapping for each of the input variables added in previous stage. Add a Compare stage. Like with the input data, load the expected output data. Do a compare using XMLDiff XQuery provided where the first argument is the loaded output test data, and the second argument the result from the Run stage. Any differences found is replaced back into the test case XMLDiff element. In case of any unexpected failure while processing, add an Error Handler to the Pipeline to capture the fault. To pass back the result add the following Insert action In the Response Pipeline. A sample on output is shown here.

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Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - Signature encodings

- by Simon Cooper

If you've just joined this series, I highly recommend you read the previous posts in this series, starting here, or at least these posts, covering the CLR metadata tables. Before we look at custom attribute encoding, we first need to have a brief look at how signatures are encoded in an assembly in general. Signature types There are several types of signatures in an assembly, all of which share a common base representation, and are all stored as binary blobs in the #Blob heap, referenced by an offset from various metadata tables. The types of signatures are: Method definition and method reference signatures. Field signatures Property signatures Method local variables. These are referenced from the StandAloneSig table, which is then referenced by method body headers. Generic type specifications. These represent a particular instantiation of a generic type. Generic method specifications. Similarly, these represent a particular instantiation of a generic method. All these signatures share the same underlying mechanism to represent a type Representing a type All metadata signatures are based around the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. This assigns a number to each 'built-in' type in the framework; for example, Uint16 is 0x07, String is 0x0e, and Object is 0x1c. Byte codes are also used to indicate SzArrays, multi-dimensional arrays, custom types, and generic type and method variables. However, these require some further information. Firstly, custom types (ie not one of the built-in types). These require you to specify the 4-byte TypeDefOrRef coded token after the CLASS (0x12) or VALUETYPE (0x11) element type. This 4-byte value is stored in a compressed format before being written out to disk (for more excruciating details, you can refer to the CLI specification). SzArrays simply have the array item type after the SZARRAY byte (0x1d). Multidimensional arrays follow the ARRAY element type with a series of compressed integers indicating the number of dimensions, and the size and lower bound of each dimension. Generic variables are simply followed by the index of the generic variable they refer to. There are other additions as well, for example, a specific byte value indicates a method parameter passed by reference (BYREF), and other values indicating custom modifiers. Some examples... To demonstrate, here's a few examples and what the resulting blobs in the #Blob heap will look like. Each name in capitals corresponds to a particular byte value in the ELEMENT_TYPE or CALLCONV structure, and coded tokens to custom types are represented by the type name in curly brackets. A simple field: int intField; FIELD I4 A field of an array of a generic type parameter (assuming T is the first generic parameter of the containing type): T[] genArrayField FIELD SZARRAY VAR 0 An instance method signature (note how the number of parameters does not include the return type): instance string MyMethod(MyType, int&, bool[][]); HASTHIS DEFAULT 3 STRING CLASS {MyType} BYREF I4 SZARRAY SZARRAY BOOLEAN A generic type instantiation: MyGenericType<MyType, MyStruct> GENERICINST CLASS {MyGenericType} 2 CLASS {MyType} VALUETYPE {MyStruct} For more complicated examples, in the following C# type declaration: GenericType<T> : GenericBaseType<object[], T, GenericType<T>> { ... } the Extends field of the TypeDef for GenericType will point to a TypeSpec with the following blob: GENERICINST CLASS {GenericBaseType} 3 SZARRAY OBJECT VAR 0 GENERICINST CLASS {GenericType} 1 VAR 0 And a static generic method signature (generic parameters on types are referenced using VAR, generic parameters on methods using MVAR): TResult[] GenericMethod<TInput, TResult>( TInput, System.Converter<TInput, TOutput>); GENERIC 2 2 SZARRAY MVAR 1 MVAR 0 GENERICINST CLASS {System.Converter} 2 MVAR 0 MVAR 1 As you can see, complicated signatures are recursively built up out of quite simple building blocks to represent all the possible variations in a .NET assembly. Now we've looked at the basics of normal method signatures, in my next post I'll look at custom attribute application signatures, and how they are different to normal signatures.

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Performing an upgrade from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010

- by Enrique Lima

I recently had to go through the process of migrating a TFS 2008 SP1 to a TFS 2010 environment. I will go into the details of the tasks that I went through, but first I want to explain why I define it as a migration and not an upgrade. When this environment was setup, based on support and limitations for TFS 2008, we used a 32 bit platform for the TFS Application Tier and Build Servers. The Data Tier, since we were installing SP1 for TFS 2008, was done as a 64 bit installation. We knew at that point that TFS 2010 was in the picture so that served as further motivation to make that a 64bit install of SQL Server. The SQL Server at that point was a single instance (Default) installation too. We had a pretty good strategy in place for backups of the databases supporting the environment (and this made the migration so much smoother), so we were pretty familiar with the databases and the purpose they serve. I am sure many of you that have gone through a TFS 2008 installation have encountered challenges and trials. And likely even more so if you, like me, needed to configure your deployment for SSL. So, frankly I was a little concerned about the process of migrating. They say practice makes perfect, and this environment I worked on is in some way my brain child, so I was not ready nor willing for this to be a failure or something that would impact my client’s work. Prior to going through the migration process, we did the install of the environment. The Data Tier was the same, with a new Named instance in place to host the 2010 install. The Application Tier was in place too, and we did the DefaultCollection configuration to test and validate all components were in place as they should. Anyway, on to the tasks for the migration (thanks to Martin Hinselwood for his very thorough documentation): Close access to TFS 2008, you want to make sure all code is checked in and ready to go. We stated a difference of 8 hours between code lock and the start of migration to give time for any unexpected delay. How do we close access? Stop IIS. Backup your databases. Which ones? TfsActivityLogging TfsBuild TfsIntegration TfsVersionControl TfsWorkItemTracking TfsWorkItemTrackingAttachments Restore the databases to the new Named Instance (make sure you keep the same names) Now comes the fun part! The actual import/migration of the databases. A couple of things happen here. The TfsIntegration database will be scanned, the other databases will be checked to validate they exist. Those databases will go through a process of data being extracted and transferred to the TfsVersionControl database to then be renamed to Tfs_<Collection>. You will be using a tool called tfsconfig and the option import. This tool is located in the TFS 2010 installation path (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools), the command to use is as follows: tfsconfig import /sqlinstance:<instance> /collectionName:<name> /confirmed Where <instance> is going to be the SQL Server instance where you restored the databases to. <name> is the name you will give the collection. And to explain /confirmed, well this means you have done a backup of the databases, why? well remember you are going to merge the databases you restored when you execute the tfsconfig import command. The process will go through about 200 tasks, once it completes go to Team Foundation Server Administration Console and validate your imported databases and contents. We’ll keep this manageable, so the next post is about how to complete that implementation with the SSL configuration.

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Hello, T4MVC – Goodbye, ASP.NET MVC “magic strings”

- by Brian Schroer

I’m working on my first ASP.NET MVC project, and I really, really like MVC. I hate all of the “magic strings”, though: <div id="logindisplay"> <% Html.RenderPartial("LogOnUserControl"); %> </div> <div id="menucontainer"> <ul id="menu"> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", "Index", "Dinners")%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Host Dinner", "Create", "Dinners")%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")%></li> </ul> </div> They’re prone to misspelling (causing errors that won’t be caught until runtime), there’s duplication, there’s no Intellisense, and they’re not friendly to refactoring tools. I had started down the path of creating static classes with constants for the strings, e.g.: <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", DinnerControllerActions.Index, Controllers.Dinner)%></li> …but that was pretty tedious. Then I discovered T4MVC (http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC). Just add its T4MVC.tt and T4MVC.settings.t4 files to the root of your MVC application, and it magically (and this time, it’s good magic) generates code that allows you to replace the first code sample above with this: <div id="logindisplay"> <% Html.RenderPartial(MVC.Shared.Views.LogOnUserControl); %> </div> <div id="menucontainer"> <ul id="menu"> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Find Dinner", MVC.Dinners.Index())%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("Host Dinner", MVC.Dinners.Create())%></li> <li><%=Html.ActionLink("About", MVC.Home.About())%></li> </ul> </div> It gives you a strongly-typed alternative to magic strings for all of these scenarios: Html.Action Html.ActionLink Html.RenderAction Html.RenderPartial Html.BeginForm Url.Action Ajax.ActionLink view names inside controllers But wait, there’s more! It even gives you static helpers for image and script links, e.g.: <img src="<%= Links.Content.nerd_jpg %>" /> <script src="<%= Links.Scripts.Map_js %>" type="text/javascript"></script> …instead of: <img src="/Content/nerd.jpg" /> <script src="/Scripts/Map.js" type="text/javascript"></script> Thanks to David Ebbo for creating this great tool. You can watch an eight and a half minute video about T4MVC on Channel 9 via this link: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/jongalloway/Jon-Takes-Five-with-David-Ebbo-on-T4MVC/. You can download T4MVC from its CodePlex page: http://mvccontrib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=T4MVC.

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ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord

- by Levi Morrison

A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns: They work only with a database. Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this. They are brittle. Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't. Their very design is influenced by the database. If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely). It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern. They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface? In php 5.4, we'll have the JsonSerializable interface that defines the data to be json_encoded, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a ResourceSerializable interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition. interface ResourceSerializable { /** * Returns the id that identifies the resource. */ function resourceId(); /** * Returns the 'type' of the resource. */ function resourceType(); /** * Returns the data to be serialized. */ function resourceSerialize(); } Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions. Notes: ResourceId will work for API's and databases. As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there. ResourceType is the group or type associated with the resource. You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the ResourceType was person, it could map to /api/1/person/{resourceId} and the table persons (or people, if it's smart enough). resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored. Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns. This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations. I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use load() to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. Downsides: You need another object to serialize it. This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects. You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables. This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. Are there other downsides that you see? Does this seem feasible to you? How would you improve it? Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here.

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.Net Reflector 6.5 EAP now available

- by CliveT

With the release of CLR 4 being so close, we’ve been working hard on getting the new C# and VB language features implemented inside Reflector. The work isn’t complete yet, but we have some of the features working. Most importantly, there are going to be changes to the Reflector object model, and we though it would be useful for people to see the changes and have an opportunity to comment on them. Before going any further, we should tell you what the EAP contains that’s different from the released version. A number of bugs have been fixed, mainly bugs that were raised via the forum. This is slightly offset by the fact that this EAP hasn’t had a whole lot of testing and there may have been new bugs introduced during the development work we’ve been doing. The C# language writer has been changed to display in and out co- and contra-variance markers on interfaces and delegates, and to display default values for optional parameters in method definitions. We also concisely display values passed by reference into COM calls. However, we do not change callsites to display calls using named parameters; this looks like hard work to get right. The forthcoming version of the C# language introduces dynamic types and dynamic calls. The new version of Reflector should display a dynamic call rather than the generated C#: dynamic target = MyTestObject(); target.Hello("Mum"); We have a few bugs in this area where we are not casting to dynamic when necessary. These have been fixed on a branch and should make their way into the next EAP. To support the dynamic features, we’ve added the types IDynamicMethodReferenceExpression, IDynamicPropertyIndexerExpression, and IDynamicPropertyReferenceExpression to the object model. These types, based on the versions without “Dynamic” in the name, reflect the fact that we don’t have full information about the method that is going to be called, but only have its name (as a string). These interfaces are going to change – in an internal version, they have been extended to include information about which parameter positions use runtime types and which use compile time types. There’s also the interface, IDynamicVariableDeclaration, that can be used to determine if a particular variable is used at dynamic call sites as a target. A couple of these language changes have also been added to the Visual Basic language writer. The new features are exposed only when the optimization level is set to .NET 4. When the level is set this high, the other standard language writers will simply display a message to say that they do not handle such an optimization level. Reflector Pro now has 4.0 as an optional compilation target and we have done some work to get the pdb generation right for these new features. The EAP version of Reflector no longer installs the add-in on startup. The first time you run the EAP, it displays the integration options dialog. You can use the checkboxes to select the versions of Visual Studio into which you want to install the EAP version. Note that you can only have one version of Reflector Pro installed in Visual Studio; if you install into a Visual Studio that has another version installed, the previous version will be removed. Please try it out and send your feedback to the EAP forum.

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