Search Results

Search found 183 results on 8 pages for 'genuine'.

Page 7/8 | < Previous Page | 3 4 5 6 7 8  | Next Page >

• Controlling soft errors and false alarms in SSIS

  - by Jim Giercyk

  If you are like me, you dread the 3AM wake-up call.  I would say that the majority of the pages I get are false alarms.  The alerts that require action often require me to open an SSIS package, see where the trouble is and try to identify the offending data.  That can be very time-consuming and can take quite a chunk out of my beauty sleep.  For those reasons, I have developed a simple error handling scenario for SSIS which allows me to rest a little easier.  Let me first say, this is a high level discussion; getting into the nuts and bolts of creating each shape is outside the scope of this document, but if you have an average understanding of SSIS, you should have no problem following along. In the Data Flow above you can see that there is a caution triangle.  For the purpose of this discussion I am creating a truncation error to demonstrate the process, so this is to be expected.  The first thing we need to do is to redirect the error output.  Double-clicking on the Query shape presents us with the properties window for the input.  Simply set the columns that you want to redirect to Redirect Row in the dropdown box and hit Apply. Without going into a dissertation on error handling, I will just note that you can decide which errors you want to redirect on Error and on Truncation.  Therefore, to override this process for a column or condition, simply do not redirect that column or condition. The next thing we want to do is to add some information about the error; specifically, the name of the package which encountered the error and which step in the package wrote the record to the error table.  REMEMBER: If you redirect the error output, your package will not fail, so you will not know where the error record was created without some additional information.    I added 3 columns to my error record; Severity, Package Name and Step Name.  Severity is just a free-form column that you can use to note whether an error is fatal, whether the package is part of a test job and should be ignored, etc.  Package Name and Step Name are system variables. In my package I have created a truncation situation, where the firstname column is 50 characters in the input, but only 4 characters in the output.  Some records will pass without truncation, others will be sent to the error output.  However, the package will not fail. We can see that of the 14 input rows, 8 were redirected to the error table. This information can be used by another step or another scheduled process or triggered to determine whether an error should be sent.  It can also be used as a historical record of the errors that are encountered over time.  There are other system variables that might make more sense in your infrastructure, so try different things.  Date and time seem like something you would want in your output for example.  In summary, we have redirected the error output from an input, added derived columns with information about the errors, and inserted the information and the offending data into an error table.  The error table information can be used by another step or process to determine, based on the error information, what level alert must be sent.  This will eliminate false alarms, and give you a head start when a genuine error occurs.

  Read the article

• Brazil is Hot for Social Media

  - by Mike Stiles

  Today’s guest blog is from Oracle SVP Product Development Reggie Bradford, fresh off a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he spoke at the Dachis Social Business Summit and spent some time getting a personal taste for the astonishing growth of social in Brazil, both in terms of usage and engagement. I knew it was big, but I now have an all-new appreciation for why the Wall Street Journal branded Brazil the “social media capital of the universe.” Brazil has the world’s 5th largest economy, an expanding middle class, an active younger demo market, a connected & outgoing culture, and an ongoing embrace of the social media platforms. According to comScore's 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus report, 97% are using social media, and that’s not even taking mobile-only users into account. There were 65 million Facebook users in 2012, spending an average 535 minutes there, up 208%. It’s one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets and the 2nd biggest market for YouTube. Instagram usage has grown over 300% since last year. That by itself is exciting, but look at the opportunity for social marketing brands. 74% of Brazilian social users follow brands on Facebook, and 59% have praised a company on either Twitter or Facebook. A 2011 Oh! Panel study found 81% of social networkers there used social to research new products and 75% went there looking for discounts. B2C eCommerce sales in Brazil is projected to hit $26.9 billion by 2015. I bet I’m not the only one who sees great things ahead, and I was fortunate enough give a keynote ABRADI, an association of leading digital agencies in Brazil with 53 execs from 35 agencies attending. I was also afforded the opportunity to give my impressions of what’s going on in Brazil to Jornal Propoganda & Marketing, one of the most popular publications in Latin America for marketers. I conveyed that especially in an environment like Brazil, where social users are so willing to connect and engage brands, marketers need to back away from the heavy-handed, one-way messaging of old school advertising and move toward genuine relationships and trust-building. To aide in this, organizational and operation changes must be embraced inside the enterprise. We've talked often about the new, tighter partnership forming between the CIO and CMO. If this partnership is not encouraged, fostered and resourced, the increasing amount of time consumers spend on mobile and digital, and the efficiencies and integrations offered by cloud-based software cannot be exploited. These are the kinds of changes that can yield social data that, when combined with enterprise data, helps you come to know your social audiences intimately and predict their needs. Consumers are always connected and need your brand to be accessible at any time, be it for information or customer service. And, of course, all of this is happening quite publicly. The holistic, socially-enable enterprise connects social to customer service systems and all other customer touch points, facilitating the kind of immediate, real-time, gratifying response customers are coming to expect. Social users in Brazil are highly active and clearly willing to meet us as brands more than halfway. Empowering yourself with a social management technology platform will have you set up to maximize this booming social market…from listening & monitoring to engagement to analytics to workflow & automation to globalization & language support. Brands, it’s time to be as social as the great people of Brazil are. Obrigado! @reggiebradfordPhoto: Gualberto107, freedigitalphotos.net

  Read the article

• Working around MySQL error "Deadlock found when trying to get lock; try restarting transaction"

  - by Anon Guy

  Hi all: I have a MySQL table with about 5,000,000 rows that are being constantly updated in small ways by parallel Perl processes connecting via DBI. The table has about 10 columns and several indexes. One fairly common operation gives rise to the following error sometimes: DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; try restarting transaction at Db.pm line 276. The SQL statement that triggers the error is something like this: UPDATE file_table SET a_lock = 'process-1234' WHERE param1 = 'X' AND param2 = 'Y' AND param3 = 'Z' LIMIT 47 The error is triggered only sometimes. I'd estimate in 1% of calls or less. However, it never happened with a small table and has become more common as the database has grown. Note that I am using the a_lock field in file_table to ensure that the four near-identical processes I am running do not try and work on the same row. The limit is designed to break their work into small chunks. I haven't done much tuning on MySQL or DBD::mysql. MySQL is a standard Solaris deployment, and the database connection is set up as follows: my $dsn = "DBI:mysql:database=" . $DbConfig::database . ";host=${DbConfig::hostname};port=${DbConfig::port}"; my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $DbConfig::username, $DbConfig::password, { RaiseError => 1, AutoCommit => 1 }) or die $DBI::errstr; I have seen online that several other people have reported similar errors and that this may be a genuine deadlock situation. I have two questions: What exactly about my situation is causing the error above? Is there a simple way to work around it or lessen its frequency? For example, how exactly do I go about "restarting transaction at Db.pm line 276"? Thanks in advance.

  Read the article

• Programming Technique: How to create a simple card game

  - by Shyam

  Hi, As I am learning the Ruby language, I am getting closer to actual programming. So I was thinking of creating a simple card game. My question isn't Ruby orientated, but I do know want to learn how to solve this problem with a genuine OOP approach. In my card game I want to have four players. Using a standard deck with 52 cards, no jokers/wildcards. In the game I won't use the Ace as a dual card, it is always the highest card. So, the programming problems I wonder about are the following: How can I sort/randomize the deck of cards? There are four types, each having 13 values. Eventually there can be only unique values, so picking random values could generate duplicates. How can I implement a simple AI? As there are tons of card games, someone would have figured this part out already, so references would be great. I am a truly Ruby nuby, and my goal here is to learn to solve problems, so pseudo code would be great, just to understand how to solve the problem programmatically. I apologize for my grammar and writing style if it's unclear, for it is not my native language. Also pointers to sites where such challenges are explained, would be a great resource! Thank you for your comments, answers and feedback!

  Read the article

• SSAS Cube reprocessing fails - then succeeds if I try again

  - by EdgarVerona

  So I'm basically brand new to the concept of BI, and I've inherited an existing ETL process that is a two step process: 1) Loads the data into a database that is only used by the cube processing 2) Starts off the SSAS cube processing against said database It seems pretty well isolated, but occasionally (once a week, sometimes twice) it will fail with the following exception: "Errors in the OLAP storage engine: The attribute key cannot be found" Now the interesting thing is that: 1) The dimension having the issue is not usually the same one (i.e. there's no single dimension that consistently has this failure) 2) The source table, when I inspect it, does actually contain the attribute key that it says could not be found And, most interestingly... 3) If I then immediately reprocess the dimensions and cubes manually through SSMS, they reprocess successfully and without incident. In both the aforementioned job and when I reprocess them through SSMS, I am using "ProcessFull", so it should be reprocessing them completely. Has anyone run into such an issue? I'm scratching my head about it... because if it was a genuine data integrity issue, reprocessing the cube again wouldn't fix it. What on earth could be happening? I've been tasked with finding out why this happens, but I can neither reproduce it consistently nor can I point to a data integrity problem as the root cause. Thanks for any input you can provide!

  Read the article

• What specific features of LabView are frustrating to you?

  - by Underflow

  Please bear with me: this isn't a language debate or a flame. It's a real request for opinions. Occasionally, I have to help educate a traditional text coder in how to think in LabVIEW (LV). Often during this process, I get to hear about how LV sucks. Rarely is this insight accompanied by rational observations other than "Language X is just so much better!". While this statement is satisfying to them, it doesn't help me understand what is frustrating them. So, for those of you with LabVIEW and text language experience, what specific things about LV drive you nuts? ------ Summaries ------- Thanks for all the answers! Some of the issues are answered in the comments below, some exist on other sites, and some are just genuine problems with LV. In the spirit of the original question, I'm not going to try to answer all of these here: check LAVA or NI's website, and you'll be pleasantly surprised at how many of these things can be overcome. Unintentional concurrency No access to tradition text manipulation tools Binary-only source code control Difficult to branch and merge Too many open windows Text has cleaner/clearer/more expressive syntax Clean coding requires a lot of time and manipulation Large, difficult to access API/palette system Mouse required File namespacing: no duplicate files with the same name in memory LV objects are natively by-value only Requires dev environment to view code Lack of zoom Slow startup Memory pig "Giant" code is difficult to work with UI lockup is easy to do Trackpads and LV don't mix well String manipulation is graphically bloated Limited UI customization "Hidden" primitives (yes, these exist) Lack of official metaprogramming capability (not for much longer, though) Lack of unicode support [1]: http://www.lavag.org LAVA

  Read the article

• Which languages support *recursive* function literals / anonymous functions?

  - by Hugh Allen

  It seems quite a few mainstream languages support function literals these days. They are also called anonymous functions, but I don't care if they have a name. The important thing is that a function literal is an expression which yields a function which hasn't already been defined elsewhere, so for example in C, &printf doesn't count. EDIT to add: if you have a genuine function literal expression <exp>, you should be able to pass it to a function f(<exp>) or immediately apply it to an argument, ie. <exp>(5). I'm curious which languages let you write function literals which are recursive. Wikipedia's "anonymous recursion" article doesn't give any programming examples. Let's use the recursive factorial function as the example. Here are the ones I know: JavaScript / ECMAScript can do it with callee: function(n){if (n<2) {return 1;} else {return n * arguments.callee(n-1);}} it's easy in languages with letrec, eg Haskell (which calls it let): let fac x = if x<2 then 1 else fac (x-1) * x in fac and there are equivalents in Lisp and Scheme. Note that the binding of fac is local to the expression, so the whole expression is in fact an anonymous function. Are there any others?

  Read the article

• Problem saving file on Motorola Droid, Android 2.1?

  - by Rob Kent

  Two of my users have reported a problem with my Android application, OftSeen Gestures. Both of them are using a Motorola Droid. The app saves a text file which is just a list of gesture names and phone numbers, both strings. It saves the file to the private data area. I don't know that it is this code that is failing but they report the assigned numbers disappearing after the phone comes out of screen sleep. Since the file is reread in OnCreate each time, I'm assuming the file doesn't exist on return. As soon as I can get my hands on a Droid I will debug it but in the meantime can you see a reason why this save operation would fail on Droid (no other users have reported this)? OutputStreamWriter out = new OutputStreamWriter(AppGlobal.getContext().openFileOutput(MAPPINGS_FILE_NAME, 0)); for (String key : mMap.keySet()) { String number = mMap.get(key).number; out.write(String.format("%s,%s\n", key, number == null ? "" : number)); } out.close(); AppGlobal.getContext returns the application context and the MAPPINGS_FILE_NAME resolves to "gesture_mappings.txt". Like I say, I don't know that this is the problem. It could be something else to do with state management inside the app. If anyone has a Droid, maybe they could download the app from Market and test it for me? Note this is a genuine request for help - not an attempt to increase my downloads.

  Read the article

• Detecting an online poker cheat

  - by Tom Gullen

  It recently emerged on a large poker site that some players were possibly able to see all opponents cards as they played through exploiting a security vulnerability that was discovered. A naïve cheater would win at an incredibly fast rate, and these cheats are caught very quickly usually, and if not caught quickly they are easy to detect through a quick scan through their hand histories. The more difficult problem occurs when the cheater exhibits intelligence, bluffing in spots they are bound to be called in, calling river bets with the worst hands, the basic premise is that they lose pots on purpose to disguise their ability to see other players cards, and they win at a reasonably realistic rate. Given: A data set of millions of verified and complete information hand histories Theoretical unlimited computer power Assume the game No Limit Hold'em, although suggestions on Omaha or limit poker may be beneficial How could we reasonably accurately classify these cheaters? The original 2+2 thread appeals for ideas, and I thought that the SO community might have some useful suggestions. It's an interesting problem also because it is current, and has real application in bettering the world if someone finds a creative solution, as there is a good chance genuine players will have funds refunded to them when identified cheaters are discovered.

  Read the article

• Extremely CPU Intensive Alarm Clock

  - by SoulBeaver

  For some reason my program, a console alarm clock I made for laughs and practice, is extremely CPU intensive. It consumes about 2mB RAM, which is already quite a bit for such a small program, but it devastates my CPU with over 50% resources at times. Most of the time my program is doing nothing except counting down the seconds, so I guess this part of my program is the one that's causing so much strain on my CPU, though I don't know why. If it is so, could you please recommend a way of making it less, or perhaps a library to use instead if the problem can't be easily solved? /* The wait function waits exactly one second before returning to the * * called function. */ void wait( const int &seconds ) { clock_t endwait; // Type needed to compare with clock() endwait = clock() + ( seconds * CLOCKS_PER_SEC ); while( clock() < endwait ) {} // Nothing need be done here. } In case anybody browses CPlusPlus.com, this is a genuine copy/paste of the clock() function they have written as an example for clock(). Much why the comment //Nothing need be done here is so lackluster. I'm not entirely sure what exactly clock() does yet. The rest of the program calls two other functions that only activate every sixty seconds, otherwise returning to the caller and counting down another second, so I don't think that's too CPU intensive- though I wouldn't know, this is my first attempt at optimizing code. The first function is a console clear using system("cls") which, I know, is really, really slow and not a good idea. I will be changing that post-haste, but, since it only activates every 60 seconds and there is a noticeable lag-spike, I know this isn't the problem most of the time. The second function re-writes the content of the screen with the updated remaining time also only every sixty seconds. I will edit in the function that calls wait, clearScreen and display if it's clear that this function is not the problem. I already tried to reference most variables so they are not copied, as well as avoid endl as I heard that it's a little slow compared to \n.

  Read the article

• Why does Android allocate more memory than needed when loading images

  - by Simon

  Folks, I don't think that this is a duplicate and is NOT one of those how do I avoid OOMs questions. This is a genuine quest for knowledge so hold off on those down votes please... Imagine I have a JPEG of 500x500 pixels. I load it as ARGB_8888 which is as "bad as it gets". I would expect Android to allocate 500x500x4 bytes = a little under 1MB however, look at a heap dump and you will see that Android allocates significantly more, often factors of 5-10 times greater. You frequently see questions on here about OOMS where the stack trace shows a heap request of say 15MB and it is ALWAYS much larger than is required simply to hold the bytes of the image. The OP usually catches some downvotes then is bombarded with stock answers and comments about using less memory (thanks Romain!) and in scaling. I think there is more than meets the eye here. Anybody know why this is? If there is no apparent answer, I will put together an SSCCE if it helps. PS. I assume that JPEG vs PNG etc is irrelevant since we're talking about the memory usage of the backing bitmap which is simply x times y times BPP - or am I being slow?

  Read the article

• Memory leaks after using typeinfo::name()

  - by icabod

  I have a program in which, partly for informational logging, I output the names of some classes as they are used (specifically I add an entry to a log saying along the lines of Messages::CSomeClass transmitted to 127.0.0.1). I do this with code similar to the following: std::string getMessageName(void) const { return std::string(typeid(*this).name()); } And yes, before anyone points it out, I realise that the output of typeinfo::name is implementation-specific. According to MSDN The type_info::name member function returns a const char* to a null-terminated string representing the human-readable name of the type. The memory pointed to is cached and should never be directly deallocated. However, when I exit my program in the debugger, any "new" use of typeinfo::name() shows up as a memory leak. If I output the information for 2 classes, I get 2 memory leaks, and so on. This hints that the cached data is never being freed. While this is not a major issue, it looks messy, and after a long debugging session it could easily hide genuine memory leaks. I have looked around and found some useful information (one SO answer gives some interesting information about how typeinfo may be implemented), but I'm wondering if this memory should normally be freed by the system, or if there is something i can do to "not notice" the leaks when debugging. I do have a back-up plan, which is to code the getMessageName method myself and not rely on typeinfo::name, but I'd like to know anyway if there's something I've missed.

  Read the article

• UDP security and identifying incoming data.

  - by Charles

  I have been creating an application using UDP for transmitting and receiving information. The problem I am running into is security. Right now I am using the IP/socketid in determining what data belongs to whom. However, I have been reading about how people could simply spoof their IP, then just send data as a specific IP. So this seems to be the wrong way to do it (insecure). So how else am I suppose to identify what data belongs to what users? For instance you have 10 users connected, all have specific data. The server would need to match the user data to this data we received. The only way I can see to do this is to use some sort of client/server key system and encrypt the data. I am curious as to how other applications (or games, since that's what this application is) make sure their data is genuine. Also there is the fact that encryption takes much longer to process than unencrypted. Although I am not sure by how much it will affect performance. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.

  Read the article

• Google Rules for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  In the book What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis outlines ten "Google Rules" that define how Google acts.  These rules help define how Web 2.0 businesses operate today and into the future.  While there's a chapter in the book on applying these rules to the retail industry, it wasn't very in-depth.  So I've decided to more directly apply the rules to retail, along with some notable examples of success.  The table below shows Jeff's Google Rule, some Industry Examples, and New Retailer Rules that I created. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} table.MsoTableGrid {mso-style-name:"Table Grid"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-priority:59; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-themecolor:text1; mso-border-alt:solid black .5pt; mso-border-themecolor:text1; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid black; mso-border-insideh-themecolor:text1; mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid black; mso-border-insidev-themecolor:text1; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Google Rule Industry Examples New Retailer Rule New Relationship Your worst customer is your friend; you best customer is your partner Newegg.com lets manufacturers respond to customer comments that are critical of the product, and their EggXpert site lets customers help other customers. Listen to what your customers are saying about you.  Convert the critics to fans and the fans to influencers. New Architecture Join a network; be a platform Tesco and BestBuy released APIs for their product catalogs so third-parties could create new applications. Become a destination for information. New Publicness Life is public, so is business Zappos and WholeFoods founders are prolific tweeters/bloggers, sharing their opinions and connecting to customers.  It's not always pretty, but it's genuine. Be transparent.  Share both your successes and failures with your customers. New Society Elegant organization Wet Seal helps their customers assemble outfits and show them off to each other.  Barnes & Noble has a community site that includes a bookclub. Communities of your customers already exist, so help them organize better. New Economy Mass market is dead; long live the mass of niches lululemon found a niche for yoga inspired athletic wear.  Threadless uses crowd-sourcing to design short-runs of T-shirts. Serve small markets with niche products. New Business Reality Decide what business you're in When Lowes realized catering to women brought the men along, their sales increased. Customers want experiences to go with the products they buy. New Attitude Trust the people and listen In 2008 Starbucks launched MyStartbucksIdea to solicit ideas from their customers. Use social networks as additional data points for making better merchandising decisions. New Ethic Be honest and transparent; don't be evil Target is giving away reusable shopping bags for Earth Day.  Kohl's has outfitted 67 stores with solar arrays. Being green earns customers' respect and lowers costs too. New Speed Life is live H&M and Zara keep up with fashion trends. Be prepared to pounce on you customers' fickle interests. New Imperatives Encourage, enable and protect innovation 1-800-Flowers was the first do sales in Facebook and an early adopter of mobile commerce.  The Sears Personal Shopper mobile app finds products based on a photo. Give your staff permission to fail so innovation won't be stifled. Jeff will be a keynote speaker at Crosstalk, our upcoming annual user conference, so I'm looking forward to hearing more of his perspective on retail and the new economy.

  Read the article

• Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Now that I have the Build failing because of a genuine bug and not just because of a test framework failure, lets see if we can trace through to finding why the first test in our new application failed. Lets look at the build and see if we can see why there is a red cross on it. First, lets open that build list. On Team Explorer Expand your Team Project Collection | Team Project and then Builds. Double click the offending build. Figure: Opening the Build list is a key way to see what the current state of your software is.   Figure: A test is failing, but we can now view the Test Results to find the problem      Figure: You can quite clearly see that the test has failed with “The device is not ready”. To me the “The Device is not ready” smacks of a System.IO exception, but it passed on my local computer, so why not on the build server? Its a FaultException so it is most likely coming from the Service and not the client, so lets take a look at the client method that the test is calling: bool IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile(string strComputerName) { ProjectFile file = new ProjectFile() { ProjectFileName = strComputerName + "_" + System.DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmsss") + ".xml", ConnectionString = "persist security info=False; pooling=False; data source=(local); application name=SSW.SQLDeploy.vshost.exe; integrated security=SSPI; initial catalog=SSWSQLDeployNorthwindSample", DateCreated = System.DateTime.Now, DateUpdated = System.DateTime.Now, FolderPath = @"C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData\", IsComplete=false, Version = "1.3", NewDatabase = true, TimeOut = 5, TurnOnMSDE = false, Mode="AutomaticMode" }; string strFolderPath = "D:\\"; //LocalSettings.ProjectFileBasePath; string strFileName = strFolderPath + file.ProjectFileName; try { using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(strFileName, FileMode.Create)) { DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(ProjectFile)); using (XmlDictionaryWriter writer = XmlDictionaryWriter.CreateTextWriter(fs)) { serializer.WriteObject(writer, file); } } } catch (Exception ex) { //TODO: Log the exception throw ex; return false; } return true; } Figure: You can see on lines 9 and 18 that there are calls being made to specific folders and disks. What is wrong with this code? What assumptions mistakes could the developer have made to make this look OK: That every install would be to “C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy” That every computer would have a “D:\\” That checking in code at 6pm because the had to go home was a good idea. lets solve each of these problems: We are in a web service… lets store data within the web root. So we can call “Server.MapPath(“~/App_Data/SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData”) instead. Never reference an explicit path. If you need some storage for your application use IsolatedStorage. Shelve your code instead. What else could have been done? Code review before check-in – The developer should have shelved their code and asked another dev to look at it. Use Defensive programming – Make sure that any code that has the possibility of failing has checks. Any more options? Let me know and I will add them. What do we do? The correct things to do is to add a Bug to the backlog, but as this is probably going to be fixed in sprint, I will add it directly to the sprint backlog. Right click on the failing test Select “Create Work Item | Bug” Figure: Create an associated bug to add to the backlog. Set the values for the Bug making sure that it goes into the right sprint and Area. Make your steps to reproduce as explicit as possible, but “See test” is valid under these circumstances.   Figure: Add it to the correct Area and set the Iteration to the Area name or the Sprint if you think it will be fixed in Sprint and make sure you bring it up at the next Scrum Meeting. Note: make sure you leave the “Assigned To” field blank as in Scrum team members sign up for work, you do not give it to them. The developer who broke the test will most likely either sign up for the bug, or say that they are stuck and need help. Note: Visual Studio has taken care of associating the failing test with the Bug. Save… Technorati Tags: WCF,MSTest,MSBuild,Team Build 2010,Team Test 2010,Team Build,Team Test

  Read the article

• How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective for us?

  - by Carnotaurus

  There is an overhead associated with continuous integration, e.g., set up, re-training, awareness activities, stoppage to fix "bugs" that turn out to be data issues, enforced separation of concerns programming styles, etc. At what point does continuous integration pay for itself? EDIT: These were my findings The set-up was CruiseControl.Net with Nant, reading from VSS or TFS. Here are a few reasons for failure, which have nothing to do with the setup: Cost of investigation: The time spent investigating whether a red light is due a genuine logical inconsistency in the code, data quality, or another source such as an infrastructure problem (e.g., a network issue, a timeout reading from source control, third party server is down, etc., etc.) Political costs over infrastructure: I considered performing an "infrastructure" check for each method in the test run. I had no solution to the timeout except to replace the build server. Red tape got in the way and there was no server replacement. Cost of fixing unit tests: A red light due to a data quality issue could be an indicator of a badly written unit test. So, data dependent unit tests were re-written to reduce the likelihood of a red light due to bad data. In many cases, necessary data was inserted into the test environment to be able to accurately run its unit tests. It makes sense to say that by making the data more robust then the test becomes more robust if it is dependent on this data. Of course, this worked well! Cost of coverage, i.e., writing unit tests for already existing code: There was the problem of unit test coverage. There were thousands of methods that had no unit tests. So, a sizeable amount of man days would be needed to create those. As this would be too difficult to provide a business case, it was decided that unit tests would be used for any new public method going forward. Those that did not have a unit test were termed 'potentially infra red'. An intestesting point here is that static methods were a moot point in how it would be possible to uniquely determine how a specific static method had failed. Cost of bespoke releases: Nant scripts only go so far. They are not that useful for, say, CMS dependent builds for EPiServer, CMS, or any UI oriented database deployment. These are the types of issues that occured on the build server for hourly test runs and overnight QA builds. I entertain that these to be unnecessary as a build master can perform these tasks manually at the time of release, esp., with a one man band and a small build. So, single step builds have not justified use of CI in my experience. What about the more complex, multistep builds? These can be a pain to build, especially without a Nant script. So, even having created one, these were no more successful. The costs of fixing the red light issues outweighed the benefits. Eventually, developers lost interest and questioned the validity of the red light. Having given it a fair try, I believe that CI is expensive and there is a lot of working around the edges instead of just getting the job done. It's more cost effective to employ experienced developers who do not make a mess of large projects than introduce and maintain an alarm system. This is the case even if those developers leave. It doesn't matter if a good developer leaves because processes that he follows would ensure that he writes requirement specs, design specs, sticks to the coding guidelines, and comments his code so that it is readable. All this is reviewed. If this is not happening then his team leader is not doing his job, which should be picked up by his manager and so on. For CI to work, it is not enough to just write unit tests, attempt to maintain full coverage, and ensure a working infrastructure for sizable systems. The bottom line: One might question whether fixing as many bugs before release is even desirable from a business prespective. CI involves a lot of work to capture a handful of bugs that the customer could identify in UAT or the company could get paid for fixing as part of a client service agreement when the warranty period expires anyway.

  Read the article

• Featureful commercial text editors?

  - by wrp

  I'm willing to buy tools if they add genuine value over a FOSS equivalent. One thing I wouldn't mind having is an editor with the power of Emacs, but made more user-friendly. There seem to be several commercial editors out there, but I can't find much discussion of them online. Maybe it's because the kind of people who use commercial software don't have time to do much blogging. ;-) If you have used any, what was your evaluation? I'd especially like to hear how you would compare them to Emacs. I'm thinking of editors like VEDIT, Boxer, Crisp, UltraEdit, SlickEdit, etc. To get things started, I tried EditPad Pro because I needed something on a Win98SE box. I was attracted by its powerful support for regexps, but I didn't use it for long. One annoyance was that find-in-files was only available in a separate product you had to buy. The main problem, though, was stability. It sometimes hung and I lost a few files because it corrupted them while editing. After a couple weeks, I found that I was avoiding using it, so I just uninstalled. Edit: Ah...I need to remove some ambiguity. With reference to Emacs, "power" often means its potential for customization. This malleability comes from having an architecture in which most of the functionality is written in a scripting language that runs on a compiled core. Emacs (with elisp) is by far the most widely known such system among home users, but there have been other heavily used editors such as Freemacs (MINT), JED (S-Lang), XEDIT (Rexx), ADAM (TPU), and SlickEdit (Slick-C). In this case, by "power" I'm not referring to extensibility but to realized features. There are three main areas which I think a commercial text editor might be an improvement over Emacs: Stability The only apps I regularly use on Linux that give me flaky behavior are Emacs, Gedit, and Geany. On Windows, I like the look and features of Notepad++, but I find it extremely unstable, especially if I try to use the plugins. Whatever I happen to be doing, I'm using some text editor practically all day long. If I could switch to an editor that never gave me problems, it would definitely lower my stress level. Tools When I started using Emacs, I searched the manual cover to cover to gleam ideas for clever, useful things I could do with it. I'd like to see lots of useful features for editing code, based on detailed knowledge of what the system can do and the accumulated feedback of users. Polish The rule of threes goes that if you develop something for yourself, it's three times harder to make it usable in-house, and three times harder again to make it a viable product for sale. It's understandable, but free software development doesn't seem to benefit from much usability testing. BTW, texteditors.org is a fantastic resource for researching text editors.

  Read the article

• practical security ramifications of increasing WCF clock skew to more than an hour

  - by Andrew Patterson

  I have written a WCF service that returns 'semi-private' data concerning peoples name, addresses and phone numbers. By semi-private, I mean that there is a username and password to access the data, and the data is meant to be secured in transit. However, IMHO noone is going to expend any energy trying to obtain the data, as it is mostly available in the public phone book anyway etc. At some level, the security is a bit of security 'theatre' to tick some boxes imposed on us by government entities. The client end of the service is an application which is given out to registered 'users' to run within their own IT setups. We have no control over the IT of the users - and in fact they often tell us to 'go jump' if we put too many requirements on their systems. One problem we have been encountering is numerous users that have system clocks that are not accurate. This can either be caused by a genuine slow/fast clocks, or more than likely a timezone or daylight savings zone error (putting their machine an hour off the 'real' time). A feature of the WCF bindings we are using is that they rely on the notion of time to detect replay attacks etc. <wsHttpBinding> <binding name="normalWsBinding" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="655360"> <reliableSession enabled="false" /> <security mode="Message"> <message clientCredentialType="UserName" negotiateServiceCredential="false" algorithmSuite="Default" establishSecurityContext="false" /> </security> </binding> </wsHttpBinding> The inaccurate client clocks cause security exceptions to be thrown and unhappy users. Other than suggesting users correct their clocks, we know that we can increase the clock skew of the security bindings. http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/08/26/changing-the-default-clock-skew-in-wcf/ My question is, what are the real practical security ramifications of increasing the skew to say 2 hours? If an attacker can perform some sort of replay attack, why would a clock skew window of 5 minutes be necessarily safer than 2 hours? I presume performing any attack with security mode of 'message' requires more than just capturing some data at a proxy and sending the data back in again to 'replay' the call? In a situation like mine where data is only 'read' by the users, are there indeed any security ramifications at all to allowing 'replay' attacks?

  Read the article

• Is the Scala 2.8 collections library a case of "the longest suicide note in history" ?

  - by oxbow_lakes

  First note the inflammatory subject title is a quotation made about the manifesto of a UK political party in the early 1980s. This question is subjective but it is a genuine question, I've made it CW and I'd like some opinions on the matter. Despite whatever my wife and coworkers keep telling me, I don't think I'm an idiot: I have a good degree in mathematics from the University of Oxford and I've been programming commercially for almost 12 years and in Scala for about a year (also commercially). I have just started to look at the Scala collections library re-implementation which is coming in the imminent 2.8 release. Those familiar with the library from 2.7 will notice that the library, from a usage perspective, has changed little. For example... > List("Paris", "London").map(_.length) res0: List[Int] List(5, 6) ...would work in either versions. The library is eminently useable: in fact it's fantastic. However, those previously unfamiliar with Scala and poking around to get a feel for the language now have to make sense of method signatures like: def map[B, That](f: A => B)(implicit bf: CanBuildFrom[Repr, B, That]): That For such simple functionality, this is a daunting signature and one which I find myself struggling to understand. Not that I think Scala was ever likely to be the next Java (or /C/C++/C#) - I don't believe its creators were aiming it at that market - but I think it is/was certainly feasible for Scala to become the next Ruby or Python (i.e. to gain a significant commercial user-base) Is this going to put people off coming to Scala? Is this going to give Scala a bad name in the commercial world as an academic plaything that only dedicated PhD students can understand? Are CTOs and heads of software going to get scared off? Was the library re-design a sensible idea? If you're using Scala commercially, are you worried about this? Are you planning to adopt 2.8 immediately or wait to see what happens? Steve Yegge once attacked Scala (mistakenly in my opinion) for what he saw as its overcomplicated type-system. I worry that someone is going to have a field day spreading fud with this API (similarly to how Josh Bloch scared the JCP out of adding closures to Java). Note - I should be clear that, whilst I believe that Josh Bloch was influential in the rejection of the BGGA closures proposal, I don't ascribe this to anything other than his honestly-held beliefs that the proposal represented a mistake.

  Read the article

• How do we, as a community, help encourage programming in public schools? (Or state Schools for the U

  - by NoMoreZealots

  PRIMARY MOTIVATION My office gets involved with the "First Robotics" competitions and one thing that lingers year to year is the students typically have no preparation for doing even simple programming as part of the public schools system. While the science classes provide some basic grasp of mechanical and electrical concepts, by in large computer programming gets no coverage from the curriculum. (This my be different in other areas of the country/world.) What makes it worse is there is only a short period of time you have to prepare the student's and help them design the robot. Talking to some professors from local colleges, it's a problem because you can't assume even the most basic understanding for freshman CS majors. Languages like Python, Lua and BASIC are simple enough for at least high school level students, if not younger. SCOPE So how do you get public schools to support a programming, at least to the level of "Try it in BASIC" examples that used to be at the end of a chapter in my Algebra book? At least enough to prepare them for event's such as the FIRST Robotic competitions. Which the primary objectives are to teach problem solving and team work, and to possible foster an interest in Math, Science and Engineering in general. (Not force feed to them, as some people her seem to be implying.) Edit: Why teach kids: (Since 2000 CS enrollment in US colleges has decreased by 70% while college enrollment has increased, this is a PROBLEM.) Saying there is no value in teaching someone programming in Jr./High school because they might think "they know programming." Is like saying there's no value in teaching High school science and physics, because they might decide they "know physics." Leading to abuse like: "I passed a high school physics class, I'm going to develop a Unified Quantum Gravitational Theory." Better Prepared students are better students. Instead it would allows college programs to raise the bar on the entry level courses, allowing students to be weeded out based on their understanding of more advanced material. Plus people who did poorly in that in topic in High school aren't as likely to say "I think there's money in computer's so I'll computer science." Plus if people take it in high school and decide THEN that it's not for them, it's better than them wasting their money to PAY a college to figure that out. The result is that people who take the degree are more likely to succeed and be there for the RIGHT reasons. (i.e. It's what they REALLY want to do. And that's REALLY the key to being good at anything.) Programming is like anything else, the more practice and genuine interest you have the better you get. If you start them later, they get less practice. The earlier give them the opportunity to start, the more practice they will get. All other things equal, the more practice the better the programmer.

  Read the article

• What is wrong in my DKIM setup? I'm getting all fails

  - by djechelon

  I own a domain name I have implemented SPF and DKIM to avoid my mails being junked. I have also upgraded to DMARC in monitor mode. Since I received a few failure reports recently I wanted to investigate more. I have only one server sending outbound emails, running postfix + dkimproxy. I trust that dkimproxy has no major software bugs resulting in bad messages. I have tested ReturnPath's automated DKIM test and this is the part related to DKIM/DomainKeys DKIM Results ============ Result = failed: invalid key for signature: Syntax error in tag: \"v Domain = domain.org Selector = sel DNS Record(s) = sel._domainkey.domain.org TXT "v=1; p=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; t=s" Public Key Length = 4096 DomainKeys Results ================== Domain = domain.org Selector = sel DNS Record(s) = sel._domainkey.domain.org TXT "v=1; p=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; t=s" The mail displays an anonymised DNS record with genuine public key. It reports an error in tag v. A few hours ago I noticed my v tag was v=DKIM1 instead of v=1 as specified in RFC. I thought it was an error made by me during the initial setup months ago and fixed to v=1, but anyway I received one DMARC success from Google. Let me explain better: I enforced DMARC a couple of days ago. On 4/16 morning I got a mail from Google telling me that DMARC fully passes, then since 4/17 I get all failures. Then I discovered the v=DKIM1 tag and replaced with v=1 without success I have not modified my DNS records before that. So, keeping in topic with the question, why does ReturnPath refuse my DKIM DNS record? Is something wrong in my DKIM implementation at DNS level? [Add] I have just tried port25.com's tester but at least DKIM passes ---------------------------------------------------------- DomainKeys check details: ---------------------------------------------------------- Result: permerror (DK_STAT_BADKEY: Unusable key, public if verifying, private if signing.) ID(s) verified: header.From=########### DNS record(s): sel._domainkey.domain.org. 1800 IN TXT ""v=1; p=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; t=s"" ---------------------------------------------------------- DKIM check details: ---------------------------------------------------------- Result: pass (matches From: #########) ID(s) verified: header.d=domain.org Canonicalized Headers: message-id:<[email protected]>'0D''0A' date:Thu,'20'18'20'Apr'20'2013'20'11:40:26'20'+0200'0D''0A' from:#############'0D''0A' mime-version:1.0'0D''0A' to:[email protected]'0D''0A' subject:Test'0D''0A' content-type:text/plain;'20'charset=ISO-8859-15;'20'format=flowed'0D''0A' content-transfer-encoding:7bit'0D''0A' dkim-signature:v=1;'20'a=rsa-sha1;'20'c=relaxed;'20'd=domain.org;'20'h='20'message-id:date:from:mime-version:to:subject:content-type'20':content-transfer-encoding;'20's=dom;'20'bh=uoq1oCgLlTqpdDX/iUbLy7J1Wi'20'c=;'20'b= Canonicalized Body: '0D''0A' DNS record(s): sel._domainkey.domain.org. 1800 IN TXT ""v=1; p=MIICIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAg8AMIICCgKCAgEAsMMLhxzXkU+tagc44oMi7eX2BsFb8BsWeT8MRL+hxi4Lsosx7tuPm90iYgilNteyJoXuSP5SUf8B2tDAifdzYQhfhctr0hX9b6ocBCukGq5p0GHpNsCPWyFvxZsCkGqLRmkfb0c36quEAWBeQLe4Z/BwXBBiW1g96WFNb2/GRI1+9OHhligdfuo4PPuU+xiwX4GB0Ik50cJL4xTdBf7lrFwoGYa03ZkXuzKxeGE4cTk50OeIs6eqrzAfbmej4nCex2qGOUt1TWI7ZvCY7u3Gxj+XKaE7VFrQACZof+NP0k2pXPHg9saGJqZrr2i6+RoxGD0w/ibjAWij9enwqlnv2ORsZfe+FmXNOLJAhlYvhHaruubDpte1c7V3ZKDceM45ZawnVmSdLCfBrMbsqipzy8NXN5MxuANYFBkx5EDT+Ieab+zqcnf08m9bgDc4RXMYppDT1/lUy6On+nyfZEnJWiH3BUtgxS8X0uXciXbsooTmPnpkzzvvKXAE/Tv3XqL90q51geqP0EmaZI6lRTpiqoX7zFGlEBiiF7/u8oheszATks8LsNZ/boTFy0OVldbYNhxlIuRmqeXkqD6+kM5ObKtMEv3AdaeBiZmvyJTP8tCsSmPt+e954RLlz2HaDjjNnZNgsj/39U2RzZsFbVqW6uyQh36/y1X4joOiPf366GkCAwEAAQ==; t=s"" Public key used for verification: sel._domainkey.domain.org (4096 bits)

  Read the article

• Add a small RAID card? Will it help overall stability and performance of my nine hard drives?

  - by Ray

  Hi, Will I get any extra genuine added performance and RAID stability if I insert a basic RAID card into a PCI-E x1 slot? I am considering the Adaptec 1220SA - 2 port SATA , pci-express (1x) , raid 0/1. Ok it only supports two SATA drives. Purpose is to help support the eight internal hard drives (1TB each), a DVD drive and an external e-SATA connected 2TB hard drive - by dealing with two of the internal hard drives. My current configuration of eight internal 1TB Barracuda (7200.12) SATA hard drives, one external 2TB SATA Western Digital Green Drive (e-SATA) and one DVD drive can already be supported by the Intel P55 & JMicron controllers on the ASUS motherboard : the Intel P55 (controls six HDD; configured as three x RAID 1), and the JMicron (controls two HDD as one RAID 1, as well as the DVD drive and the external SATA drive via the motherboard's e-SATA port (controlled by the JMicron)). Bigger picture details : I have an ASUS motherboard designed for the LGA1156 type processor and it includes the Intel P55 Express Chipset and JMicron. I am using the Intel Core i7-870 processor, and have 8GB DDR3 (1333) memory (four x 2GB Corsair DIMMs). Enough overall power. The power supply is more than sufficicient for the system. Corsair AX850. The system will never need the full 850 watts (future : second graphics card). The RAID card would provide hardware RAID 1 for two of the eight intrnal drives. It would either reduce the load on : the Intel P55 firmware RAID support, or replace the JMicron controller's RAID 1 set. I am busy installing the above configuration using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit as the OS. The RAID card is a last minute addition to the plan. Is it worth spending the extra R700 - R900 on the Adaptec 1220SA, or equivalent RAID card? I cannot afford to spend yet another R2000 - R3000 on a RAID card that would support many SATA2 hard drives, with a better RAID, example the RAID 5. My Issue & assumption : I am trusting that the Intel P55 chipset can properly handle six drives, configured as three * RAID 1. I am assuming that the JMicron can handle, using its RED SATA ports, one RAID-1 (two HDDs). The DVD drive connects to the JMicron optical SATA port 1 (white port 1). White port 2 is not used. The e-SATA connection is from the JMicron straight to, and through the motherboard - to an on-board (rear panel) e-SATA port. Am I being a little hopeful in only using the on-board Intel P55 and the JMicron? Is it a waste of money to install a RAID card that handles two SATA2 drives? OR Is it wisdom to take the pressure a little off the Intel P55? Obviously I am interested in data security, hence RAID 1, not RAID Zero. RAID 5 would be nice. The CPU, Intel Core i7-870 will provide the clout. Context to nine drives : I am using virtualisation with Windows 7 Ultimate. Bootable VMs. The operating system gets a mirror. Loaded apps gets a mirror. The current design data is kept in another mirror and Another mirror is back-up one and / or VM territory. Then the external 2TB drive (via e-SATA) is the next layer of data security and then finally, I use off-site data security. Thanks.

  Read the article

• Enabling Kerberos Authentication for Reporting Services

  - by robcarrol

  Recently, I’ve helped several customers with Kerberos authentication problems with Reporting Services and Analysis Services, so I’ve decided to write this blog post and pull together some useful resources in one place (there are 2 whitepapers in particular that I found invaluable configuring Kerberos authentication, and these can be found in the references section at the bottom of this post). In most of these cases, the problem has manifested itself with the Login failed for User ‘NT Authority\Anonymous’ (“double-hop”) error. By default, Reporting Services uses Windows Integrated Authentication, which includes the Kerberos and NTLM protocols for network authentication. Additionally, Windows Integrated Authentication includes the negotiate security header, which prompts the client to select Kerberos or NTLM for authentication. The client can access reports which have the appropriate permissions by using Kerberos for authentication. Servers that use Kerberos authentication can impersonate those clients and use their security context to access network resources. You can configure Reporting Services to use both Kerberos and NTLM authentication; however this may lead to a failure to authenticate. With negotiate, if Kerberos cannot be used, the authentication method will default to NTLM. When negotiate is enabled, the Kerberos protocol is always used except when: Clients/servers that are involved in the authentication process cannot use Kerberos. The client does not provide the information necessary to use Kerberos. An in-depth discussion of Kerberos authentication is beyond the scope of this post, however when users execute reports that are configured to use Windows Integrated Authentication, their logon credentials are passed from the report server to the server hosting the data source. Delegation needs to be set on the report server and Service Principle Names (SPNs) set for the relevant services. When a user processes a report, the request must go through a Web server on its way to a database server for processing. Kerberos authentication enables the Web server to request a service ticket from the domain controller; impersonate the client when passing the request to the database server; and then restrict the request based on the user’s permissions. Each time a server is required to pass the request to another server, the same process must be used. Kerberos authentication is supported in both native and SharePoint integrated mode, but I’ll focus on native mode for the purpose of this post (I’ll explain configuring SharePoint integrated mode and Kerberos authentication in a future post). Configuring Kerberos avoids the authentication failures due to double-hop issues. These double-hop errors occur when a users windows domain credentials can’t be passed to another server to complete the user’s request. In the case of my customers, users were executing Reporting Services reports that were configured to query Analysis Services cubes on a separate machine using Windows Integrated security. The double-hop issue occurs as NTLM credentials are valid for only one network hop, subsequent hops result in anonymous authentication. The client attempts to connect to the report server by making a request from a browser (or some other application), and the connection process begins with authentication. With NTLM authentication, client credentials are presented to Computer 2. However Computer 2 can’t use the same credentials to access Computer 3 (so we get the Anonymous login error). To access Computer 3 it is necessary to configure the connection string with stored credentials, which is what a number of customers I have worked with have done to workaround the double-hop authentication error. However, to get the benefits of Windows Integrated security, a better solution is to enable Kerberos authentication. Again, the connection process begins with authentication. With Kerberos authentication, the client and the server must demonstrate to one another that they are genuine, at which point authentication is successful and a secure client/server session is established. In the illustration above, the tiers represent the following: Client tier (computer 1): The client computer from which an application makes a request. Middle tier (computer 2): The Web server or farm where the client’s request is directed. Both the SharePoint and Reporting Services server(s) comprise the middle tier (but we’re only concentrating on native deployments just now). Back end tier (computer 3): The Database/Analysis Services server/Cluster where the requested data is stored. In order to enable Kerberos authentication for Reporting Services it’s necessary to configure the relevant SPNs, configure trust for delegation for server accounts, configure Kerberos with full delegation and configure the authentication types for Reporting Services. Service Principle Names (SPNs) are unique identifiers for services and identify the account’s type of service. If an SPN is not configured for a service, a client account will be unable to authenticate to the servers using Kerberos. You need to be a domain administrator to add an SPN, which can be added using the SetSPN utility. For Reporting Services in native mode, the following SPNs need to be registered --SQL Server Service SETSPN -S mssqlsvc/servername:1433 Domain\SQL For named instances, or if the default instance is running under a different port, then the specific port number should be used. --Reporting Services Service SETSPN -S http/servername Domain\SSRS SETSPN -S http/servername.domain.com Domain\SSRS The SPN should be set for the NETBIOS name of the server and the FQDN. If you access the reports using a host header or DNS alias, then that should also be registered SETSPN -S http/www.reports.com Domain\SSRS --Analysis Services Service SETSPN -S msolapsvc.3/servername Domain\SSAS Next, you need to configure trust for delegation, which refers to enabling a computer to impersonate an authenticated user to services on another computer: Location Description Client 1. The requesting application must support the Kerberos authentication protocol. 2. The user account making the request must be configured on the domain controller. Confirm that the following option is not selected: Account is sensitive and cannot be delegated. Servers 1. The service accounts must be trusted for delegation on the domain controller. 2. The service accounts must have SPNs registered on the domain controller. If the service account is a domain user account, the domain administrator must register the SPNs. In Active Directory Users and Computers, verify that the domain user accounts used to access reports have been configured for delegation (the ‘Account is sensitive and cannot be delegated’ option should not be selected): We then need to configure the Reporting Services service account and computer to use Kerberos with full delegation:   We also need to do the same for the SQL Server or Analysis Services service accounts and computers (depending on what type of data source you are connecting to in your reports). Finally, and this is the part that sometimes gets over-looked, we need to configure the authentication type correctly for reporting services to use Kerberos authentication. This is configured in the Authentication section of the RSReportServer.config file on the report server. <Authentication> <AuthenticationTypes>           <RSWindowsNegotiate/> </AuthenticationTypes> <EnableAuthPersistence>true</EnableAuthPersistence> </Authentication> This will enable Kerberos authentication for Internet Explorer. For other browsers, see the link below. The report server instance must be restarted for these changes to take effect. Once these changes have been made, all that’s left to do is test to make sure Kerberos authentication is working properly by running a report from report manager that is configured to use Windows Integrated authentication (either connecting to Analysis Services or SQL Server back-end). Resources: Manage Kerberos Authentication Issues in a Reporting Services Environment http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/E/1/BE1AABB3-6ED8-4C3C-AF91-448AB733B1AF/SSRSKerberos.docx Configuring Kerberos Authentication for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=23176 How to: Configure Windows Authentication in Reporting Services http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc281253.aspx RSReportServer Configuration File http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms157273.aspx#Authentication Planning for Browser Support http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156511.aspx

  Read the article

• Java 7 update 6 installation fails on Windows 7 when Chrome is default browser

  - by ali1234

  I am configuring a brand new Lenovo U410 system with Windows 7 Home Premium for a user. I received the system direct from the shop. As part of the configuration I installed Java using the online installer. This worked correctly. Later, due to a mistake I made, I needed to restore the system to factory default. The factory default FORMATS C:\ and puts back (supposedly) the exact factory configuration. However, after doing this, I was no longer able to install Java successfully using the same method I used before. Now, whenever I attempt to use the online Java installer, the following happens. First of all, a window always appears "Welcome to Java", "Downloading Java Installer...". After short time this window disappears and then one of three things happens: The very first time I do this after doing a factory reset, I get a Windows error report, which contains this information: Application Name: JavaSetup7u5.exe Application Version: 7.0.50.6 Application Timestamp: 4feacd84 Fault Module Name: JavaIC.dll Fault Module Version: 9.9.9.9 Fault Module Timestamp: 4f2343d6 Exception Offset: 000052cb Exception Code: c0000417 Exception Data: 00000000 OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.768.3 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 773c Additional Information 2: 773cd78cf06816f8246f359fa270f3bb Additional Information 3: f51a Additional Information 4: f51aaea7d22f36fa9e3a626b5a5cd1c3 2. Subsequent runs produce either this error message: "Error: Java(TM) installer - Downloaded file C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp\fx-runtime.exe is corrupt." or Nothing happens at all. I Believe this is a red herring. Running the installer again causes a different error because the files were downloaded and the installer crashed before it could clean up. This isn't the actual problem, as when this happens the installer deletes the downloaded files, and then when you run it for the third time, it downloads everything again and does the javaic.dll crash. I suspect the downloader is appending to the existing files or something, causing the corruption. I have tried all of the above as Administrator and as a normal user. I have tried reseting the system to factory defaults several times. I have tried downloading with Chrome and Internet Explorer 9. I have tried uninstalling all anti-virus software and disabling the windows firewall entirely. The only thing which makes a difference is running the installer in Windows XP compatibility mode, which allows the installation to complete. I know I can workaround this error by using the offline installer so please don't post that as an answer. I am looking for an explanation of the root cause. Additionally, if I use the offline installer, the updater does not work. The updater also does not work if I install in XP mode. The updater fails because it works by just downloading the newest online setup and running it. Also remember that the installers are digitally signed. The signitures verify correctly so there is no way in hell that this is caused by corrupted downloads. Some theories I have: The Java setup files on java.com actually changed in between the first successful install and my later attempts. Seems unlikely as none of the version numbers have changed. However, I have seen a couple of reports of this error which showed up in the past 24 hours. This looks like the most likely explanation right now: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1735645 - Oracle released 7 update 6 two days ago. Careful inspection of the installers reveal that they are in fact attempting to download .6, not .5 as the download page claims. Not actually correct. Only the update tool tries to install 7u6. The online installer still tries 7u5. However, 7u6 being released two days ago is too much of a coincidence to ignore. Update: The 7u6 online installer is available from Oracle technetwork. It crashes in exactly the same way. The factory reset software uses GMT-8 and I am on GMT-1. As a result, after factory reset, any software which cares to check would think that the system was restored 7 hours in the future, due to Window's awful policy of storing local time in the system clock. This could be confusing a certificate check or similar. Update: I discovered that this does cause Windows Update to fail. The workaround, setting the clock back before starting factory reset, does not enable Java to install correctly. The factory reset image isn't really the same as what is installed in the main partition when you buy the system. Naughty Lenovo. The installer appears to crash while installing or displaying something to do with the Ask.com toolbar. That seems to be what javaic.dll does. Microsoft Tuesday was the 14th. Some update in that could be causing this. However, I'm factory reseting the machine every time, so unless the patches get slipstreamed into the recovery image, or there is some mechanism by which they get silently installed even if updates are disabled, then I don't see how this can be the cause. Major breakthrough: The default browser on Lenovo systems is Google Chrome. I noticed that the JavaIC.dll "sponsor check" actually does a check on your default browser in order to decide which sponsor ad to display. Normally that would get you the Ask toolbar on IE9. But that toolbar doesn't work on Chrome, and so the installer tries to display a different ad. The different ad is what causes the crash. Changing the default browser to IE9 allows the installer to run correctly. So this looks like a genuine bug in the sponsor ad code in the installer, caused by a combination of Google Chrome default browser and not being in the US. (Installer also checks your location using IP geolocation service and displays different ads based on that.)

  Read the article

• How to Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like more features and flash in Windows on your netbook?  Here’s how you can easily upgrade your netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium the easy way. Most new netbooks today ship with Windows 7 Starter, which is the cheapest edition of Windows 7.  It is fine for many computing tasks, and will run all your favorite programs great, but it lacks many customization, multimedia, and business features found in higher editions.  Here we’ll show you how you can quickly upgrade your netbook to more full-featured edition of Windows 7 using Windows Anytime Upgrade.  Also, if you want to upgrade your laptop or desktop to another edition of Windows 7, say Professional, you can follow these same steps to upgrade it, too. Please note: This is only for computers already running Windows 7.  If your netbook is running XP or Vista, you will have to run a traditional upgrade to install Windows 7. Upgrade Advisor First, let’s make sure your netbook can support the extra features, such as Aero Glass, in Windows 7 Home Premium.  Most modern netbooks that ship with Windows 7 Starter can run the advanced features in Windows 7 Home Premium, but let’s check just in case.  Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (link below), and install as normal. Once it’s installed, run it and click Start Check.   Make sure you’re connected to the internet before you run the check, or otherwise you may see this error message.  If you see it, click Ok and then connect to the internet and start the check again. It will now scan all of your programs and hardware to make sure they’re compatible with Windows 7.  Since you’re already running Windows 7 Starter, it will also tell you if your computer will support the features in other editions of Windows 7. After a few moments, the Upgrade Advisor will show you want it found.  Here we see that our netbook, a Samsung N150, can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate. We also see that we had one issue, but this was because a driver we had installed was not recognized.  Click “See all system requirements” to see what your netbook can do with the new edition. This shows you which of the requirements, including support for Windows Aero, your netbook meets.  Here our netbook supports Aero, so we’re ready to go upgrade. For more, check out our article on how to make sure your computer can run Windows 7 with Upgrade Advisor. Upgrade with Anytime Upgrade Now, we’re ready to upgrade our netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium.  Enter “Anytime Upgrade” in the Start menu search,and select Windows Anytime Upgrade. Windows Anytime Upgrade lets you upgrade using product key you already have or one you purchase during the upgrade process.  And, it installs without any downloads or Windows disks, so it works great even for netbooks without DVD drives. Anytime Upgrades are cheaper than a standard upgrade, and for a limited time, select retailers in the US are offering Anytime Upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium for only $49.99 if purchased with a new netbook.  If you already have a netbook running Windows 7 Starter, you can either purchase an Anytime Upgrade package at a retail store or purchase a key online during the upgrade process for $79.95.  Or, if you have a standard Windows 7 product key (full or upgrade), you can use it in Anytime upgrade.  This is especially nice if you can purchase Windows 7 cheaper through your school, university, or office. Purchase an upgrade online To purchase an upgrade online, click “Go online to choose the edition of Windows 7 that’s best for you”.   Here you can see a comparison of the features of each edition of Windows 7.  Note that you can upgrade to either Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.  We chose home Premium because it has most of the features that home users want, including Media Center and Aero Glass effects.  Also note that the price of each upgrade is cheaper than the respective upgrade from Windows XP or Vista.  Click buy under the edition you want.   Enter your billing information, then your payment information.  Once you confirm your purchase, you will directly be taken to the Upgrade screen.  Make sure to save your receipt, as you will need the product key if you ever need to reinstall Windows on your computer. Upgrade with an existing product key If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit from a retailer, or already have a Full or Upgrade key for another edition of Windows 7, choose “Enter an upgrade key”. Enter your product key, and click Next.  If you purchased an Anytime Upgrade kit, the product key will be located on the inside of the case on a yellow sticker. The key will be verified as a valid key, and Anytime Upgrade will automatically choose the correct edition of Windows 7 based on your product key.  Click Next when this is finished. Continuing the Upgrade process Whether you entered a key or purchased a key online, the process is the same from here on.  Click “I accept” to accept the license agreement. Now, you’re ready to install your upgrade.  Make sure to save all open files and close any programs, and then click Upgrade. The upgrade only takes about 10 minutes in our experience but your mileage may vary.  Any available Microsoft updates, including ones for Office, Security Essentials, and other products, will be installed before the upgrade takes place. After a couple minutes, your computer will automatically reboot and finish the installation.  It will then reboot once more, and your computer will be ready to use!  Welcome to your new edition of Windows 7! Here’s a before and after shot of our desktop.  When you do an Anytime Upgrade, all of your programs, files, and settings will be just as they were before you upgraded.  The only change we noticed was that our pinned taskbar icons were slightly rearranged to the default order of Internet Explorer, Explorer, and Media Player.  Here’s a shot of our desktop before the upgrade.  Notice that all of our pinned programs and desktop icons are still there, as well as our taskbar customization (we are using small icons on the taskbar instead of the default large icons). Before, with the Windows 7 Starter background and the Aero Basic theme: And after, with Aero Glass and the more colorful default Windows 7 background.   All of the features of Windows 7 Home Premium are now ready to use.  The Aero theme was activate by default, but you can now customize your netbook theme, background, and more with the Personalization pane.  To open it, right-click on your desktop and select Personalize. You can also now use Windows Media Center, and can play-back DVD movies using an external drive. One of our favorite tools, the Snipping Tool, is also now available for easy screenshots and clips. Activating you new edition of Windows 7 You will still need to activate your new edition of Windows 7.  To do this right away, open the start menu, right-click on Computer, and select Properties.   Scroll to the bottom, and click “Activate Windows Now”. Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then select “Activate Windows online now”. Activation may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed. When it is done, the Activation wizard will let you know that Windows is activated and genuine.  Your upgrade is all finished! Conclusion Windows Anytime Upgrade makes it easy, and somewhat cheaper, to upgrade to another edition of Windows 7.  It’s useful for desktop and laptop owners who want to upgrade to Professional or Ultimate, but many more netbook owners will want to upgrade from Starter to Home Premium or another edition.  Links Download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Windows Team Blog: Anytime Upgrade Special with new PC purchase Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium EditionAnother Blog You Should Subscribe ToMysticgeek Blog: Turn Vista Home Premium Into Ultimate (Part 3) – Shadow CopyUpgrade Ubuntu from Breezy to DapperHow to Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to RTM (Final Release) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar Manage Photos Across Different Social Sites With Dropico Test Drive Windows 7 Online Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 3 4 5 6 7 8  | Next Page >