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• In Which We Demystify A Few Docupresentment Settings And Learn the Ethos of the Author

  - by Andy Little

  It's no secret that Docupresentment (part of the Oracle Documaker suite) is powerful tool for integrating on-demand and interactive applications for publishing with the Oracle Documaker framework.  It's also no secret there are are many details with respect to the configuration of Docupresentment that can elude even the most erudite of of techies.  To be sure, Docupresentment will work for you right out of the box, and in most cases will suit your needs without toying with a configuration file.  But, where's the adventure in that?   With this inaugural post to That's The Way, I'm going to introduce myself, and what my aim is with this blog.  If you didn't figure it out already by checking out my profile, my name is Andy and I've been with Oracle (nee Skywire Software nee Docucorp nee Formmaker) since the formative years of 1998.  Strangely, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's certainly a lifetime in the age of technology.  I recall running a BBS from my parent's basement on a 1200 baud modem, and the trepidation and sweaty-palmed excitement of upgrading to the power and speed of 2400 baud!  Fine, I'll admit that perhaps I'm inflating the experience a bit, but I was kid!  This is the stuff of War Games and King's Quest I and the demise of TI-99 4/A.  Exciting times.  So fast-forward a bit and I'm 12 years into a career in the world of document automation and publishing working for the best (IMHO) software company on the planet.  With That's The Way I hope to shed a little light and peek under the covers of some of the more interesting aspects of implementations involving the tech space within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit (IGBU), which includes Oracle Documaker, Rating & Underwriting, and Policy Administration to name a few.  I may delve off course a bit, and you'll likely get a dose of humor (at least in my mind) but I hope you'll glean at least a tidbit of usefulness with each post.  Feel free to comment as I'm a fairly conversant guy and happy to talk -- it's stopping the talking that's the hard part... So, back to our regularly-scheduled post, already in progress.  By this time you've visited Oracle's E-Delivery site and acquired your properly-licensed version of Oracle Documaker.  Wait -- you didn't find it?  Understandable -- navigating the voluminous download library within Oracle can be a daunting task.  It's pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times.  Login to the e-delivery site, and accept the license terms and restrictions.  Then, you’ll be able to select the Oracle Insurance Applications product pack and your appropriate platform. Click Go and you’ll see a list of applicable products, and you’ll click on Oracle Documaker Media Pack (as I went to press with this article the version is 11.4): Finally, click the Download button next to Docupresentment (again, version at press time is 2.2 p5). This should give you a ZIP file that contains the installation packages for the Docupresentment Server and Client, cryptically named IDSServer22P05W32.exe and IDSClient22P05W32.exe. At this time, I’d like to take a little detour and explain that the world of Oracle, like most technical companies, is rife with acronyms.  One of the reasons Skywire Software was a appealing to Oracle was our use of many acronyms, including the occasional use of multiple acronyms with the same meaning.  I apologize in advance and will try to point these out along the way.  Here’s your first sticky note to go along with that: IDS = Internet Document Server = Docupresentment Once you’ve completed the installation, you’ll have a shiny new Docupresentment server and client, and if you installed the default location it will be living in c:\docserv. Unix users, I’m one of you!  You’ll find it by default in  ~/docupresentment/docserv.  Forging onward with the meat of this post is learning about some special configuration options.  By now you’ve read the documentation included with the download (specifically ids_book.pdf) which goes into some detail of the rubric of the configuration file and in fact there’s even a handy utility that provides an interface to the configuration file (see Running IDSConfig in the documentation).  But who wants to deal with a configuration utility when we have the tools and technology to edit the file <gasp> by hand! I shall now proceed with the standard Information Technology Under the Hood Disclaimer: Please remember to back up any files before you make changes.  I am not responsible for any havoc you may wreak! Go to your installation directory, and locate your docserv.xml file.  Open it in your favorite XML editor.  I happen to be fond of Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin.  Almost immediately you will behold the splendor of the configuration file.  Just take a moment and let that sink in.  Ok – moving on.  If you reviewed the documentation you know that inside the root <configuration> node there are multiple <section> nodes, each containing a specific group of settings.  Let’s take a look at <section name=”DocumentServer”>: There are a few entries I’d like to discuss.  First, <entry name=”StartCommand”>. This should be pretty self-explanatory; it’s the name of the executable that’s run when you fire up Docupresentment.  Immediately following that is <entry name=”StartArguments”> and as you might imagine these are the arguments passed to the executable.  A few things to point out: The –Dids.configuration=docserv.xml parameter specifies the name of your configuration file. The –Dlogging.configuration=logconf.xml parameter specifies the name of your logging configuration file (this uses log4j so bone up on that before you delve here). The -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed parameter specifies the path where 3rd party Java libraries can be located for use with Docupresentment.  More on that in another post. The <entry name=”Instances”> allows you to specify the number of instances of Docupresentment that will be started.  By default this is two, and generally two instances per CPU is adequate, however you will always need to perform load testing to determine the sweet spot based on your hardware and types of transactions.  You may have many, many more instances than 2. Time for a sidebar on instances.  An instance is nothing more than a separate process of Docupresentment.  The Docupresentment service that you fire up with docserver.bat or docserver.sh actually starts a watchdog process, which is then responsible for starting up the actual Docupresentment processes.  Each of these act independently from one another, so if one crashes, it does not affect any others.  In the case of a crashed process, the watchdog will start up another instance so the number of configured instances are always running.  Bottom line: instance = Docupresentment process. And now, finally, to the settings which gave me pause on an not-too-long-ago implementation!  Docupresentment includes a feature that watches configuration files (such as docserv.xml and logconf.xml) and will automatically restart its instances to load the changes.  You can configure the time that Docupresentment waits to check these files using the setting <entry name=”FileWatchTimeMillis”>.  By default the number is 12000ms, or 12 seconds.  You can save yourself a few CPU cycles by extending this time, or by disabling  the check altogether by setting the value to 0.  This may or may not be appropriate for your environment; if you have 100% uptime requirements then you probably don’t want to bring down an entire set of processes just to accept a new configuration value, so it’s best to leave this somewhere between 12 seconds to a few minutes.  Another point to keep in mind: if you are using Documaker real-time processing under Docupresentment the Master Resource Library (MRL) files and INI options are cached, and if you need to affect a change, you’ll have to “restart” Docupresentment.  Touching the docserv.xml file is an easy way to do this (other methods including using the RSS request, but that’s another post). The next item up: <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”>.  You may already know that the Docupresentment system can generate many temporary files based on certain request types that are processed through the system.  What you may not know is how those files are cleaned up.  There are many rules in Docupresentment that cause the creation of temporary files.  When these files are created, Docupresentment writes an entry into a properties file called the file cache.  This file contains the name, creation date, and expiration time of each temporary file created by each instance of Docupresentment.  Periodically Docupresentment will check the file cache to determine if there are files that are past the expiration time, not unlike that block of cheese festering away in the back of my refrigerator.  However, unlike my ‘fridge cleaning tendencies, Docupresentment is quick to remove files that are past their expiration time.  You, my friend, have the power to control how often Docupresentment inspects the file cache.  Simply set the value for <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”> to the number of seconds appropriate for your requirements and you’re set.  Note that file purging happens on a separate thread from normal request processing, so this shouldn’t interfere with response times unless the CPU happens to be really taxed at the point of cache processing.  Finally, after all of this, we get to the final setting I’m going to address in this post: <entry name=”FilePurgeList”>.  The default is “filecache.properties”.  This establishes the root name for the Docupresentment file cache that I mentioned previously.  Docupresentment creates a separate cache file for each instance based on this setting.  If you have two instances, you’ll see two files created: filecache.properties.1 and filecache.properties.2.  Feel free to open these up and check them out. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first foray into the configuration file of Docupresentment.  If you did enjoy it, feel free to drop a comment, I welcome feedback.  If you have ideas for other posts you’d like to see, please do let me know.  You can reach me at [email protected]. ‘Til next time! ###

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• Editing sqlcmdvariable nodes in SSDT Publish Profile files using msbuild

  - by jamiet

  Publish profile files are a new feature of SSDT database projects that enable you to package up all environment-specific properties into a single file for use at publish time; I have written about them before at Publish Profile Files in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) and if it wasn’t obvious from that blog post, I’m a big fan! As I have used Publish Profile files more and more I have realised that there may be times when you need to edit those Publish profile files during your build process, you may think of such an operation as a kind of pre-processor step. In my case I have a sqlcmd variable called DeployTag, it holds a value representing the current build number that later gets inserted into a table using a Post-Deployment script (that’s a technique that I wrote about in Implementing SQL Server solutions using Visual Studio 2010 Database Projects – a compendium of project experiences – search for “Putting a build number into the DB”). Here are the contents of my Publish Profile file (simplified for demo purposes) : Notice that DeployTag defaults to “UNKNOWN”. On my current project we are using msbuild scripts to control what gets built and what I want to do is take the build number from our build engine and edit the Publish profile files accordingly. Here is the pertinent portion of the the msbuild script I came up with to do that:   <ItemGroup>     <Namespaces Include="myns">       <Prefix>myns</Prefix>       <Uri>http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003</Uri>     </Namespaces>   </ItemGroup>   <Target Name="UpdateBuildNumber">     <ItemGroup>       <SSDTPublishFiles Include="$(DESTINATION)\**\$(CONFIGURATION)\**\*.publish.xml" />     </ItemGroup>     <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Xml.XmlFile Condition="%(SSDTPublishFiles.Identity) != ''"                                        TaskAction="UpdateElement"                                        File="%(SSDTPublishFiles.Identity)"                                        Namespaces="@(Namespaces)"                                         XPath="//myns:SqlCmdVariable[@Include='DeployTag']/myns:Value"                                         InnerText="$(BuildNumber)"/>   </Target> The important bits here are the definition of the namespace http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003: and the XPath expression //myns:SqlCmdVariable[@Include='DeployTag']/myns:Value: Some extra info: I use a fantastic tool called XMLPad to discover/test XPath expressions, read more at XMLPad – a new tool in my developer utility belt MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Xml.XmlFile is a msbuild task used to edit XML files and is available from Mike Fourie’s MSBuild Extension Pack I’m using a property called $(BuildNumber) to hold the value to substitute into the file and also $(DESTINATION)\**\$(CONFIGURATION)\**\*.publish.xml to define an ItemGroup all of my Publish Profile files. Populating those properties is basic msbuild stuff and is therefore outside the scope of this blog post however if you want to learn more check out MSBuild properties & How To: Use Wildcards to Build All Files in a Directory. Hope this is useful! @Jamiet

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• JavaScript Intellisense Improvements with VS 2010

  - by ScottGu

  This is the twentieth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  Today’s blog post covers some of the nice improvements coming with JavaScript intellisense with VS 2010 and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express.  You’ll find with VS 2010 that JavaScript Intellisense loads much faster for large script files and with large libraries, and that it now provides statement completion support for more advanced scenarios compared to previous versions of Visual Studio. [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Improved JavaScript Intellisense Providing Intellisense for a dynamic language like JavaScript is more involved than doing so with a statically typed language like VB or C#.  Correctly inferring the shape and structure of variables, methods, etc is pretty much impossible without pseudo-executing the actual code itself – since JavaScript as a language is flexible enough to dynamically modify and morph these things at runtime.  VS 2010’s JavaScript code editor now has the smarts to perform this type of pseudo-code execution as you type – which is how its intellisense completion is kept accurate and complete.  Below is a simple walkthrough that shows off how rich and flexible it is with the final release. Scenario 1: Basic Type Inference When you declare a variable in JavaScript you do not have to declare its type.  Instead, the type of the variable is based on the value assigned to it.  Because VS 2010 pseudo-executes the code within the editor, it can dynamically infer the type of a variable, and provide the appropriate code intellisense based on the value assigned to a variable. For example, notice below how VS 2010 provides statement completion for a string (because we assigned a string to the “foo” variable): If we later assign a numeric value to “foo” the statement completion (after this assignment) automatically changes to provide intellisense for a number: Scenario 2: Intellisense When Manipulating Browser Objects It is pretty common with JavaScript to manipulate the DOM of a page, as well as work against browser objects available on the client.  Previous versions of Visual Studio would provide JavaScript statement completion against the standard browser objects – but didn’t provide much help with more advanced scenarios (like creating dynamic variables and methods).  VS 2010’s pseudo-execution of code within the editor now allows us to provide rich intellisense for a much broader set of scenarios. For example, below we are using the browser’s window object to create a global variable named “bar”.  Notice how we can now get intellisense (with correct type inference for a string) with VS 2010 when we later try and use it: When we assign the “bar” variable as a number (instead of as a string) the VS 2010 intellisense engine correctly infers its type and modifies statement completion appropriately to be that of a number instead: Scenario 3: Showing Off Because VS 2010 is psudo-executing code within the editor, it is able to handle a bunch of scenarios (both practical and wacky) that you throw at it – and is still able to provide accurate type inference and intellisense. For example, below we are using a for-loop and the browser’s window object to dynamically create and name multiple dynamic variables (bar1, bar2, bar3…bar9).  Notice how the editor’s intellisense engine identifies and provides statement completion for them: Because variables added via the browser’s window object are also global variables – they also now show up in the global variable intellisense drop-down as well: Better yet – type inference is still fully supported.  So if we assign a string to a dynamically named variable we will get type inference for a string.  If we assign a number we’ll get type inference for a number.  Just for fun (and to show off!) we could adjust our for-loop to assign a string for even numbered variables (bar2, bar4, bar6, etc) and assign a number for odd numbered variables (bar1, bar3, bar5, etc): Notice above how we get statement completion for a string for the “bar2” variable.  Notice below how for “bar1” we get statement completion for a number:   This isn’t just a cool pet trick While the above example is a bit contrived, the approach of dynamically creating variables, methods and event handlers on the fly is pretty common with many Javascript libraries.  Many of the more popular libraries use these techniques to keep the size of script library downloads as small as possible.  VS 2010’s support for parsing and pseudo-executing libraries that use these techniques ensures that you get better code Intellisense out of the box when programming against them. Summary Visual Studio 2010 (and the free Visual Web Developer 2010 Express) now provide much richer JavaScript intellisense support.  This support works with pretty much all popular JavaScript libraries.  It should help provide a much better development experience when coding client-side JavaScript and enabling AJAX scenarios within your ASP.NET applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. You can read my previous blog post on VS 2008’s JavaScript Intellisense to learn more about our previous JavaScript intellisense (and some of the scenarios it supported).  VS 2010 obviously supports all of the scenarios previously enabled with VS 2008.

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• Chart Control in ASP.Net 4 – Second Part

  - by sreejukg

    Couple of weeks before, I have written an introduction about the chart control available in .Net framework. In that article, I explained the basic usage of the chart control with a simple example. You can read that article from the url http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2010/12/31/getting-started-with-chart-control-in-asp-net-4-0.aspx. In this article I am going to demonstrate how one can generate various types of charts that can be generated easily using the ASP.Net chart control. Let us recollect the data sample we were working in the previous sample. The following is the data I used in the previous article. id SaleAmount SalesPerson SaleType SaleDate CompletionStatus (%) 1 1000 Jack Development 2010-01-01 100 2 300 Mills Consultancy 2010-04-14 90 3 4000 Mills Development 2010-05-15 80 4 2500 Mike eMarketting 2010-06-15 40 5 1080 Jack Development 2010-07-15 30 6 6500 Mills Consultancy 2010-08-24 65 In this article I am going to demonstrate various graphical reports generated from this data with the help of chart control. The following are the reports I am going to generate 1. Representation of share of Sales by each Sales person. 2. Representation of share of sales data according to sale type 3. Representation of sales progress over time period I am going to demonstrate how to bind the chart control programmatically. In order to facilitate this, I created an aspx page named “SalesAnalysis.Aspx” to my project. In the page I added the following controls 1. Dropdownlist control – with id ddlAnalysisType, user will use this to choose the type of chart they want to see. 2. A Button control – with id btnSubmit , by clicking this button, the chart based on the dropdownlist selection will be shown to the user 3. A label Control – with id lblMessage, to display the message to the user, initially this will ask the user to select an option and click on the button. 4. Chart control – with id chrtAnalysis, by default, I set visible = false so that during the page load the chart will be hidden to the users. The following is the initial output of the page. Generating chart for salesperson share Now from Visual Studio, I have double clicked on the button; it created the event handler btnSubmit_Click. In the button Submit event handler, I am using a switch case to execute the corresponding SQL statement and bind it to the chart control. The below is the code for generating the sales person share chart using a pie chart. The above code produces the following output The steps for creating the above chart can be summarized as follows. You specify a chart area, then a series and bind the chart to some x and y values. That is it. If you want to control the chart size and position, you can set the properties for the ChartArea.Position element. For e.g. in the previous code, after instantiating the chart area, setting the below code will give you a bigger pie chart. c.Position.Width = 100; c.Position.Height = 100; The width and height values are in percentage. In this case the chart will be generated by utilizing all the width and height of the chart object. See the output updated with the width and height set to 100% each. Generate Chart for sales type share Now for generating the chart according to the sales type, you just need to change the SQL query and x and y values of the chart. The Sql query used is “SELECT SUM(saleAmount) amount, SaleType from SalesData group by SaleType” and the X-Value is amount and Y-Values is SaleType. s.XValueMember = "SaleType"; s.YValueMembers = "amount"; After modifying the above code with these, the following output is generated. Generate Chart for sales progress over time period For generating the progress of sale chart against sales amount / period, line chart is the ideal tool. In order to facilitate the line chart, you can use Chart Type as System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.SeriesChartType.Line. Also we need to retrieve the amount and sales date from the data source. I have used the following query to facilitate this. “SELECT SaleAmount, SaleDate FROM SalesData” The output for the line chart is as follows Now you have seen how easily you can build various types of charts. Chart control is an excellent one that helps you to bring business intelligence to your applications. What I demonstrated in only a small part of what you can do with the chart control. Refer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456632.aspx for further reading. If you want to get the project files in zip format, post your email below. Hope you enjoyed reading this article.

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• Dual Boot Oracle Solaris 11/11 and Linux (Ubuntu 11.10/grub2)

  - by HartmutStreppel

  After having worked with Open Solaris on my laptop first, then with an upgrade to Oracle Solaris 11 Express, I finally did a fresh install of Oracle Solaris 11/11, when it became available. I am not a big fan of upgrades as I know that I am not the perfect administrator and my system gets spoiled with unclean configurations, outdated packages and wrong settings that cannot be reversed. So I prefer to start from scratch. Especially with Oracle Solaris 11 I wanted to have a system just like a customer would have it in production. The installation was smooth - more or less, if I had only read the documentation a bit better in advance. For a number of reasons I prefer a dual boot system. The most important one is, that especially with mobile devices you often run into network problems. And you have a hard time figuring out where the problem is: in your laptop hardware, in the OS you are running, or really within the network. If you have an alternate OS to boot, you can exclude the OS and your hardware. This makes you feel better. The second OS should be a Linux variant - and for some not so obvious reason I decided to go with the latest Ubuntu release (11.10). It replaced a very old Open Suse installation that had not been booted for a while. I knew that it was probably best to install Ubuntu first and then Oracle Solaris 11, as this would put the right boot information for Oracle Solaris  into the MBR and onto the root partition. But then, how to enable dual boot with the 2 OSes. Searching the web one mainly finds information about dual boot of: Linux and Linux Linux and Windows I do not want to explain which wrong configurations I worked through, but I prefer to explain the final setup, which is extremely simple, and I am wondering why this is not covered as the easiest solution for most dual boot setups. I use chainloader from and to both OS'es, with the only disadvantage that I have to confirm two grub menus each time I want to boot the "other" OS. Still there were some hurdles to jump over: Ubuntu did not like getting its boot blocks being placed on the partition instead of the disk; I must admit that I do not fully understand why. But using the --force option you could get that done Ubuntu needs an active partition; that was easy to achieve grub2 uses a different numbering scheme for the partitions. That is in the docs, if you read them. BTW: The usual disclaimer is valid. There is  no guarantee that what I describe works or works well. Please back up your data carefully before trying any of this. So, Oracle Solaris 11 is installed on the first partition and Ubuntu on the third. With Ubtuntu things initially were a bit more complicated, as I did not know how to boot it. And the live CD did not offer the capability to boot the on-disk image (at least I did not find it). So I booted the live CD, mounted the Ubuntu installation at /mnt and wrote the boot blocks into the partition. This is something that does not seem to be recommended, at least grub-install refrained from doing what I intended. After a bit more research I was bold enough to use the --force option and wrote the boot blocks to /dev/sda3 using grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot --force --no-floppy /dev/sda3 So, I now had a system with the Solaris boot loader in the MBR, Solaris specific boot blocks on the Solaris root partition and Ubuntu specific boot blocks in the Ubuntu partition. I just had to chain them together and I was done. Oracle Solaris 11: I have added the following lines to /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst (be aware of the /rpool!!!!) title Ubuntu 11.10root (hd0,2)makeactivechainloader +1boot The Ubuntu root file system sits on the third partition (/dev/sda3). Ubuntu: I have added the following lines to /etc/grub.d/40_custom: menuentry "Solaris 11/11" {      set root=(hd0,1)      chainloader +1} Two things need to be mentioned: a) grub2 starts numbering partitions with 1; so my /dev/sda1 is partition 1. b) Oracle Solaris boots without the partition being made active (btw: the command to make a partition active with grub2 is "parttool (hd0,1) boot+", which currently does not work for me). As debugging grub is a bit complicated, I used the grub CLI to perform some tests and also used a tool, that I found on sourceforge.net that was able to prepare a list of all boot loaders on all partitions. This told me that the basic setup was correct. Unfortunately I lost it in the live CD environment. I hope this is helpful for some of the readers.Hartmut

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• DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network

  Even though IPv6 might not be that important within your local network it might be good to get yourself into shape, and be able to provide some details of your infrastructure automatically to your network clients. This is the second article in a series on IPv6 configuration: Configure IPv6 on your Linux system DHCPv6: Provide IPv6 information in your local network Enabling DNS for IPv6 infrastructure Accessing your web server via IPv6 Piece of advice: This is based on my findings on the internet while reading other people's helpful articles and going through a couple of man-pages on my local system. IPv6 addresses for everyone (in your network) Okay, after setting up the configuration of your local system, it might be interesting to enable all your machines in your network to use IPv6. There are two options to solve this kind of requirement... Either you're busy like a bee and you go around to configure each and every system manually, or you're more the lazy and effective type of network administrator and you prefer to work with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Obviously, I'm of the second type. Enabling dynamic IPv6 address assignments can be done with a new or an existing instance of a DHCPd. In case of Ubuntu-based installation this might be isc-dhcp-server. The isc-dhcp-server allows address pooling for IP and IPv6 within the same package, you just have to run to independent daemons for each protocol version. First, check whether isc-dhcp-server is already installed and maybe running your machine like so: $ service isc-dhcp-server6 status In case, that the service is unknown, you have to install it like so: $ sudo apt-get install isc-dhcp-server Please bear in mind that there is no designated installation package for IPv6. Okay, next you have to create a separate configuration file for IPv6 address pooling and network parameters called /etc/dhcp/dhcpd6.conf. This file is not automatically provided by the package, compared to IPv4. Again, use your favourite editor and put the following lines: $ sudo nano /etc/dhcp/dhcpd6.conf authoritative;default-lease-time 14400; max-lease-time 86400;log-facility local7;subnet6 2001:db8:bad:a55::/64 {    option dhcp6.name-servers 2001:4860:4860::8888, 2001:4860:4860::8844;    option dhcp6.domain-search "ios.mu";    range6 2001:db8:bad:a55::100 2001:db8:bad:a55::199;    range6 2001:db8:bad:a55::/64 temporary;} Next, save the file and start the daemon as a foreground process to see whether it is going to listen to requests or not, like so: $ sudo /usr/sbin/dhcpd -6 -d -cf /etc/dhcp/dhcpd6.conf eth0 The parameters are explained quickly as -6 we want to run as a DHCPv6 server, -d we are sending log messages to the standard error descriptor (so you should monitor your /var/log/syslog file, too), and we explicitely want to use our newly created configuration file (-cf). You might also use the command switch -t to test the configuration file prior to running the server. In my case, I ended up with a couple of complaints by the server, especially reporting that the necessary lease file wouldn't exist. So, ensure that the lease file for your IPv6 address assignments is present: $ sudo touch /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd6.leases$ sudo chown dhcpd:dhcpd /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd6.leases Now, you should be good to go. Stop your foreground process and try to run the DHCPv6 server as a service on your system: $ sudo service isc-dhcp-server6 startisc-dhcp-server6 start/running, process 15883 Check your log file /var/log/syslog for any kind of problems. Refer to the man-pages of isc-dhcp-server and you might check out Chapter 22.6 of Peter Bieringer's IPv6 Howto. The instructions regarding DHCPv6 on the Ubuntu Wiki are not as complete as expected and it might not be as helpful as this article or Peter's HOWTO. But see for yourself. Does the client get an IPv6 address? Running a DHCPv6 server on your local network surely comes in handy but it has to work properly. The following paragraphs describe briefly how to check the IPv6 configuration of your clients, Linux - ifconfig or ip command First, you have enable IPv6 on your Linux by specifying the necessary directives in the /etc/network/interfaces file, like so: $ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces iface eth1 inet6 dhcp Note: Your network device might be eth0 - please don't just copy my configuration lines. Then, either restart your network subsystem, or enable the device manually using the dhclient command with IPv6 switch, like so: $ sudo dhclient -6 You would either use the ifconfig or (if installed) the ip command to check the configuration of your network device like so: $ sudo ifconfig eth1eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1d:09:5d:8d:98            inet addr:192.168.160.147  Bcast:192.168.160.255  Mask:255.255.255.0          inet6 addr: 2001:db8:bad:a55::193/64 Scope:Global          inet6 addr: fe80::21d:9ff:fe5d:8d98/64 Scope:Link          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1 Looks good, the client has an IPv6 assignment. Now, let's see whether DNS information has been provided, too. $ less /etc/resolv.conf # Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTENnameserver 2001:4860:4860::8888nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8844nameserver 192.168.1.2nameserver 127.0.1.1search ios.mu Nicely done. Windows - netsh Per description on TechNet the netsh is defined as following: "Netsh is a command-line scripting utility that allows you to, either locally or remotely, display or modify the network configuration of a computer that is currently running. Netsh also provides a scripting feature that allows you to run a group of commands in batch mode against a specified computer. Netsh can also save a configuration script in a text file for archival purposes or to help you configure other servers." And even though TechNet states that it applies to Windows Server (only), it is also available on Windows client operating systems, like Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. In order to get or even set information related to IPv6 protocol, we have to switch the netsh interface context prior to our queries. Open a command prompt in Windows and run the following statements: C:\Users\joki>netshnetsh>interface ipv6netsh interface ipv6>show interfaces Select the device index from the Idx column to get more details about the IPv6 address and DNS server information (here: I'm going to use my WiFi device with device index 11), like so: netsh interface ipv6>show address 11 Okay, address information has been provided. Now, let's check the details about DNS and resolving host names: netsh interface ipv6> show dnsservers 11 Okay, that looks good already. Our Windows client has a valid IPv6 address lease with lifetime information and details about the configured DNS servers. Talking about DNS server... Your clients should be able to connect to your network servers via IPv6 using hostnames instead of IPv6 addresses. Please read on about how to enable a local named with IPv6.

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• JavaScript Class Patterns

  - by Liam McLennan

  To write object-oriented programs we need objects, and likely lots of them. JavaScript makes it easy to create objects: var liam = { name: "Liam", age: Number.MAX_VALUE }; But JavaScript does not provide an easy way to create similar objects. Most object-oriented languages include the idea of a class, which is a template for creating objects of the same type. From one class many similar objects can be instantiated. Many patterns have been proposed to address the absence of a class concept in JavaScript. This post will compare and contrast the most significant of them. Simple Constructor Functions Classes may be missing but JavaScript does support special constructor functions. By prefixing a call to a constructor function with the ‘new’ keyword we can tell the JavaScript runtime that we want the function to behave like a constructor and instantiate a new object containing the members defined by that function. Within a constructor function the ‘this’ keyword references the new object being created -  so a basic constructor function might be: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; this.toString = function() { return this.name + " is " + age + " years old."; }; } var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that by convention the name of a constructor function is always written in Pascal Case (the first letter of each word is capital). This is to distinguish between constructor functions and other functions. It is important that constructor functions be called with the ‘new’ keyword and that not constructor functions are not. There are two problems with the pattern constructor function pattern shown above: It makes inheritance difficult The toString() function is redefined for each new object created by the Person constructor. This is sub-optimal because the function should be shared between all of the instances of the Person type. Constructor Functions with a Prototype JavaScript functions have a special property called prototype. When an object is created by calling a JavaScript constructor all of the properties of the constructor’s prototype become available to the new object. In this way many Person objects can be created that can access the same prototype. An improved version of the above example can be written: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { toString: function() { return this.name + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); In this version a single instance of the toString() function will now be shared between all Person objects. Private Members The short version is: there aren’t any. If a variable is defined, with the var keyword, within the constructor function then its scope is that function. Other functions defined within the constructor function will be able to access the private variable, but anything defined outside the constructor (such as functions on the prototype property) won’t have access to the private variable. Any variables defined on the constructor are automatically public. Some people solve this problem by prefixing properties with an underscore and then not calling those properties by convention. function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { _getName: function() { return this.name; }, toString: function() { return this._getName() + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that the _getName() function is only private by convention – it is in fact a public function. Functional Object Construction Because of the weirdness involved in using constructor functions some JavaScript developers prefer to eschew them completely. They theorize that it is better to work with JavaScript’s functional nature than to try and force it to behave like a traditional class-oriented language. When using the functional approach objects are created by returning them from a factory function. An excellent side effect of this pattern is that variables defined with the factory function are accessible to the new object (due to closure) but are inaccessible from anywhere else. The Person example implemented using the functional object construction pattern is: var personFactory = function(name, age) { var privateVar = 7; return { toString: function() { return name + " is " + age * privateVar / privateVar + " years old."; } }; }; var john2 = personFactory("John Lennon", 40); console.log(john2.toString()); Note that the ‘new’ keyword is not used for this pattern, and that the toString() function has access to the name, age and privateVar variables because of closure. This pattern can be extended to provide inheritance and, unlike the constructor function pattern, it supports private variables. However, when working with JavaScript code bases you will find that the constructor function is more common – probably because it is a better approximation of mainstream class oriented languages like C# and Java. Inheritance Both of the above patterns can support inheritance but for now, favour composition over inheritance. Summary When JavaScript code exceeds simple browser automation object orientation can provide a powerful paradigm for controlling complexity. Both of the patterns presented in this article work – the choice is a matter of style. Only one question still remains; who is John Galt?

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• JavaScript Class Patterns

  - by Liam McLennan

  To write object-oriented programs we need objects, and likely lots of them. JavaScript makes it easy to create objects: var liam = { name: "Liam", age: Number.MAX_VALUE }; But JavaScript does not provide an easy way to create similar objects. Most object-oriented languages include the idea of a class, which is a template for creating objects of the same type. From one class many similar objects can be instantiated. Many patterns have been proposed to address the absence of a class concept in JavaScript. This post will compare and contrast the most significant of them. Simple Constructor Functions Classes may be missing but JavaScript does support special constructor functions. By prefixing a call to a constructor function with the ‘new’ keyword we can tell the JavaScript runtime that we want the function to behave like a constructor and instantiate a new object containing the members defined by that function. Within a constructor function the ‘this’ keyword references the new object being created -  so a basic constructor function might be: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; this.toString = function() { return this.name + " is " + age + " years old."; }; } var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that by convention the name of a constructor function is always written in Pascal Case (the first letter of each word is capital). This is to distinguish between constructor functions and other functions. It is important that constructor functions be called with the ‘new’ keyword and that not constructor functions are not. There are two problems with the pattern constructor function pattern shown above: It makes inheritance difficult The toString() function is redefined for each new object created by the Person constructor. This is sub-optimal because the function should be shared between all of the instances of the Person type. Constructor Functions with a Prototype JavaScript functions have a special property called prototype. When an object is created by calling a JavaScript constructor all of the properties of the constructor’s prototype become available to the new object. In this way many Person objects can be created that can access the same prototype. An improved version of the above example can be written: function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { toString: function() { return this.name + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); In this version a single instance of the toString() function will now be shared between all Person objects. Private Members The short version is: there aren’t any. If a variable is defined, with the var keyword, within the constructor function then its scope is that function. Other functions defined within the constructor function will be able to access the private variable, but anything defined outside the constructor (such as functions on the prototype property) won’t have access to the private variable. Any variables defined on the constructor are automatically public. Some people solve this problem by prefixing properties with an underscore and then not calling those properties by convention. function Person(name, age) { this.name = name; this.age = age; } Person.prototype = { _getName: function() { return this.name; }, toString: function() { return this._getName() + " is " + this.age + " years old."; } }; var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); Note that the _getName() function is only private by convention – it is in fact a public function. Functional Object Construction Because of the weirdness involved in using constructor functions some JavaScript developers prefer to eschew them completely. They theorize that it is better to work with JavaScript’s functional nature than to try and force it to behave like a traditional class-oriented language. When using the functional approach objects are created by returning them from a factory function. An excellent side effect of this pattern is that variables defined with the factory function are accessible to the new object (due to closure) but are inaccessible from anywhere else. The Person example implemented using the functional object construction pattern is: var john = new Person("John Galt", 50); console.log(john.toString()); var personFactory = function(name, age) { var privateVar = 7; return { toString: function() { return name + " is " + age * privateVar / privateVar + " years old."; } }; }; var john2 = personFactory("John Lennon", 40); console.log(john2.toString()); Note that the ‘new’ keyword is not used for this pattern, and that the toString() function has access to the name, age and privateVar variables because of closure. This pattern can be extended to provide inheritance and, unlike the constructor function pattern, it supports private variables. However, when working with JavaScript code bases you will find that the constructor function is more common – probably because it is a better approximation of mainstream class oriented languages like C# and Java. Inheritance Both of the above patterns can support inheritance but for now, favour composition over inheritance. Summary When JavaScript code exceeds simple browser automation object orientation can provide a powerful paradigm for controlling complexity. Both of the patterns presented in this article work – the choice is a matter of style. Only one question still remains; who is John Galt?

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• VLC 2.0.3 on Lubuntu 12.04: No audio?

  - by drezabek

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

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• Class Loading Deadlocks

  - by tomas.nilsson

  Mattis follows up on his previous post with one more expose on Class Loading Deadlocks As I wrote in a previous post, the class loading mechanism in Java is very powerful. There are many advanced techniques you can use, and when used wrongly you can get into all sorts of trouble. But one of the sneakiest deadlocks you can run into when it comes to class loading doesn't require any home made class loaders or anything. All you need is classes depending on each other, and some bad luck. First of all, here are some basic facts about class loading: 1) If a thread needs to use a class that is not yet loaded, it will try to load that class 2) If another thread is already loading the class, the first thread will wait for the other thread to finish the loading 3) During the loading of a class, one thing that happens is that the <clinit method of a class is being run 4) The <clinit method initializes all static fields, and runs any static blocks in the class. Take the following class for example: class Foo { static Bar bar = new Bar(); static { System.out.println("Loading Foo"); } } The first time a thread needs to use the Foo class, the class will be initialized. The <clinit method will run, creating a new Bar object and printing "Loading Foo" But what happens if the Bar object has never been used before either? Well, then we will need to load that class as well, calling the Bar <clinit method as we go. Can you start to see the potential problem here? A hint is in fact #2 above. What if another thread is currently loading class Bar? The thread loading class Foo will have to wait for that thread to finish loading. But what happens if the <clinit method of class Bar tries to initialize a Foo object? That thread will have to wait for the first thread, and there we have the deadlock. Thread one is waiting for thread two to initialize class Bar, thread two is waiting for thread one to initialize class Foo. All that is needed for a class loading deadlock is static cross dependencies between two classes (and a multi threaded environment): class Foo { static Bar b = new Bar(); } class Bar { static Foo f = new Foo(); } If two threads cause these classes to be loaded at exactly the same time, we will have a deadlock. So, how do you avoid this? Well, one way is of course to not have these circular (static) dependencies. On the other hand, it can be very hard to detect these, and sometimes your design may depend on it. What you can do in that case is to make sure that the classes are first loaded single threadedly, for example during an initialization phase of your application. The following program shows this kind of deadlock. To help bad luck on the way, I added a one second sleep in the static block of the classes to trigger the unlucky timing. Notice that if you uncomment the "//Foo f = new Foo();" line in the main method, the class will be loaded single threadedly, and the program will terminate as it should. public class ClassLoadingDeadlock { // Start two threads. The first will instansiate a Foo object, // the second one will instansiate a Bar object. public static void main(String[] arg) { // Uncomment next line to stop the deadlock // Foo f = new Foo(); new Thread(new FooUser()).start(); new Thread(new BarUser()).start(); } } class FooUser implements Runnable { public void run() { System.out.println("FooUser causing class Foo to be loaded"); Foo f = new Foo(); System.out.println("FooUser done"); } } class BarUser implements Runnable { public void run() { System.out.println("BarUser causing class Bar to be loaded"); Bar b = new Bar(); System.out.println("BarUser done"); } } class Foo { static { // We are deadlock prone even without this sleep... // The sleep just makes us more deterministic try { Thread.sleep(1000); } catch(InterruptedException e) {} } static Bar b = new Bar(); } class Bar { static { try { Thread.sleep(1000); } catch(InterruptedException e) {} } static Foo f = new Foo(); }

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 06, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 06, 2013Popular ReleasesMedia Companion: Media Companion MC3.580b: Fixed IMDB Actor names and Actor Roles, empty <actor> entries in movie nfo, and actor scraping during initial movie scrape. Revision HistoryEvent-Based Components AppBuilder: AB3.Iteration.53: Iteration 53 (Feature): Allow drag&drop of existing component (flow, step) from component list to chart. Duplicate names are automatically recognized and solved. By the color of the draged component you can see what kind of component (flow or step) is currently draged. New: AddExistingComponentFlow, PartDragDropEventHandler, ExistingStepPreparerPulse: Pulse 0.6.7.3: Pulse is now accepting donations. To donate by Bitcoin or PayPal see https://pulse.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Donations Lots of updates in v0.6.7.3: (Feature) New option allows you to disable wallpaper changing when a full screen application is running. This way Pulse doesn't slow down/lag your videos and games :) (Fix) Some users were getting Wallbase errors when logging in. This has been fixed. (Feature) Right click a provider and you can now make a copy of it by selecting the "Dupl...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.1: Release 1.11.1 =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== Added more tile blocks (Clouds, crimstone) Added items (binoculars, rope, Pirahna Gun) Added ores (Lead, Tin) Chests now work, I broke them yesterday. =============== =Known Issues= =============== I am having trouble with new background walls. So you will see a red outline for crimson then a pink inside. Same with where I think the queen bee lives.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Menu Option to delete an Forum Account NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org links FIXED: Fixed Ripping of http://forum.babeunion.com ForumsSimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.fastJSON: v2.0.22: 2.0.22 - added .net 3.5 project - now compiling to 'output' directory - added signed assembly - version numbers will stay at 2.0.0.0 for drop in compatibility - file version will reflect the build number - bug fix deserializing to dictionaries instead of dataset when type is not definedResponsive SharePoint: Bootstrap 3 for SharePoint 2013 - Alpha 0.1: Bootstrap 3 for SharePoint 2013 Alpha version 0.1 NOTE - This is an alpha version, there are bound to be issues. Please help us solve them by contributing in our Discussion. Publishing - The source for Twitter Bootstrap 3.0.0 integrated into SharePoint 2013 for a site with Publishing enabled. Non-Publishing - A master page and branding assets for Twitter Bootstrap 3.0.0 integrated into SharePoint 2013 without Publishing enabled. PageLayoutSampleContent - Sample content for included page l...C++ AMP Conformance Test Suite: C++ AMP Conformance Test Suite 1.0.0: This release contains following changes from previous release: Removed the tests that were testing Microsoft specific behavior not part of open specification. The test suite now contains two folders, containing set of test cases, named ‘Tests’ and ‘TestsWithProp'. The set of tests under these two folders are identical except one difference. The set of test cases under directory ‘TestsWithProp’ makes use of ‘properties’ (which the compiler being tested should handle as mentioned in the open ...ASP.NET dhtmxGantt Class: dhtmlxGantt2.vb class: This is the latest class based on work performed. For more information read the project description and get the source files from dhtmlx.comExpressiveDataGenerators: Alpha 2: Fix serveral bugs, more testsQuickTestsFramework: 1.0.0: First release with stable API.VS Tiny Extension for TortoiseGit: 0.1c: + Icons revised + Push button disappeared when IDE loads the menu instead of toolbar. + Detected twice loading and prevented. + About box deprecated. + Next version will have major improvements. NEW: Visual Studio 2013 Support!BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????PayBox payment gateway provider for NB_Store: NB_Store_Gateway_01.00.02_PayBox: Paybox DNN module installMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release (Updated) Version 7.1005September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Important UpdateThis release has been updated to fix three issues: Up...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0New ProjectsBasic4Android (B4A) Charting Framework: dhtlmxCharts, GoogleCharts etc: Basic4Android (B4A) mobile charting framework.Client Meeting Tool: This site facilitate users to create and schedule meetings for an event.FoodScan: This app focuses on implementing diet monitoring application for Malaysian overweight and obese adolescents using AR technique on Windows Phone 8.Hello Team foundation server: Try to use team foundation server and compare it with GitKDG C# Password Generator: C# password generator developed by KDG.KDG's C# Password Generator: C# password generator that uses Random to create strong passwords based on user input.Meta: Meta is the EECS 111 programming language at Northwestern University. Meta is a dynamically-typed scheme-like language built on .NET. This is its home.Monoscript: Allows using Mono and C# for scripting on Unix. Source files are automatically compiled and executed. Caching is employed to avoid recompiling unchanged files.mtdsharp: Developed by Chris Hyndman, Alec KC, Lu Huang and Merrill Huang for CS 196 at the University of Illinois.Planr.me: Planr is a time management website currently in the early development stageProject Hermes: This very project is currently closed door and under core development. The project description and other works would be published soon.Remindme for Windows Phone 8: Simple, open source Pocket client for Windows Phone 8Remindme for WinRT: Simple, open source Pocket client for WinRT and Windows 8.SQL Server Periodic Table with Molecules: This a SQL Server Database intended to be used by students and researchers for Chemistry and Physics projects. Tesseract: The Tesseract Project aims to easily display and rotate 4 Dimensional Objects in 3D Test Case Manager: A Windows Application which extends Microsoft Test Manager. Features: * one click search * test case export * better test case reader * extended edit modeTest Project for Assignment 1: This is a test ProjectTorah File: Torah File is an project that allow you to use Torah Bible and Mishneh for the computer by type of the programming languages that will be able to use the ToUSAePay nopCommerce Payment Plugin: A simple plugin for nopCommerce to use the USAePay SOAP API interface for processing credit cards.Veterinaria Dr Leo: Este es nuestro Proyecto del curso Calidad y Pruebas de Software 2013-2 Arevalo Ticlla, Susan. Chalán Malca, Elvis. Cruzado Asencio, Gustavo.Visual Studio Test Extensions: The Visual Studio Test Extensions provides extensions and tools for the Visual Studio MSTest engine. It allows to execute unit tests in a separate AppDomain.WSAAD7COM1052: Central repository for 7COM1052 - Web Scripting & Application Development (COM)wscc2013online: this is a project related to Web Application Development at the University of Hertfordshire

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 06, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, April 06, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC | SCAFFOLD: Add-in para Visual Studio 2008 que adiciona um poderoso scaffold para o ASP.NET MVC, com suporte ao Entity Framework.ASP.Net Permission Manager: This is an extension of ASP.Net Permission Manager that permission to roles.Babelfish.NET: Babelfish was created as a common framework for navigating several different node-to-node structured data sources, such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, X...CollaSuite: Collaboration Suite, Chat Client ServerdnyFramework: Denny FrameWorkDocxToHtml: DocxToHtmlDomain Driven Design and ASP.NET MVC 2 sample: It's a simple application ASP.NET MVC 2 with DDD modeling approach. It's about how to build maintainable applications applying DDD, IoC and infrast...DRP Address Book: A web based address book implementation using SQL Server 2008, ASP.NET, C#, and CSLA.NETFileSystemHelper SQL Server CLR: FileSystemHelper SQL Server CLR provides a collection of CLR stored procedures and functions for interacting with the file system. Using these sto...Foothill: This is an asp.net Web AppHouseFly controls: Controls for my upcomming app: HouseFlyiTunes Artwork App: This project is related to my iTunes Artwork App blog series. The application will automate the process of collecting album art for music tracks i...Logwiz - Automate the collection of Performance monitor logs using logman.exe: This tool is used to automate the process of collecting Performance monitoring data using the logman.exe on Windows Vista/Windows 7/Windows 2008 an...MailSharp - Beyond MailMessage: An easy-to-use library for .NET developers to send HTML formatted emails using templates with merge tags and embedded images instead of pointing at...MSTests.Fluently: MSTests.Fluently makes it easier for developers and testers to read and write tests with the Visual Studio Unit-Testing Framework. The Sentence-lik...openSIS dot net - Open Source SIS written in C#, built on dotnet 3.5 framework: openSIS dotnet is the dot net version of the popular openSIS Student Information System from OS4ED. This openSIS version is written in C# and is ba...PHP.net: PHP.net is a PHP IDE written in C# for Windows. The IDE will eventually be a complete standalone PHP development enviroment, including a developmen...Recommender System for Optus Website: <Recommender System for Optus Website>This project is trying to apply some recommeder system techniques to telecom company websites. This project ...Sendkeys: This is a tool for remote controlling any Windows Application.Shamil: Shamil WorkSite Directory for SharePoint 2010 (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): A solution which provides 'site directory' functionality for SharePoint 2010. Refer to [file:Solution Description|Microsoft.MCSUK.SPSiteDirectory...SPD Workflow action to add user to a security group: This is a custom SPD workflow step developed to facilitate the process of adding users from a list to the security group. Keep in mind this is run...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Source for the Star Trooper XNA 2d Tutorial on XNA-UK (www.XNA-UK.co.uk), including the full set of code and each phase of the tutorial. Additio...TFS WitAdminUI: Team Foundation Server 2010 RC WitAdmin simple application with UIWindows Phone 7 Panorama control: The Windows Phone 7 Panorama control is a sample implementation of a Silverlight control that allows to create "Hub" applications on Windows Phone ...Yulu: Yulu helps you maintain short quotations or your thoughts with your Windows Mobile phones.New ReleasesASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.0: Atomic CMS 2.0 was released. Please visit http://atomiccms.com/ for download documentation, last release and get more information about Atomic CMS ...ASP.Net Permission Manager: Mal.Web.Security.dll v1.0.2.0: Mal.Web.Security.dll Relealse v1.0.2.0CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.48: The application now uses Windows Communication Foundation services. See Source Code tab for other recent changes.dotNetInstaller: setup bootstrapper for Windows: 1.10 (Development): Build 1.10.6588.0. Features - Added support for .exe setup components with an optional response file. - Added has_value_disabled option to user-de...Examine: RC 1: This is Examine RC1 release. It includes: Examine UmbracoExamine Lucene.Net 2.9.2Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.010: Improved the pentagone crazy quizFileSystemHelper SQL Server CLR: FileSystemHelper CLR Project: Source code for FileSystemHelper CLR assembly.GameStore League Manager: League Manager 1.0.5-Logging: Added Logging functionality to track down bugs.iSun Shut - PC Auto Shutdown: iSun Shut 2.5: Relase Notes: -To properly view the source code please install DotNetBar 8.3 (http://www.devcomponents.com) -The Shutdown after firefox download f...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.10: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MIC Pattern: !MIC Pattern DAL: Data Access Layer Este arquivo contem a DLL que faz acesso a dados e simplifica as operações de INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE e SELECT em bases de dados ...MVC Foolproof Validation: Alpha 0.1: Server side validation is stable. Client side validation is fairly stable aside from some border cases I hope to address soon. I’m actually using t...OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: First binary release: CAB-installer for installing the sample application provided with the solution. Demonstrates a simple quad with rotation animation. Changes from l...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG2010 Drop8: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices ****************************************** ***************************************...PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT: PROGRAMMABLE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT - V3: The Beta Version 3 of the Programmable Software Development Environment features the random generator, longitudinal and cryptographic commands whi...RoTwee: RoTwee (9.0.0.0): New feature in this version : 17102 Tweet rotated count.SharePhone: SharePhone v.1.0.3: Added search functionality. Use clientContext.SearchProvider.Search(..) or clientContext.SearchProvider.KeywordSearch(..) A few examples here: ht...SharePoint Outlook Connector: Version 1.2.4.3: UI has been improved. Some bugs have been resolved.SPD Workflow action to add user to a security group: Version 1 custom workflow action: A custom SPD workflow step that automatically adds user to the correct security group, the user name can be driven from a list item or document li...SQL Server Metadata Toolkit 2008: SQL Server Metadata Toolkit Alpha 5: This release addresses the Issue 10567, which was a recursive view recursing more than 100 times. This was caused by the addition of SQL Parsing in...TFS WitAdminUI: WitAdminUI ver1.0: Download zip file and unzip to TFS2010 RC. And Excute WitAdminUI.exe. Because WitAdmin is made by .net v4.0 so I can't my application with MSI.TFTP Server: TFTP Server 1.0 Installer: Installer for the binary release of TFTP server v 1.0VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.1.0: Version 7.1.0 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.1.0 rel...WAFFLE: Windows Authentication Functional Framework (LE): 1.3 (Development): Build 1.3.9740.0. Features Added waffle-jna-auth.jar, native Java with JNA port. Misc Project upgraded to Visual Studio 2008.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryImage Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsSkype Voice ChangerAll-In-One Code FrameworkWindows Live Calendar GadgetMDownloaderWindows 7 USB/DVD Download ToolDroid ExplorerEnhSimMost Active ProjectsGraffiti CMSnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.Facebook Developer ToolkitRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesShweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexFarseer Physics EngineNcqrs Framework - The CQRS framework for .NETIonics Isapi Rewrite Filter

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• Silverlight Recruiting Application Part 4 - Navigation and Modules

  After our brief intermission (and the craziness of Q1 2010 release week), we're back on track here and today we get to dive into how we are going to navigate through our applications as well as how to set up our modules. That way, as I start adding the functionality- adding Jobs and Applicants, Interview Scheduling, and finally a handy Dashboard- you'll see how everything is communicating back and forth. This is all leading up to an eventual webinar, in which I'll dive into this process and give a honest look at the current story for MVVM vs. Code-Behind applications. (For a look at the future with SL4 and a little thing called MEF, check out what Ross is doing over at his blog!) Preamble... Before getting into really talking about this app, I've done a little bit of work ahead of time to create a ton of files that I'll need. Since the webinar is going to cover the Dashboard, it's not here, but otherwise this is a look at what the project layout looks like (and remember, this is both projects since they share the .Web): So as you can see, from an architecture perspective, the code-behind app is much smaller and more streamlined- aka a better fit for the one man shop that is me. Each module in the MVVM app has the same setup, which is the Module class and corresponding Views and ViewModels. Since the code-behind app doesn't need a go-between project like Infrastructure, each MVVM module is instead replaced by a single Silverlight UserControl which will contain all the logic for each respective bit of functionality. My Very First Module Navigation is going to be key to my application, so I figured the first thing I would setup is my MenuModule. First step here is creating a Silverlight Class Library named MenuModule, creatingthe View and ViewModel folders, and adding the MenuModule.cs class to handle module loading. The most important thing here is that my MenuModule inherits from IModule, which runs an Initialize on each module as it is created that, in my case, adds the views to the correct regions. Here's the MenuModule.cs code: public class MenuModule : IModule { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; private readonly IUnityContainer container; public MenuModule(IUnityContainer container, IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.container = container; this.regionManager = regionmanager; } public void Initialize() { var addMenuView = container.Resolve<MenuView>(); regionManager.Regions["MenuRegion"].Add(addMenuView); } } Pretty straightforward here... We inject a container and region manager from Prism/Unity, then upon initialization we grab the view (out of our Views folder) and add it to the region it needs to live in. Simple, right? When the MenuView is created, the only thing in the code-behind is a reference to the set the MenuViewModel as the DataContext. I'd like to achieve MVVM nirvana and have zero code-behind by placing the viewmodel in the XAML, but for the reasons listed further below I can't. Navigation - MVVM Since navigation isn't the biggest concern in putting this whole thing together, I'm using the Button control to handle different options for loading up views/modules. There is another reason for this- out of the box, Prism has command support for buttons, which is one less custom command I had to work up for the functionality I would need. This comes from the Microsoft.Practices.Composite.Presentation assembly and looks as follows when put in code: <Button x:Name="xGoToJobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyle}" Content="Jobs" cal:Click.Command="{Binding GoModule}" cal:Click.CommandParameter="JobPostingsView" /> For quick reference, 'menuStyle' is just taking care of margins and spacing, otherwise it looks, feels, and functions like everyone's favorite Button. What MVVM's this up is that the Click.Command is tying to a DelegateCommand (also coming fromPrism) on the backend. This setup allows you to tie user interaction to a command you setup in your viewmodel, which replaces the standard event-based setup you'd see in the code-behind app. Due to databinding magic, it all just works. When we get looking at the DelegateCommand in code, it ends up like this: public class MenuViewModel : ViewModelBase { private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; public DelegateCommand<object> GoModule { get; set; } public MenuViewModel(IRegionManager regionmanager) { this.regionManager = regionmanager; this.GoModule = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.goToView); } public void goToView(object obj) { MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", obj.ToString()); } } Another for reference, ViewModelBase takes care of iNotifyPropertyChanged and MakeMeActive, which switches views in the MainRegion based on the parameters. So our public DelegateCommand GoModule ties to our command on the view, that in turn calls goToView, and the parameter on the button is the name of the view (which we pass with obj.ToString()) to activate. And how do the views get the names I can pass as a string? When I called regionManager.Regions[regionname].Add(view), there is an overload that allows for .Add(view, "viewname"), with viewname being what I use to activate views. You'll see that in action next installment, just wanted to clarify how that works. With this setup, I create two more buttons in my MenuView and the MenuModule is good to go. Last step is to make sure my MenuModule loads in my Bootstrapper: protected override IModuleCatalog GetModuleCatalog() { ModuleCatalog catalog = new ModuleCatalog(); // add modules here catalog.AddModule(typeof(MenuModule.MenuModule)); return catalog; } Clean, simple, MVVM-delicious. Navigation - Code-Behind Keeping with the history of significantly shorter code-behind sections of this series, Navigation will be no different. I promise. As I explained in a prior post, due to the one-project setup I don't have to worry about the same concerns so my menu is part of MainPage.xaml. So I can cheese-it a bit, though, since I've already got three buttons all set I'm just copying that code and adding three click-events instead of the command/commandparameter setup: <!-- Menu Region --> <StackPanel Grid.Row="1" Orientation="Vertical"> <Button x:Name="xJobsButton" Content="Jobs" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xJobsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xApplicantsButton" Content="Applicants" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xApplicantsButton_Click" /> <Button x:Name="xSchedulingModule" Content="Scheduling" Style="{StaticResource menuStyleCB}" Click="xSchedulingModule_Click" /> </StackPanel> Simple, easy to use events, and no extra assemblies required! Since the code for loading each view will be similar, we'll focus on JobsView for now.The code-behind with this setup looks something like... private JobsView _jobsView; public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); } private void xJobsButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (MainRegion.Content.GetType() != typeof(JobsView)) { if (_jobsView == null) _jobsView = new JobsView(); MainRegion.Content = _jobsView; } } What am I doing here? First, for each 'view' I create a private reference which MainPage will hold on to. This allows for a little bit of state-maintenance when switching views. When a button is clicked, first we make sure the 'view' typeisn't active (why load it again if it is already at center stage?), then we check if the view has been created and create if necessary, then load it up. Three steps to switching views and is easy as pie. Part 4 Results The end result of all this is that I now have a menu module (MVVM) and a menu section (code-behind) that load their respective views. Since I'm using the same exact XAML (except with commands/events depending on the project), the end result for both is again exactly the same and I'll show a slightly larger image to show it off: Next time, we add the Jobs Module and wire up RadGridView and a separate edit page to handle adding and editing new jobs. That's when things get fun. And somewhere down the line, I'll make the menu look slicker. :) Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series Part 4: Paging and Querying

  - by Jon Galloway

  We're continuing a six part series on ASP.NET Web API that accompanies the getting started screencast series. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. In Part 1 we looked at what ASP.NET Web API is, why you'd care, did the File / New Project thing, and did some basic HTTP testing using browser F12 developer tools. In Part 2 we started to build up a sample that returns data from a repository in JSON format via GET methods. In Part 3, we modified data on the server using DELETE and POST methods. In Part 4, we'll extend on our simple querying methods form Part 2, adding in support for paging and querying. This part shows two approaches to querying data (paging really just being a specific querying case) - you can do it yourself using parameters passed in via querystring (as well as headers, other route parameters, cookies, etc.). You're welcome to do that if you'd like. What I think is more interesting here is that Web API actions that return IQueryable automatically support OData query syntax, making it really easy to support some common query use cases like paging and filtering. A few important things to note: This is just support for OData query syntax - you're not getting back data in OData format. The screencast demonstrates this by showing the GET methods are continuing to return the same JSON they did previously. So you don't have to "buy in" to the whole OData thing, you're just able to use the query syntax if you'd like. This isn't full OData query support - full OData query syntax includes a lot of operations and features - but it is a pretty good subset: filter, orderby, skip, and top. All you have to do to enable this OData query syntax is return an IQueryable rather than an IEnumerable. Often, that could be as simple as using the AsQueryable() extension method on your IEnumerable. Query composition support lets you layer queries intelligently. If, for instance, you had an action that showed products by category using a query in your repository, you could also support paging on top of that. The result is an expression tree that's evaluated on-demand and includes both the Web API query and the underlying query. So with all those bullet points and big words, you'd think this would be hard to hook up. Nope, all I did was change the return type from IEnumerable<Comment> to IQueryable<Comment> and convert the Get() method's IEnumerable result using the .AsQueryable() extension method. public IQueryable<Comment> GetComments() { return repository.Get().AsQueryable(); } You still need to build up the query to provide the $top and $skip on the client, but you'd need to do that regardless. Here's how that looks: $(function () { //--------------------------------------------------------- // Using Queryable to page //--------------------------------------------------------- $("#getCommentsQueryable").click(function () { viewModel.comments([]); var pageSize = $('#pageSize').val(); var pageIndex = $('#pageIndex').val(); var url = "/api/comments?$top=" + pageSize + '&$skip=' + (pageIndex * pageSize); $.getJSON(url, function (data) { // Update the Knockout model (and thus the UI) with the comments received back // from the Web API call. viewModel.comments(data); }); return false; }); }); And the neat thing is that - without any modification to our server-side code - we can modify the above jQuery call to request the comments be sorted by author: $(function () { //--------------------------------------------------------- // Using Queryable to page //--------------------------------------------------------- $("#getCommentsQueryable").click(function () { viewModel.comments([]); var pageSize = $('#pageSize').val(); var pageIndex = $('#pageIndex').val(); var url = "/api/comments?$top=" + pageSize + '&$skip=' + (pageIndex * pageSize) + '&$orderby=Author'; $.getJSON(url, function (data) { // Update the Knockout model (and thus the UI) with the comments received back // from the Web API call. viewModel.comments(data); }); return false; }); }); So if you want to make use of OData query syntax, you can. If you don't like it, you're free to hook up your filtering and paging however you think is best. Neat. In Part 5, we'll add on support for Data Annotation based validation using an Action Filter.

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• EHome IR receiver and Ubuntu 13 - any one have this working?

  - by squakie

  I have a "generic" USB IR receiver I purchased off of Ebay to make my life a little easier with XBMC on my Ubuntu box. I am currently running 13.10 and have never tried nor have any knowledge of IR in Ubuntu. I know of lirc, and I know a lot of it is now included in the kernel. My understanding is that lirc in basic terms maps pulses from an remote control to functions - like keyboard or mouse clicks. It is also my understanding that I might still need a driver or something for my device. lsusb shows the device as: Bus 006 Device 003: ID 147a:e016 Formosa Industrial Computing, Inc. eHome Infrared Receiver dmesg shows the following pertaining to the device: [43635.311985] usb 6-2: USB disconnect, device number 2 [43641.344387] usb 6-2: new full-speed USB device number 3 using ohci-pci [43641.543454] usb 6-2: New USB device found, idVendor=147a, idProduct=e016 [43641.543467] usb 6-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [43641.543473] usb 6-2: Product: eHome Infrared Transceiver [43641.543478] usb 6-2: Manufacturer: Formosa21 [43641.543483] usb 6-2: SerialNumber: FM000623 [43641.555736] Registered IR keymap rc-rc6-mce [43641.555968] input: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared Remote Transceiver (147a:e016) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.0/usb6/6-2/6-2:1.0/rc/rc2/input15 [43641.556221] rc2: Media Center Ed. eHome Infrared Remote Transceiver (147a:e016) as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.0/usb6/6-2/6-2:1.0/rc/rc2 [43641.556584] input: MCE IR Keyboard/Mouse (mceusb) as /devices/virtual/input/input16 [43641.557186] rc rc2: lirc_dev: driver ir-lirc-codec (mceusb) registered at minor = 0 [43641.731965] mceusb 6-2:1.0: Registered Formosa21 eHome Infrared Transceiver with mce emulator interface version 1 [43641.731978] mceusb 6-2:1.0: 2 tx ports (0x0 cabled) and 2 rx sensors (0x0 active) (excuse the double spacing, but I had to put in extra cr/lf using "enter" or the entire thing was just one long unreadable string). When I connect the same IR receiver to a Raspberry Pi running OpenELEC/XBMC there is no flashing led unless I press a remote button, and the device works. In Ubuntu, the led is constantly blinking, and nothing happens when I press a remote key. I tried the command line program to test but it never echoes anything back to the terminal window. I believe it must need some sort of driver or something else, but I am completely in the dark on this. If it matters I also have: - Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse USB receiver - Tenda USB wireless adapter And.....I've also noticed some errors now that show in dmesg that seem to somehow related to HDMI if that makes any sense: 46721.144731] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46721.144749] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46721.444025] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46721.444061] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46721.743375] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46721.743411] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.043092] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.043118] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.343086] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.343122] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.642517] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.642574] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46722.942459] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46722.942485] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46723.242103] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46723.242129] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [46723.541877] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [46723.541923] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58366.651954] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58366.651980] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58366.951523] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58366.951549] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58367.251075] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58367.251121] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58367.550517] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58367.550563] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58367.850219] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58367.850256] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58368.150160] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58368.150185] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58368.449544] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58368.449570] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58368.749583] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58368.749629] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58369.049280] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58369.049326] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58394.706273] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58394.706300] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58394.706350] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58394.706367] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.003032] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.003058] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.302680] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.302705] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.602442] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.602477] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58395.902143] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58395.902179] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58396.201839] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58396.201875] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58396.501538] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58396.501574] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58396.801232] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58396.801268] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [58397.100583] HDMI: ELD buf size is 0, force 128 [58397.100627] HDMI: invalid ELD data byte 0 [63095.766042] systemd-hostnamed[8875]: Warning: nss-myhostname is not installed. Changing the local hostname might make it unresolveable. Please install nss-myhostname! dave@davepc:~$ EDIT: Maybe another way to look at this would be what does Ubuntu do or not do that OpenELEC does or doesn't do (on Raspberry Pi) such that it works in OpenELEC but not in Ubuntu?

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• What Did You Do? is a Bad Question

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  Brian Moran (blog | Twitter) did a great presentation today for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter on The Art of Questions.  One of the points that Brian made was that there are good questions and bad (or at least not-as-good) questions.  Good questions tend to open-up the conversation and engender positive reactions (perhaps even trust and respect) between the participants; and bad questions tend to close-down a conversation either through the narrow list of possible responses (e.g. strictly Yes/No) or through the negative reactions they can produce.  And this explains why I so frequently had problems troubleshooting real-time problems with users in the past.  I’ll explain that in more detail below, but before we go on, let me recommend that you watch the recording of Brian’s presentation to learn why the question Why is often problematic in the U.S. and yet we so often resort to it. For a short portion (3 years) of my career, I taught basic computer skills and Office applications in an adult vocational school, and this gave me ample opportunity to do live troubleshooting of user challenges with computers.  And like many people who ended up in computer related jobs, I also have had numerous times where I was called upon by less computer-savvy individuals to help them with some challenge they were having, whether it was part of my job or not.  One of the things that I noticed, especially during my time as a teacher, was that when I was helping somebody, typically the first question I would ask them was, “What did you do?”  This seemed to me like a good way to start my detective work trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to help the person avoid it again in the future.  I always asked it in a polite tone of voice as I was just trying to gather the facts before diving in deeper.  However; 99.999% of the time, I always got the same answer, “Nothing!”  For a long time this frustrated me because (remember I’m in detective mode at that point) I knew it could not possibly be true.  They HAD to have done SOMETHING…just tell me what were the last actions you took before this problem presented itself.  But no, they always stuck with “Nothing”.  At which point, with frustration growing, and not a little bit of disdain for their lack of helpfulness, I would usually ask them to move aside while I took over their machine and got them out of whatever they had gotten themselves into.  After a while I just grew used to the fact that this was the answer I would usually receive, but I always kept asking because for the .001% of the people who would actually tell me, I could then help them understand what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. Now, after hearing Brian’s talk, I understand what the problem was.  Even though I meant to just be in an information gathering mode, the words I was using, “What did YOU do?” have such a strong negative connotation that people would instinctively go into defense-mode and stop sharing information that might make them look bad.  Many of them probably were not even consciously aware that they had gone on the defensive, but the self-preservation instinct, especially self-preservation of the ego, is so strong that people would end up there without even realizing it. So, if “What did you do” is a bad question, what would have been better?  Well, one suggestion that Brian makes in his talk is something along the lines of, “Can you tell me what led up to this?” or “what was happening on the computer right before this came up?”  It’s subtle, but the point is to take the focus off of the person and their behavior; instead depersonalizing it and talk about events from more of a 3rd-party observer point of view.  With this approach, people will be more likely to talk about what the computer did and what they did in response to it without feeling the interrogation spotlight is on them.  They are also more likely to mention other events that occurred around the same time that may or may not be related, but which could certainly help you troubleshoot a larger problem if it is not just user actions.  And that is the ultimate goal of your asking the questions.  So yes, it does matter how you ask the question; and there are such things as good questions and bad questions.  Excellent topic Brian!  Thanks for getting the thinking gears churning! (Cross-posted to the Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog.)

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• top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – March 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity PeterPaul ? RT @JDeveloper: EJB 3 Deployment guide for WebLogic Server Version: 10.3.4.0 dlvr.it/1J5VcV Andrejus Baranovskis ?Open ADF PopUp on Page Load fb.me/1Rx9LP3oW Sten Vesterli ? RT @OracleBlogs: Using the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java on ADF Applications ow.ly/1hVKbB <- Neat! No more WS calls Java Buddy ?JavaFX 2.0: Example of MediaPlay java-buddy.blogspot.com/2012/03/javafx… Georges Saab Build improvements coming to #openJDK for #jdk8 mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/buil… NetBeans Team Share your #Java experience! JavaOne 2012 India call for papers: ow.ly/9xYg0 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 Screencasts & Videos – bit.ly/zmQjn2 chriscmuir ?G+: New blog post: ADF Runtimes vs WLS versions as of JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 – bit.ly/y8tkgJ Michael Heinrichs New article: Creating a Sprite Animation with JavaFX blog.netopyr.com/2012/03/09/cre… Oracle WebLogic ? #WebLogic Devcast Webinar Series for March: Enterprise Java Scale Out, JPA, Distributed Grid Data Cache bit.ly/zeUXEV #Coherence Andrejus Baranovskis ?Extending Application Module for ADF BC Proxy User DB Connection fb.me/Bj1hLUqm OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7 | Mark Nelson bit.ly/w7IroZ OTNArchBeat ? Java Champion Jonas Bonér Explains the Akka Platform bit.ly/x2GbXm Adam Bien ? (Java) FX Experience Tools–Feels Like Native Mac App: FX Experience Tools application comes with a native Mac O… bit.ly/waHF3H GlassFish ? GlassFish new recruit and Eclipse integration progress – bit.ly/y5eEkk JDeveloper & ADF Prototyping ADF Libraries dlvr.it/1Hhnw0 Eric Elzinga ?Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7, bit.ly/xkphFQ ADF EMG ? Working with ADF in Arabic, Hebrew or other right-to-left-written language? Oracle UX asks for your help. groups.google.com/forum/?fromgro… Java ? A simple #JavaFX Login Form with a TRON like effect ow.ly/9n9AG JDeveloper & ADF ? Logging in Oracle ADF Applications dlvr.it/1HZhcX OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Cloud Conference: dates and locations worldwide bit.ly/ywXydR UK Oracle User Group ? Simon Haslam, ACE Director present on #WebLogic for DBAs at #oug_ire2012 j.mp/zG6vz3 @oraclewebcenter @oracleace #dublin Steven Davelaar ? Working with ADF and not a member of ADF EMG? You miss lots of valuable info, join now! sites.google.com/site/oracleemg… Simon Haslam @MaciejGruszka: Oracle plans to provide Forms & Reports plug-in for OVAB next year to help deployment. #ukoug MW SIG GlassFish ? Introducing JSR 357: Social Media API – bit.ly/yC8vez JAX London ? Are you coming to Java EE workshops by @AdamBien at JAX Days? Save £100 by registering today. #jaxdays #javaee jaxdays.com WebLogic Community ?Welcome to our Munich WebLogic 12c Bootcamp in Munich! If you also want to attend a training register for the Community oracle.com/partners/goto/… chriscmuir ? My first webcast for Oracle! (be kind) Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object bit.ly/ArKija OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Weblogic Server 12c is available on Oracle Solaris 11 (SPARC and x86) bit.ly/xE3TLg JDeveloper & ADF ? Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object – YouTube dlvr.it/1H93Qr OTNArchBeat ? Application-Driven Virtualization with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder | Ronen Kofman bit.ly/wF1C1N Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server Singleton Services ow.ly/1hOu4U Barbara Ann May ?@oracledevtools: New update: #NetBeans IDE 7.1.1, with support for #GlassFish 3.1.2 bit.ly/mOLcQd #java #developer OTNArchBeat ? Using Coherence with JDeveloper: bit.ly/AkoEQb WebLogic Community ? WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter February 2012 wp.me/p1LMIb-f3 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 – new Podcast episode : bit.ly/wc6oBE Frank Nimphius ?Cool! Open JDeveloper 11.1.1.5, go help–>check for updates. First thing shown is that 11.1.1.6 is available. Never miss a new release Adam Bien ?5 Minutes (Video) With Java EE …Or With NetBeans + GlassFish: This screencast covers a 5-minute development of a… bit.ly/xkOJMf WebLogic Community ? Free Oracle WebLogic Certification Application Grid Implementation Specialist wp.me/p1LMIb-eT OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Coherence: First Steps Using Clusters and Basic API Usage | Ricardo Ferreira bit.ly/yYQ3Wz GlassFish ? JMS 2.0 Early Draft is here – bit.ly/ygT1VN OTNArchBeat ? Exalogic Networking Part 2 | The Old Toxophilist bit.ly/xuYMIi OTNArchBeat ?New Release: GlassFish Server 3.1.2. Read All About It! | Paul Davies bit.ly/AtlGxo Oracle WebLogic ?OTN Virtual Developer Day: #WebLogic 12c & #Coherence ost-conference on-demand page live with bonus #Virtualbox lab – bit.ly/xUy6BJ Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server 11g (10.3.6) Documentation ow.ly/1hJgUB Lucas Jellema ? Just published an article on the AMIS blog: technology.amis.nl/2012/03/adf-11… ADF 11g – programmatically sorting rich table columns. Java Certification ? New Course! Learn how to create mobile applications using Java ME: bit.ly/xZj1Jh Simon Haslam ? @MaciejGruszka WebLogic 12c can run against 11g domain config without changes …and can rollback to 11. #ukoug MW SIG Justin Kestelyn ? Learn Advanced ADF, free and online bit.ly/wEKSRc WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress,WebLogic 12c

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• C# 4.0: Covariance And Contravariance In Generics

  - by Paulo Morgado

  C# 4.0 (and .NET 4.0) introduced covariance and contravariance to generic interfaces and delegates. But what is this variance thing? According to Wikipedia, in multilinear algebra and tensor analysis, covariance and contravariance describe how the quantitative description of certain geometrical or physical entities changes when passing from one coordinate system to another.(*) But what does this have to do with C# or .NET? In type theory, a the type T is greater (>) than type S if S is a subtype (derives from) T, which means that there is a quantitative description for types in a type hierarchy. So, how does covariance and contravariance apply to C# (and .NET) generic types? In C# (and .NET), variance applies to generic type parameters and not to the resulting generic type. A generic type parameter is: covariant if the ordering of the generic types follows the ordering of the generic type parameters: Generic<T> = Generic<S> for T = S. contravariant if the ordering of the generic types is reversed from the ordering of the generic type parameters: Generic<T> = Generic<S> for T = S. invariant if neither of the above apply. If this definition is applied to arrays, we can see that arrays have always been covariant because this is valid code: object[] objectArray = new string[] { "string 1", "string 2" }; objectArray[0] = "string 3"; objectArray[1] = new object(); However, when we try to run this code, the second assignment will throw an ArrayTypeMismatchException. Although the compiler was fooled into thinking this was valid code because an object is being assigned to an element of an array of object, at run time, there is always a type check to guarantee that the runtime type of the definition of the elements of the array is greater or equal to the instance being assigned to the element. In the above example, because the runtime type of the array is array of string, the first assignment of array elements is valid because string = string and the second is invalid because string = object. This leads to the conclusion that, although arrays have always been covariant, they are not safely covariant – code that compiles is not guaranteed to run without errors. In C#, the way to define that a generic type parameter as covariant is using the out generic modifier: public interface IEnumerable<out T> { IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator(); } public interface IEnumerator<out T> { T Current { get; } bool MoveNext(); } Notice the convenient use the pre-existing out keyword. Besides the benefit of not having to remember a new hypothetic covariant keyword, out is easier to remember because it defines that the generic type parameter can only appear in output positions — read-only properties and method return values. In a similar way, the way to define a type parameter as contravariant is using the in generic modifier: public interface IComparer<in T> { int Compare(T x, T y); } Once again, the use of the pre-existing in keyword makes it easier to remember that the generic type parameter can only be used in input positions — write-only properties and method non ref and non out parameters. Because covariance and contravariance apply only to the generic type parameters, a generic type definition can have both covariant and contravariant generic type parameters in its definition: public delegate TResult Func<in T, out TResult>(T arg); A generic type parameter that is not marked covariant (out) or contravariant (in) is invariant. All the types in the .NET Framework where variance could be applied to its generic type parameters have been modified to take advantage of this new feature. In summary, the rules for variance in C# (and .NET) are: Variance in type parameters are restricted to generic interface and generic delegate types. A generic interface or generic delegate type can have both covariant and contravariant type parameters. Variance applies only to reference types; if you specify a value type for a variant type parameter, that type parameter is invariant for the resulting constructed type. Variance does not apply to delegate combination. That is, given two delegates of types Action<Derived> and Action<Base>, you cannot combine the second delegate with the first although the result would be type safe. Variance allows the second delegate to be assigned to a variable of type Action<Derived>, but delegates can combine only if their types match exactly. If you want to learn more about variance in C# (and .NET), you can always read: Covariance and Contravariance in Generics — MSDN Library Exact rules for variance validity — Eric Lippert Events get a little overhaul in C# 4, Afterward: Effective Events — Chris Burrows Note: Because variance is a feature of .NET 4.0 and not only of C# 4.0, all this also applies to Visual Basic 10.

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• Login failed for user 'sa' because the account is currently locked out. The system administrator can

  - by cabhilash

  Login failed for user 'sa' because the account is currently locked out. The system administrator can unlock it. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18486) SQL server has local password policies. If policy is enabled which locks down the account after X number of failed attempts then the account is automatically locked down.This error with 'sa' account is very common. sa is default administartor login available with SQL server. So there are chances that an ousider has tried to bruteforce your system. (This can cause even if a legitimate tries to access the account with wrong password.Sometimes a user would have changed the password without informing others. So the other users would try to lo) You can unlock the account with the following options (use another admin account or connect via windows authentication) Alter account & unlock ALTER LOGIN sa WITH PASSWORD='password' UNLOCK Use another account Almost everyone is aware of the sa account. This can be the potential security risk. Even if you provide strong password hackers can lock the account by providing the wrong password. ( You can provide extra security by installing firewall or changing the default port but these measures are not always practical). As a best practice you can disable the sa account and use another account with same privileges.ALTER LOGIN sa DISABLE You can edit the lock-ot options using gpedit.msc( in command prompt type gpedit.msc and press enter). Navigate to Account Lokout policy as shown in the figure The Following options are available Account lockout threshold This security setting determines the number of failed logon attempts that causes a user account to be locked out. A locked-out account cannot be used until it is reset by an administrator or until the lockout duration for the account has expired. You can set a value between 0 and 999 failed logon attempts. If you set the value to 0, the account will never be locked out. Failed password attempts against workstations or member servers that have been locked using either CTRL+ALT+DELETE or password-protected screen savers count as failed logon attempts. Account lockout duration This security setting determines the number of minutes a locked-out account remains locked out before automatically becoming unlocked. The available range is from 0 minutes through 99,999 minutes. If you set the account lockout duration to 0, the account will be locked out until an administrator explicitly unlocks it. If an account lockout threshold is defined, the account lockout duration must be greater than or equal to the reset time. Default: None, because this policy setting only has meaning when an Account lockout threshold is specified. Reset account lockout counter after This security setting determines the number of minutes that must elapse after a failed logon attempt before the failed logon attempt counter is reset to 0 bad logon attempts. The available range is 1 minute to 99,999 minutes. If an account lockout threshold is defined, this reset time must be less than or equal to the Account lockout duration. Default: None, because this policy setting only has meaning when an Account lockout threshold is specified.When creating SQL user you can set CHECK_POLICY=on which will enforce the windows password policy on the account. The following policies will be applied Define the Enforce password history policy setting so that several previous passwords are remembered. With this policy setting, users cannot use the same password when their password expires.  Define the Maximum password age policy setting so that passwords expire as often as necessary for your environment, typically, every 30 to 90 days. With this policy setting, if an attacker cracks a password, the attacker only has access to the network until the password expires.  Define the Minimum password age policy setting so that passwords cannot be changed until they are more than a certain number of days old. This policy setting works in combination with the Enforce password historypolicy setting. If a minimum password age is defined, users cannot repeatedly change their passwords to get around the Enforce password history policy setting and then use their original password. Users must wait the specified number of days to change their passwords.  Define a Minimum password length policy setting so that passwords must consist of at least a specified number of characters. Long passwords--seven or more characters--are usually stronger than short ones. With this policy setting, users cannot use blank passwords, and they have to create passwords that are a certain number of characters long.  Enable the Password must meet complexity requirements policy setting. This policy setting checks all new passwords to ensure that they meet basic strong password requirements.  Password must meet the following complexity requirement, when they are changed or created: Not contain the user's entire Account Name or entire Full Name. The Account Name and Full Name are parsed for delimiters: commas, periods, dashes or hyphens, underscores, spaces, pound signs, and tabs. If any of these delimiters are found, the Account Name or Full Name are split and all sections are verified not to be included in the password. There is no check for any character or any three characters in succession. Contain characters from three of the following five categories:  English uppercase characters (A through Z) English lowercase characters (a through z) Base 10 digits (0 through 9) Non-alphabetic characters (for example, !, $, #, %) A catch-all category of any Unicode character that does not fall under the previous four categories. This fifth category can be regionally specific.

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• Retrieve Performance Data from SOA Infrastructure Database

  - by fip

  My earlier blog posting shows how to enable, retrieve and interpret BPEL engine performance statistics to aid performance troubleshooting. The strength of BPEL engine statistics at EM is its break down per request. But there are some limitations with the BPEL performance statistics mentioned in that blog posting: The statistics were stored in memory instead of being persisted. To avoid memory overflow, the data are stored to a buffer with limited size. When the statistic entries exceed the limitation, old data will be flushed out to give ways to new statistics. Therefore it can only keep the last X number of entries of data. The statistics 5 hour ago may not be there anymore. The BPEL engine performance statistics only includes latencies. It does not provide throughputs. Fortunately, Oracle SOA Suite runs with the SOA Infrastructure database and a lot of performance data are naturally persisted there. It is at a more coarse grain than the in-memory BPEL Statistics, but it does have its own strengths as it is persisted. Here I would like offer examples of some basic SQL queries you can run against the infrastructure database of Oracle SOA Suite 11G to acquire the performance statistics for a given period of time. You can run it immediately after you modify the date range to match your actual system. 1. Asynchronous/one-way messages incoming rates The following query will show number of messages sent to one-way/async BPEL processes during a given time period, organized by process names and states select composite_name composite, state, count(*) Count from dlv_message where receive_date >= to_timestamp('2012-10-24 21:00:00','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') and receive_date <= to_timestamp('2012-10-24 21:59:59','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') group by composite_name, state order by Count; 2. Throughput of BPEL process instances The following query shows the number of synchronous and asynchronous process instances created during a given time period. It list instances of all states, including the unfinished and faulted ones. The results will include all composites cross all SOA partitions select state, count(*) Count, composite_name composite, component_name,componenttype from cube_instance where creation_date >= to_timestamp('2012-10-24 21:00:00','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') and creation_date <= to_timestamp('2012-10-24 21:59:59','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') group by composite_name, component_name, componenttype order by count(*) desc; 3. Throughput and latencies of BPEL process instances This query is augmented on the previous one, providing more comprehensive information. It gives not only throughput but also the maximum, minimum and average elapse time BPEL process instances. select composite_name Composite, component_name Process, componenttype, state, count(*) Count, trunc(Max(extract(day from (modify_date-creation_date))*24*60*60 + extract(hour from (modify_date-creation_date))*60*60 + extract(minute from (modify_date-creation_date))*60 + extract(second from (modify_date-creation_date))),4) MaxTime, trunc(Min(extract(day from (modify_date-creation_date))*24*60*60 + extract(hour from (modify_date-creation_date))*60*60 + extract(minute from (modify_date-creation_date))*60 + extract(second from (modify_date-creation_date))),4) MinTime, trunc(AVG(extract(day from (modify_date-creation_date))*24*60*60 + extract(hour from (modify_date-creation_date))*60*60 + extract(minute from (modify_date-creation_date))*60 + extract(second from (modify_date-creation_date))),4) AvgTime from cube_instance where creation_date >= to_timestamp('2012-10-24 21:00:00','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') and creation_date <= to_timestamp('2012-10-24 21:59:59','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') group by composite_name, component_name, componenttype, state order by count(*) desc;   4. Combine all together Now let's combine all of these 3 queries together, and parameterize the start and end time stamps to make the script a bit more robust. The following script will prompt for the start and end time before querying against the database: accept startTime prompt 'Enter start time (YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS)' accept endTime prompt 'Enter end time (YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS)' Prompt "==== Rejected Messages ===="; REM 2012-10-24 21:00:00 REM 2012-10-24 21:59:59 select count(*), composite_dn from rejected_message where created_time >= to_timestamp('&&StartTime','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') and created_time <= to_timestamp('&&EndTime','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') group by composite_dn; Prompt " "; Prompt "==== Throughput of one-way/asynchronous messages ===="; select state, count(*) Count, composite_name composite from dlv_message where receive_date >= to_timestamp('&StartTime','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') and receive_date <= to_timestamp('&EndTime','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') group by composite_name, state order by Count; Prompt " "; Prompt "==== Throughput and latency of BPEL process instances ====" select state, count(*) Count, trunc(Max(extract(day from (modify_date-creation_date))*24*60*60 + extract(hour from (modify_date-creation_date))*60*60 + extract(minute from (modify_date-creation_date))*60 + extract(second from (modify_date-creation_date))),4) MaxTime, trunc(Min(extract(day from (modify_date-creation_date))*24*60*60 + extract(hour from (modify_date-creation_date))*60*60 + extract(minute from (modify_date-creation_date))*60 + extract(second from (modify_date-creation_date))),4) MinTime, trunc(AVG(extract(day from (modify_date-creation_date))*24*60*60 + extract(hour from (modify_date-creation_date))*60*60 + extract(minute from (modify_date-creation_date))*60 + extract(second from (modify_date-creation_date))),4) AvgTime, composite_name Composite, component_name Process, componenttype from cube_instance where creation_date >= to_timestamp('&StartTime','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') and creation_date <= to_timestamp('&EndTime','YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS') group by composite_name, component_name, componenttype, state order by count(*) desc;  

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• GoldenGate 12c Trail Encryption and Credentials with Oracle Wallet

  - by hamsun

  I have been asked more than once whether the Oracle Wallet supports GoldenGate trail encryption. Although GoldenGate has supported encryption with the ENCKEYS file for years, Oracle GoldenGate 12c now also supports encryption using the Oracle Wallet. This helps improve security and makes it easier to administer. Two types of wallets can be configured in Oracle GoldenGate 12c: The wallet that holds the master keys, used with trail or TCP/IP encryption and decryption, stored in the new 12c dirwlt/cwallet.sso file.   The wallet that holds the Oracle Database user IDs and passwords stored in the ‘credential store’ stored in the new 12c dircrd/cwallet.sso file.   A wallet can be created using a ‘create wallet’  command.  Adding a master key to an existing wallet is easy using ‘open wallet’ and ‘add masterkey’ commands.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 42> open wallet Opened wallet at location 'dirwlt'. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 43> add masterkey Master key 'OGG_DEFAULT_MASTERKEY' added to wallet at location 'dirwlt'.   Existing GUI Wallet utilities that come with other products such as the Oracle Database “Oracle Wallet Manager” do not work on this version of the wallet. The default Oracle Wallet can be changed.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 44> sh ls -ltr ./dirwlt/* -rw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall 685 May 30 05:24 ./dirwlt/cwallet.sso GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 45> info masterkey Masterkey Name:                 OGG_DEFAULT_MASTERKEY Creation Date:                  Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014 Version:        Creation Date:                  Status: 1               Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014        Current   The second wallet file is used for the credential used to connect to a database, without exposing the user id or password. Once it is configured, this file can be copied so that credentials are available to connect to the source or target database.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 48> sh cp ./dircrd/cwallet.sso $GG_EURO_HOME/dircrd GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 49> sh ls -ltr ./dircrd/* -rw-r----- 1 oracle oinstall 709 May 28 05:39 ./dircrd/cwallet.sso   The encryption wallet file can also be copied to the target machine so the replicat has access to the master key to decrypt records that are encrypted in the trail. Similar to the old ENCKEYS file, the master keys wallet created on the source host must either be stored in a centrally available disk or copied to all GoldenGate target hosts. The wallet is in a platform-independent format, although it is not certified for the iSeries, z/OS, and NonStop platforms.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 50> sh cp ./dirwlt/cwallet.sso $GG_EURO_HOME/dirwlt   The new 12c UserIdAlias parameter is used to locate the credential in the wallet so the source user id and password does not need to be stored as a parameter as long as it is in the wallet.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 52> view param extwest extract extwest exttrail ./dirdat/ew useridalias gguamer table west.*; The EncryptTrail parameter is used to encrypt the trail using the Advanced Encryption Standard and can be used with a primary extract or pump extract. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 54> view param pwest extract pwest encrypttrail AES256 rmthost easthost, mgrport 15001 rmttrail ./dirdat/pe passthru table west.*;   Once the extracts are running, records can be encrypted using the wallet.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 60> info extract *west EXTRACT    EXTWEST   Last Started 2014-05-30 05:26   Status RUNNING Checkpoint Lag       00:00:17 (updated 00:00:01 ago) Process ID           24982 Log Read Checkpoint  Oracle Integrated Redo Logs                      2014-05-30 05:25:53                      SCN 0.0 (0) EXTRACT    PWEST     Last Started 2014-05-30 05:26   Status RUNNING Checkpoint Lag       24:02:32 (updated 00:00:05 ago) Process ID           24983 Log Read Checkpoint  File ./dirdat/ew000004                      2014-05-29 05:23:34.748949  RBA 1483   The ‘info masterkey’ command is used to confirm the wallet contains the key after copying it to the target machine. The key is needed to decrypt the data in the trail before the replicat applies the changes to the target database.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 41> open wallet Opened wallet at location 'dirwlt'. GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 42> info masterkey Masterkey Name:                 OGG_DEFAULT_MASTERKEY Creation Date:                  Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014 Version:        Creation Date:                  Status: 1               Fri May 30 05:24:04 2014        Current   Once the replicat is running, records can be decrypted using the wallet.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 44> info reast REPLICAT   REAST     Last Started 2014-05-30 05:28   Status RUNNING INTEGRATED Checkpoint Lag       00:00:00 (updated 00:00:02 ago) Process ID           25057 Log Read Checkpoint  File ./dirdat/pe000004                      2014-05-30 05:28:16.000000  RBA 1546   There is no need for the DecryptTrail parameter when using the Oracle Wallet, unlike when using the ENCKEYS file.   GGSCI (EDLVC3R27P0) 45> view params reast replicat reast assumetargetdefs discardfile ./dirrpt/reast.dsc, purge useridalias ggueuro map west.*, target east.*;   Once a record is inserted into the source table and committed, the encryption can be verified using logdump and then querying the target table.   AMER_SQL>insert into west.branch values (50, 80071); 1 row created.   AMER_SQL>commit; Commit complete.   The following encrypted record can be found using logdump. Logdump 40 >n 2014/05/30 05:28:30.001.154 Insert               Len    28 RBA 1546 Name: WEST.BRANCH After  Image:                                             Partition 4   G  s    0a3e 1ba3 d924 5c02 eade db3f 61a9 164d 8b53 4331 | .>...$\....?a..M.SC1   554f e65a 5185 0257                               | UO.ZQ..W  Bad compressed block, found length of  7075 (x1ba3), RBA 1546   GGS tokens: TokenID x52 'R' ORAROWID         Info x00  Length   20  4141 4157 7649 4141 4741 4141 4144 7541 4170 0001 | AAAWvIAAGAAAADuAAp..  TokenID x4c 'L' LOGCSN           Info x00  Length    7  3231 3632 3934 33                                 | 2162943  TokenID x36 '6' TRANID           Info x00  Length   10  3130 2e31 372e 3135 3031                          | 10.17.1501  The replicat automatically decrypted this record from the trail and then inserted the row to the target table using the wallet. This select verifies the row was inserted into the target database and the data is not encrypted. EURO_SQL>select * from branch where branch_number=50; BRANCH_NUMBER                  BRANCH_ZIP -------------                                   ----------    50                                              80071   Book a seat in an upcoming Oracle GoldenGate 12c: Fundamentals for Oracle course now to learn more about GoldenGate 12c new features including how to use GoldenGate with the Oracle wallet, credentials, integrated extracts, integrated replicats, the Oracle Universal Installer, and other new features. Looking for another course? View all Oracle GoldenGate training.   Randy Richeson joined Oracle University as a Senior Principal Instructor in March 2005. He is an Oracle Certified Professional (10g-12c) and a GoldenGate Certified Implementation Specialist (10-11g). He has taught GoldenGate since 2010 and also has experience teaching other technical curriculums including GoldenGate Monitor, Veridata, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and the Oracle Application Server.

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• SQL SERVER – SSMS: Disk Usage Report

  - by Pinal Dave

  Let us start with humor!  I think we the series on various reports, we come to a logical point. We covered all the reports at server level. This means the reports we saw were targeted towards activities that are related to instance level operations. These are mostly like how a doctor diagnoses a patient. At this point I am reminded of a dialog which I read somewhere: Patient: Doc, It hurts when I touch my head. Doc: Ok, go on. What else have you experienced? Patient: It hurts even when I touch my eye, it hurts when I touch my arms, it even hurts when I touch my feet, etc. Doc: Hmmm … Patient: I feel it hurts when I touch anywhere in my body. Doc: Ahh … now I get it. You need a plaster to your finger John. Sometimes the server level gives an indicator to what is happening in the system, but we need to get to the root cause for a specific database. So, this is the first blog in series where we would start discussing about database level reports. To launch database level reports, expand selected server in Object Explorer, expand the Databases folder, and then right-click any database for which we want to look at reports. From the menu, select Reports, then Standard Reports, and then any of database level reports. In this blog, we would talk about four “disk” reports because they are similar: Disk Usage Disk Usage by Top Tables Disk Usage by Table Disk Usage by Partition Disk Usage This report shows multiple information about the database. Let us discuss them one by one.  We have divided the output into 5 different sections. Section 1 shows the high level summary of the database. It shows the space used by database files (mdf and ldf). Under the hood, the report uses, various DMVs and DBCC Commands, it is using sys.data_spaces and DBCC SHOWFILESTATS. Section 2 and 3 are pie charts. One for data file allocation and another for the transaction log file. Pie chart for “Data Files Space Usage (%)” shows space consumed data, indexes, allocated to the SQL Server database, and unallocated space which is allocated to the SQL Server database but not yet filled with anything. “Transaction Log Space Usage (%)” used DBCC SQLPERF (LOGSPACE) and shows how much empty space we have in the physical transaction log file. Section 4 shows the data from Default Trace and looks at Event IDs 92, 93, 94, 95 which are for “Data File Auto Grow”, “Log File Auto Grow”, “Data File Auto Shrink” and “Log File Auto Shrink” respectively. Here is an expanded view for that section. If default trace is not enabled, then this section would be replaced by the message “Trace Log is disabled” as highlighted below. Section 5 of the report uses DBCC SHOWFILESTATS to get information. Here is the enhanced version of that section. This shows the physical layout of the file. In case you have In-Memory Objects in the database (from SQL Server 2014), then report would show information about those as well. Here is the screenshot taken for a different database, which has In-Memory table. I have highlighted new things which are only shown for in-memory database. The new sections which are highlighted above are using sys.dm_db_xtp_checkpoint_files, sys.database_files and sys.data_spaces. The new type for in-memory OLTP is ‘FX’ in sys.data_space. The next set of reports is targeted to get information about a table and its storage. These reports can answer questions like: Which is the biggest table in the database? How many rows we have in table? Is there any table which has a lot of reserved space but its unused? Which partition of the table is having more data? Disk Usage by Top Tables This report provides detailed data on the utilization of disk space by top 1000 tables within the Database. The report does not provide data for memory optimized tables. Disk Usage by Table This report is same as earlier report with few difference. First Report shows only 1000 rows First Report does order by values in DMV sys.dm_db_partition_stats whereas second one does it based on name of the table. Both of the reports have interactive sort facility. We can click on any column header and change the sorting order of data. Disk Usage by Partition This report shows the distribution of the data in table based on partition in the table. This is so similar to previous output with the partition details now. Here is the query taken from profiler. SELECT row_number() OVER (ORDER BY a1.used_page_count DESC, a1.index_id) AS row_number ,      (dense_rank() OVER (ORDER BY a5.name, a2.name))%2 AS l1 ,      a1.OBJECT_ID ,      a5.name AS [schema] ,       a2.name ,       a1.index_id ,       a3.name AS index_name ,       a3.type_desc ,       a1.partition_number ,       a1.used_page_count * 8 AS total_used_pages ,       a1.reserved_page_count * 8 AS total_reserved_pages ,       a1.row_count FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats a1 INNER JOIN sys.all_objects a2  ON ( a1.OBJECT_ID = a2.OBJECT_ID) AND a1.OBJECT_ID NOT IN (SELECT OBJECT_ID FROM sys.tables WHERE is_memory_optimized = 1) INNER JOIN sys.schemas a5 ON (a5.schema_id = a2.schema_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN  sys.indexes a3  ON ( (a1.OBJECT_ID = a3.OBJECT_ID) AND (a1.index_id = a3.index_id) ) WHERE (SELECT MAX(DISTINCT partition_number) FROM sys.dm_db_partition_stats a4 WHERE (a4.OBJECT_ID = a1.OBJECT_ID)) >= 1 AND a2.TYPE <> N'S' AND  a2.TYPE <> N'IT' ORDER BY a5.name ASC, a2.name ASC, a1.index_id, a1.used_page_count DESC, a1.partition_number Using all of the above reports, you should be able to get the usage of database files and also space used by tables. I think this is too much disk information for a single blog and I hope you have used them in the past to get data. Do let me know if you found anything interesting using these reports in your environments. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: SQL Reports

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• Making a Case For The Command Line

  - by Jesse Taber

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

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• RTS Voxel Engine using LWJGL - Textures glitching

  - by Dieter Hubau

  I'm currently working on an RTS game engine using voxels. I have implemented a basic chunk manager using an Octree of Octrees which contains my voxels (simple square blocks, as in Minecraft). I'm using a Voronoi-based terrain generation to get a simplistic yet relatively realistic heightmap. I have no problem showing a 256*256*256 grid of voxels with a decent framerate (250), because of frustum culling, face culling and only rendering visible blocks. For example, in a random voxel grid of 256*256*256 I generally only render 100k-120k faces, not counting frustum culling. Frustum culling is only called every 100ms, since calling it every frame seemed a bit overkill. Now I have reached the stage of texturing and I'm experiencing some problems: Some experienced people might already see the problem, but if we zoom in, you can see the glitches more clearly: All the seams between my blocks are glitching and kind of 'overlapping' or something. It's much more visible when you're moving around. I'm using a single, simple texture map to draw on my cubes, where each texture is 16*16 pixels big: I have added black edges around the textures to get a kind of cellshaded look, I think it's cool. The texture map has 256 textures of each 16*16 pixels, meaning the total size of my texture map is 256*256 pixels. The code to update the ChunkManager: public void update(ChunkManager chunkManager) { for (Octree<Cube> chunk : chunks) { if (chunk.getId() < 0) { // generate an id for the chunk to be able to call it later chunk.setId(glGenLists(1)); } glNewList(chunk.getId(), GL_COMPILE); glBegin(GL_QUADS); faces += renderChunk(chunk); glEnd(); glEndList(); } } Where my renderChunk method is: private int renderChunk(Octree<Cube> node) { // keep track of the number of visible faces in this chunk int faces = 0; if (!node.isEmpty()) { if (node.isLeaf()) { faces += renderItem(node); } List<Octree<Cube>> children = node.getChildren(); if (children != null && !children.isEmpty()) { for (Octree<Cube> child : children) { faces += renderChunk(child); } } return faces; } Where my renderItem method is the following: private int renderItem(Octree<Cube> node) { Cube cube = node.getItem(-1, -1, -1); int faces = 0; float x = node.getPosition().x; float y = node.getPosition().y; float z = node.getPosition().z; float size = cube.getSize(); Vector3f point1 = new Vector3f(-size + x, -size + y, size + z); Vector3f point2 = new Vector3f(-size + x, size + y, size + z); Vector3f point3 = new Vector3f(size + x, size + y, size + z); Vector3f point4 = new Vector3f(size + x, -size + y, size + z); Vector3f point5 = new Vector3f(-size + x, -size + y, -size + z); Vector3f point6 = new Vector3f(-size + x, size + y, -size + z); Vector3f point7 = new Vector3f(size + x, size + y, -size + z); Vector3f point8 = new Vector3f(size + x, -size + y, -size + z); TextureCoordinates tc = textureManager.getTextureCoordinates(cube.getCubeType()); // front face if (cube.isVisible(CubeSide.FRONT)) { faces++; glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point1.x, point1.y, point1.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point4.x, point4.y, point4.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point3.x, point3.y, point3.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point2.x, point2.y, point2.z); } // back face if (cube.isVisible(CubeSide.BACK)) { faces++; glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point5.x, point5.y, point5.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point6.x, point6.y, point6.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point7.x, point7.y, point7.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point8.x, point8.y, point8.z); } // left face if (cube.isVisible(CubeSide.SIDE_LEFT)) { faces++; glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point5.x, point5.y, point5.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v]); glVertex3f(point1.x, point1.y, point1.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u + 1], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point2.x, point2.y, point2.z); glTexCoord2f(TEXTURE_U_COORDINATES[tc.u], TEXTURE_V_COORDINATES[tc.v + 1]); glVertex3f(point6.x, point6.y, point6.z); } // ETC ETC return faces; } When all this is done, I simply render my lists every frame, like this: public void render(ChunkManager chunkManager) { glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureManager.getCubeTextureId()); // load all chunks from the tree List<Octree<Cube>> chunks = chunkManager.getTree().getAllItems(); for (Octree<Cube> chunk : chunks) { if (frustum.cubeInFrustum(chunk.getPosition(), chunk.getSize() / 2)) { glCallList(chunk.getId()); } } } I don't know if anyone is willing to go through all of this code or maybe you can spot the problem right away, but that is basically the problem, and I can't find a solution :-) Thanks for reading and any help is appreciated!

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• Who broke the build?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  I recently sent round a list of broken builds at SSW and asked for them to be fixed or deleted if they are not being used. My colleague Peter came back with a couple of questions which I love as it tells me that at least one person reads my email I think first we need to answer a couple of other questions related to builds in general.   Why do we want the build to pass? Any developer can pick up a project and build it Standards can be enforced Constant quality is maintained Problems in code are identified early What could a failed build signify? Developers have not built and tested their code properly before checking in. Something added depends on a local resource that is not under version control or does not exist on the target computer. Developers are not writing tests to cover common problems. There are not enough tests to cover problems. Now we know why, lets answer Peters questions: Where is this list? (can we see it somehow) You can normally only see the builds listed for each project. But, you have a little application called “Build Notifications” on your computer. It is installed when you install Visual Studio 2010. Figure: Staring the build notification application on Windows 7. Once you have it open (it may disappear into your system tray) you should click “Options” and select all the projects you are involved in. This application only lists projects that have builds, so don’t worry if it is not listed. This just means you are about to setup a build, right? I just selected ALL projects that have builds. Figure: All builds are listed here In addition to seeing the list you will also get toast notification of build failure’s. How can we get more info on what broke the build? (who is interesting too, to point the finger but more important is what) The only thing worse than breaking the build, is continuing to develop on a broken build! Figure: I have highlighted the users who either are bad for braking the build, or very bad for not fixing it. To find out what is wrong with a build you need to open the build definition. You can open a web version by double clicking the build in the image above, or you can open it from “Team Explorer”. Just connect to your project and open out the “Builds” tree. Then Open the build by double clicking on it. Figure: Opening a build is easy, but double click it and then open a build run from the list. Figure: Good example, the build and tests have passed Figure: Bad example, there are 133 errors preventing POK from being built on the build server. For identifying failures see: Solution: Getting Silverlight to build on Team Build 2010 RC Solution: Testing Web Services with MSTest on Team Build Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build So, Peter asked about blame, let’s have a look and see: Figure: The build has been broken for so long I have no idea when it was broken, but everyone on this list is to blame (I am there too) The rest of the history is lost in the sands of time, there is no way to tell when the build was originally broken, or by whom, or even if it ever worked in the first place. Build should be protected by the team that uses them and the only way to do that is to have them own them. It is fine for me to go in and setup a build, but the ownership for a build should always reside with the person who broke it last. Conclusion This is an example of a pointless build. Lets be honest, if you have a system like TFS in place and builds are constantly left broken, or not added to projects then your developers don’t yet understand the value. I have found that adding a Gated Check-in helps instil that understanding of value. If you prevent them from checking in without passing that basic quality gate of “your code builds on another computer” then it makes them look more closely at why they can’t check-in. I have had builds fail because one developer had a “d” drive, but the build server did not. That is what they are there to catch.   If you want to know what builds to create and why I wrote a post on “Do you know the minimum builds to create on any branch?”   Technorati Tags: TFS2010,Gated Check-in,Builds,Build Failure,Broken Build

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