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  • Scripting with the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance

    - by Geoff Ongley
    The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 appliance has a user friendly and easy to understand graphical web based interface we call the "BUI" or "Browser User Interface".This interface is very useful for many tasks, but in some cases a script (or workflow) may be more appropriate, such as:Repetitive tasksTasks which work on (or obtain information about) a large number of shares or usersTasks which are triggered by an alert threshold (workflows)Tasks where you want a only very basic input, but a consistent output (workflows)The appliance scripting language is based on ECMAscript 3 (close to javascript). I'm not going to cover ECMAscript 3 in great depth (I'm far from an expert here), but I would like to show you some neat things you can do with the appliance, to get you started based on what I have found from my own playing around.I'm making the assumption you have some sort of programming background, and understand variables, arrays, functions to some extent - but of course if something is not clear, please let me know so I can fix it up or clarify it.Variable Declarations and ArraysVariablesECMAScript is a dynamically and weakly typed language. If you don't know what that means, google is your friend - but at a high level it means we can just declare variables with no specific type and on the fly.For example, I can declare a variable and use it straight away in the middle of my code, for example:projects=list();Which makes projects an array of values that are returned from the list(); function (which is usable in most contexts). With this kind of variable, I can do things like:projects.length (this property on array tells you how many objects are in it, good for for loops etc). Alternatively, I could say:projects=3;and now projects is just a simple number.Should we declare variables like this so loosely? In my opinion, the answer is no - I feel it is a better practice to declare variables you are going to use, before you use them - and given them an initial value. You can do so as follows:var myVariable=0;To demonstrate the ability to just randomly assign and change the type of variables, you can create a simple script at the cli as follows (bold for input):fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("Number of projects is: %d\n",projects.length);("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: %d\n",projects);("." to run)> .Number of projects is: 7Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: 152You can also confirm this behaviour by checking the typeof variable we are dealing with:fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> .var projects is of type objectvar projects is of type numberArraysSo you likely noticed that we have already touched on arrays, as the list(); (in the shares context) stored an array into the 'projects' variable.But what if you want to declare your own array? Easy! This is very similar to Java and other languages, we just instantiate a brand new "Array" object using the keyword new:var myArray = new Array();will create an array called "myArray".A quick example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> testArray = new Array();("." to run)> testArray[0]="This";("." to run)> testArray[1]="is";("." to run)> testArray[2]="just";("." to run)> testArray[3]="a";("." to run)> testArray[4]="test";("." to run)> for (i=0; i < testArray.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    printf("Array element %d is %s\n",i,testArray[i]);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Array element 0 is ThisArray element 1 is isArray element 2 is justArray element 3 is aArray element 4 is testWorking With LoopsFor LoopFor loops are very similar to those you will see in C, java and several other languages. One of the key differences here is, as you were made aware earlier, we can be a bit more sloppy with our variable declarations.The general way you would likely use a for loop is as follows:for (variable; test-case; modifier for variable){}For example, you may wish to declare a variable i as 0; and a MAX_ITERATIONS variable to determine how many times this loop should repeat:var i=0;var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;And then, use this variable to be tested against some case existing (has i reached MAX_ITERATIONS? - if not, increment i using i++);for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++){ // some work to do}So lets run something like this on the appliance:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var i=0;("." to run)> var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;("." to run)> for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    printf("The number is %d\n",i);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .The number is 0The number is 1The number is 2The number is 3The number is 4The number is 5The number is 6The number is 7The number is 8The number is 9While LoopWhile loops again are very similar to other languages, we loop "while" a condition is met. For example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    if (counter==10) ("." to run)>    { ("." to run)>            isTen=true;   ("." to run)>    } ("." to run)>    printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)>    counter++;    ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Counter is 10Loop has ended and Counter is 11So what do we notice here? Something has actually gone wrong - counter will technically be 11 once the loop completes... Why is this?Well, if we have a loop like this, where the 'while' condition that will end the loop may be set based on some other condition(s) existing (such as the counter has reached 10) - we must ensure that we  terminate this iteration of the loop when the condition is met - otherwise the rest of the code will be followed which may not be desirable. In other words, like in other languages, we will only ever check the loop condition once we are ready to perform the next iteration, so any other code after we set "isTen" to be true, will still be executed as we can see it was above.We can avoid this by adding a break into our loop once we know we have set the condition - this will stop the rest of the logic being processed in this iteration (and as such, counter will not be incremented). So lets try that again:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    if (counter==10) ("." to run)>    { ("." to run)>            isTen=true;   ("." to run)>            break;("." to run)>    } ("." to run)>    printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)>    counter++;    ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n", counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Loop has ended and Counter is 10Much better!Methods to Obtain and Manipulate DataGet MethodThe get method allows you to get simple properties from an object, for example a quota from a user. The syntax is fairly simple:var myVariable=get('property');An example of where you may wish to use this, is when you are getting a bunch of information about a user (such as quota information when in a shares context):var users=list();for(k=0; k < users.length; k++){     user=users[k];     run('select ' + user);     var username=get('name');     var usage=get('usage');     var quota=get('quota');...Which you can then use to your advantage - to print or manipulate infomation (you could change a user's information with a set method, based on the information returned from the get method). The set method is explained next.Set MethodThe set method can be used in a simple manner, similar to get. The syntax for set is:set('property','value'); // where value is a string, if it was a number, you don't need quotesFor example, we could set the quota on a share as follows (first observing the initial value):fishy10:shares default/test-geoff> script("." to run)> var currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> set('quota','30G');("." to run)> run('commit');("." to run)> currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> .Current Quota is: 0Current Quota is: 32212254720This shows us using both the get and set methods as can be used in scripts, of course when only setting an individual share, the above is overkill - it would be much easier to set it manually at the cli using 'set quota=3G' and then 'commit'.List MethodThe list method can be very powerful, especially in more complex scripts which iterate over large amounts of data and manipulate it if so desired. The general way you will use list is as follows:var myVar=list();Which will make "myVar" an array, containing all the objects in the relevant context (this could be a list of users, shares, projects, etc). You can then gather or manipulate data very easily.We could list all the shares and mountpoints in a given project for example:fishy10:shares another-project> script("." to run)> var shares=list();("." to run)> for (i=0; i < shares.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    run('select ' + shares[i]);("." to run)>    var mountpoint=get('mountpoint');("." to run)>    printf("Share %s discovered, has mountpoint %s\n",shares[i],mountpoint);("." to run)>    run('done');("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Share and-another discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/and-anotherShare another-share discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/another-shareShare bob discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-projectShare more-shares-for-all discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/more-shares-for-allShare yep discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/yepWriting More Complex and Re-Usable CodeFunctionsThe best way to be able to write more complex code is to use functions to split up repeatable or reusable sections of your code. This also makes your more complex code easier to read and understand for other programmers.We write functions as follows:function functionName(variable1,variable2,...,variableN){}For example, we could have a function that takes a project name as input, and lists shares for that project (assuming we're already in the 'project' context - context is important!):function getShares(proj){        run('select ' + proj);        shares=list();        printf("Project: %s\n", proj);        for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)        {                printf("Discovered share: %s\n",shares[i]);        }        run('done'); // exit selected project}Commenting your CodeLike any other language, a large part of making it readable and understandable is to comment it. You can use the same comment style as in C and Java amongst other languages.In other words, sngle line comments use://at the beginning of the comment.Multi line comments use:/*at the beginning, and:*/ at the end.For example, here we will use both:fishy10:> script("." to run)> // This is a test comment("." to run)> printf("doing some work...\n");("." to run)> /* This is a multi-line("." to run)> comment which I will span across("." to run)> three lines in total */("." to run)> printf("doing some more work...\n");("." to run)> .doing some work...doing some more work...Your comments do not have to be on their own, they can begin (particularly with single line comments this is handy) at the end of a statement, for examplevar projects=list(); // The variable projects is an array containing all projects on the system.Try and Catch StatementsYou may be used to using try and catch statements in other languages, and they can (and should) be utilised in your code to catch expected or unexpected error conditions, that you do NOT wish to stop your code from executing (if you do not catch these errors, your script will exit!):try{  // do some work}catch(err) // Catch any error that could occur{ // do something here under the error condition}For example, you may wish to only execute some code if a context can be reached. If you can't perform certain actions under certain circumstances, that may be perfectly acceptable.For example if you want to test a condition that only makes sense when looking at a SMB/NFS share, but does not make sense when you hit an iscsi or FC LUN, you don't want to stop all processing of other shares you may not have covered yet.For example we may wish to obtain quota information on all shares for all users on a share (but this makes no sense for a LUN):function getShareQuota(shar) // Get quota for each user of this share{        run('select ' + shar);        printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shar);        try        {                run('users');                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","----");                                users=list();                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                {                        user=users[k];                        getUserQuota(user);                }                run('done'); // exit user context        }        catch(err)        {                printf("    SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar);        }        run('done'); // done with this share}Running Scripts Remotely over SSHAs you have likely noticed, writing and running scripts for all but the simplest jobs directly on the appliance is not going to be a lot of fun.There's a couple of choices on what you can do here:Create scripts on a remote system and run them over sshCreate scripts, wrapping them in workflow code, so they are stored on the appliance and can be triggered under certain circumstances (like a threshold being reached)We'll cover the first one here, and then cover workflows later on (as these are for the most part just scripts with some wrapper information around them).Creating a SSH Public/Private SSH Key PairLog on to your handy Solaris box (You wouldn't be using any other OS, right? :P) and use ssh-keygen to create a pair of ssh keys. I'm storing this separate to my normal key:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 1024Generating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/export/home/geoff/.ssh/id_rsa): /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsaEnter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.Your public key has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub.The key fingerprint is:7f:3d:53:f0:2a:5e:8b:2d:94:2a:55:77:66:5c:9b:14 geoff@lightningInstalling the Public Key on the ApplianceOn your Solaris host, observe the public key:[geoff@lightning ~] cat .ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc= geoff@lightningNow, copy and paste everything after "ssh-rsa" and before "user@hostname" - in this case, geoff@lightning. That is, this bit:AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc=Logon to your appliance and get into the preferences -> keys area for this user (root):[geoff@lightning ~] ssh [email protected]: Last login: Mon Dec  6 17:13:28 2010 from 192.168.0.2fishy10:> configuration usersfishy10:configuration users> select rootfishy10:configuration users root> preferences fishy10:configuration users root preferences> keysOR do it all in one hit:fishy10:> configuration users select root preferences keysNow, we create a new public key that will be accepted for this user and set the type to RSA:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> createfishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set type=RSASet the key itself using the string copied previously (between ssh-rsa and user@host), and set the key ensuring you put double quotes around it (eg. set key="<key>"):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set key="AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc="Now set the comment for this key (do not use spaces):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set comment="LightningRSAKey" Commit the new key:fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> commitVerify the key is there:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> lsKeys:NAME     MODIFIED              TYPE   COMMENT                                  key-000  2010-10-25 20:56:42   RSA    cycloneRSAKey                           key-001  2010-12-6 17:44:53    RSA    LightningRSAKey                         As you can see, we now have my new key, and a previous key I have created on this appliance.Running your Script over SSH from a Remote SystemHere I have created a basic test script, and saved it as test.ecma3:[geoff@lightning ~] cat test.ecma3 script// This is a test script, By Geoff Ongley 2010.printf("Testing script remotely over ssh\n");.Now, we can run this script remotely with our keyless login:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh -i .ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < test.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Testing script remotely over sshPutting it Together - An Example Completed Quota Gathering ScriptSo now we have a lot of the basics to creating a script, let us do something useful, like, find out how much every user is using, on every share on the system (you will recognise some of the code from my previous examples): script/************************************** Quick and Dirty Quota Check script ** Written By Geoff Ongley            ** 25 October 2010                    **************************************/function getUserQuota(usr){        run('select ' + usr);        var username=get('name');        var usage=get('usage');        var quota=get('quota');        var usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes        var quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above        var quota_percent=0        if (quota > 0)        {                quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1);        }        printf("    %20s        %8.2f           %8.2f           %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent);        run('done'); // done with this selected user}function getShareQuota(shar){        //printf("DEBUG: selecting share %s\n", shar);        run('select ' + shar);        printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shar);        try        {                run('users');                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","--------");                                users=list();                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                {                        user=users[k];                        getUserQuota(user);                }                run('done'); // exit user context        }        catch(err)        {                printf("    SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar);        }        run('done'); // done with this share}function getShares(proj){        //printf("DEBUG: selecting project %s\n",proj);        run('select ' + proj);        shares=list();        printf("Project: %s\n", proj);        for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)        {                share=shares[j];                getShareQuota(share);        }        run('done'); // exit selected project}function getProjects(){        run('cd /');        run('shares');        projects=list();                for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++)        {                var project=projects[i];                getShares(project);        }        run('done'); // exit context for all projects}getProjects();.Which can be run as follows, and will print information like this:[geoff@lightning ~/FISHWORKS_SCRIPTS] ssh -i ~/.ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < get_quota_utilisation.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Project: another-project  SHARE: and-another                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%                   Billy            0.10            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%            testing-user            0.05            0.00        0%  SHARE: another-share                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.49        9%            testing-user            0.05            0.02        249%                   Billy            0.10            0.29        33%  SHARE: bob                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%  SHARE: more-shares-for-all                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                   Billy            0.10            0.00        0%            testing-user            0.05            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%  SHARE: yep                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                   Billy            0.10            0.01        999%            testing-user            0.05            0.49        9%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%Project: default  SHARE: Test-LUN    SKIPPING Test-LUN - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users  SHARE: test-geoff                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%                    root            3.18           10.00        31%                    uucp            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.59            0.49        119%^CKilled by signal 2.Creating a WorkflowWorkflows are scripts that we store on the appliance, and can have the script execute either on request (even from the BUI), or on an event such as a threshold being met.Workflow BasicsA workflow allows you to create a simple process that can be executed either via the BUI interface interactively, or by an alert being raised (for some threshold being reached, for example).The basics parameters you will have to set for your "workflow object" (notice you're creating a variable, that embodies ECMAScript) are as follows (parameters is optional):name: A name for this workflowdescription: A Description for the workflowparameters: A set of input parameters (useful when you need user input to execute the workflow)execute: The code, the script itself to execute, which will be function (parameters)With parameters, you can specify things like this (slightly modified sample taken from the System Administration Guide):          ...parameters:        variableParam1:         {                             label: 'Name of Share',                             type: 'String'                  },                  variableParam2                  {                             label: 'Share Size',                             type: 'size'                  },execute: ....};  Note the commas separating the sections of name, parameters, execute, and so on. This is important!Also - there is plenty of properties you can set on the parameters for your workflow, these are described in the Sun ZFS Storage System Administration Guide.Creating a Basic Workflow from a Basic ScriptTo make a basic script into a basic workflow, you need to wrap the following around your script to create a 'workflow' object:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function() {// (basic script goes here, minus the "script" at the beginning, and "." at the end)}};However, it appears (at least in my experience to date) that the workflow object may only be happy with one function in the execute parameter - either that or I'm doing something wrong. As far as I can tell, after execute: you should only have a basic one function context like so:execute: function(){}To deal with this, and to give an example similar to our script earlier, I have created another simple quota check, to show the same basic functionality, but in a workflow format:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function () {        run('cd /');        run('shares');        projects=list();                for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++)        {                run('select ' + projects[i]);                shares=list('filesystem');                printf("Project: %s\n", projects[i]);                for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)                {                        run('select ' +shares[j]);                        try                        {                                run('users');                                printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shares[j]);                                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","-------");                                users=list();                                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                                {                                        run('select ' + users[k]);                                        username=get('name');                                        usage=get('usage');                                        quota=get('quota');                                        usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes                                        quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above                                        quota_percent=0                                        if (quota > 0)                                        {                                                quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1);                                        }                                        printf("    %20s        %8.2f   %8.2f   %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent);                                        run('done');                                }                                run('done'); // exit user context                        }                        catch(err)                        {                        //      printf("    %s is a LUN, Not looking for users\n", shares[j]);                        }                        run('done'); // exit selected share context                }                run('done'); // exit project context        }        }};SummaryThe Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance offers lots of different and interesting features to Sun/Oracle customers, including the world renowned Analytics. Hopefully the above will help you to think of new creative things you could be doing by taking advantage of one of the other neat features, the internal scripting engine!Some references are below to help you continue learning more, I'll update this post as I do the same! Enjoy...More information on ECMAScript 3A complete reference to ECMAScript 3 which will help you learn more of the details you may be interested in, can be found here:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST-ARCH/ECMA-262,%203rd%20edition,%20December%201999.pdfMore Information on Administering the Sun ZFS Storage 7000The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 System Administration guide can be a useful reference point, and can be found here:http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/186238602/2010_Q3_2_ADMIN.pdf

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  • IntelliSense for Razor Hosting in non-Web Applications

    - by Rick Strahl
    When I posted my Razor Hosting article a couple of weeks ago I got a number of questions on how to get IntelliSense to work inside of Visual Studio while editing your templates. The answer to this question is mainly dependent on how Visual Studio recognizes assemblies, so a little background is required. If you open a template just on its own as a standalone file by clicking on it say in Explorer, Visual Studio will open up with the template in the editor, but you won’t get any IntelliSense on any of your related assemblies that you might be using by default. It’ll give Intellisense on base System namespace, but not on your imported assembly types. This makes sense: Visual Studio has no idea what the assembly associations for the single file are. There are two options available to you to make IntelliSense work for templates: Add the templates as included files to your non-Web project Add a BIN folder to your template’s folder and add all assemblies required there Including Templates in your Host Project By including templates into your Razor hosting project, Visual Studio will pick up the project’s assembly references and make IntelliSense available for any of the custom types in your project and on your templates. To see this work I moved the \Templates folder from the samples from the Debug\Bin folder into the project root and included the templates in the WinForm sample project. Here’s what this looks like in Visual Studio after the templates have been included:   Notice that I take my original example and type cast the Context object to the specific type that it actually represents – namely CustomContext – by using a simple code block: @{ CustomContext Model = Context as CustomContext; } After that assignment my Model local variable is in scope and IntelliSense works as expected. Note that you also will need to add any namespaces with the using command in this case: @using RazorHostingWinForm which has to be defined at the very top of a Razor document. BTW, while you can only pass in a single Context 'parameter’ to the template with the default template I’ve provided realize that you can also assign a complex object to Context. For example you could have a container object that references a variety of other objects which you can then cast to the appropriate types as needed: @{ ContextContainer container = Context as ContextContainer; CustomContext Model = container.Model; CustomDAO DAO = container.DAO; } and so forth. IntelliSense for your Custom Template Notice also that you can get IntelliSense for the top level template by specifying an inherits tag at the top of the document: @inherits RazorHosting.RazorTemplateFolderHost By specifying the above you can then get IntelliSense on your base template’s properties. For example, in my base template there are Request and Response objects. This is very useful especially if you end up creating custom templates that include your custom business objects as you can get effectively see full IntelliSense from the ‘page’ level down. For Html Help Builder for example, I’d have a Help object on the page and assuming I have the references available I can see all the way into that Help object without even having to do anything fancy. Note that the @inherits key is a GREAT and easy way to override the base template you normally specify as the default template. It allows you to create a custom template and as long as it inherits from the base template it’ll work properly. Since the last post I’ve also made some changes in the base template that allow hooking up some simple initialization logic so it gets much more easy to create custom templates and hook up custom objects with an IntializeTemplate() hook function that gets called with the Context and a Configuration object. These objects are objects you can pass in at runtime from your host application and then assign to custom properties on your template. For example the default implementation for RazorTemplateFolderHost does this: public override void InitializeTemplate(object context, object configurationData) { // Pick up configuration data and stuff into Request object RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration config = configurationData as RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration; this.Request.TemplatePath = config.TemplatePath; this.Request.TemplateRelativePath = config.TemplateRelativePath; // Just use the entire ConfigData as the model, but in theory // configData could contain many objects or values to set on // template properties this.Model = config.ConfigData as TModel; } to set up a strongly typed Model and the Request object. You can do much more complex hookups here of course and create complex base template pages that contain all the objects that you need in your code with strong typing. Adding a Bin folder to your Template’s Root Path Including templates in your host project works if you own the project and you’re the only one modifying the templates. However, if you are distributing the Razor engine as a templating/scripting solution as part of your application or development tool the original project is likely not available and so that approach is not practical. Another option you have is to add a Bin folder and add all the related assemblies into it. You can also add a Web.Config file with assembly references for any GAC’d assembly references that need to be associated with the templates. Between the web.config and bin folder Visual Studio can figure out how to provide IntelliSense. The Bin folder should contain: The RazorHosting.dll Your host project’s EXE or DLL – renamed to .dll if it’s an .exe Any external (bin folder) dependent assemblies Note that you most likely also want a reference to the host project if it contains references that are going to be used in templates. Visual Studio doesn’t recognize an EXE reference so you have to rename the EXE to DLL to make it work. Apparently the binary signature of EXE and DLL files are identical and it just works – learn something new everyday… For GAC assembly references you can add a web.config file to your template root. The Web.config file then should contain any full assembly references to GAC components: <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Web.Mvc, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" /> <add assembly="System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" /> <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" /> </assemblies> </compilation> </system.web> </configuration> And with that you should get full IntelliSense. Note that if you add a BIN folder and you also have the templates in your Visual Studio project Visual Studio will complain about reference conflicts as it’s effectively seeing both the project references and the ones in the bin folder. So it’s probably a good idea to use one or the other but not both at the same time :-) Seeing IntelliSense in your Razor templates is a big help for users of your templates. If you’re shipping an application level scripting solution especially it’ll be real useful for your template consumers/users to be able to get some quick help on creating customized templates – after all that’s what templates are all about – easy customization. Making sure that everything is referenced in your bin folder and web.config is a good idea and it’s great to see that Visual Studio (and presumably WebMatrix/Visual Web Developer as well) will be able to pick up your custom IntelliSense in Razor templates.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in Razor  

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  • C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend...

    - by James Michael Hare
    I've been thinking a lot about extension methods lately, and I must admit I both love them and hate them. They are a lot like sugar, they taste so nice and sweet, but they'll rot your teeth if you eat them too much.   I can't deny that they aren't useful and very handy. One of the major components of the Shared Component library where I work is a set of useful extension methods. But, I also can't deny that they tend to be overused and abused to willy-nilly extend every living type.   So what constitutes a good extension method? Obviously, you can write an extension method for nearly anything whether it is a good idea or not. Many times, in fact, an idea seems like a good extension method but in retrospect really doesn't fit.   So what's the litmus test? To me, an extension method should be like in the movies when a person runs into their twin, separated at birth. You just know you're related. Obviously, that's hard to quantify, so let's try to put a few rules-of-thumb around them.   A good extension method should:     Apply to any possible instance of the type it extends.     Simplify logic and improve readability/maintainability.     Apply to the most specific type or interface applicable.     Be isolated in a namespace so that it does not pollute IntelliSense.     So let's look at a few examples in relation to these rules.   The first rule, to me, is the most important of all. Once again, it bears repeating, a good extension method should apply to all possible instances of the type it extends. It should feel like the long lost relative that should have been included in the original class but somehow was missing from the family tree.    Take this nifty little int extension, I saw this once in a blog and at first I really thought it was pretty cool, but then I started noticing a code smell I couldn't quite put my finger on. So let's look:       public static class IntExtensinos     {         public static int Seconds(int num)         {             return num * 1000;         }           public static int Minutes(int num)         {             return num * 60000;         }     }     This is so you could do things like:       ...     Thread.Sleep(5.Seconds());     ...     proxy.Timeout = 1.Minutes();     ...     Awww, you say, that's cute! Well, that's the problem, it's kitschy and it doesn't always apply (and incidentally you could achieve the same thing with TimeStamp.FromSeconds(5)). It's syntactical candy that looks cool, but tends to rot and pollute the code. It would allow things like:       total += numberOfTodaysOrders.Seconds();     which makes no sense and should never be allowed. The problem is you're applying an extension method to a logical domain, not a type domain. That is, the extension method Seconds() doesn't really apply to ALL ints, it applies to ints that are representative of time that you want to convert to milliseconds.    Do you see what I mean? The two problems, in a nutshell, are that a) Seconds() called off a non-time value makes no sense and b) calling Seconds() off something to pass to something that does not take milliseconds will be off by a factor of 1000 or worse.   Thus, in my mind, you should only ever have an extension method that applies to the whole domain of that type.   For example, this is one of my personal favorites:       public static bool IsBetween<T>(this T value, T low, T high)         where T : IComparable<T>     {         return value.CompareTo(low) >= 0 && value.CompareTo(high) <= 0;     }   This allows you to check if any IComparable<T> is within an upper and lower bound. Think of how many times you type something like:       if (response.Employee.Address.YearsAt >= 2         && response.Employee.Address.YearsAt <= 10)     {     ...     }     Now, you can instead type:       if(response.Employee.Address.YearsAt.IsBetween(2, 10))     {     ...     }     Note that this applies to all IComparable<T> -- that's ints, chars, strings, DateTime, etc -- and does not depend on any logical domain. In addition, it satisfies the second point and actually makes the code more readable and maintainable.   Let's look at the third point. In it we said that an extension method should fit the most specific interface or type possible. Now, I'm not saying if you have something that applies to enumerables, you create an extension for List, Array, Dictionary, etc (though you may have reasons for doing so), but that you should beware of making things TOO general.   For example, let's say we had an extension method like this:       public static T ConvertTo<T>(this object value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This lets you do more fluent conversions like:       double d = "5.0".ConvertTo<double>();     However, if you dig into Reflector (LOVE that tool) you will see that if the type you are calling on does not implement IConvertible, what you convert to MUST be the exact type or it will throw an InvalidCastException. Now this may or may not be what you want in this situation, and I leave that up to you. Things like this would fail:       object value = new Employee();     ...     // class cast exception because typeof(IEmployee) != typeof(Employee)     IEmployee emp = value.ConvertTo<IEmployee>();       Yes, that's a downfall of working with Convertible in general, but if you wanted your fluent interface to be more type-safe so that ConvertTo were only callable on IConvertibles (and let casting be a manual task), you could easily make it:         public static T ConvertTo<T>(this IConvertible value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This is what I mean by choosing the best type to extend. Consider that if we used the previous (object) version, every time we typed a dot ('.') on an instance we'd pull up ConvertTo() whether it was applicable or not. By filtering our extension method down to only valid types (those that implement IConvertible) we greatly reduce our IntelliSense pollution and apply a good level of compile-time correctness.   Now my fourth rule is just my general rule-of-thumb. Obviously, you can make extension methods as in-your-face as you want. I included all mine in my work libraries in its own sub-namespace, something akin to:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions { ... }     This is in a library called Shared.Core, so just referencing the Core library doesn't pollute your IntelliSense, you have to actually do a using on Shared.Core.Extensions to bring the methods in. This is very similar to the way Microsoft puts its extension methods in System.Linq. This way, if you want 'em, you use the appropriate namespace. If you don't want 'em, they won't pollute your namespace.   To really make this work, however, that namespace should only include extension methods and subordinate types those extensions themselves may use. If you plant other useful classes in those namespaces, once a user includes it, they get all the extensions too.   Also, just as a personal preference, extension methods that aren't simply syntactical shortcuts, I like to put in a static utility class and then have extension methods for syntactical candy. For instance, I think it imaginable that any object could be converted to XML:       namespace Shared.Core     {         // A collection of XML Utility classes         public static class XmlUtility         {             ...             // Serialize an object into an xml string             public static string ToXml(object input)             {                 var xs = new XmlSerializer(input.GetType());                   // use new UTF8Encoding here, not Encoding.UTF8. The later includes                 // the BOM which screws up subsequent reads, the former does not.                 using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())                 using (var xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, new UTF8Encoding()))                 {                     xs.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, input);                     return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());                 }             }             ...         }     }   I also wanted to be able to call this from an object like:       value.ToXml();     But here's the problem, if i made this an extension method from the start with that one little keyword "this", it would pop into IntelliSense for all objects which could be very polluting. Instead, I put the logic into a utility class so that users have the choice of whether or not they want to use it as just a class and not pollute IntelliSense, then in my extensions namespace, I add the syntactical candy:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions     {         public static class XmlExtensions         {             public static string ToXml(this object value)             {                 return XmlUtility.ToXml(value);             }         }     }   So now it's the best of both worlds. On one hand, they can use the utility class if they don't want to pollute IntelliSense, and on the other hand they can include the Extensions namespace and use as an extension if they want. The neat thing is it also adheres to the Single Responsibility Principle. The XmlUtility is responsible for converting objects to XML, and the XmlExtensions is responsible for extending object's interface for ToXml().

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  • WhatsApp &amp; Tasker for Android &ndash; Read &amp; Write messages

    - by Shaurya Anand
    So, I finally gave up on all my previous the Microsoft Mobile/Phone OS devices and made my switch to Android this year. I am using my Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000 with CyanogenMod 9.1.0 (http://get.cm/get/jenkins/7086/cm-9.1.0-n7000.zip) and ClockworkMod 6.0.1.2 (http://download2.clockworkmod.com/recoveries/recovery-clockwork-6.0.1.2-n7000.zip) since August this year and I am so happy with the performance and the flexibility it offers me. As a software developer by profession, I would expect most of my gadget to be highly customizable and programmable (one time or at intervals) to suit my needs as close as it can. I was introduced to Automation for Android – Tasker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm&hl=en) via reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/tasker) and the word ‘automation’ was enough for me to dive right into this app. Only automation that I did earlier was switching profiles depending on location on there phones. And now, just imagine a complete set of possibilities that can be automate on the phone or via the phone. I did my research and found a couple of other tools that do the same/as close as what Tasker can do and few of them are even free. There’s one even by Microsoft called on{X} (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.onx.app&hl=en). Microsoft’s on{X} really caught my eye. You can write code for your phone on the web application by them, deploy it on your phone and even trace the flow all using your PC. Really brilliant, I love the fact that it’s all JavaScript. Here comes the but, it is still very very young and it’s policy of accessing my News Feed on Facebook is not something that I can not digest. On{X} is good, but as I said earlier, the API is not very mature and hence, I gave up on it. I bought Tasker, the best 5,00 € I spent in ages and I want to talk about it in this post. I am still a “noob” while operating this tool, but I tried my shot at automating WhatsApp (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whatsapp&hl=en), a popular messenger for various platform. The requirement for the automation is that, if I send a WhatsApp ‘wru’ message to the phone, it should respond back giving the location and battery level of my phone. It could be useful, if you like to locate your misplaced phone or automatically reply to your partner/friend, honestly, I don’t know what you will use it - through this post, I am just introducing automating WhatsApp using Tasker. Before we begin, the following script only works when your phone is rooted as we will be accessing the WhatsApp database and type some special characters like ‘:’. Let’s follow the code line by line: Profile:         Location request from XYZ. (12) // Name of your profile. Event:         Notification [ Owner Application:WhatsApp Title:* ] // When a new notification comes from WhatsApp, this event is fired. Read the end note, if you face problems with Chrome app after enabling Tasker accessibility. Enter:         A1: Run Shell [ Command:sqlite3 // We will access the WhatsApp database and check if the message comes from designated phone number or not. We mustn’t reply to every message.                 /data/data/com.whatsapp/databases/msgstore.db "SELECT _id, data FROM                  messages WHERE key_from_me='0' AND key_remote_jid LIKE '%XXXXXXXXXXX%' // Replace XXXXXXXXXXX with the phone number of your message sender.                 ORDER BY _id DESC LIMIT 1;" Timeout (Seconds):10 Use Root:On Store // I made a timeout for 10 seconds, if in case WhatsApp is busy accessing the database.                 Result In:%WHATSAPP_CURRREQ ] // Store the read Id and the last message on to the variable %WHATSAPP_CURRREQ         A2: If [ %WHATSAPP_CURRREQ ~R .*[wW][rR][uU].* ] // Check if the pattern of the message is correct and we are all set to send the location.                 A3: If [ %WHATSAPP_CURRREQ !~ %WHATSAPP_LASTREQ ] // Verify that the message is different from the last request. Remember every message has a unique Id.                         A4: Notify [ Title:WhatsApp location request... Text:Sending location // Just a notification that the location message is being prepared.                                 to Krati Gupta... Icon:<icon> Number:0 Permanent:On Priority:3 ] // Make a note it is a permanent notification, we will clear it later.                         A5: Secure Settings [ Configuration:Pattern Lock Disabled // I am disabling the pattern lock, that I use using the plugin Secure Settings.                                 Package:com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin Name:Secure // You can download the plugin from here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin&hl=en                                 Settings ]                         A6: Secure Settings [ Configuration:Keyguard Disabled // Disable the keygaurd, it is useful, when your phone is on lock and you want to automate everything, even the typing.                                 Package:com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin Name:Secure                                 Settings ]                         A7: Secure Settings [ Configuration:GPS Enabled // Pretty clear, turn on the GPS and get location at A8                                 Package:com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin Name:Secure                                 Settings ]                         A8: AutoShortcut [ Configuration:WhatsApp: Some One // I am using AutoShortcut plugin (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.autoshortcut) to start WhatsApp with the indented recipient.                                 Package:com.joaomgcd.autoshortcut Name:AutoShortcut ] // Replace Some One, actually choose it from the plugin, the right recipient.                         A9: Get Location [ Source:Any Timeout (Seconds):30 Continue Task // I am getting the location, timeout is 30 seconds, adjust it accordingly.                                 Immediately:Off Keep Tracking:Off ]                         A10: Secure Settings [ Configuration:Screen Dim // Now, this extension of the plugin Secure Settings, wakes your device so that you can type out the string on the WhatsApp app.                                 5 Seconds Package:com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin                                 Name:Secure Settings ]                         A11: Run Shell [ Command:input text // Now, I am using the shell script to type the text to the window, because the ‘:’ while not be typed from the Type task in Tasker.                                 LOCATION:maps.google.com/maps?q=%LOC Timeout (Seconds):0 Use Root:On // And also, this is way faster, but remember you need root for this, not for the other way of typing.                                 Store Result In: ]                         A12: Dpad [ Button:Right Repeat Times:1 ] // Focus the Send button                         A13: Dpad [ Button:Press Repeat Times:1 ] // And press it.                         A14: Dpad [ Button:Left Repeat Times:1 ] // Get back to the typing box.                         A15: Run Shell [ Command:input text LOCATION_ACCURACY:%LOCACC Timeout                                 (Seconds):0 Use Root:On Store Result In: ]                         A16: Dpad [ Button:Right Repeat Times:1 ]                         A17: Dpad [ Button:Press Repeat Times:1 ]                         A18: Dpad [ Button:Left Repeat Times:1 ]                         A19: Run Shell [ Command:input text BATTERY_LEVEL:%BATT% Timeout // I am adding Battery level in my case as well.                                 (Seconds):0 Use Root:On Store Result In: ]                         A20: Dpad [ Button:Right Repeat Times:1 ]                         A21: Dpad [ Button:Press Repeat Times:1 ]                         A22: Variable Set [ Name:%WHATSAPP_LASTREQ To:%WHATSAPP_CURRREQ Do // And now, we say, request is done.                                 Maths:Off Append:Off ]                         A23: Button [ Button:Back ] // I am exiting the WhatsApp nicely and not killing it. If you are the murderer kind, kill it, just know, you don’t have any place in the heaven.                         A24: Button [ Button:Back ]                         A25: Notify Cancel [ Title: Warn Not Exist:Off ] // Remove the permanent notification.                         A26: Notify [ Title:WhatsApp location request Text:Location sent // Make a temporary notification, and say, location is sent.                                 successfully. Icon:<icon> Number:0 Permanent:Off Priority:3 ]                                                         A27: Secure Settings [ Configuration:GPS Disabled // Disable all the horrible things we turned on earlier.                                 Package:com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin Name:Secure                                 Settings ]                         A28: Secure Settings [ Configuration:Pattern Lock Enabled                                 Package:com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin Name:Secure                                 Settings ]                         A29: Secure Settings [ Configuration:Keyguard Enabled                                 Package:com.intangibleobject.securesettings.plugin Name:Secure                                 Settings ]                 A30: End If         A31: End If Download this Task from here: http://db.tt/9vRmbhyb That’s it in the above small example – you can read/write messages from/to WhatsApp app. I am using n7000-cm9.1-cwr6. Oh yea, and if you are having the Talkback auto enabled for Chrome browser, you need to turn Off the Web scripts to run. Tasker is amazing, I have automated a lot of tasks using this tool. I will share a few none generic ones with you in my coming post here.

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  • Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business - Q&A from the Webcast

    - by [email protected]
    A few weeks ago, Vince Casarez and I presented with KMWorld on the Five Ways Enterprise 2.0 Can Transform Your Business. It was an enjoyable, interactive webcast in which Vince and I discussed the ways Enterprise 2.0 can transform your business and more importantly, highlighted key customer examples of how to do so. If you missed the webcast, you can catch a replay here. We had a lot of audience participation in some of the polls we conducted and in the Q&A session. We weren't able to address all of the questions during the broadcast, so we attempted to answer them here: Q: Which area within your firm focuses on Web 2.0? Meaning, do you find new departments developing just to manage the web 2.0 (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) user experience or are you structuring current departments? A: There are three distinct efforts within Oracle. The first is around delivery of these Web 2.0 services for enterprise deployments. This is the focus of the WebCenter team. The second effort is injecting these Web 2.0 services into use cases that drive the different enterprise applications. This effort is focused on how to manage these external services and bring them into a cohesive flow for marketing programs, customer care, and purchasing. The third effort is how we consume these services internally to enhance Oracle's business delivery. It leverages the technologies and use cases of the first two but also pushes the envelope with regards to future directions of these other two areas. Q: In a business, Web 2.0 is mostly like action logs. How can we leverage the official process practice versus the logs of a recent action? Example: a system configuration modified last night on a call out versus the official practice that everybody would use in the morning.A: The key thing to remember is that most Web 2.0 actions / activity streams today are based on collaboration and communication type actions. At least with public social sites like Facebook and Twitter. What we're delivering as part of the WebCenter Suite are not just these types of activities but also enterprise application activities. These enterprise application activities come from different application modules: purchasing, HR, order entry, sales opportunity, etc. The actions within these systems are normally tied to a business object or process: purchase order/customer, employee or department, customer and supplier, customer and product, respectively. Therefore, the activities or "logs" as you name them are able to be "typed" so that as a viewer, you can filter or decide to see only certain types of information. In your example, you could have a view that only showed you recent "configuration" changes and this could be right next to a view that showed off the items to be watched every morning. Q: It's great to hear about customers using the software but is there any plan for future webinars to show what the products/installs look like? That would be very helpful.A: We don't have a webinar planned to show off the install process. However, we have a viewlet that's posted on Oracle Technology Network. You can see it here:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/testcontent/wcs-install-098014.htmlAnd we've got excellent documentation that walks you through the steps here:http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/install.1111/e12001/install.htmAnd there's a whole set of demos and examples of what WebCenter can do at this URL:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/release11-demos-097468.html Q: How do you anticipate managing metadata across the enterprise to make content findable?A: We need to first make sure we are all talking about the same thing when we use a word like "metadata". Here's why...  For a developer, metadata means information that describes key elements of the portal or application and what the portal or application can do. For content systems, metadata means key terms that provide a taxonomy or folksonomy about the information that is being indexed, ordered, and managed. For business intelligence systems, metadata means key terms that provide labels to groups of data that most non-mathematicians need to understand. And for SOA, metadata means labels for parts of the processes that business owners should understand that connect development terminology. There are also additional requirements for metadata to be available to the team building these new solutions as well as requirements to make this metadata available to the running system. These requirements are often separated by "design time" and "run time" respectively. So clearly, a general goal of managing metadata across the enterprise is very challenging. We've invested a huge amount of resources around Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) to be able to provide a more generic system for all of these elements. No other vendor has anything like this technology foundation in their products. This provides a huge benefit to our customers as they will now be able to find content, processes, people, and information from a common set of search interfaces with consistent enterprise wide results. Q: Can you give your definition of terms as to document and content, please?A: Content applies to a broad category of information from Word documents, presentations and reports through attachments to invoices and/or purchase orders. Content is essentially any type of digital asset including images, video, and voice. A document is just one type of content. Q: Do you have special integration tools to realize an interaction between UCM and WebCenter Spaces/Services?A: Yes, we've dedicated a whole team of engineers to exploit the key features of Oracle UCM within WebCenter.  While ensuring that WebCenter can connect to other non-Oracle systems, we've made sure that with the combined set of Oracle technology, no other solution can match the combined power and integration.  This is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy which is to provide best in class capabilities for Content and Portals.  When combined together, the synergy between the two products enables users to quickly add capabilities when they are needed.  For example, simple document sharing is part of the combined product offering, but if legal discovery or archiving is required, Oracle UCM product includes these capabilities that can be quickly added.  There's no need to move content around or add another system to support this, it's just a feature that gets turned on within Oracle UCM. Q: All customers have some interaction with their applications and have many older versions, how do you see some of these new Enterprise 2.0 capabilities adding value to existing enterprise application deployments?A: Just as Service Oriented Architectures allowed for connecting the processes of different applications systems to work together, there's a need for a similar approach with regards to these enterprise 2.0 capabilities. Oracle WebCenter is built on a core architecture that allows for SOA of these Enterprise 2.0 services so that one set of scalable services can be used and integrated directly into any type of application. In this way, users can get immediate value out of the Enterprise 2.0 capabilities without having to wait for the next major release or upgrade. These centrally managed WebCenter services expose a set of standard interfaces that make it extremely easy to add them into existing applications no matter what technology the application has been implemented. Q: We've heard about Oracle Next Generation applications called "Fusion Applications", can you tell me how all this works together?A: Oracle WebCenter powers the core collaboration and social computing services found within Fusion Applications. It is the core user experience technology for how all the application screens have been implemented. And the core concept of task flows allows for all the Fusion Applications modules to be adaptable and composable by business users and IT without needing to be a professional developer. Oracle WebCenter is at the heart of the new Fusion Applications. In addition, the same patterns and technologies are now being added to the existing applications including JD Edwards, Siebel, Peoplesoft, and eBusiness Suite. The core technology enables all these customers to have a much smoother upgrade path to Fusion Applications. They get immediate benefits of injecting new user interactions into their existing applications without having to completely move to Fusion Applications. And then when the time comes, their users will already be well versed in how the new capabilities work. Q: Does any of this work with non Oracle software? Other databases? Other application servers? etc.A: We have made sure that Oracle WebCenter delivers the broadest set of development choices so that no matter what technology you developers are using, WebCenter capabilities can be quickly and easily added to the site or application. In addition, we have certified Oracle WebCenter to run against non-Oracle databases like DB2 and SQLServer. We have stated plans for certification against MySQL as well. Later in CY 2011, Oracle will provide certification on non-Oracle application servers such as WebSphere and JBoss. Q: How do we balance User and IT requirements in regards to Enterprise 2.0 technologies?A: Wrong decisions are often made because employee knowledge is not tapped efficiently and opportunities to innovate are often missed because the right people do not work together. Collaboration amongst workers in the right business context is critical for success. While standalone Enterprise 2.0 technologies can improve collaboration for collaboration's sake, using social collaboration tools in the context of business applications and processes will improve business responsiveness and lead companies to a more competitive position. As these systems become more mission critical it is essential that they maintain the highest level of performance and availability while scaling to support larger communities. Q: What are the ways in which Enterprise 2.0 can improve business responsiveness?A: With a wide range of Enterprise 2.0 tools in the marketplace, CIOs need to deploy solutions that will meet the requirements from users as well as address the requirements from IT. Workers want a next-generation user experience that is personalized and aggregates their daily tools and tasks, while IT needs to ensure the solution is secure, scalable, flexible, reliable and easily integrated with existing systems. An open and integrated approach to deploying portals, content management, and collaboration can enhance your business by addressing both the needs of knowledge workers for better information and the IT mandate to conserve resources by simplifying, consolidating and centralizing infrastructure and administration.  

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  • MySQL for Excel 1.1.3 has been released

    - by Javier Treviño
    The MySQL Windows Experience Team is proud to announce the release of MySQL for Excel version 1.1.3, the  latest addition to the MySQL Installer for Windows. MySQL for Excel is an application plug-in enabling data analysts to very easily access and manipulate MySQL data within Microsoft Excel. It enables you to directly work with a MySQL database from within Microsoft Excel so you can easily do tasks such as: Importing MySQL Data into Excel Exporting Excel data directly into MySQL to a new or existing table Editing MySQL data directly within Excel MySQL for Excel is installed using the MySQL Installer for Windows. The MySQL installer comes in 2 versions   Full (150 MB) which includes a complete set of MySQL products with their binaries included in the download Web (1.5 MB - a network install) which will just pull MySQL for Excel over the web and install it when run.   You can download MySQL Installer from our official Downloads page at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/installer/. MySQL for Excel 1.1.3 introduces the following features:   Upon saving a Workbook containing Worksheets in Edit Mode, the user is asked if he wants to exit the Edit Mode on all Worksheets before their parent Workbook is saved so the Worksheets are saved unprotected, otherwise the Worksheets will remain protected and the users will be able to unprotect them later retrieving the passkeys from the application log after closing MySQL for Excel. Added background coloring to the column names header row of an Import Data operation to have the same look as the one in an Edit Data operation (i.e. gray-ish background). Connection passwords can be stored securely just like MySQL Workbench does and these secured passwords are shared with Workbench in the same way connections are. Changed the way the MySQL for Excel ribbon toggle button works, instead of just showing or hiding the add-in it actually opens and closes it. Added a connection test before any operation against the database (schema creation, data import, append, export or edition) so the operation dialog is not shown and a friendlier error message is shown.   Also this release contains the following bug fixes:   Added a check on every connection test for an expired password, if the password has been expired a dialog is now shown to the user to reset the password. Bug #17354118 - DON'T HANDLE EXPIRED PASSWORDS Added code to escape text values to be imported to an Excel worksheet that start with an equals sign so Excel does not treat those values as formulas that will fail evaluation. This is an option turned on by default that can be turned off by users if they wish to import values to be treated as Excel formulas. Bug #17354102 - ERROR IMPORTING TEXT VALUES TO EXCEL STARTING WITH AN EQUALS SIGN Added code to properly check the reason for a failing connection, if it's a failing password the user gets a dialog to retry the connection with a different password until the connection succeeds, a connection error not related to the password is thrown or the user cancels. If the failing connection is not related to a bad password an error message is shown to the users indicating the reason of the failure. Bug #16239007 - CONNECTIONS TO MYSQL SERVICES NOT RUNNING DISPLAY A WRONG PASSWORD ERROR MESSAGE Added global options dialog that can be accessed from the Schema Selection and DB Object Selection panels where the timeouts for the connection to the DB Server and for the query commands can be changed from their default values (15 seconds for the connection timeout and 30 seconds for the query timeout). MySQL Bug #68732, Bug #17191646 - QUERY TIMEOUT CANNOT BE ADJUSTED IN MYSQL FOR EXCEL Changed the Varchar(65,535) data type shown in the Export Data data type combo box to Text since the maximum row size is 65,535 bytes and any autodetected column data type with a length greater than 4,000 should be set to Text actually for the table to be created successfully. MySQL Bug #69779, Bug #17191633 - EXPORT FAILS FOR EXCEL FILES CONTAINING > 4000 CHARACTERS OF TEXT PER CELL Removed code that was replacing all spaces typed by the user in an overriden data type for a new column in an Export Data operation, also improved the data type detection code to flag as invalid data types with parenthesis but without any text inside or where the contents inside the parenthesis are not valid for the specific data type. Bug #17260260 - EXPORT DATA SET TYPE NOT WORKING WITH MEMBER VALUES CONTAINING SPACES Added support for the year data type with a length of 2 or 4 and a validation that valid values are integers between 1901-2155 (for 4-digit years) or between 0-99 (for 2-digit years). Bug #17259915 - EXPORT DATA YEAR DATA TYPE NOT RECOGNIZED IF DECLARED WITH A DISPLAY WIDTH) Fixed code for Export Data operations where users overrode the data type for columns typing Text in the data type combobox, which is a valid data type but was not recognized as such. Bug #17259490 - EXPORT DATA TEXT DATA TYPE NOT RECOGNIZED AS A VALID DATA TYPE Changed the location of the registry where the MySQL for Excel add-in is installed to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER so the add-in is accessible by all users and not only to the user that installed it. For this to work with Excel 2007 a hotfix may be required (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976477). MySQL Bug #68746, Bug #16675992 - EXCEL-ADD-IN IS ONLY INSTALLED FOR USER ACCOUNT THAT THE INSTALLATION RUNS UNDER Added support for Excel 2013 Single Document Interface, now that Excel 2013 creates 1 window per workbook also the Excel Add-In maintains an independent custom task pane in each window. MySQL Bug #68792, Bug #17272087 - MYSQL FOR EXCEL SIDEBAR DOES NOT APPEAR IN EXCEL 2013 (WITH WORKAROUND) Included the latest MySQL Utility with a code fix for the COM exception thrown when attempting to open Workbench in the Manage Connections window. Bug #17258966 - MYSQL WORKBENCH NOT OPENED BY CLICKING MANAGE CONNECTIONS HOTLABEL Fixed code for Append Data operations that was not applying a calculated automatic mapping correctly when the source and target tables had different number of columns, some columns with the same name but some of those lying on column indexes beyond the limit of the other source/target table. MySQL Bug #69220, Bug #17278349 - APPEND DOESN'T AUTOMATICALLY DETECT EXCEL COL HEADER WITH SAME NAME AS SQL FIELD Fixed some code for Edit Data operations that was escaping special characters twice (during edition in Excel and then upon sending the query to the MySQL server). MySQL Bug #68669, Bug #17271693 - A BACKSLASH IS INSERTED BEFORE AN APOSTROPHE EDITING TABLE WITH MYSQL FOR EXCEL Upgraded MySQL Utility with latest version that encapsulates dialog base classes and introduces more classes to handle Workbench connections, and removed these from the Excel project. Bug #16500331 - CAN'T DELETE CONNECTIONS CREATED WITHIN ADDIN You can access the MySQL for Excel documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/mysql-for-excel.html You can find our team’s blog at http://blogs.oracle.com/MySQLOnWindows. You can also post questions on our MySQL for Excel forum found at http://forums.mysql.com/. Enjoy and thanks for the support!

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  • Source-control 'wet-work'?

    - by Phil Factor
    When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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  • Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

    - by Wes McClure
    Fear, it’s what turns maintaining applications into a nightmare.  Technology moves on, teams move on, someone is left to operate the application, what was green is now perceived brown.  Eventually the business will evolve and changes will need to be made.  The approach to those changes often dictates the long term viability of the application.  Fear of change, lack of passion and a lack of interest in understanding the domain often leads to a paranoia to do anything that doesn’t involve duct tape and bailing twine.  Don’t get me wrong, those have a place in the short term viability of a project but they don’t have a place in the long term.  Add to it “us versus them” in regards to the original team and those that maintain it, internal politics and other factors and you have a recipe for disaster.  This results in code that quickly becomes unmanageable.  Even the most clever of designs will eventually become sub optimal and debt will amount that exponentially makes changes difficult.  This is where refactoring comes in, and it’s something I’m very passionate about.  Refactoring is about improving the process whereby we make change, it’s an exponential investment in the process of change. Without it we will incur exponential complexity that halts productivity. Investments, especially in the long term, require intuition and reflection.  How can we tackle new development effectively via evolving the original design and paying off debt that has been incurred? The longer we wait to ask and answer this question, the more it will cost us.  Small requests don’t warrant big changes, but realizing when changes now will pay off in the long term, and especially in the short term, is valuable. I have done my fair share of maintaining applications and continuously refactoring as needed, but recently I’ve begun work on a project that hasn’t had much debt, if any, paid down in years.  This is the first in a series of blog posts to try to capture the process which is largely driven by intuition of smaller refactorings from other projects. Signs that refactoring could help: Testability How can decreasing test time not pay dividends? One of the first things I found was that a very important piece often takes 30+ minutes to test.  I can only imagine how much time this has cost historically, but more importantly the time it might cost in the coming weeks: I estimate at least 10-20 hours per person!  This is simply unacceptable for almost any situation.  As it turns out, about 6 hours of working with this part of the application and I was able to cut the time down to under 30 seconds!  In less than the lost time of one week, I was able to fix the problem for all future weeks! If we can’t test fast then we can’t change fast, nor with confidence. Code is used by end users and it’s also used by developers, consider your own needs in terms of the code base.  Adding logic to enable/disable features during testing can help decouple parts of an application and lead to massive improvements.  What exactly is so wrong about test code in real code?  Often, these become features for operators and sometimes end users.  If you cannot run an integration test within a test runner in your IDE, it’s time to refactor. Readability Are variables named meaningfully via a ubiquitous language? Is the code segmented functionally or behaviorally so as to minimize the complexity of any one area? Are aspects properly segmented to avoid confusion (security, logging, transactions, translations, dependency management etc) Is the code declarative (what) or imperative (how)?  What matters, not how.  LINQ is a great abstraction of the what, not how, of collection manipulation.  The Reactive framework is a great example of the what, not how, of managing streams of data. Are constants abstracted and named, or are they just inline? Do people constantly bitch about the code/design? If the code is hard to understand, it will be hard to change with confidence.  It’s a large undertaking if the original designers didn’t pay much attention to readability and as such will never be done to “completion.”  Make sure not to go over board, instead use this as you change an application, not in lieu of changes (like with testability). Complexity Simplicity will never be achieved, it’s highly subjective.  That said, a lot of code can be significantly simplified, tidy it up as you go.  Refactoring will often converge upon a simplification step after enough time, keep an eye out for this. Understandability In the process of changing code, one often gains a better understanding of it.  Refactoring code is a good way to learn how it works.  However, it’s usually best in combination with other reasons, in effect killing two birds with one stone.  Often this is done when readability is poor, in which case understandability is usually poor as well.  In the large undertaking we are making with this legacy application, we will be replacing it.  Therefore, understanding all of its features is important and this refactoring technique will come in very handy. Unused code How can deleting things not help? This is a freebie in refactoring, it’s very easy to detect with modern tools, especially in statically typed languages.  We have VCS for a reason, if in doubt, delete it out (ok that was cheesy)! If you don’t know where to start when refactoring, this is an excellent starting point! Duplication Do not pray and sacrifice to the anti-duplication gods, there are excellent examples where consolidated code is a horrible idea, usually with divergent domains.  That said, mediocre developers live by copy/paste.  Other times features converge and aren’t combined.  Tools for finding similar code are great in the example of copy/paste problems.  Knowledge of the domain helps identify convergent concepts that often lead to convergent solutions and will give intuition for where to look for conceptual repetition. 80/20 and the Boy Scouts It’s often said that 80% of the time 20% of the application is used most.  These tend to be the parts that are changed.  There are also parts of the code where 80% of the time is spent changing 20% (probably for all the refactoring smells above).  I focus on these areas any time I make a change and follow the philosophy of the Boy Scout in cleaning up more than I messed up.  If I spend 2 hours changing an application, in the 20%, I’ll always spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it or nearby areas. This gives a huge productivity edge on developers that don’t. Ironically after a short period of time the 20% shrinks enough that we don’t have to spend 80% of our time there and can move on to other areas.   Refactoring is highly subjective, never attempt to refactor to completion!  Learn to be comfortable with leaving one part of the application in a better state than others.  It’s an evolution, not a revolution.  These are some simple areas to look into when making changes and can help get one started in the process.  I’ve often found that refactoring is a convergent process towards simplicity that sometimes spans a few hours but often can lead to massive simplifications over the timespan of weeks and months of regular development.

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  • Source-control 'wet-work'?

    - by Phil Factor
    When a design or creative work is flawed beyond remedy, it is often best to destroy it and start again. The other day, I lost the code to a long and intricate SQL batch I was working on. I’d thought it was impossible, but it happened. With all the technology around that is designed to prevent this occurring, this sort of accident has become a rare event.  If it weren’t for a deranged laptop, and my distraction, the code wouldn’t have been lost this time.  As always, I sighed, had a soothing cup of tea, and typed it all in again.  The new code I hastily tapped in  was much better: I’d held in my head the essence of how the code should work rather than the details: I now knew for certain  the start point, the end, and how it should be achieved. Instantly the detritus of half-baked thoughts fell away and I was able to write logical code that performed better.  Because I could work so quickly, I was able to hold the details of all the columns and variables in my head, and the dynamics of the flow of data. It was, in fact, easier and quicker to start from scratch rather than tidy up and refactor the existing code with its inevitable fumbling and half-baked ideas. What a shame that technology is now so good that developers rarely experience the cleansing shock of losing one’s code and having to rewrite it from scratch.  If you’ve never accidentally lost  your code, then it is worth doing it deliberately once for the experience. Creative people have, until Technology mistakenly prevented it, torn up their drafts or sketches, threw them in the bin, and started again from scratch.  Leonardo’s obsessive reworking of the Mona Lisa was renowned because it was so unusual:  Most artists have been utterly ruthless in destroying work that didn’t quite make it. Authors are particularly keen on writing afresh, and the results are generally positive. Lawrence of Arabia actually lost the entire 250,000 word manuscript of ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ by accidentally leaving it on a train at Reading station, before rewriting a much better version.  Now, any writer or artist is seduced by technology into altering or refining their work rather than casting it dramatically in the bin or setting a light to it on a bonfire, and rewriting it from the blank page.  It is easy to pick away at a flawed work, but the real creative process is far more brutal. Once, many years ago whilst running a software house that supplied commercial software to local businesses, I’d been supervising an accounting system for a farming cooperative. No packaged system met their needs, and it was all hand-cut code.  For us, it represented a breakthrough as it was for a government organisation, and success would guarantee more contracts. As you’ve probably guessed, the code got mangled in a disk crash just a week before the deadline for delivery, and the many backups all proved to be entirely corrupted by a faulty tape drive.  There were some fragments left on individual machines, but they were all of different versions.  The developers were in despair.  Strangely, I managed to re-write the bulk of a three-month project in a manic and caffeine-soaked weekend.  Sure, that elegant universally-applicable input-form routine was‘nt quite so elegant, but it didn’t really need to be as we knew what forms it needed to support.  Yes, the code lacked architectural elegance and reusability. By dawn on Monday, the application passed its integration tests. The developers rose to the occasion after I’d collapsed, and tidied up what I’d done, though they were reproachful that some of the style and elegance had gone out of the application. By the delivery date, we were able to install it. It was a smaller, faster application than the beta they’d seen and the user-interface had a new, rather Spartan, appearance that we swore was done to conform to the latest in user-interface guidelines. (we switched to Helvetica font to look more ‘Bauhaus’ ). The client was so delighted that he forgave the new bugs that had crept in. I still have the disk that crashed, up in the attic. In IT, we have had mixed experiences from complete re-writes. Lotus 123 never really recovered from a complete rewrite from assembler into C, Borland made the mistake with Arago and Quattro Pro  and Netscape’s complete rewrite of their Navigator 4 browser was a white-knuckle ride. In all cases, the decision to rewrite was a result of extreme circumstances where no other course of action seemed possible.   The rewrite didn’t come out of the blue. I prefer to remember the rewrite of Minix by young Linus Torvalds, or the rewrite of Bitkeeper by a slightly older Linus.  The rewrite of CP/M didn’t do too badly either, did it? Come to think of it, the guy who decided to rewrite the windowing system of the Xerox Star never regretted the decision. I’ll agree that one should often resist calls for a rewrite. One of the worst habits of the more inexperienced programmer is to denigrate whatever code he or she inherits, and then call loudly for a complete rewrite. They are buoyed up by the mistaken belief that they can do better. This, however, is a different psychological phenomenon, more related to the idea of some motorcyclists that they are operating on infinite lives, or the occasional squaddies that if they charge the machine-guns determinedly enough all will be well. Grim experience brings out the humility in any experienced programmer.  I’m referring to quite different circumstances here. Where a team knows the requirements perfectly, are of one mind on methodology and coding standards, and they already have a solution, then what is wrong with considering  a complete rewrite? Rewrites are so painful in the early stages, until that point where one realises the payoff, that even I quail at the thought. One needs a natural disaster to push one over the edge. The trouble is that source-control systems, and disaster recovery systems, are just too good nowadays.   If I were to lose this draft of this very blog post, I know I’d rewrite it much better. However, if you read this, you’ll know I didn’t have the nerve to delete it and start again.  There was a time that one prayed that unreliable hardware would deliver you from an unmaintainable mess of a codebase, but now technology has made us almost entirely immune to such a merciful act of God. An old friend of mine with long experience in the software industry has long had the idea of the ‘source-control wet-work’,  where one hires a malicious hacker in some wild eastern country to hack into one’s own  source control system to destroy all trace of the source to an application. Alas, backup systems are just too good to make this any more than a pipedream. Somehow, it would be difficult to promote the idea. As an alternative, could one construct a source control system that, on doing all the code-quality metrics, would systematically destroy all trace of source code that failed the quality test? Alas, I can’t see many managers buying into the idea. In reading the full story of the near-loss of Toy Story 2, it set me thinking. It turned out that the lucky restoration of the code wasn’t the happy ending one first imagined it to be, because they eventually came to the conclusion that the plot was fundamentally flawed and it all had to be rewritten anyway.  Was this an early  case of the ‘source-control wet-job’?’ It is very hard nowadays to do a rapid U-turn in a development project because we are far too prone to cling to our existing source-code.

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  • Benefits of Behavior Driven Development

    - by Aligned
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2013/07/26/benefits-of-behavior-driven-development.aspxContinuing my previous article on BDD, I wanted to point out some benefits of BDD and since BDD is an extension of Test Driven Development (TDD), you get those as well. I’ll add another article on some possible downsides of this approach. There are many articles about the benefits of TDD and they apply to BDD. I’ve pointed out some here and copied some of the main points for each article, but there are many more including the book The Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. http://geekswithblogs.net/leesblog/archive/2008/04/30/the-benefits-of-test-driven-development.aspx (Lee Brandt) Stability Accountability Design Ability Separated Concerns Progress Indicator http://tddftw.com/benefits-of-tdd/ Help maintainers understand the intention behind the code Bring validation and proper data handling concerns to the forefront. Writing the tests first is fun. Better APIs come from writing testable code. TDD will make you a better developer. http://www.slideshare.net/dhelper/benefit-from-unit-testing-in-the-real-world (from Typemock). Take a look at the slides, especially the extra time required for TDD (slide 10) and the next one of the bugs avoided using TDD (slide 11). Less bugs (slide 11) about testing and development (13) Increase confidence in code (14) Fearlessly change your code (14) Document Requirements (14) also see http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/06/01/roc-rocks.aspx Discover usability issues early (14) All these points and articles are great and there are many more. The following are my additions to the benefits of BDD from using it in real projects for my company. July 2013 on MSDN - Behavior-Driven Design with SpecFlow Scott Allen did a very informative TDD and MVC module, but to me he is doing BDDCompile and Execute Requirements in Microsoft .NET ~ Video from TechEd 2012 Communication I was working through a complicated task that the decision tree kept growing. After writing out the Given, When, Then of the scenario, I was able tell QA what I had worked through for their initial test cases. They were able to add from there. It is also useful to use this language with other developers, managers, or clients to help make informed decisions on if it meets the requirements or if it can simplified to save time (money). Thinking through solutions, before starting to code This was the biggest benefit to me. I like to jump into coding to figure out the problem. Many times I don't understand my path well enough and have to do some parts over. A past supervisor told me several times during reviews that I need to get better at seeing "the forest for the trees". When I sit down and write out the behavior that I need to implement, I force myself to think things out further and catch scenarios before they get to QA. A co-worker that is new to BDD and we’ve been using it in our new project for the last 6 months, said “It really clarifies things”. It took him awhile to understand it all, but now he’s seeing the value of this approach (yes there are some downsides, but that is a different issue). Developers’ Confidence This is huge for me. With tests in place, my confidence grows that I won’t break code that I’m not directly changing. In the past, I’ve worked on projects with out tests and we would frequently find regression bugs (or worse the users would find them). That isn’t fun. We don’t catch all problems with the tests, but when QA catches one, I can write a test to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s also good for Releasing code, telling your manager that it’s good to go. As time goes on and the code gets older, how confident are you that checking in code won’t break something somewhere else? Merging code - pre release confidence If you’re merging code a lot, it’s nice to have the tests to help ensure you didn’t merge incorrectly. Interrupted work I had a task that I started and planned out, then was interrupted for a month because of different priorities. When I started it up again, and un-shelved my changes, I had the BDD specs and it helped me remember what I had figured out and what was left to do. It would have much more difficult without the specs and tests. Testing and verifying complicated scenarios Sometimes in the UI there are scenarios that get tricky, because there are a lot of steps involved (click here to open the dialog, enter the information, make sure it’s valid, when I click cancel it should do {x}, when I click ok it should close and do {y}, then do this, etc….). With BDD I can avoid some of the mouse clicking define the scenarios and have them re-run quickly, without using a mouse. UI testing is still needed, but this helps a bunch. The same can be true for tricky server logic. Documentation of Assumptions and Specifications The BDD spec tests (Jasmine or SpecFlow or other tool) also work as documentation and show what the original developer was trying to accomplish. It’s not a different Word document, so developers will keep this up to date, instead of letting it become obsolete. What happens if you leave the project (consulting, new job, etc) with no specs or at the least good comments in the code? Sometimes I think of a new scenario, so I add a failing spec and continue in the same stream of thought (don’t forget it because it was on a piece of paper or in a notepad). Then later I can come back and handle it and have it documented. Jasmine tests and JavaScript –> help deal with the non-typed system I like JavaScript, but I also dislike working with JavaScript. I miss C# telling me if a property doesn’t actually exist at build time. I like the idea of TypeScript and hope to use it more in the future. I also use KnockoutJs, which has observables that need to be called with ending (), since the observable is a function. It’s hard to remember when to use () or not and the Jasmine specs/tests help ensure the correct usage.   This should give you an idea of the benefits that I see in using the BDD approach. I’m sure there are more. It talks a lot of practice, investment and experimentation to figure out how to approach this and to get comfortable with it. I agree with Scott Allen in the video I linked above “Remember that TDD can take some practice. So if you're not doing test-driven design right now? You can start and practice and get better. And you'll reach a point where you'll never want to get back.”

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 28, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 28, 2012Popular ReleasesWPUtils: WPUtils 1.2: Just fixed an issue related to isolated storage path for ChoosePhotoBehavior. Specifically CreateDirectory method only accepts relative path, but was given a "/photos/" path which would result in exception. Please make sure you have this fix if you are using ChoosePhotoBehavior! NOTE: Windows Phone SDK 7.1 or higher is required.TFS Timesheets: TFS Timesheets 2.0: New features: Visual Studio 2012 support Bug fixes: Scaling mode inherited rather than font scalingCRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogFree Aspx Image Gallery: Free Aspx Image Gallery Release V1: This is first basic release of my free aspx image gallery project. It is free to use and modify by the user without any need of providing any credit to me.Simple Microsoft Excel Document Converter (Convert To XLS, XLSX, PDF, XPS): ExcelDocConverter 0.1 Beta: Initial Release Microsoft Excel Documents Converter. Microsoft Excel 1997-2003 (XLS) Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 (XLSX) Portable Document Format (PDF) Microsoft XPS Document (XPS) Difference between NET2.0 and NET3.5 This program uses .NET Framework runtime library to run. Basically, they are no differences. Only the runtime library version is different. For older computers, i.e. Windows XP, might not have .NET Framework 3.5 installed, then use NET2.0 in stead. But, some Windows XP SP2 mig...Office File Properties: Office File Properties 3.3.1: Bug fix. Convert file extension to lowercase before checking.LoBDb.NET: LoBDb.NET 1.0.9: Centido.Core library: 1) SQL Server script bug fix: an error when changing the MaxLength property of an indexed string column or when changing the Precision-Scale properties of a decimal column. LobDb.NET Manager: 1) Changing the Precision, Scale, Default Value, Minimum and Maximum properties of a decimal column now enables the Save button. 2) The MaxLength property of a string column and the Precision+Scale values of a decimal column are now displayed in the column list. 3) Changing the Min...Chaos games: Chaos games: Small app for generating fractals using chaos gamesVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.16: Changelog for 2.2.16 (32bit and 64bit) Now a standalone remote client also available to control the Engine remotely. 1. Added support for remote connections for status and configuration. MCEBuddy now uses port 23332. The remote server name, remote server port and local server port can be updated from the MCEBuddy.conf file BUT the Service or GUI needs to be restarted (i.e. reboot or restart service or restart program) for it to take effect. Refer to documentation for more details http://mce...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.SSIS GoogleAnalyticsSource: Version 1.1 Alpha 2: The component uses now the Google API V2.4 including the management API.MVC Bootstrap: MVC Boostrap 0.5.1: A small demo site, based on the default ASP.NET MVC 3 project template, showing off some of the features of MVC Bootstrap. This release uses Entity Framework 5 for data access and Ninject 3 for dependency injection. If you download and use this project, please give some feedback, good or bad!menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.JSLint for Visual Studio 2010: 1.4.0: VS2012 support is alphaBlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (Preview 6): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 5 Added separate samples download with .vsix dependencies instead of source dependencies Support for FreeWheel SmartXML ad responses Support for Smooth Streaming SDK DownloaderPlugins Support for VMAP and TTML polling for live scenarios Support for custom smooth streaming byte stream and scheme handlers Support for new play time and position tracking plugin Added IsLiveChanged event Added AdaptivePlugin.MaxBitrate property Add...New ProjectsChaos games: Small app to generating fractals using chaos gamesDocument Digitalization System: This system will allow the users with on one or more PCs to digitalize pdf files and store it or export it to other file formats.ExternalTokenAnalysisOffline: SPUser?UserToken????????????????。FinalProjectSeniorProject: ***Unfinished*** Senior project build GL Ponpes Selamat Kendal: Aplikasi Akuntansi Sekolah Pondok Pesantren Modern Selamat KendalHealth Care Manager: One of keynote planned for the Brazzaville Microsoft event coming soon.Orchard Commerce History with PayPal: Project expands on Nwazet.Commerce module (and is required for this module to work). Adds a purchase history, product role associations, and PayPal.PDF.NET: PWMIS ?????? Ver 4.5 ???? SMS Egypt: This project is intended to make it easy for people to send SMS to their customers using SMS gateways inside and outside Egypt. Strong Caml: Use the familiar CAML syntax, but now do it in strongly-typed, dynamic code. Just follow Visual Studio's IntelliSense, and your CAML query can't go wrong!TrainingFrameWork: TrainingFrameWork

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  • MVC Razor Engine For Beginners Part 1

    - by Humprey Cogay, C|EH, E|CSA
    I. What is MVC? a. http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/older-versions/overview/asp-net-mvc-overview II. Software Requirements for this tutorial a. Visual Studio 2010/2012. You can get your free copy here Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 b. MVC Framework Option 1 - Install using a standalone installer http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30683 Option 2 - Install using Web Platform Installer http://www.microsoft.com/web/handlers/webpi.ashx?command=getinstallerredirect&appid=MVC4VS2010_Loc III. Creating your first MVC4 Application a. On the Visual Studio click file new solution link b. Click Other Project Type>Visual Studio Solutions and on the templates window select blank solution and let us name our solution MVCPrimer. c. Now Click File>New and select Project d. Select Visual C#>Web> and select ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application and Enter MyWebSite as Name e. Select Empty, Razor as view engine and uncheck Create a Unit test project f. You can now view a basic MVC 4 Application Structure on your solution explorer g. Now we will add our first controller by right clicking on the controllers folder on your solution explorer and select Add>Controller h. Change the name of the controller to HomeController and under the scaffolding options select Empty MVC Controller. i. You will now see a basic controller with an Index method that returns an ActionResult j. We will now add a new View Folder for our Home Controller. Right click on the views folder on your solution explorer and select Add> New Folder> and name this folder Home k. Add a new View by right clicking on Views>Home Folder and select Add View. l. Name the view Index, and select Razor(CSHTML) as View Engine, All checkbox should be unchecked for now and click add. m. Relationship between our HomeController and Home Views Sub Folder n. Add new HTML Contents to our newly created Index View o. Press F5 to run our MVC Application p. We will create our new model, Right click on the models folder of our solution explorer and select Add> Class. q. Let us name our class Customer r. Edit the Customer class with the following code s. Open the HomeController by double clickin HomeController of our Controllers folder and edit the HomeControllerusing System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Mvc;   namespace MyWebSite.Controllers {     public class HomeController : Controller     {         //         // GET: /Home/           public ActionResult Index()         {             return View();         }           public ActionResult ListCustomers()         {             List<Models.Customer> customers = new List<Models.Customer>();               //Add First Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()                     {                         Id = 1,                         CompanyName = "Volvo",                         ContactNo = "123-0123-0001",                         ContactPerson = "Gustav Larson",                         Description = "Volvo Car Corporation, or Volvo Personvagnar AB, is a Scandinavian automobile manufacturer founded in 1927"                     });                 //Add Second Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()                     {                         Id = 2,                         CompanyName = "BMW",                         ContactNo = "999-9876-9898",                         ContactPerson = "Franz Josef Popp",                         Description = "Bayerische Motoren Werke AG,  (BMW; English: Bavarian Motor Works) is a " +                                       "German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1917. "                     });                 //Add Third Customer to Our Collection             customers.Add(new Models.Customer()             {                 Id = 3,                 CompanyName = "Audi",                 ContactNo = "983-2222-1212",                 ContactPerson = "Karl Benz",                 Description = " is a multinational division of the German manufacturer Daimler AG,"             });               return View(customers);         }     } } t. Let us now create a view for this Class, But before continuing Press Ctrl + Shift + B to rebuild the solution, this will make the previously created model on the Model class drop down of the Add View Menu. Right click on the views>Home folder and select Add>View u. Let us name our View as ListCustomers, Select Razor(CSHTML) as View Engine, Put a check mark on Create a strongly-typed view, and select Customer (MyWebSite.Models) as model class. Slect List on the Scaffold Template and Click OK. v. Run the MVC Application by pressing F5, and on the address bar insert Home/ListCustomers, We should now see a web page similar below.   x. You can edit ListCustomers.CSHTML to remove and add HTML codes @model IEnumerable<MyWebSite.Models.Customer>   @{     Layout = null; }   <!DOCTYPE html>   <html> <head>     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />     <title>ListCustomers</title> </head> <body>     <h2>List of Customers</h2>     <table border="1">         <tr>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.CompanyName)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.Description)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ContactPerson)             </th>             <th>                 @Html.DisplayNameFor(model => model.ContactNo)             </th>         </tr>         @foreach (var item in Model) {         <tr>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.CompanyName)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.Description)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ContactPerson)             </td>             <td>                 @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.ContactNo)             </td>                   </tr>     }         </table> </body> </html> y. Press F5 to run the MVC Application   z. You will notice some @HTML.DisplayFor codes. These are called HTML Helpers you can read more about HTML Helpers on this site http://www.w3schools.com/aspnet/mvc_htmlhelpers.asp   That’s all. You now have your first MVC4 Razor Engine Web Application . . .

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  • Help with OpenVPN setup on Windows Server 2003

    - by Bill Johnson
    Hi all, Just wondering if someone can assist me further with the set-up of OpenVPN on my Windows Server 2003. I have configured Win Server as per the following guide: http://tinyurl.com/kxusv and I'm now at the stage of Creating the config files. I have a few questions that I need some assistance with. My server IP is 192.168.1.10 and my routers IP address is 192.168.1.1 (the router is a Netgear DGN2000). I have edited the server.ovpn file as per the following: push "dhcp-option DNS X.X.X.X" # Replace the Xs with the IP address of the DNS for your home network (usually your ISP's DNS) push "dhcp-option DNS X.X.X.X" # A second DNS server if you have one to include my ISP DNS and I have not edited anything else. Now my issue is with the client1.opvpn file as per the below: client dev tap #dev-node MyTAP #If you renamed your TAP interface or have more than one TAP interface then remove the # at the beginning and change "MyTAP" to its name proto udp remote YOURHOST.dyndns.org 1194 #You will need to enter you dyndns account or static IP address here. The number following it is the port you set in the server's config route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 vpn_gateway 3 #This it the IP address scheme and subnet of your normal network your server is on. Your router would usually be 192.168.1.1 resolv-retry infinite nobind persist-key persist-tun ca "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\keys\\ca.crt" cert "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\keys\\client1.crt" # Change the next two lines to match the files in the keys directory. This should be be different for each client. key "C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\keys\\client1.key" # This file should be kept secret ns-cert-type server cipher BF-CBC # Blowfish (default) encrytion comp-lzo verb 1 To me it looks like I will need to amend the following: remote YOURHOST.dyndns.org 1194 #You will need to enter you dyndns account or static IP address here. The number following it is the port you set in the server's config route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 vpn_gateway 3 #This it the IP address scheme and subnet of your normal network your server is on. Your router would usually be 192.168.1.1 So, should the first line be the static IP of the machine that I'm applying this to? The IP address of the server (192.168.1.10) or something else? I'm also stuck on the second part 'route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 vpn_gateway 3' Should this be the router IP which is 192.168.1.1 and the subnet is 255.255.255.0 and that is all I need to alter? The final part that I'm stuggling with is Configuring the router. Basically I have a Netgear DGN2000 and as it mentions that the router should be configured to port forward port 1194 to the server’s IP address of 192.168.1.150 all I have been able to do is in 'Firewall Rules' and on 'Inbound Services', set the Service to 'Any(ALL) and Send to LAN Server point to 1923.168.1.150. I'm not sure if this is correct? It is the following stage of the help guide that I'm struggling with and really need some help with: You need to make sure the port you configured OpenVPN to listen on is forwarded on the router to the IP address of your server. On the WRT54G, port forwarding is configured in the “Applications & Gaming” section. Enter 1194 for the port, UDP for the protocol, and 192.168.1.150 for the IP address. Make sure the entry is enabled and then save the setting. Next, you need to add an entry to the router’s Routing Table. This will enable the router to properly route requests from the clients to the TAP interface of the server. On the WRT54G you would go to the “Setup” page and then the “Advanced Routing” section. Enter the follwing info to make the entry: Enter Route Name: openVPN Destination LAN IP: 192.168.10.0 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.252 Default Gateway: 192.168.1.150 Interface: LAN & Wireless Once the info has been typed in make sure you save the setting. Can anyone possibly guide me through setting this part up with my Netgear router. I see that once I have these 2 parts complete I'm there so I would really appreciate someone walking me through what is required in completing this. Much appreciated.

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  • ViewModel with SelectList binding in ASP.NET MVC2

    - by Junto
    I am trying to implement an Edit ViewModel for my Linq2SQL entity called Product. It has a foreign key linked to a list of brands. Currently I am populating the brand list via ViewData and using DropDownListFor, thus: <div class="editor-field"> <%= Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.BrandId, (SelectList)ViewData["Brands"])%> <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.BrandId) %> </div> Now I want to refactor the view to use a strongly typed ViewModel and Html.EditorForModel(): <% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%> <%= Html.ValidationSummary(true) %> <fieldset> <legend>Fields</legend> <%=Html.EditorForModel() %> <p> <input type="submit" value="Save" /> </p> </fieldset> <% } %> In my Edit ViewModel, I have the following: public class EditProductViewModel { [HiddenInput] public int ProductId { get; set; } [Required()] [StringLength(200)] public string Name { get; set; } [Required()] [DataType(DataType.Html)] public string Description { get; set; } public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> Brands { get; set; } public int BrandId { get; set; } public EditProductViewModel(Product product, IEnumerable<SelectListItem> brands) { this.ProductId = product.ProductId; this.Name = product.Name; this.Description = product.Description; this.Brands = brands; this.BrandId = product.BrandId; } } The controller is setup like so: public ActionResult Edit(int id) { BrandRepository br = new BrandRepository(); Product p = _ProductRepository.Get(id); IEnumerable<SelectListItem> brands = br.GetAll().ToList().ToSelectListItems(p.BrandId); EditProductViewModel model = new EditProductViewModel(p, brands); return View("Edit", model); } The ProductId, Name and Description display correctly in the generated view, but the select list does not. The brand list definitely contains data. If I do the following in my view, the SelectList is visible: <% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%> <%= Html.ValidationSummary(true) %> <fieldset> <legend>Fields</legend> <%=Html.EditorForModel() %> <div class="editor-label"> <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.BrandId) %> </div> <div class="editor-field"> <%= Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.BrandId, Model.Brands)%> <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.BrandId) %> </div> <p> <input type="submit" value="Save" /> </p> </fieldset> <% } %> What am I doing wrong? Does EditorForModel() not generically support the SelectList? Am I missing some kind of DataAnnotation? I can't seem to find any examples of SelectList usage in ViewModels that help. I'm truly stumped. This answer seems to be close, but hasn't helped.

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  • Nasty mono bug with F#

    - by Aurimas Anskaitis
    Hi, I have this monstrous f# 2.0 program My mono version is Mono JIT compiler version 2.9 (master/f593354 Sun Dec 26 03:15:55 EET 2010) Copyright (C) 2002-2010 Novell, Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com TLS: __thread SIGSEGV: altstack Notifications: epoll Architecture: x86 Disabled: none Misc: softdebug LLVM: supported, not enabled. GC: Included Boehm (with typed GC and Parallel Mark) //--------------------------------------------- module Main let rec gcd x y = if y = 0 then x else gcd y (x%y) let main = printfn "%i" (gcd 4 2) main //----------------------------------------------- And the problem is that output from running the program is as follows: Stacktrace: at (wrapper managed-to-native) System.Reflection.MonoMethodInfo.get_parameter_info (intptr,System.Reflection.MemberInfo) <0xffffffff at System.Reflection.MonoMethodInfo.GetParametersInfo (intptr,System.Reflection.MemberInfo) <0x00013 at System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.GetParameters () <0x00015 at System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (object,System.Reflection.BindingFlags,System.Reflection.Binder,object[],System.Globalization.CultureInfo) <0x00035 at System.Reflection.MonoCMethod.Invoke (System.Reflection.BindingFlags,System.Reflection.Binder,object[],System.Globalization.CultureInfo) <0x00024 at System.Reflection.ConstructorInfo.Invoke (object[]) <0x0003f at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type,bool) <0x0017c at System.Activator.CreateInstance (System.Type) <0x00012 at Microsoft.FSharp.Reflection.FSharpValue.MakeFunction (System.Type,Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc2<object, object>) <0x00145> at Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfImpl.capture@529<b, c, d> (Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc2, Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc`2<char, Microsoft.FSharp.Core.Unit>, Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc`2,string,int,Microsoft.FSharp.Collections.FSharpList1<object>,System.Type,int) <0x00147> at Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfImpl.gprintf<b, c, d, a> (Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc2, Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc`2<char, Microsoft.FSharp.Core.Unit>, Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc`2,Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfFormat4<a, b, c, d>) <0x000dd> at Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfModule.kprintf_imperative<a, b, c> (Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc2,b,Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc2<char, Microsoft.FSharp.Core.Unit>,Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfFormat4) <0x00058 at Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfModule.PrintFormatToTextWriterThen (Microsoft.FSharp.Core.FSharpFunc2<Microsoft.FSharp.Core.Unit, TResult>,System.IO.TextWriter,Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfFormat4) <0x0004d at Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfModule.PrintFormatLineToTextWriter (System.IO.TextWriter,Microsoft.FSharp.Core.PrintfFormat`4) <0x0004d at .$Main.main@ () <0x00042 Native stacktrace: mono() [0x80dc13b] mono() [0x811c65b] mono() [0x8059a11] [0x7af40c] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228214] mono() [0x8228282] mono() [0x822991e] mono() [0x822aa9d] mono(mono_array_new_specific+0xea) [0x813ba9a] mono() [0x81c63a1] mono() [0x8149ac8] [0xc04328] [0xc042e4] [0xc042be] [0xc0455e] [0xc0451d] [0xc044d8] [0xc0349d] [0xc0330b] [0xc02f9e] [0xbfe960] [0xbfe6c6] [0xbfe571] [0xbfe4de] [0xbfe44e] [0xbf9d2b] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] [0x9bf0724] Debug info from gdb: Could not attach to process. If your uid matches the uid of the target process, check the setting of /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope, or try again as the root user. For more details, see /etc/sysctl.d/10-ptrace.conf ptrace: Operation not permitted. ================================================================= Got a SIGSEGV while executing native code. This usually indicates a fatal error in the mono runtime or one of the native libraries used by your application. Aborted It is a huge problem with mono or f#? By the way, the same function works when using pattern matching instead of "if".

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  • How can I dynamically change auto complete entries in a C# combobox or textbox?

    - by Sam Hopkins
    I have a combobox in C# and I want to use auto complete suggestions with it, however I want to be able to change the auto complete entries as the user types, because the possible valid entries are far too numerous to populate the AutoCompleteStringCollection at startup. As an example, suppose I'm letting the user type in a name. I have a list of possible first names ("Joe", "John") and a list of surnames ("Bloggs", "Smith"), but if I have a thousand of each, then that would be a million possible strings - too many to put in the auto complete entries. So initially I want to have just the first names as suggestions ("Joe", "John") , and then once the user has typed the first name, ("Joe"), I want to remove the existing auto complete entries and replace them with a new set consisting of the chosen first name followed by the possible surnames ("Joe Bloggs", "Joe Smith"). In order to do this, I tried the following code: void InitializeComboBox() { ComboName.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.SuggestAppend; ComboName.AutoCompleteSource = AutoCompleteSource.CustomSource; ComboName.AutoCompleteCustomSource = new AutoCompleteStringCollection(); ComboName.TextChanged += new EventHandler( ComboName_TextChanged ); } void ComboName_TextChanged( object sender, EventArgs e ) { string text = this.ComboName.Text; string[] suggestions = GetNameSuggestions( text ); this.ComboQuery.AutoCompleteCustomSource.Clear(); this.ComboQuery.AutoCompleteCustomSource.AddRange( suggestions ); } However, this does not work properly. It seems that the call to Clear() causes the auto complete mechanism to "turn off" until the next character appears in the combo box, but of course when the next character appears the above code calls Clear() again, so the user never actually sees the auto complete functionality. It also causes the entire contents of the combo box to become selected, so between every keypress you have to deselect the existing text, which makes it unusable. If I remove the call to Clear() then the auto complete works, but it seems that then the AddRange() call has no effect, because the new suggestions that I add do not appear in the auto complete dropdown. I have been searching for a solution to this, and seen various things suggested, but I cannot get any of them to work - either the auto complete functionality appears disabled, or new strings do not appear. Here is a list of things I have tried: Calling BeginUpdate() before changing the strings and EndUpdate() afterwards. Calling Remove() on all the existing strings instead of Clear(). Clearing the text from the combobox while I update the strings, and adding it back afterwards. Setting the AutoCompleteMode to "None" while I change the strings, and setting it back to "SuggestAppend" afterwards. Hooking the TextUpdate or KeyPress event instead of TextChanged. Replacing the existing AutoCompleteCustomSource with a new AutoCompleteStringCollection each time. None of these helped, even in various combinations. Spence suggested that I try overriding the ComboBox function that gets the list of strings to use in auto complete. Using a reflector I found a couple of methods in the ComboBox class that look promising - GetStringsForAutoComplete() and SetAutoComplete(), but they are both private so I can't access them from a derived class. I couldn't take that any further. I tried replacing the ComboBox with a TextBox, because the auto complete interface is the same, and I found that the behaviour is slightly different. With the TextBox it appears to work better, in that the Append part of the auto complete works properly, but the Suggest part doesn't - the suggestion box briefly flashes to life but then immediately disappears. So I thought "Okay, I'll

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  • Android 1.5 - 2.1 Search Activity affects Parent Lifecycle

    - by pacoder
    Behavior seems consistent in Android 1.5 to 2.1 Short version is this, it appears that when my (android search facility) search activity is fired from the android QSR due to either a suggestion or search, UNLESS my search activity in turn fires off a VISIBLE activity that is not the parent of the search, the search parents life cycle changes. It will NOT fire onDestroy until I launch a visible activity from it. If I do, onDestroy will fire fine. I need a way to get around this behavior... The long version: We have implemented a SearchSuggestion provider and a Search activity in our application. The one thing about it that is very odd is that if the SearchManager passes control to our custom Search activity, AND that activity does not create a visible Activity the Activity which parented the search does not destroy (onDestroy doesn't run) and it will not until we call a visible Activity from the parent activity. As long as our Search Activity fires off another Activity that gets focus the parent activity will fire onDestroy when I back out of it. The trick is that Activity must have a visual component. I tried to fake it out with a 'pass through' Activity so that my Search Activity could fire off another Intent and bail out but that didn't work either. I have tried setting our SearchActivity to launch singleTop and I also tried setting its noHistory attribute to true, tried setResult(RESULT_OK) in SearchACtivity prior to finish, bunch of other things, nothing is working. This is the chunk of code in our Search Activity onCreate. Couple of notes about it: If Intent is Action_Search (user typed in their own search and didn't pick a suggestion), we display a list of results as our Search Activity is a ListActivity. In this case when the item is picked, the Search Activity closes and our parent Activity does fire onDestroy() when we back out. If Intent is Action_View (user picked a suggestion) when type is "action" we fire off an Intent that creates a new visible Activity. In this case same thing, when we leave that new activity and return to the parent activity, the back key does cause the parent activity to fire onDestroy when leaving. If Intent is Action_View (user picked a suggestion) when type is "pitem" is where the problem lies. It works fine (the method call focuses an item on the parent activity), but when the back button is hit on the parent activity onDestroy is NOT called. IF after this executes I pick an option in the parent activity that fires off another activity and return to the parent then back out it will fire onDestroy() in the parent activity. Note that the "action" intent ends up running the exact same method call as "pitem", it just bring up a new visual Activity first. Also I can take out the method call from "pitem" and just finish() and the behavior is the same, the parent activity doesn't fire onDestroy() when backed out of. if (Intent.ACTION_SEARCH.equals(queryAction)) { this.setContentView(_layoutId); String searchKeywords = queryIntent.getStringExtra(SearchManager.QUERY); init(searchKeywords); } else if(Intent.ACTION_VIEW.equals(queryAction)){ Bundle bundle = queryIntent.getExtras(); String key = queryIntent.getDataString(); String userQuery = bundle.getString(SearchManager.USER_QUERY); String[] keyValues = key.split("-"); if(keyValues.length == 2) { String type = keyValues[0]; String value = keyValues[1]; if(type.equals("action")) { Intent intent = new Intent(this, EventInfoActivity.class); Long longKey = Long.parseLong(value); intent.putExtra("vo_id", longKey); startActivity(intent); finish(); } else if(type.equals("pitem")) { Integer id = Integer.parseInt(value); _application._servicesManager._mapHandlerSelector.selectInfoItem(id); finish(); } } } It just seems like something is being held onto and I can't figure out what it is, in all cases the Search Activity fires onDestroy() when finish() is called so it is definitely going away. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be most appreciative. Thanks, Sean Overby

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  • Speeding up a search .net 4.0

    - by user231465
    Wondering if I can speed up the search. I need to build a functionality that has to be used by many UI screens The one I have got works but I need to make sure I am implementing a fast algoritim if you like It's like an incremental search. User types a word to search for eg const string searchFor = "Guinea"; const char nextLetter = ' ' It looks in the list and returns 2 records "Guinea and Guinea Bissau " User types a word to search for eg const string searchFor = "Gu"; const char nextLetter = 'i' returns 3 results. This is the function but I would like to speed it up. Is there a pattern for this kind of search? class Program { static void Main() { //Find all countries that begin with string + a possible letter added to it //const string searchFor = "Guinea"; //const char nextLetter = ' '; //returns 2 results const string searchFor = "Gu"; const char nextLetter = 'i'; List<string> result = FindPossibleMatches(searchFor, nextLetter); result.ForEach(x=>Console.WriteLine(x)); //returns 3 results Console.Read(); } /// <summary> /// Find all possible matches /// </summary> /// <param name="searchFor">string to search for</param> /// <param name="nextLetter">pretend user as just typed a letter</param> /// <returns></returns> public static List<string> FindPossibleMatches (string searchFor, char nextLetter) { var hashedCountryList = new HashSet<string>(CountriesList()); var result=new List<string>(); IEnumerable<string> tempCountryList = hashedCountryList.Where(x => x.StartsWith(searchFor)); foreach (string item in tempCountryList) { string tempSearchItem; if (nextLetter == ' ') { tempSearchItem = searchFor; } else { tempSearchItem = searchFor + nextLetter; } if(item.StartsWith(tempSearchItem)) { result.Add(item); } } return result; } /// <summary> /// Returns list of countries. /// </summary> public static string[] CountriesList() { return new[] { "Afghanistan", "Albania", "Algeria", "American Samoa", "Andorra", "Angola", "Anguilla", "Antarctica", "Antigua And Barbuda", "Argentina", "Armenia", "Aruba", "Australia", "Austria", "Azerbaijan", "Bahamas", "Bahrain", "Bangladesh", "Barbados", "Belarus", "Belgium", "Belize", "Benin", "Bermuda", "Bhutan", "Bolivia", "Bosnia Hercegovina", "Botswana", "Bouvet Island", "Brazil", "Brunei Darussalam", "Bulgaria", "Burkina Faso", "Burundi", "Byelorussian SSR", "Cambodia", "Cameroon", "Canada", "Cape Verde", "Cayman Islands", "Central African Republic", "Chad", "Chile", "China", "Christmas Island", "Cocos (Keeling) Islands", "Colombia", "Comoros", "Congo", "Cook Islands", "Costa Rica", "Cote D'Ivoire", "Croatia", "Cuba", "Cyprus", "Czech Republic", "Czechoslovakia", "Denmark", "Djibouti", "Dominica", "Dominican Republic", "East Timor", "Ecuador", "Egypt", "El Salvador", "England", "Equatorial Guinea", "Eritrea", "Estonia", "Ethiopia", "Falkland Islands", "Faroe Islands", "Fiji", "Finland", "France", "Gabon", "Gambia", "Georgia", "Germany", "Ghana", "Gibraltar", "Great Britain", "Greece", "Greenland", "Grenada", "Guadeloupe", "Guam", "Guatemela", "Guernsey", "Guiana", "Guinea", "Guinea Bissau", "Guyana", "Haiti", "Heard Islands", "Honduras", "Hong Kong", "Hungary", "Iceland", "India", "Indonesia", "Iran", "Iraq", "Ireland", "Isle Of Man", "Israel", "Italy", "Jamaica", "Japan", "Jersey", "Jordan", "Kazakhstan", "Kenya", "Kiribati", "Korea, South", "Korea, North", "Kuwait", "Kyrgyzstan", "Lao People's Dem. Rep.", "Latvia", "Lebanon", "Lesotho", "Liberia", "Libya", "Liechtenstein", "Lithuania", "Luxembourg", "Macau", "Macedonia", "Madagascar", "Malawi", "Malaysia", "Maldives", "Mali", "Malta", "Mariana Islands", "Marshall Islands", "Martinique", "Mauritania", "Mauritius", "Mayotte", "Mexico", "Micronesia", "Moldova", "Monaco", "Mongolia", "Montserrat", "Morocco", "Mozambique", "Myanmar", "Namibia", "Nauru", "Nepal", "Netherlands", "Netherlands Antilles", "Neutral Zone", "New Caledonia", "New Zealand", "Nicaragua", "Niger", "Nigeria", "Niue", "Norfolk Island", "Northern Ireland", "Norway", "Oman", "Pakistan", "Palau", "Panama", "Papua New Guinea", "Paraguay", "Peru", "Philippines", "Pitcairn", "Poland", "Polynesia", "Portugal", "Puerto Rico", "Qatar", "Reunion", "Romania", "Russian Federation", "Rwanda", "Saint Helena", "Saint Kitts", "Saint Lucia", "Saint Pierre", "Saint Vincent", "Samoa", "San Marino", "Sao Tome and Principe", "Saudi Arabia", "Scotland", "Senegal", "Seychelles", "Sierra Leone", "Singapore", "Slovakia", "Slovenia", "Solomon Islands", "Somalia", "South Africa", "South Georgia", "Spain", "Sri Lanka", "Sudan", "Suriname", "Svalbard", "Swaziland", "Sweden", "Switzerland", "Syrian Arab Republic", "Taiwan", "Tajikista", "Tanzania", "Thailand", "Togo", "Tokelau", "Tonga", "Trinidad and Tobago", "Tunisia", "Turkey", "Turkmenistan", "Turks and Caicos Islands", "Tuvalu", "Uganda", "Ukraine", "United Arab Emirates", "United Kingdom", "United States", "Uruguay", "Uzbekistan", "Vanuatu", "Vatican City State", "Venezuela", "Vietnam", "Virgin Islands", "Wales", "Western Sahara", "Yemen", "Yugoslavia", "Zaire", "Zambia", "Zimbabwe" }; } } } Any suggestions? Thanks

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  • How to "DRY up" C# attributes in Models and ViewModels?

    - by DanM
    This question was inspired by my struggles with ASP.NET MVC, but I think it applies to other situations as well. Let's say I have an ORM-generated Model and two ViewModels (one for a "details" view and one for an "edit" view): Model public class FooModel // ORM generated { public int Id { get; set; } public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } public string EmailAddress { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } public int CategoryId { get; set; } } Display ViewModel public class FooDisplayViewModel // use for "details" view { [DisplayName("ID Number")] public int Id { get; set; } [DisplayName("First Name")] public string FirstName { get; set; } [DisplayName("Last Name")] public string LastName { get; set; } [DisplayName("Email Address")] [DataType("EmailAddress")] public string EmailAddress { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } [DisplayName("Category")] public string CategoryName { get; set; } } Edit ViewModel public class FooEditViewModel // use for "edit" view { [DisplayName("First Name")] // not DRY public string FirstName { get; set; } [DisplayName("Last Name")] // not DRY public string LastName { get; set; } [DisplayName("Email Address")] // not DRY [DataType("EmailAddress")] // not DRY public string EmailAddress { get; set; } public int Age { get; set; } [DisplayName("Category")] // not DRY public SelectList Categories { get; set; } } Note that the attributes on the ViewModels are not DRY--a lot of information is repeated. Now imagine this scenario multiplied by 10 or 100, and you can see that it can quickly become quite tedious and error prone to ensure consistency across ViewModels (and therefore across Views). How can I "DRY up" this code? Before you answer, "Just put all the attributes on FooModel," I've tried that, but it didn't work because I need to keep my ViewModels "flat". In other words, I can't just compose each ViewModel with a Model--I need my ViewModel to have only the properties (and attributes) that should be consumed by the View, and the View can't burrow into sub-properties to get at the values. Update LukLed's answer suggests using inheritance. This definitely reduces the amount of non-DRY code, but it doesn't eliminate it. Note that, in my example above, the DisplayName attribute for the Category property would need to be written twice because the data type of the property is different between the display and edit ViewModels. This isn't going to be a big deal on a small scale, but as the size and complexity of a project scales up (imagine a lot more properties, more attributes per property, more views per model), there is still the potentially for "repeating yourself" a fair amount. Perhaps I'm taking DRY too far here, but I'd still rather have all my "friendly names", data types, validation rules, etc. typed out only once.

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  • Modern Java alternatives

    - by Ralph
    I'm not sure if stackoverflow is the best forum for this discussion. I have been a Java developer for 14 years and have written an enterprise-level (~500,000 line) Swing application that uses most of the standard library APIs. Recently, I have become disappointed with the progress that the language has made to "modernize" itself, and am looking for an alternative for ongoing development. I have considered moving to the .NET platform, but I have issues with using something the only runs well in Windows (I know about Mono, but that is still far behind Microsoft). I also plan on buying a new Macbook Pro as soon as Apple releases their new rumored Arrandale-based machines and want to develop in an environment that will feel "at home" in Unix/Linux. I have considered using Python or Ruby, but the standard Java library is arguably the largest of any modern language. In JVM-based languages, I looked at Groovy, but am disappointed with its performance. Rumor has it that with the soon-to-be released JDK7, with its InvokeDynamic instruction, this will improve, but I don't know how much. Groovy is also not truly a functional language, although it provides closures and some of the "functional" features on collections. It does not embrace immutability. I have narrowed my search down to two JVM-based alternatives: Scala and Clojure. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. I am looking for the stackoverflow readerships' opinions. I am not an expert at either of these languages; I have read 2 1/2 books on Scala and am currently reading Stu Halloway's book on Clojure. Scala is strongly statically typed. I know the dynamic language folks claim that static typing is a crutch for not doing unit testing, but it does provide a mechanism for compile-time location of a whole class of errors. Scala is more concise than Java, but not as much as Clojure. Scala's inter-operation with Java seems to be better than Clojure's, in that most Java operations are easier to do in Scala than in Clojure. For example, I can find no way in Clojure to create a non-static initialization block in a class derived from a Java superclass. For example, I like the Apache commons CLI library for command line argument parsing. In Java and Scala, I can create a new Options object and add Option items to it in an initialization block as follows (Java code): final Options options = new Options() { { addOption(new Option("?", "help", false, "Show this usage information"); // other options } }; I can't figure out how to the same thing in Clojure (except by using (doit...)), although that may reflect my lack of knowledge of the language. Clojure's collections are optimized for immutability. They rarely require copy-on-write semantics. I don't know if Scala's immutable collections are implemented using similar algorithms, but Rich Hickey (Clojure's inventor) goes out of his way to explain how that language's data structures are efficient. Clojure was designed from the beginning for concurrency (as was Scala) and with modern multi-core processors, concurrency takes on more importance, but I occasionally need to write simple non-concurrent utilities, and Scala code probably runs a little faster for these applications since it discourages, but does not prohibit, "simple" mutability. One could argue that one-off utilities do not have to be super-fast, but sometimes they do tasks that take hours or days to complete. I know that there is no right answer to this "question", but I thought I would open it up for discussion. If anyone has a suggestion for another JVM-based language that can be used for enterprise level development, please list it. Also, it is not my intent to start a flame war. Thanks, Ralph

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  • Is this question too hard for a seasoned C++ architect?

    - by Monomer
    Background Information We're looking to hire a seasoned C++ architect (10+years dev, of which at least 6years must be C++ ) for a high frequency trading platform. Job advert says STL, Boost proficiency is a must with preferences to modern uses of C++. The company I work for is a Fortune 500 IB (aka finance industry), it requires passes in all the standard SHL tests (numeric, vocab, spatial etc) before interviews can commence. Everyone on the team was given the task of coming up with one question to ask the candidates during a written/typed test, please note this is the second test provided to the candidates, the first being Advanced IKM C++ test, done in the offices supervised and without internet access. People passing that do the second test. After roughly 70 candidates, my question has been determined to be statistically the worst performing - aka least number of people attempted it, furthermore even less people were able to give meaningful answers. Please note, the second test is not timed, the candidate can literally take as long as they like (we've had one person take roughly 10.5hrs) My question to SO is this, after SHL and IKM adv c++ tests, backed up with at least 6+ years C++ development experience, is it still ok not to be able to even comment about let alone come up with some loose strategy for solving the following question. The Question There is a class C with methods foo, boo, boo_and_foo and foo_and_boo. Each method takes i,j,k and l clock cycles respectively, where i < j, k < i+j and l < i+j. class C { public: int foo() {...} int boo() {...} int boo_and_foo() {...} int foo_and_boo() {...} }; In code one might write: C c; . . int i = c.foo() + c.boo(); But it would be better to have: int i = c.foo_and_boo(); What changes or techniques could one make to the definition of C, that would allow similar syntax of the original usage, but instead have the compiler generate the latter. Note that foo and boo are not commutative. Possible Solution We were basically looking for an expression templates based approach, and were willing to give marks to anyone who had even hinted or used the phrase or related terminology. We got only two people that used the wording, but weren't able to properly describe how they accomplish the task in detail. We use such techniques all over the place, due to the use of various mathematical operators for matrix and vector based calculations, for example to decide when to use IPP or hand woven implementations at compile time for a particular architecture and many other things. The particular area of software development requires microsecond response times. I believe could/should be able to teach a junior such techniques, but given the assumed caliber of candidates I expected a little more. Is this really a difficult question? Should it be removed? Or are we just not seeing the right candidates?

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  • What is good practice in .NET system architecture design concerning multiple models and aggregates

    - by BuzzBubba
    I'm designing a larger enterprise architecture and I'm in a doubt about how to separate the models and design those. There are several points I'd like suggestions for: - models to define - way to define models Currently my idea is to define: Core (domain) model Repositories to get data to that domain model from a database or other store Business logic model that would contain business logic, validation logic and more specific versions of forms of data retrieval methods View models prepared for specifically formated data output that would be parsed by views of different kind (web, silverlight, etc). For the first model I'm puzzled at what to use and how to define the mode. Should this model entities contain collections and in what form? IList, IEnumerable or IQueryable collections? - I'm thinking of immutable collections which IEnumerable is, but I'd like to avoid huge data collections and to offer my Business logic layer access with LINQ expressions so that query trees get executed at Data level and retrieve only really required data for situations like the one when I'm retrieving a very specific subset of elements amongst thousands or hundreds of thousands. What if I have an item with several thousands of bids? I can't just make an IEnumerable collection of those on the model and then retrieve an item list in some Repository method or even Business model method. Should it be IQueryable so that I actually pass my queries to Repository all the way from the Business logic model layer? Should I just avoid collections in my domain model? Should I void only some collections? Should I separate Domain model and BusinessLogic model or integrate those? Data would be dealt trough repositories which would use Domain model classes. Should repositories be used directly using only classes from domain model like data containers? This is an example of what I had in mind: So, my Domain objects would look like (e.g.) public class Item { public string ItemName { get; set; } public int Price { get; set; } public bool Available { get; set; } private IList<Bid> _bids; public IQueryable<Bid> Bids { get { return _bids.AsQueryable(); } private set { _bids = value; } } public AddNewBid(Bid newBid) { _bids.Add(new Bid {.... } } Where Bid would be defined as a normal class. Repositories would be defined as data retrieval factories and used to get data into another (Business logic) model which would again be used to get data to ViewModels which would then be rendered by different consumers. I would define IQueryable interfaces for all aggregating collections to get flexibility and minimize data retrieved from real data store. Or should I make Domain Model "anemic" with pure data store entities and all collections define for business logic model? One of the most important questions is, where to have IQueryable typed collections? - All the way from Repositories to Business model or not at all and expose only solid IList and IEnumerable from Repositories and deal with more specific queries inside Business model, but have more finer grained methods for data retrieval within Repositories. So, what do you think? Have any suggestions?

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  • Trouble calculating correct decimal digits.

    - by Crath
    I am trying to create a program that will do some simple calculations, but am having trouble with the program not doing the correct math, or placing the decimal correctly, or something. Some other people I asked cannot figure it out either. Here is the code: http://pastie.org/887352 When you enter the following data: Weekly Wage: 500 Raise: 3 Years Employed: 8 It outputs the following data: Year Annual Salary 1 $26000.00 2 $26780.00 3 $27560.00 4 $28340.00 5 $29120.00 6 $29900.00 7 $30680.00 8 $31460.00 And it should be outputting: Year Annual Salary 1 $26000.00 2 $26780.00 3 $27583.40 4 $28410.90 5 $29263.23 6 $30141.13 7 $31045.36 8 $31976.72 Here is the full description of the task: 8.17 ( Pay Raise Calculator Application) Develop an application that computes the amount of money an employee makes each year over a user- specified number of years. Assume the employee receives a pay raise once every year. The user specifies in the application the initial weekly salary, the amount of the raise (in percent per year) and the number of years for which the amounts earned will be calculated. The application should run as shown in Fig. 8.22. in your text. (fig 8.22 is the output i posted above as what my program should be posting) Opening the template source code file. Open the PayRaise.cpp file in your text editor or IDE. Defining variables and prompting the user for input. To store the raise percentage and years of employment that the user inputs, define int variables rate and years, in main after line 12. Also define double variable wage to store the user’s annual wage. Then, insert statements that prompt the user for the raise percentage, years of employment and starting weekly wage. Store the values typed at the keyboard in the rate, years and wage variables, respectively. To find the annual wage, multiply the new wage by 52 (the number of weeks per year) and store the result in wage. Displaying a table header and formatting output. Use the left and setw stream manipulators to display a table header as shown in Fig. 8.22 in your text. The first column should be six characters wide. Then use the fixed and setprecision stream manipulators to format floating- point values with two positions to the left of the decimal point. Writing a for statement header. Insert a for statement. Before the first semicolon in the for statement header, define and initialize the variable counter to 1. Before the second semicolon, enter a loop- continuation condition that will cause the for statement to loop until counter has reached the number of years entered. After the second semicolon, enter the increment of counter so that the for statement executes once for each number of years. Calculating the pay raise. In the body of the for statement, display the value of counter in the first column and the value of wage in the second column. Then calculate the new weekly wage for the following year, and store the resulting value in the wage variable. To do this, add 1 to the percentage increase (be sure to divide the percentage by 100.0 ) and multiply the result by the current value in wage. Save, compile and run the application. Input a raise percentage and a number of years for the wage increase. View the results to ensure that the correct years are displayed and that the future wage results are correct. Close the Command Prompt window. We can not figure it out! Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

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  • How does one track down an error using the YII Framework?

    - by ian
    I am learning the Yii Framework and I got this error wich does not really point to the specific pages I am working on or as far as i can tell show me where I should start looking for my problem. How do I make sense of this? As far as I can see all my 'type_id' references are typed in correctly. CException Description Property "Project.type_id" is not defined. Source File /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/db/ar/CActiveRecord.php(107) 00095: */ 00096: public function __get($name) 00097: { 00098: if(isset($this->_attributes[$name])) 00099: return $this->_attributes[$name]; 00100: else if(isset($this->getMetaData()->columns[$name])) 00101: return null; 00102: else if(isset($this->_related[$name])) 00103: return $this->_related[$name]; 00104: else if(isset($this->getMetaData()->relations[$name])) 00105: return $this->getRelated($name); 00106: else 00107: return parent::__get($name); 00108: } 00109: 00110: /** 00111: * PHP setter magic method. 00112: * This method is overridden so that AR attributes can be accessed like properties. 00113: * @param string property name 00114: * @param mixed property value 00115: */ 00116: public function __set($name,$value) 00117: { 00118: if($this->setAttribute($name,$value)===false) 00119: { Stack Trace #0 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/db/ar/CActiveRecord.php(107): CComponent->__get('type_id') #1 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/trackstar/protected/views/project/_view.php(15): CActiveRecord->__get('type_id') #2 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CBaseController.php(119): require('/Users/user/Dro...') #3 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CBaseController.php(88): CBaseController->renderInternal('/Users/user/Dro...', Array, true) #4 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CController.php(748): CBaseController->renderFile('/Users/user/Dro...', Array, true) #5 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/zii/widgets/CListView.php(215): CController->renderPartial('_view', Array) #6 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/zii/widgets/CBaseListView.php(152): CListView->renderItems() #7 [internal function]: CBaseListView->renderSection(Array) #8 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/zii/widgets/CBaseListView.php(135): preg_replace_callback('/{(\w+)}/', Array, '{summary}?{sort...') #9 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/zii/widgets/CBaseListView.php(121): CBaseListView->renderContent() #10 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CBaseController.php(174): CBaseListView->run() #11 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/trackstar/protected/views/project/index.php(17): CBaseController->widget('zii.widgets.CLi...', Array) #12 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CBaseController.php(119): require('/Users/user/Dro...') #13 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CBaseController.php(88): CBaseController->renderInternal('/Users/user/Dro...', Array, true) #14 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CController.php(748): CBaseController->renderFile('/Users/user/Dro...', Array, true) #15 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CController.php(687): CController->renderPartial('index', Array, true) #16 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/trackstar/protected/controllers/ProjectController.php(148): CController->render('index', Array) #17 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/actions/CInlineAction.php(32): ProjectController->actionIndex() #18 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CController.php(300): CInlineAction->run() #19 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/filters/CFilterChain.php(129): CController->runAction(Object(CInlineAction)) #20 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/filters/CFilter.php(41): CFilterChain->run() #21 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CController.php(999): CFilter->filter(Object(CFilterChain)) #22 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/filters/CInlineFilter.php(59): CController->filterAccessControl(Object(CFilterChain)) #23 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/filters/CFilterChain.php(126): CInlineFilter->filter(Object(CFilterChain)) #24 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CController.php(283): CFilterChain->run() #25 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CController.php(257): CController->runActionWithFilters(Object(CInlineAction), Array) #26 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CWebApplication.php(320): CController->run('') #27 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/web/CWebApplication.php(120): CWebApplication->runController('project') #28 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/yii/framework/base/CApplication.php(135): CWebApplication->processRequest() #29 /Users/user/Dropbox/localhost/trackstar/index.php(12): CApplication->run() #30 {main} 2011-10-17 18:17:18 Apache/2.2.17 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.17 OpenSSL/0.9.8r DAV/2 PHP/5.3.6 Yii Framework/1.1.2

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  • The maximum message size quota for incoming messages (65536) has been exceeded.

    - by DaleyKD
    My WCF Service has an OperationContract that accepts, as a parameter, an array of objects. This can potentially be quite large. After looking for fixes for Bad Request: 400, I found the real reason: the maximum message size. I know this question has been asked before in MANY places. I've tried what everyone says: "Increase the sizes in the client and server config files." I have. It still doesn't work. My Service's web.config: <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="myService"> <endpoint name="myEndpoint" address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="myBinding" contract="Meisel.WCF.PDFDocs.IPDFDocsService" /> </service> </services> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="myBinding" closeTimeout="00:11:00" openTimeout="00:11:00" receiveTimeout="00:15:00" sendTimeout="00:15:00" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647" maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647" transferMode="Buffered" allowCookies="false" bypassProxyOnLocal="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" messageEncoding="Text" textEncoding="utf-8" useDefaultWebProxy="true"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="2147483647" maxStringContentLength="2147483647" maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxBytesPerRead="2147483647" maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" /> <security mode="None" /> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> </bindings> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" /> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" /> <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647" /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> <serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" /> </system.serviceModel> My Client's app.config: <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="BasicHttpBinding_IPDFDocsService" closeTimeout="00:11:00" openTimeout="00:11:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:11:00" allowCookies="false" bypassProxyOnLocal="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647" messageEncoding="Text" textEncoding="utf-8" transferMode="Buffered" useDefaultWebProxy="true"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="2147483647" maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxBytesPerRead="2147483647" maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" /> <security mode="None"> <transport clientCredentialType="None" proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" /> <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" /> </security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> </bindings> <client> <endpoint address="http://localhost:8451/PDFDocsService.svc" behaviorConfiguration="MoreItemsInObjectGraph" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_IPDFDocsService" contract="PDFDocsService.IPDFDocsService" name="BasicHttpBinding_IPDFDocsService" /> </client> <behaviors> <endpointBehaviors> <behavior name="MoreItemsInObjectGraph"> <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647" /> </behavior> </endpointBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel> What can I possibly be missing or doing wrong? It's as though the service is ignoring what I typed in the maxReceivedBufferSize. Thanks in advance, Kyle UPDATE Here are two other StackOverflow questions where they never received an answer, either: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2880623/maxreceivedmessagesize-adjusted-but-still-getting-the-quotaexceedexception-with http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2569715/wcf-maxreceivedmessagesize-property-not-taking

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