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• How do I prevent missing network from slowing down boot-up?

  - by Ravi S Ghosh

  I have been having rather slow boot on Ubuntu 12.04. Lately, I tried to figure out the reason and it seems to be the network connection which does not get connected and requires multiple attempts. Here is part of dmesg [ 2.174349] EXT4-fs (sda2): INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem [ 2.174352] EXT4-fs (sda2): write access will be enabled during recovery [ 2.308172] firewire_core: created device fw0: GUID 384fc00005198d58, S400 [ 2.333457] usb 7-1.2: new low-speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd [ 2.465896] EXT4-fs (sda2): recovery complete [ 2.466406] EXT4-fs (sda2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) [ 2.589440] usb 7-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 4 using uhci_hcd **[ 18.292029] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready** [ 18.458958] udevd[377]: starting version 175 [ 18.639482] Adding 4200960k swap on /dev/sda5. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:4200960k [ 19.314127] wmi: Mapper loaded [ 19.426602] r592 0000:09:01.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 19.426739] r592: driver successfully loaded [ 19.460105] input: Dell WMI hotkeys as /devices/virtual/input/input5 [ 19.493629] lp: driver loaded but no devices found [ 19.497012] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain [ 19.535523] ACPI Warning: _BQC returned an invalid level (20110623/video-480) [ 19.539457] acpi device:03: registered as cooling_device2 [ 19.539520] input: Video Bus as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:01/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input6 [ 19.539568] ACPI: Video Device [M86] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no) [ 19.578060] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [ 19.667708] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell Systems Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2) [ 19.763171] r852 0000:09:01.3: PCI INT B -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 19.763258] r852: driver loaded successfully [ 19.854769] input: Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb7/7-1/7-1.2/7-1.2:1.0/input/input7 [ 19.854864] generic-usb 0003:045E:00DD.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-1.2/input0 [ 19.878605] input: Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb7/7-1/7-1.2/7-1.2:1.1/input/input8 [ 19.878698] generic-usb 0003:045E:00DD.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Device [Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-1.2/input1 [ 19.902779] input: DELL DELL USB Laser Mouse as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb7/7-1/7-1.3/7-1.3:1.0/input/input9 [ 19.925034] generic-usb 0003:046D:C063.0003: input,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [DELL DELL USB Laser Mouse] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-1.3/input0 [ 19.925057] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid [ 19.925059] usbhid: USB HID core driver [ 19.942362] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M (0c45:63ea) [ 19.947004] input: Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/input/input10 [ 19.947075] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo [ 19.947077] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1) [ 20.145232] Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, in-tree: [ 20.145235] Copyright(c) 2003-2011 Intel Corporation [ 20.145327] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 20.145357] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.145402] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: pci_resource_len = 0x00002000 [ 20.145404] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: pci_resource_base = ffffc90000674000 [ 20.145407] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: HW Revision ID = 0x0 [ 20.145531] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: irq 46 for MSI/MSI-X [ 20.145613] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Detected Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN, REV=0x54 [ 20.145720] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: L1 Enabled; Disabling L0S [ 20.167535] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: device EEPROM VER=0x11f, CALIB=0x4 [ 20.167538] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Device SKU: 0Xf0 [ 20.167567] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 24 802.11a channels [ 20.172779] fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel. [ 20.172783] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint [ 20.250115] [fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 3759 MBytes. [ 20.250567] [fglrx] vendor: 1002 device: 9553 count: 1 [ 20.251256] [fglrx] ioport: bar 1, base 0x2000, size: 0x100 [ 20.251271] pci 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 20.251277] pci 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.251559] [fglrx] Kernel PAT support is enabled [ 20.251578] [fglrx] module loaded - fglrx 8.96.4 [Mar 12 2012] with 1 minors [ 20.310385] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.83.5.1 build 33692 [ 20.310598] Registered led device: phy0-led [ 20.310628] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain [ 20.372306] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs' [ 20.411015] psmouse serio1: synaptics: Touchpad model: 1, fw: 7.2, id: 0x1c0b1, caps: 0xd04733/0xa40000/0xa0000 [ 20.454232] input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input11 [ 20.545636] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain [ 20.545640] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: [ 20.545642] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [ 20.545644] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545647] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545649] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545652] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545654] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.609484] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:2): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=693 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.609494] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:3): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=642 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.609843] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:4): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=693 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.609852] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=642 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610047] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=693 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610060] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=642 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610476] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=814 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610829] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=814 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.611035] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=814 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.661912] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 [ 20.661982] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X [ 20.662013] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.770289] input: HDA Intel Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input12 [ 20.770689] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 20.770786] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: irq 48 for MSI/MSI-X [ 20.770815] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.994040] HDMI status: Codec=0 Pin=3 Presence_Detect=0 ELD_Valid=0 [ 20.994189] input: HDA ATI HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input13 [ 21.554799] vesafb: mode is 1024x768x32, linelength=4096, pages=0 [ 21.554802] vesafb: scrolling: redraw [ 21.554804] vesafb: Truecolor: size=0:8:8:8, shift=0:16:8:0 [ 21.557342] vesafb: framebuffer at 0xd0000000, mapped to 0xffffc90011800000, using 3072k, total 3072k [ 21.557498] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48 [ 21.557516] fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device [ 21.987338] EXT4-fs (sda2): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro [ 22.184693] EXT4-fs (sda6): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) [ 27.362440] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: RF_KILL bit toggled to disable radio. [ 27.436988] init: failsafe main process (986) killed by TERM signal [ 27.970112] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 28.198917] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16 [ 28.198935] NET: Registered protocol family 31 [ 28.198937] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 28.198940] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 28.198941] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 28.198947] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 28.226135] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 28.226141] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 28.226143] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 28.445620] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 28.445623] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast [ 28.524578] type=1400 audit(1340502641.076:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1052 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.525018] type=1400 audit(1340502641.076:12): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1052 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.629957] type=1400 audit(1340502641.180:13): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=1105 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.630325] type=1400 audit(1340502641.180:14): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=1105 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.630535] type=1400 audit(1340502641.180:15): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=1105 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.645266] type=1400 audit(1340502641.196:16): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=1104 comm="apparmor_parser" **[ 28.751922] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready** [ 28.753653] tg3 0000:08:00.0: irq 49 for MSI/MSI-X **[ 28.856127] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 28.857034] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready** [ 28.871080] type=1400 audit(1340502641.420:17): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=1108 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.871519] type=1400 audit(1340502641.420:18): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=1108 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.874905] type=1400 audit(1340502641.424:19): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1113 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.875354] type=1400 audit(1340502641.424:20): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1113 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 30.477976] tg3 0000:08:00.0: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex [ 30.477979] tg3 0000:08:00.0: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX **[ 30.478390] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready** [ 31.110269] fglrx_pci 0000:01:00.0: irq 50 for MSI/MSI-X [ 31.110859] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1327 [ 31.111021] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1329 [ 31.111408] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1330 [ 31.111543] [fglrx] IRQ 50 Enabled [ 31.712938] [fglrx] Gart USWC size:1224 M. [ 31.712941] [fglrx] Gart cacheable size:486 M. [ 31.712945] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:1000000 [ 31.712948] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:fc2b000, size:3d5000 [ 31.712950] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:1fffb000, size:5000 [ 41.312020] eth0: no IPv6 routers present As you can see I get multiple instances of [ 28.856127] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready and then finally it becomes read and I get the message [ 30.478390] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready. I searched askubuntun, ubuntuforum, and the web but couldn't find a solution. Any help would be very much appreciated. Here is the bootchart

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• apache tomcat loadbalancing clustering on ubuntu

  - by user740010

  i am facing a problem in clustering the tomcat with apache as a loadbalancer using mod_jk on ubuntu. i have install apache2 on my ubuntu 11.04 and i have downloaded tomcat7 created two copies and kept them at two different location. 1st one is at /home/net4u/vishal/test/tomcatA 2nd one is at /home/net4u/vishal/test1/tomcatB i have made following changes to server.xml file in /conf folder 1. <Server port="8205" shutdown="SHUTDOWN"> 2. <Connector port="8280" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> 3.<Connector port="8209" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" /> <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="tomcatB"> 4. <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster"/> similarly i have modified other tomcat i.e tomcatA server.xml content of the server.xml is as follow: -- <!--The connectors can use a shared executor, you can define one or more named thread pools--> <!-- <Executor name="tomcatThreadPool" namePrefix="catalina-exec-" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="4"/> --> <!-- A "Connector" represents an endpoint by which requests are received and responses are returned. Documentation at : Java HTTP Connector: /docs/config/http.html (blocking & non-blocking) Java AJP Connector: /docs/config/ajp.html APR (HTTP/AJP) Connector: /docs/apr.html Define a non-SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8080 --> <Connector port="8280" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> <!-- A "Connector" using the shared thread pool--> <!-- <Connector executor="tomcatThreadPool" port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443" /> --> <!-- Define a SSL HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443 This connector uses the JSSE configuration, when using APR, the connector should be using the OpenSSL style configuration described in the APR documentation --> <!-- <Connector port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" /> --> <!-- Define an AJP 1.3 Connector on port 8009 --> <Connector port="8109" protocol="AJP/1.3" redirectPort="8443" /> <!-- An Engine represents the entry point (within Catalina) that processes every request. The Engine implementation for Tomcat stand alone analyzes the HTTP headers included with the request, and passes them on to the appropriate Host (virtual host). Documentation at /docs/config/engine.html --> <!-- You should set jvmRoute to support load-balancing via AJP ie : <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="jvm1"> --> <Engine name="Catalina" defaultHost="localhost" jvmRoute="tomcatB"> <!--For clustering, please take a look at documentation at: /docs/cluster-howto.html (simple how to) /docs/config/cluster.html (reference documentation) --> <!-- uncomment for clustering--> <Cluster className="org.apache.catalina.ha.tcp.SimpleTcpCluster"/> <!-- Use the LockOutRealm to prevent attempts to guess user passwords via a brute-force attack --> <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.LockOutRealm"> <!-- This Realm uses the UserDatabase configured in the global JNDI resources under the key "UserDatabase". Any edits that are performed against this UserDatabase are immediately available for use by the Realm. --> <Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.UserDatabaseRealm" resourceName="UserDatabase"/> </Realm> <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"> <!-- SingleSignOn valve, share authentication between web applications Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html --> <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn" /> --> <!-- Access log processes all example. Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html Note: The pattern used is equivalent to using pattern="common" --> <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs" prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b" resolveHosts="false"/> </Host> </Engine> i have install libapache2-mod-jk step 1. i have Created jk.load file in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/jk.load content is as follows: LoadModule jk_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_jk.so Create /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/jk.conf: JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/workers.properties JkLogFile /var/log/apache2/jk.log JkMount /ecommerce/* worker1 JkMount /images/* worker1 JkMount /content/* worker1 step 2. Created workers.properties file in /etc/apache2/workers.properties content is as follows: workers.tomcat_home=/home/vishal/Desktop/test/tomcatA workers.java_home=/usr/lib/jvm/default-java ps=/ worker.list=tomcatA,tomcatB,loadbalancer   worker.tomcatA.port=8109 worker.tomcatA.host=localhost worker.tomcatA.type=ajp13 worker.tomcatA.lbfactor=1   worker.tomcatB.port=8209 worker.tomcatB.host=localhost worker.tomcatB.type=ajp13 worker.tomcatB.lbfactor=1 worker.loadbalancer.type=lb worker.loadbalancer.balanced_workers=tomcatA,tomcatB worker.loadbalancer.sticky_session=1 i tried the same thing on the windows machine it is working.

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• Weighted round robins via TTL - possible?

  - by Joe Hopfgartner

  I currently use DNS round robin for load balancing, which works great. The records look like this (I have a ttl of 120 seconds) ;; ANSWER SECTION: orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 80.237.201.41 orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 87.230.54.12 orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 87.230.100.10 orion.2x.to. 116 IN A 87.230.51.65 I learned that not every ISP / device treats such a response the same way. For example some DNS servers rotate the addresses randomly or always cycle them through. Some just propagate the first entry, others try to determine which is best (regionally near) by looking at the ip address. However if the userbase is big enough (spreads over multiple ISPs etc) it balances pretty well. The discrepancies from highest to lowest loaded server hardly every exceeds 15%. However now I have the problem that I am introducing more servers into the systems, that not all have the same capacities. I currently only have 1gbps servers, but I want to work with 100mbit and also 10gbps servers too. So what I want is I want to introduce a server with 10 GBps with a weight of 100, a 1 gbps server with a weight of 10 and a 100 mbit server with a weight of 1. I used to add servers twice to bring more traffic to them (which worked nice. the bandwidth doubled almost.) But adding a 10gbit server 100 times to DNS is a bit rediculous. So I thought about using the TTL. If I give server A 240 seconds ttl and server B only 120 seconds (which is about about the minimum to use for round robin, as a lot of dns servers set to 120 if a lower ttl is specified.. so i have heard) I think something like this should occour in an ideal scenario: first 120 seconds 50% of requests get server A -> keep it for 240 seconds. 50% of requests get server B -> keep it for 120 seconds second 120 seconds 50% of requests still have server A cached -> keep it for another 120 seconds. 25% of requests get server A -> keep it for 240 seconds 25% of requests get server B -> keep it for 120 seconds third 120 seconds 25% will get server A (from the 50% of Server A that now expired) -> cache 240 sec 25% will get server B (from the 50% of Server A that now expired) -> cache 120 sec 25% will have server A cached for another 120 seconds 12.5% will get server B (from the 25% of server B that now expired) -> cache 120sec 12.5% will get server A (from the 25% of server B that now expired) -> cache 240 sec fourth 120 seconds 25% will have server A cached -> cache for another 120 secs 12.5% will get server A (from the 25% of b that now expired) -> cache 240 secs 12.5% will get server B (from the 25% of b that now expired) -> cache 120 secs 12.5% will get server A (from the 25% of a that now expired) -> cache 240 secs 12.5% will get server B (from the 25% of a that now expired) -> cache 120 secs 6.25% will get server A (from the 12.5% of b that now expired) -> cache 240 secs 6.25% will get server B (from the 12.5% of b that now expired) -> cache 120 secs 12.5% will have server A cached -> cache another 120 secs ... i think i lost something at this point but i think you get the idea.... As you can see this gets pretty complicated to predict and it will for sure not work out like this in practice. But it should definitely have an effect on the distribution! I know that weighted round robin exists and is just controlled by the root server. It just cycles through dns records when responding and returns dns records with a set propability that corresponds to the weighting. My DNS server does not support this, and my requirements are not that precise. If it doesnt weight perfectly its okay, but it should go into the right direction. I think using the TTL field could be a more elegant and easier solution - and it deosnt require a dns server that controls this dynamically, which saves resources - which is in my opinion the whole point of dns load balancing vs hardware load balancers. My question now is... are there any best prectices / methos / rules of thumb to weight round robin distribution using the TTL attribute of DNS records? Edit: The system is a forward proxy server system. The amount of Bandwidth (not requests) exceeds what one single server with ethernet can handle. So I need a balancing solution that distributes the bandwidth to several servers. Are there any alternative methods than using DNS? Of course I can use a load balancer with fibre channel etc, but the costs are rediciulous and it also increases only the width of the bottleneck and does not eliminate it. The only thing i can think of are anycast (is it anycast or multicast?) ip addresses, but I don't have the means to set up such a system.

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• Elegance, thy Name is jQuery

  - by SGWellens

  So, I'm browsing though some questions over on the Stack Overflow website and I found a good jQuery question just a few minutes old. Here is a link to it. It was a tough question; I knew that by answering it, I could learn new stuff and reinforce what I already knew: Reading is good, doing is better. Maybe I could help someone in the process too. I cut and pasted the HTML from the question into my Visual Studio IDE and went back to Stack Overflow to reread the question. Dang, someone had already answered it! And it was a great answer. I never even had a chance to start analyzing the issue. Now I know what a one-legged man feels like in an ass-kicking contest. Nevertheless, since the question and answer were so interesting, I decided to dissect them and learn as much as possible. The HTML consisted of some divs separated by h3 headings.  Note the elements are laid out sequentially with no programmatic grouping: <h3 class="heading">Heading 1</h3> <div>Content</div> <div>More content</div> <div>Even more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 2</h3> <div>some content</div> <div>some more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 3</h3> <div>other content</div></form></body>  The requirement was to wrap a div around each h3 heading and the subsequent divs grouping them into sections. Why? I don't know, I suppose if you screen-scrapped some HTML from another site, you might want to reformat it before displaying it on your own. Anyways… Here is the marvelously, succinct posted answer: $('.heading').each(function(){ $(this).nextUntil('.heading').andSelf().wrapAll('<div class="section">');}); I was familiar with all the parts except for nextUntil and andSelf. But, I'll analyze the whole answer for completeness. I'll do this by rewriting the posted answer in a different style and adding a boat-load of comments: function Test(){ // $Sections is a jQuery object and it will contain three elements var $Sections = $('.heading'); // use each to iterate over each of the three elements $Sections.each(function () { // $this is a jquery object containing the current element // being iterated var $this = $(this); // nextUntil gets the following sibling elements until it reaches // an element with the CSS class 'heading' // andSelf adds in the source element (this) to the collection $this = $this.nextUntil('.heading').andSelf(); // wrap the elements with a div $this.wrapAll('<div class="section" >'); });}  The code here doesn't look nearly as concise and elegant as the original answer. However, unless you and your staff are jQuery masters, during development it really helps to work through algorithms step by step. You can step through this code in the debugger and examine the jQuery objects to make sure one step is working before proceeding on to the next. It's much easier to debug and troubleshoot when each logical coding step is a separate line. Note: You may think the original code runs much faster than this version. However, the time difference is trivial: Not enough to worry about: Less than 1 millisecond (tested in IE and FF). Note: You may want to jam everything into one line because it results in less traffic being sent to the client. That is true. However, most Internet servers now compress HTML and JavaScript by stripping out comments and white space (go to Bing or Google and view the source). This feature should be enabled on your server: Let the server compress your code, you don't need to do it. Free Career Advice: Creating maintainable code is Job One—Maximum Priority—The Prime Directive. If you find yourself suddenly transferred to customer support, it may be that the code you are writing is not as readable as it could be and not as readable as it should be. Moving on… I created a CSS class to see the results: .section{ background-color: yellow; border: 2px solid black; margin: 5px;} Here is the rendered output before:   …and after the jQuery code runs.   Pretty Cool! But, while playing with this code, the logic of nextUntil began to bother me: What happens in the last section? What stops elements from being collected since there are no more elements with the .heading class? The answer is nothing.  In this case it stopped because it was at the end of the page.  But what if there were additional HTML elements? I added an anchor tag and another div to the HTML: <h3 class="heading">Heading 1</h3> <div>Content</div> <div>More content</div> <div>Even more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 2</h3> <div>some content</div> <div>some more content</div><h3 class="heading">Heading 3</h3> <div>other content</div><a>this is a link</a><div>unrelated div</div> </form></body> The code as-is will include both the anchor and the unrelated div. This isn't what we want.   My first attempt to correct this used the filter parameter of the nextUntil function: nextUntil('.heading', 'div')  This will only collect div elements. But it merely skipped the anchor tag and it still collected the unrelated div:   The problem is we need a way to tell the nextUntil function when to stop. CSS selectors to the rescue: nextUntil('.heading, a')  This tells nextUntil to stop collecting sibling elements when it gets to an element with a .heading class OR when it gets to an anchor tag. In this case it solved the problem. FYI: The comma operator in a CSS selector allows multiple criteria.   Bingo! One final note, we could have broken the code down even more: We could have replaced the andSelf function here: $this = $this.nextUntil('.heading, a').andSelf(); With this: // get all the following siblings and then add the current item$this = $this.nextUntil('.heading, a');$this.add(this);  But in this case, the andSelf function reads real nice. In my opinion. Here's a link to a jsFiddle if you want to play with it. I hope someone finds this useful Steve Wellens CodeProject

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• Real World Nuget

  - by JoshReuben

  Why Nuget A higher level of granularity for managing references When you have solutions of many projects that depend on solutions of many projects etc à escape from Solution Hell. Links · Using A GUI (Package Explorer) to build packages - http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/using-a-gui-to-build-packages · Creating a Nuspec File - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2010trainingcourse_aspnetmvcnuget_topic2.aspx · consuming a Nuget Package - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2010trainingcourse_aspnetmvcnuget_topic3 · Nuspec reference - http://docs.nuget.org/docs/reference/nuspec-reference · updating packages - http://nuget.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Updating%20All%20Packages · versioning - http://docs.nuget.org/docs/reference/versioning POC Folder Structure POC Setup Steps · Install package explorer · Source o Create a source solution – configure output directory for projects (Project > Properties > Build > Output Path) · Package o Add assemblies to package from output directory (D&D)- add net folder o File > Export – save .nuspec files and lib contents <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <package > <metadata> <id>MyPackage</id> <version>1.0.0.3</version> <title /> <authors>josh-r</authors> <owners /> <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance> <description>My package description.</description> <summary /> </metadata> </package> o File > Save – saves .nupkg file · Create Target Solution o In Tools > Options: Configure package source & Add package Select projects: Output from package manager (powershell console) ------- Installing...MyPackage 1.0.0 ------- Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyA.dll' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyA.pdb' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyB.dll' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'NugetSource.AssemblyB.pdb' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0\lib'. Added file 'MyPackage.1.0.0.nupkg' to folder 'MyPackage.1.0.0'. Successfully installed 'MyPackage 1.0.0'. Added reference 'NugetSource.AssemblyA' to project 'AssemblyX' Added reference 'NugetSource.AssemblyB' to project 'AssemblyX' Added file 'packages.config'. Added file 'packages.config' to project 'AssemblyX' Added file 'repositories.config'. Successfully added 'MyPackage 1.0.0' to AssemblyX. ============================== o Packages folder created at solution level o Packages.config file generated in each project: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <packages>   <package id="MyPackage" version="1.0.0" targetFramework="net40" /> </packages> A local Packages folder is created for package versions installed: Each folder contains the downloaded .nupkg file and its unpacked contents – eg of dlls that the project references Note: this folder is not checked in UpdatePackages o Configure Package Manager to automatically check for updates o Browse packages - It automatically picked up the updates Update Procedure · Modify source · Change source version in assembly info · Build source · Open last package in package explorer · Increment package version number and re-add assemblies · Save package with new version number and export its definition · In target solution – Tools > Manage Nuget Packages – click on All to trigger refresh , then click on recent packages to see updates · If problematic, delete packages folder Versioning uninstall-package mypackage install-package mypackage –version 1.0.0.3 uninstall-package mypackage install-package mypackage –version 1.0.0.4 Dependencies · <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2012/06/nuspec.xsd"> <metadata> <id>MyDependentPackage</id> <version>1.0.0</version> <title /> <authors>josh-r</authors> <owners /> <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance> <description>My package description.</description> <dependencies> <group targetFramework=".NETFramework4.0"> <dependency id="MyPackage" version="1.0.0.4" /> </group> </dependencies> </metadata> </package> Using NuGet without committing packages to source control http://docs.nuget.org/docs/workflows/using-nuget-without-committing-packages Right click on the Solution node in Solution Explorer and select Enable NuGet Package Restore. — Recall that packages folder is not part of solution If you get downloading package ‘Nuget.build’ failed, config proxy to support certificate for https://nuget.org/api/v2/ & allow unrestricted access to packages.nuget.org To test connectivity: get-package –listavailable To test Nuget Package Restore – delete packages folder and open vs as admin. In nugget msbuild: <Import Project="$(SolutionDir)\.nuget\nuget.targets" /> TFSBuild Integration Modify Nuget.Targets file <RestorePackages Condition="  '$(RestorePackages)' == '' "> True </RestorePackages> … <PackageSource Include="\\IL-CV-004-W7D\Packages" /> Add System Environment variable EnableNuGetPackageRestore=true & restart the “visual studio team foundation build service host” service. Important: Ensure Network Service has access to Packages folder Nugetter TFS Build integration Add Nugetter build process templates to TFS source control For Build Controller - Specify location of custom assemblies Generate .nuspec file from Package Explorer: File > Export Edit the file elements – remove path info from src and target attributes <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?> <package xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/packaging/2012/06/nuspec.xsd">     <metadata>         <id>Common</id>         <version>1.0.0</version>         <title />         <authors>josh-r</authors>         <owners />         <requireLicenseAcceptance>false</requireLicenseAcceptance>         <description>My package description.</description>         <dependencies>             <group targetFramework=".NETFramework3.5" />         </dependencies>     </metadata>     <files>         <file src="CommonTypes.dll" target="CommonTypes.dll" />         <file src="CommonTypes.pdb" target="CommonTypes.pdb" /> … Add .nuspec file to solution so that it is available for build: Dev\NovaNuget\Common\NuSpec\common.1.0.0.nuspec Add a Build Process Definition based on the Nugetter build process template: Configure the build process – specify: · .sln to build · Base path (output directory) · Nuget.exe file path · .nuspec file path Copy DLLs to a binary folder 1) Set copy local for an assembly reference to false 2)  MSBuild Copy Task – modify .csproj file: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3e54c37h.aspx <ItemGroup>     <MySourceFiles Include="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\..\SourceAssemblies\**\*.*" />   </ItemGroup>     <Target Name="BeforeBuild">     <Copy SourceFiles="@(MySourceFiles)" DestinationFolder="bin\debug\SourceAssemblies" />   </Target> 3) Set Probing assembly search path from app.config - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/823z9h8w(v=vs.80).aspx -                 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration>   <runtime>     <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">       <probing privatePath="SourceAssemblies"/>     </assemblyBinding>   </runtime> </configuration> Forcing 'copy local = false' The following generic powershell script was added to the packages install.ps1: param($installPath, $toolsPath, $package, $project) if( $project.Object.Project.Name -ne "CopyPackages") { $asms = $package.AssemblyReferences | %{$_.Name} foreach ($reference in $project.Object.References) { if ($asms -contains $reference.Name + ".dll") { $reference.CopyLocal = $false; } } } An empty project named "CopyPackages" was added to the solution - it references all the packages and is the only one set to CopyLocal="true". No MSBuild knowledge required.

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• Top 10 Browser Productivity Tips

  - by Renso

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2013/10/14/top-10-browser-productivity-tips.aspxYou don’t have to be a geek to be a productive browser user. The tips below have been selected by actions users take most of the time to navigate a web-site but use long-standing keyboard or mouse actions to get them done, when there are keyboard short-cuts you can use instead. Since you hands are already on the keyboard it is almost always faster to sue a keyboard shortcut to get something done that you usually used the mouse for. For example right-clicking on something to copy it and then doing to same for pasting something is very time consuming, keyboard shortcuts have been created that simplify the task. All it takes are a few memory brain cells to remember them. Here are the tips, in no particular order:   Tip 1 Hold down the spacebar on your keyboard to page to the end of your web page rather than using your mouse. This is really a slow way of doing it. If you want to page one page at a time, hit the spacebar once, and again to page again. But if you want to page all the way to the end of the web page simply hit Ctrl+End (that is hold down the Ctrl key and hit the End button on your keyboard). To get to the top of your web page, simply hit Ctrl + Home to go all the way to the top of your web page. Tip 2 Where are my downloads? Some folks run downloads again-and-again because they do not know where the last one went and they do not see the popup, or browser note on their web page in the footer, etc. Simply hit Ctrl+J. Works in most browsers. Tip 3 Selecting a US state from a drop down box. Don’t use the mouse, takes just way too long to scroll. When you tab to the drop down box or click on it with your mouse, simply hit the first character of the state and it will be selected. For Texas for example hit the letter “T” twice on your keyboard to get to it. The same concept can be applied to any drop down box that is alphabetical or numerically sorted. Tip 4 Fixing spelling errors. All modern-day browsers support this now. You see the red wavy lines underscoring a word, yes it is a spelling error. How do you fix it? Don’t overtype it or try and fix it manually, fist right-click on it and a list of suggestions comes up. If it does not show up, like my name “Renso” and you know how to spell your name as in this example, look further down the list of options (the little window popup that appears when you right click) and you should see an option to “Add to Dictionary”. Be warned, when you add it, it only adds it to the browser you’re using’s dictionary. If you use Google Chrome, Firefox and IE, each one will have their own list. Tip 5 So you have trouble seeing the text on the screen. Or you are looking at a photo, for example in Facebook. You want to zoom in to read better or zoom into a photo a bit more. Hit Ctrl++ (hold down Ctrl key and hit the plus key – actually it’s the equal key but it is easier to remember that it is plus for bigger). Hit the minus to zoom out. Now you can’t remember what the original size was since you were so excited to hit it 20 times, or was that 21… Simply hit Ctrl+0 (that is zero) and it will reset it to the default. Tip 6 So you closed a couple of tabs in your browser. Suddenly you remember something you wanted to double-check something on one of the tabs, you cannot remember the URL ad the tab is gone forever, or is it? Simply hit Ctrl+Shift+t and it will bring back your tabs one by one each time you click the T. This has also been a great way for me to quickly close some tabs because I don’t want my boss to see I’m shopping and then hitting Ctrl+Shift+t to quickly get it back and complete my check-put and purchase. Or, for parents, when you walk into your daughter’s room and you see she quickly clicks and closes a window/tab in here browser. Not to worry my little darling, daddy will Ctrl+Shift+t and see what boys on Facebook you were talking too… Tip 7 The web browser is frozen on your PC/Laptop/Whatever, in this example it may be your Internet Explorer browser. I don’t mention Firefox or Chrome here because it probably never happens in their world. You cannot close it, it won’t respond to anything you have done s far except for the next step you are about to take, which is throw your two-day old coffee on your keyboard. This happens especially on sites that want to force you to complete a purchase order. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard on any version of windows, select TASK MANAGER. In the  First Tab, which is the Process Tab, look for the item in question. In this example you should see Internet Explorer. Right-click it and select “End Task”. It will force the thread out of memory and terminate that process. You can of course do this with any program running under your account. Tip 8 This is a personal favorite of mine. To select words in the paragraph without using the mouse. You don’t want to select one character at a time like when you use the Ctrl+arrows as it can be very slow if you want to select a lot of text. You also want to select whole words. Simply use the Ctrl+Shift_arrow (right or left depending which direction you want to go. Tip 9 I was a bit reluctant to add this one, but being in the professional services industry still come across many-a-folk that simply can’t copy-and-paste them-all text or images that reside on them screens, y’all. Ctrl+c to copy and Ctrl+v to paste it. Works a lot faster than using the mouse. You may be asking: “Well why in the devil did they not use Ctrl+p for paste…. because that is for printing. This is of course not limited to the browser world, it applies to almost any piece of software running on PC or Mac. Go try it on an image on your browser, right-click it and select copy. Open a word document and Ctrl+v to paste the image in there. Please consider copyright laws. Tip 10 Getting rid of annoying ads. Now this only works when you load a web page, meaning when you get back to the same page later you will have to do this again and you will need to learn a tool to do it, WELL WORTH IT. For example, I use GrooveShark to listen to music but I don’t like the ads they show. Install a tool like Firebug for Firefox or use the Ctrl+Shift+I on Chrome to bring up the developer toolbar. Shows at the bottom of the page. With Firefox, once you have installed Firebug as an add-on, a yellow bug should appear on the top right-hand-side of your browser, click on it to display the developer toolbar. You will need to learn how to use it, but once you know how to select an item/section on the window (usually just right-click the add you don’t want to see and select “Inspect Element”, the developer toolbar will appear (if not already there)) and then simply hit delete and it will remove the add from the screen. If you don’t know HTML you may need to play with it a bit, but once you understand how it works can open up a whole new world for you on how web pages actually work. If you can think of any others that have saved you a ton of time please let me know so I can add them to a top 99 list.

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• The Sensemaking Spectrum for Business Analytics: Translating from Data to Business Through Analysis

  - by Joe Lamantia

  One of the most compelling outcomes of our strategic research efforts over the past several years is a growing vocabulary that articulates our cumulative understanding of the deep structure of the domains of discovery and business analytics. Modes are one example of the deep structure we’ve found.  After looking at discovery activities across a very wide range of industries, question types, business needs, and problem solving approaches, we've identified distinct and recurring kinds of sensemaking activity, independent of context.  We label these activities Modes: Explore, compare, and comprehend are three of the nine recognizable modes.  Modes describe *how* people go about realizing insights.  (Read more about the programmatic research and formal academic grounding and discussion of the modes here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235971352_A_Taxonomy_of_Enterprise_Search_and_Discovery) By analogy to languages, modes are the 'verbs' of discovery activity.  When applied to the practical questions of product strategy and development, the modes of discovery allow one to identify what kinds of analytical activity a product, platform, or solution needs to support across a spread of usage scenarios, and then make concrete and well-informed decisions about every aspect of the solution, from high-level capabilities, to which specific types of information visualizations better enable these scenarios for the types of data users will analyze. The modes are a powerful generative tool for product making, but if you've spent time with young children, or had a really bad hangover (or both at the same time...), you understand the difficult of communicating using only verbs.  So I'm happy to share that we've found traction on another facet of the deep structure of discovery and business analytics.  Continuing the language analogy, we've identified some of the ‘nouns’ in the language of discovery: specifically, the consistently recurring aspects of a business that people are looking for insight into.  We call these discovery Subjects, since they identify *what* people focus on during discovery efforts, rather than *how* they go about discovery as with the Modes. Defining the collection of Subjects people repeatedly focus on allows us to understand and articulate sense making needs and activity in more specific, consistent, and complete fashion.  In combination with the Modes, we can use Subjects to concretely identify and define scenarios that describe people’s analytical needs and goals.  For example, a scenario such as ‘Explore [a Mode] the attrition rates [a Measure, one type of Subject] of our largest customers [Entities, another type of Subject] clearly captures the nature of the activity — exploration of trends vs. deep analysis of underlying factors — and the central focus — attrition rates for customers above a certain set of size criteria — from which follow many of the specifics needed to address this scenario in terms of data, analytical tools, and methods. We can also use Subjects to translate effectively between the different perspectives that shape discovery efforts, reducing ambiguity and increasing impact on both sides the perspective divide.  For example, from the language of business, which often motivates analytical work by asking questions in business terms, to the perspective of analysis.  The question posed to a Data Scientist or analyst may be something like “Why are sales of our new kinds of potato chips to our largest customers fluctuating unexpectedly this year?” or “Where can innovate, by expanding our product portfolio to meet unmet needs?”.  Analysts translate questions and beliefs like these into one or more empirical discovery efforts that more formally and granularly indicate the plan, methods, tools, and desired outcomes of analysis.  From the perspective of analysis this second question might become, “Which customer needs of type ‘A', identified and measured in terms of ‘B’, that are not directly or indirectly addressed by any of our current products, offer 'X' potential for ‘Y' positive return on the investment ‘Z' required to launch a new offering, in time frame ‘W’?  And how do these compare to each other?”.  Translation also happens from the perspective of analysis to the perspective of data; in terms of availability, quality, completeness, format, volume, etc. By implication, we are proposing that most working organizations — small and large, for profit and non-profit, domestic and international, and in the majority of industries — can be described for analytical purposes using this collection of Subjects.  This is a bold claim, but simplified articulation of complexity is one of the primary goals of sensemaking frameworks such as this one.  (And, yes, this is in fact a framework for making sense of sensemaking as a category of activity - but we’re not considering the recursive aspects of this exercise at the moment.) Compellingly, we can place the collection of subjects on a single continuum — we call it the Sensemaking Spectrum — that simply and coherently illustrates some of the most important relationships between the different types of Subjects, and also illuminates several of the fundamental dynamics shaping business analytics as a domain.  As a corollary, the Sensemaking Spectrum also suggests innovation opportunities for products and services related to business analytics. The first illustration below shows Subjects arrayed along the Sensemaking Spectrum; the second illustration presents examples of each kind of Subject.  Subjects appear in colors ranging from blue to reddish-orange, reflecting their place along the Spectrum, which indicates whether a Subject addresses more the viewpoint of systems and data (Data centric and blue), or people (User centric and orange).  This axis is shown explicitly above the Spectrum.  Annotations suggest how Subjects align with the three significant perspectives of Data, Analysis, and Business that shape business analytics activity.  This rendering makes explicit the translation and bridging function of Analysts as a role, and analysis as an activity. Subjects are best understood as fuzzy categories [http://georgelakoff.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/hedges-a-study-in-meaning-criteria-and-the-logic-of-fuzzy-concepts-journal-of-philosophical-logic-2-lakoff-19731.pdf], rather than tightly defined buckets.  For each Subject, we suggest some of the most common examples: Entities may be physical things such as named products, or locations (a building, or a city); they could be Concepts, such as satisfaction; or they could be Relationships between entities, such as the variety of possible connections that define linkage in social networks.  Likewise, Events may indicate a time and place in the dictionary sense; or they may be Transactions involving named entities; or take the form of Signals, such as ‘some Measure had some value at some time’ - what many enterprises understand as alerts.   The central story of the Spectrum is that though consumers of analytical insights (represented here by the Business perspective) need to work in terms of Subjects that are directly meaningful to their perspective — such as Themes, Plans, and Goals — the working realities of data (condition, structure, availability, completeness, cost) and the changing nature of most discovery efforts make direct engagement with source data in this fashion impossible.  Accordingly, business analytics as a domain is structured around the fundamental assumption that sense making depends on analytical transformation of data.  Analytical activity incrementally synthesizes more complex and larger scope Subjects from data in its starting condition, accumulating insight (and value) by moving through a progression of stages in which increasingly meaningful Subjects are iteratively synthesized from the data, and recombined with other Subjects.  The end goal of  ‘laddering’ successive transformations is to enable sense making from the business perspective, rather than the analytical perspective.Synthesis through laddering is typically accomplished by specialized Analysts using dedicated tools and methods. Beginning with some motivating question such as seeking opportunities to increase the efficiency (a Theme) of fulfillment processes to reach some level of profitability by the end of the year (Plan), Analysts will iteratively wrangle and transform source data Records, Values and Attributes into recognizable Entities, such as Products, that can be combined with Measures or other data into the Events (shipment of orders) that indicate the workings of the business.  More complex Subjects (to the right of the Spectrum) are composed of or make reference to less complex Subjects: a business Process such as Fulfillment will include Activities such as confirming, packing, and then shipping orders.  These Activities occur within or are conducted by organizational units such as teams of staff or partner firms (Networks), composed of Entities which are structured via Relationships, such as supplier and buyer.  The fulfillment process will involve other types of Entities, such as the products or services the business provides.  The success of the fulfillment process overall may be judged according to a sophisticated operating efficiency Model, which includes tiered Measures of business activity and health for the transactions and activities included.  All of this may be interpreted through an understanding of the operational domain of the businesses supply chain (a Domain).   We'll discuss the Spectrum in more depth in succeeding posts.

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• DRY and SRP

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/06/11/dry-and-srp.aspxKent Beck’s XP Simplicity Rules (aka Four Rules of Simple Design) are a prioritized list of rules that when applied to your code generally yield a great design.  As you’ll see from the above link the list has slightly evolved over time.  I find today they are usually listed as: All Tests Pass Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) Express Intent Minimalistic These are prioritized.  If your code doesn’t work (rule 1) then everything else is forfeit.  Go back to rule one and get the code working before worrying about anything else. Over the years the community have debated whether the priority of rules 2 and 3 should be reversed.  Some say a little duplication in the code is OK as long as it helps express intent.  I’ve debated it myself.  This recent post got me thinking about this again, hence this post.   I don’t think it is fair to compare “Expressing Intent” against “DRY”.  This is a comparison of apples to oranges.  “Expressing Intent” is a principal of code quality.  “Repeating Yourself” is a code smell.  A code smell is merely an indicator that there might be something wrong with the code.  It takes further investigation to determine if a violation of an underlying principal of code quality has actually occurred. For example “using nouns for method names”, “using verbs for property names”, or “using Booleans for parameters” are all code smells that indicate that code probably isn’t doing a good job at expressing intent.  They are usually very good indicators.  But what principle is the code smell of Duplication pointing to and how good of an indicator is it? Duplication in the code base is bad for a couple reasons.  If you need to make a change and that needs to be made in a number of locations it is difficult to know if you have caught all of them.  This can lead to bugs if/when one of those locations is overlooked.  By refactoring the code to remove all duplication there will be left with only one place to change, thereby eliminating this problem. With most projects the code becomes the single source of truth for a project.  If a production code base is inconsistent with a five year old requirements or design document the production code that people are currently living with is usually declared as the current reality (or truth).  Requirement or design documents at this age in a project life cycle are usually of little value. Although comparing production code to external documentation is usually straight forward, duplication within the code base muddles this declaration of truth.  When code is duplicated small discrepancies will creep in between the two copies over time.  The question then becomes which copy is correct?  As different factions debate how the software should work, trust in the software and the team behind it erodes. The code smell of Duplication points to a violation of the “Single Source of Truth” principle.  Let me define that as: A stakeholder’s requirement for a software change should never cause more than one class to change. Violation of the Single Source of Truth principle will always result in duplication in the code.  However, the inverse is not always true.  Duplication in the code does not necessarily indicate that there is a violation of the Single Source of Truth principle. To illustrate this, let’s look at a retail system where the system will (1) send a transaction to a bank and (2) print a receipt for the customer.  Although these are two separate features of the system, they are closely related.  The reason for printing the receipt is usually to provide an audit trail back to the bank transaction.  Both features use the same data:  amount charged, account number, transaction date, customer name, retail store name, and etcetera.  Because both features use much of the same data, there is likely to be a lot of duplication between them.  This duplication can be removed by making both features use the same data access layer. Then start coming the divergent requirements.  The receipt stakeholder wants a change so that the account number has the last few digits masked out to protect the customer’s privacy.  That can be solve with a small IF statement whilst still eliminating all duplication in the system.  Then the bank wants to take a picture of the customer as well as capture their signature and/or PIN number for enhanced security.  Then the receipt owner wants to pull data from a completely different system to report the customer’s loyalty program point total. After a while you realize that the two stakeholders have somewhat similar, but ultimately different responsibilities.  They have their own reasons for pulling the data access layer in different directions.  Then it dawns on you, the Single Responsibility Principle: There should never be more than one reason for a class to change. In this example we have two stakeholders giving two separate reasons for the data access class to change.  It is clear violation of the Single Responsibility Principle.  That’s a problem because it can often lead the project owner pitting the two stakeholders against each other in a vein attempt to get them to work out a mutual single source of truth.  But that doesn’t exist.  There are two completely valid truths that the developers need to support.  How is this to be supported and honour the Single Responsibility Principle?  The solution is to duplicate the data access layer and let each stakeholder control their own copy. The Single Source of Truth and Single Responsibility Principles are very closely related.  SST tells you when to remove duplication; SRP tells you when to introduce it.  They may seem to be fighting each other, but really they are not.  The key is to clearly identify the different responsibilities (or sources of truth) over a system.  Sometimes there is a single person with that responsibility, other times there are many.  This can be especially difficult if the same person has dual responsibilities.  They might not even realize they are wearing multiple hats. In my opinion Single Source of Truth should be listed as the second rule of simple design with Express Intent at number three.  Investigation of the DRY code smell should yield to the proper application SST, without violating SRP.  When necessary leave duplication in the system and let the class names express the different people that are responsible for controlling them.  Knowing all the people with responsibilities over a system is the higher priority because you’ll need to know this before you can express it.  Although it may be a code smell when there is duplication in the code, it does not necessarily mean that the coder has chosen to be expressive over DRY or that the code is bad.

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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• How Mature is Your Database Change Management Process?

  - by Ben Rees

  .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database Delivery Patterns & Practices Further Reading Organization and team processes How do you get your database schema changes live, on to your production system? As your team of developers and DBAs are working on the changes to the database to support your business-critical applications, how do these updates wend their way through from dev environments, possibly to QA, hopefully through pre-production and eventually to production in a controlled, reliable and repeatable way? In this article, I describe a model we use to try and understand the different stages that customers go through as their database change management processes mature, from the very basic and manual, through to advanced continuous delivery practices. I also provide a simple chart that will help you determine “How mature is our database change management process?” This process of managing changes to the database – which all of us who have worked in application/database development have had to deal with in one form or another – is sometimes known as Database Change Management (even if we’ve never used the term ourselves). And it’s a difficult process, often painfully so. Some developers take the approach of “I’ve no idea how my changes get live – I just write the stored procedures and add columns to the tables. It’s someone else’s problem to get this stuff live. I think we’ve got a DBA somewhere who deals with it – I don’t know, I’ve never met him/her”. I know I used to work that way. I worked that way because I assumed that making the updates to production was a trivial task – how hard can it be? Pause the application for half an hour in the middle of the night, copy over the changes to the app and the database, and switch it back on again? Voila! But somehow it never seemed that easy. And it certainly was never that easy for database changes. Why? Because you can’t just overwrite the old database with the new version. Databases have a state – more specifically 4Tb of critical data built up over the last 12 years of running your business, and if your quick hotfix happened to accidentally delete that 4Tb of data, then you’re “Looking for a new role” pretty quickly after the failed release. There are a lot of other reasons why a managed database change management process is important for organisations, besides job security, not least: Frequency of releases. Many business managers are feeling the pressure to get functionality out to their users sooner, quicker and more reliably. The new book (which I highly recommend) Lean Enterprise by Jez Humble, Barry O’Reilly and Joanne Molesky provides a great discussion on how many enterprises are having to move towards a leaner, more frequent release cycle to maintain their competitive advantage. It’s no longer acceptable to release once per year, leaving your customers waiting all year for changes they desperately need (and expect) Auditing and compliance. SOX, HIPAA and other compliance frameworks have demanded that companies implement proper processes for managing changes to their databases, whether managing schema changes, making sure that the data itself is being looked after correctly or other mechanisms that provide an audit trail of changes. We’ve found, at Red Gate that we have a very wide range of customers using every possible form of database change management imaginable. Everything from “Nothing – I just fix the schema on production from my laptop when things go wrong, and write it down in my notebook” to “A full Continuous Delivery process – any change made by a dev gets checked in and recorded, fully tested (including performance tests) before a (tested) release is made available to our Release Management system, ready for live deployment!”. And everything in between of course. Because of the vast number of customers using so many different approaches we found ourselves struggling to keep on top of what everyone was doing – struggling to identify patterns in customers’ behavior. This is useful for us, because we want to try and fit the products we have to different needs – different products are relevant to different customers and we waste everyone’s time (most notably, our customers’) if we’re suggesting products that aren’t appropriate for them. If someone visited a sports store, looking to embark on a new fitness program, and the store assistant suggested the latest $10,000 multi-gym, complete with multiple weights mechanisms, dumb-bells, pull-up bars and so on, then he’s likely to lose that customer. All he needed was a pair of running shoes! To solve this issue – in an attempt to simplify how we understand our customers and our offerings – we built a model. This is a an attempt at trying to classify our customers in to some sort of model or “Customer Maturity Framework” as we rather grandly term it, which somehow simplifies our understanding of what our customers are doing. The great statistician, George Box (amongst other things, the “Box” in the Box-Jenkins time series model) gave us the famous quote: “Essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful” We’ve taken this quote to heart – we know it’s a gross over-simplification of the real world of how users work with complex legacy and new database developments. Almost nobody precisely fits in to one of our categories. But we hope it’s useful and interesting. There are actually a number of similar models that exist for more general application delivery. We’ve found these from ThoughtWorks/Forrester, from InfoQ and others, and initially we tried just taking these models and replacing the word “application” for “database”. However, we hit a problem. From talking to our customers we know that users are far less further down the road of mature database change management than they are for application development. As a simple example, no application developer, who wants to keep his/her job would develop an application for an organisation without source controlling that code. Sure, he/she might not be using an advanced Gitflow branching methodology but they’ll certainly be making sure their code gets managed in a repo somewhere with all the benefits of history, auditing and so on. But this certainly isn’t the case (yet) for the database – a very large segment of the people we speak to have no source control set up for their databases whatsoever, even at the most basic level (for example, keeping change scripts in a source control system somewhere). By the way, if this is you, Red Gate has a great whitepaper here, on the barriers people face getting a source control process implemented at their organisations. This difference in maturity is the same as you move in to areas such as continuous integration (common amongst app developers, relatively rare for database developers) and automated release management (growing amongst app developers, very rare for the database). So, when we created the model we started from scratch and biased the levels of maturity towards what we actually see amongst our customers. But, what are these stages? And what level are you? The table below describes our definitions for four levels of maturity – Baseline, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. As I say, this is a model – you won’t fit any of these categories perfectly, but hopefully one will ring true more than others. We’ve also created a PDF with a flow chart to help you find which of these groups most closely matches your team:  Download the Database Delivery Maturity Framework PDF here   Level D1 – Baseline Work directly on live databases Sometimes work directly in production Generate manual scripts for releases. Sometimes use a product like SQL Compare or similar to do this Any tests that we might have are run manually Level D2 – Beginner Have some ad-hoc DB version control such as manually adding upgrade scripts to a version control system Attempt is made to keep production in sync with development environments There is some documentation and planning of manual deployments Some basic automated DB testing in process Level D3 – Intermediate The database is fully version-controlled with a product like Red Gate SQL Source Control or SSDT Database environments are managed Production environment schema is reproducible from the source control system There are some automated tests Have looked at using migration scripts for difficult database refactoring cases Level D4 – Advanced Using continuous integration for database changes Build, testing and deployment of DB changes carried out through a proper database release process Fully automated tests Production system is monitored for fast feedback to developers   Does this model reflect your team at all? Where are you on this journey? We’d be very interested in knowing how you get on. We’re doing a lot of work at the moment, at Red Gate, trying to help people progress through these stages. For example, if you’re currently not source controlling your database, then this is a natural next step. If you are already source controlling your database, what about the next stage – continuous integration and automated release management? To help understand these issues, there’s a summary of the Red Gate Database Delivery learning program on our site, alongside a Patterns and Practices library here on Simple-Talk and a Training Academy section on our documentation site to help you get up and running with the tools you need to progress. All feedback is welcome and it would be great to hear where you find yourself on this journey! This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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• Learnings from trying to write better software: Loud errors from the very start

  - by theo.spears

  Microsoft made a very small number of backwards incompatible changes between .NET 1.1 and 2.0, because they wanted to make it as easy and safe as possible to port applications to the new runtime. (Here’s a list.) However, one thing they did change was what happens when a background thread fails with an unhanded exception - in .NET 1.1 nothing happened, the thread terminated, and the application continued oblivious. Try the same trick in .NET 2.0 and the entire application, including all threads, will rudely terminate. There are three reasons for this. Firstly if a background thread has crashed, it may have left the entire application in an inconsistent state, in a way that will affect other threads. It’s better to terminate the entire application than continue and have the application perform actions based on a broken state, for example take customer orders, or write corrupt files to disk.  Secondly, during software development, it is far better for errors to be loud and obtrusive. Even if you have unit tests and integration tests (and you should), a key part of ensuring software works properly is to actually try using it, both through systematic testing and through the casual use all software gets by its developers during use. Subtle errors are easy to miss if you are not actually doing real work using the application, loud errors are obvious. Thirdly, and most importantly, even if catching and swallowing exceptions indiscriminately doesn't cause any problems in your application, the presence of unexpected exceptions shows you do not fully understand the behavior of your code. The currently released version of your application may be absolutely correct. However, because your mental model of the behavior is wrong, any future change you make to the program could and probably will introduce critical errors.  This applies to more than just exceptions causing threads to exit, any unexpected state should make the application blow up in an un-ignorable way. The worst thing you can do is silently swallow errors and continue. And let's be clear, writing to a log file does not count as blowing up in an un-ignorable way.  This is all simple as long as the call stack only contains your code, but when your functions start to be called by third party or .NET framework code, it's surprisingly easy for exceptions to start vanishing. Let's look at two examples.   1. Windows forms drag drop events  Usually if you throw an exception from a winforms event handler it will bring up the "application has crashed" dialog with abort and continue options. This is a good default behavior - the error is big and loud, but it is possible for the user to ignore the error and hopefully save their data, if somehow this bug makes it past testing. However drag and drop are different - throw an exception from one of these and it will just be silently swallowed with no explanation.  By the way, it's not just drag and drop events. Timer events do it too.  You can research how exceptions are treated in different handlers and code appropriately, but the safest and most user friendly approach is to always catch exceptions in your event handlers and show your own error message. I'll talk about one good approach to handling these exceptions at the end of this post.   2. SSMS integration for SQL Tab Magic  A while back wrote an SSMS add-in called SQL Tab Magic (learn more about the process here). It works by listening to certain SSMS events and remembering what documents are opened and closed. I deployed it internally and it was used for a few months by a number of people without problems, so I was reasonably confident in its quality. Before releasing I made a few cleanups, including introducing error reporting. Bam. A few days later I was looking at over 1,000 error reports in my inbox. In turns out I wasn't handling table designers properly. The exceptions were there, but again SSMS was helpfully swallowing them all for me, so I was blissfully unaware. Had I made my errors loud from the start, I would have noticed these issues long before and fixed them.   Handling exceptions  Now you are systematically catching exceptions throughout your application, you need to do something with them. I've tried 3 options: log them, alert the user, and automatically send them home.  There are a few good options for logging in .NET. The most widespread is Apache log4net, which provides a very capable and configurable logging framework. There is also NLog which has a compatible interface, with a greater emphasis on fluent rather than XML configuration.  Alerting the user serves two purposes. Firstly it means they understand their action has failed to they don't just assume it worked (Silent file copy failure is a problem if you then delete the originals) or that they should keep waiting for a background task to complete. Secondly, it means the users can report the bug to your support team, and then you can fix it. This means the message you show the user should contain the information you need as a developer to identify and fix it. And the user will probably just send you a screenshot of the dialog, so it shouldn't be hidden by scroll bars.  This leads us to the third option, automatically sending error reports home. By automatic I mean with minimal effort on the part of the user, rather than doing it silently behind their backs. The advantage of this is you can send back far more detailed and precise information than you can expect a user to include in an email, and by making it easier to report errors, you make it more likely users will do so.  We do this using a great tool called SmartAssembly (full disclosure: this is a product made by Red Gate). It captures complete stack traces including the values of all local variables and then allows the user to send all this information back with a single click. We also capture log files to help understand what lead up to the error. We then use the free SmartAssembly Sync for Jira to dedupe these reports and raise them as bugs in our bug tracking system.  The combined effect of loud errors during development and then automatic error reporting once software is deployed allows us to find and fix more bugs, correct misunderstandings on how our software works, and overall is a key piece in delivering higher quality software. However it is no substitute for having motivated cunning testers in the building - and we're looking to hire more of those too.   If you found this post interesting you should follow me on twitter.  

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• Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 3: Anonymous partial-trust consumer

  - by Elton Stoneman

  This is the third in the IPASBR series, see also: Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 1: Exposing the on-premise service Integration Patterns with Azure Service Bus Relay, Part 2: Anonymous full-trust .NET consumer As the patterns get further from the simple .NET full-trust consumer, all that changes is the communication protocol and the authentication mechanism. In Part 3 the scenario is that we still have a secure .NET environment consuming our service, so we can store shared keys securely, but the runtime environment is locked down so we can't use Microsoft.ServiceBus to get the nice WCF relay bindings. To support this we will expose a RESTful endpoint through the Azure Service Bus, and require the consumer to send a security token with each HTTP service request. Pattern applicability This is a good fit for scenarios where: the runtime environment is secure enough to keep shared secrets the consumer can execute custom code, including building HTTP requests with custom headers the consumer cannot use the Azure SDK assemblies the service may need to know who is consuming it the service does not need to know who the end-user is Note there isn't actually a .NET requirement here. By exposing the service in a REST endpoint, anything that can talk HTTP can be a consumer. We'll authenticate through ACS which also gives us REST endpoints, so the service is still accessed securely. Our real-world example would be a hosted cloud app, where we we have enough room in the app's customisation to keep the shared secret somewhere safe and to hook in some HTTP calls. We will be flowing an identity through to the on-premise service now, but it will be the service identity given to the consuming app - the end user's identity isn't flown through yet. In this post, we’ll consume the service from Part 1 in ASP.NET using the WebHttpRelayBinding. The code for Part 3 (+ Part 1) is on GitHub here: IPASBR Part 3. Authenticating and authorizing with ACS We'll follow the previous examples and add a new service identity for the namespace in ACS, so we can separate permissions for different consumers (see walkthrough in Part 1). I've named the identity partialTrustConsumer. We’ll be authenticating against ACS with an explicit HTTP call, so we need a password credential rather than a symmetric key – for a nice secure option, generate a symmetric key, copy to the clipboard, then change type to password and paste in the key: We then need to do the same as in Part 2 , add a rule to map the incoming identity claim to an outgoing authorization claim that allows the identity to send messages to Service Bus: Issuer: Access Control Service Input claim type: http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2005/05/identity/claims/nameidentifier Input claim value: partialTrustConsumer Output claim type: net.windows.servicebus.action Output claim value: Send As with Part 2, this sets up a service identity which can send messages into Service Bus, but cannot register itself as a listener, or manage the namespace. RESTfully exposing the on-premise service through Azure Service Bus Relay The part 3 sample code is ready to go, just put your Azure details into Solution Items\AzureConnectionDetails.xml and “Run Custom Tool” on the .tt files.  But to do it yourself is very simple. We already have a WebGet attribute in the service for locally making REST calls, so we are just going to add a new endpoint which uses the WebHttpRelayBinding to relay that service through Azure. It's as easy as adding this endpoint to Web.config for the service:         <endpoint address="https://sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net/rest"                   binding="webHttpRelayBinding"                    contract="Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services.IFormatService"                   behaviorConfiguration="SharedSecret">         </endpoint> - and adding the webHttp attribute in your endpoint behavior:           <behavior name="SharedSecret">             <webHttp/>             <transportClientEndpointBehavior credentialType="SharedSecret">               <clientCredentials>                 <sharedSecret issuerName="serviceProvider"                               issuerSecret="gl0xaVmlebKKJUAnpripKhr8YnLf9Neaf6LR53N8uGs="/>               </clientCredentials>             </transportClientEndpointBehavior>           </behavior> Where's my WSDL? The metadata story for REST is a bit less automated. In our local webHttp endpoint we've enabled WCF's built-in help, so if you navigate to: http://localhost/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.Services/FormatService.svc/rest/help - you'll see the uri format for making a GET request to the service. The format is the same over Azure, so this is where you'll be connecting: https://[your-namespace].servicebus.windows.net/rest/reverse?string=abc123 Build the service with the new endpoint, open that in a browser and you'll get an XML version of an HTTP status code - a 401 with an error message stating that you haven’t provided an authorization header: <?xml version="1.0"?><Error><Code>401</Code><Detail>MissingToken: The request contains no authorization header..TrackingId:4cb53408-646b-4163-87b9-bc2b20cdfb75_5,TimeStamp:10/3/2012 8:34:07 PM</Detail></Error> By default, the setup of your Service Bus endpoint as a relying party in ACS expects a Simple Web Token to be presented with each service request, and in the browser we're not passing one, so we can't access the service. Note that this request doesn't get anywhere near your on-premise service, Service Bus only relays requests once they've got the necessary approval from ACS. Why didn't the consumer need to get ACS authorization in Part 2? It did, but it was all done behind the scenes in the NetTcpRelayBinding. By specifying our Shared Secret credentials in the consumer, the service call is preceded by a check on ACS to see that the identity provided is a) valid, and b) allowed access to our Service Bus endpoint. By making manual HTTP requests, we need to take care of that ACS check ourselves now. We do that with a simple WebClient call to the ACS endpoint of our service; passing the shared secret credentials, we will get back an SWT: var values = new System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection(); values.Add("wrap_name", "partialTrustConsumer"); //service identity name values.Add("wrap_password", "suCei7AzdXY9toVH+S47C4TVyXO/UUFzu0zZiSCp64Y="); //service identity password values.Add("wrap_scope", "http://sixeyed-ipasbr.servicebus.windows.net/"); //this is the realm of the RP in ACS var acsClient = new WebClient(); var responseBytes = acsClient.UploadValues("https://sixeyed-ipasbr-sb.accesscontrol.windows.net/WRAPv0.9/", "POST", values); rawToken = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(responseBytes); With a little manipulation, we then attach the SWT to subsequent REST calls in the authorization header; the token contains the Send claim returned from ACS, so we will be authorized to send messages into Service Bus. Running the sample Navigate to http://localhost:2028/Sixeyed.Ipasbr.WebHttpClient/Default.cshtml, enter a string and hit Go! - your string will be reversed by your on-premise service, routed through Azure: Using shared secret client credentials in this way means ACS is the identity provider for your service, and the claim which allows Send access to Service Bus is consumed by Service Bus. None of the authentication details make it through to your service, so your service is not aware who the consumer is (MSDN calls this "anonymous authentication").

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• CISCO 2911 Router configuration

  - by bala

  Device cisco 2911 router configuration support is required please. I have exchange server 2010 configured and working without any errors the problem is in cisco router configuration when exchange server sends emails out the receives WAN IP not the public ip. I have configured RDNS lookups with our MX record IP addesses that match the FQDN but all our emails are rejected because it does not match with the public ip. Receiving mails problem is not an problem all mails are coming through. i am sure i am missing something on the router configuration that does not sends the public ip, can any one help me to solve this issue. Note; I've got 1 WAN IP & 8 Public IP from ISP . Find below the running configuration. Building configuration... Current configuration : 2734 bytes ! ! Last configuration change at 06:32:13 UTC Tue Apr 3 2012 ! NVRAM config last updated at 06:32:14 UTC Tue Apr 3 2012 ! NVRAM config last updated at 06:32:14 UTC Tue Apr 3 2012 version 15.1 service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec service password-encryption ! hostname BSBG-LL ! boot-start-marker boot-end-marker ! ! enable secret 5 $x$xHrxxxxx5ox0 enable password 7 xx23xx5FxxE1xx044 ! no aaa new-model ! no ipv6 cef ip source-route ip cef ! ! ! ! ! ip flow-cache timeout active 1 ip domain name yourdomain.com ip name-server 213.42.20.20 ip name-server 195.229.241.222 multilink bundle-name authenticated ! ! crypto pki token default removal timeout 0 ! ! license udi pid CISCO2911/K9 ! ! username bsbg ! ! ! ! ! ! interface Embedded-Service-Engine0/0 no ip address shutdown ! interface GigabitEthernet0/0 ip address 192.168.0.9 255.255.255.0 ip flow ingress ip nat inside ip virtual-reassembly in duplex auto speed 100 no cdp enable ! interface GigabitEthernet0/1 ip address 213.42.xx.x2 255.255.255.252 ip nat outside ip virtual-reassembly in duplex auto speed auto no cdp enable ! interface GigabitEthernet0/2 no ip address shutdown duplex auto speed auto ! ip forward-protocol nd ! no ip http server no ip http secure-server ! ip nat inside source list 120 interface GigabitEthernet0/1 overload ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 25 94.56.89.100 25 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 53 94.56.89.100 53 extendable ip nat inside source static udp 192.168.0.4 53 94.56.89.100 53 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 110 94.56.89.100 110 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 443 94.56.89.100 443 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 587 94.56.89.100 587 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 995 94.56.89.100 995 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 3389 94.56.89.100 3389 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.4 443 94.56.89.101 443 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.12 80 94.56.89.102 80 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.12 443 94.56.89.102 443 extendable ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.12 3389 94.56.89.102 3389 extendable ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 213.42.69.41 ! access-list 120 permit ip 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255 any ! ! ! control-plane ! ! ! line con 0 exec-timeout 5 0 line aux 0 line 2 no activation-character no exec transport preferred none transport input all transport output pad telnet rlogin lapb-ta mop udptn v120 ssh stopbits 1 line vty 0 4 password 7 xx64xxD530D26086Dxx login transport input all ! scheduler allocate 20000 1000 end

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Constraining Generics with Where Clause

  - by James Michael Hare

  Back when I was primarily a C++ developer, I loved C++ templates.  The power of writing very reusable generic classes brought the art of programming to a brand new level.  Unfortunately, when .NET 1.0 came about, they didn’t have a template equivalent.  With .NET 2.0 however, we finally got generics, which once again let us spread our wings and program more generically in the world of .NET However, C# generics behave in some ways very differently from their C++ template cousins.  There is a handy clause, however, that helps you navigate these waters to make your generics more powerful. The Problem – C# Assumes Lowest Common Denominator In C++, you can create a template and do nearly anything syntactically possible on the template parameter, and C++ will not check if the method/fields/operations invoked are valid until you declare a realization of the type.  Let me illustrate with a C++ example: 1: // compiles fine, C++ makes no assumptions as to T 2: template <typename T> 3: class ReverseComparer 4: { 5: public: 6: int Compare(const T& lhs, const T& rhs) 7: { 8: return rhs.CompareTo(lhs); 9: } 10: }; Notice that we are invoking a method CompareTo() off of template type T.  Because we don’t know at this point what type T is, C++ makes no assumptions and there are no errors. C++ tends to take the path of not checking the template type usage until the method is actually invoked with a specific type, which differs from the behavior of C#: 1: // this will NOT compile! C# assumes lowest common denominator. 2: public class ReverseComparer<T> 3: { 4: public int Compare(T lhs, T rhs) 5: { 6: return lhs.CompareTo(rhs); 7: } 8: } So why does C# give us a compiler error even when we don’t yet know what type T is?  This is because C# took a different path in how they made generics.  Unless you specify otherwise, for the purposes of the code inside the generic method, T is basically treated like an object (notice I didn’t say T is an object). That means that any operations, fields, methods, properties, etc that you attempt to use of type T must be available at the lowest common denominator type: object.  Now, while object has the broadest applicability, it also has the fewest specific.  So how do we allow our generic type placeholder to do things more than just what object can do? Solution: Constraint the Type With Where Clause So how do we get around this in C#?  The answer is to constrain the generic type placeholder with the where clause.  Basically, the where clause allows you to specify additional constraints on what the actual type used to fill the generic type placeholder must support. You might think that narrowing the scope of a generic means a weaker generic.  In reality, though it limits the number of types that can be used with the generic, it also gives the generic more power to deal with those types.  In effect these constraints says that if the type meets the given constraint, you can perform the activities that pertain to that constraint with the generic placeholders. Constraining Generic Type to Interface or Superclass One of the handiest where clause constraints is the ability to specify the type generic type must implement a certain interface or be inherited from a certain base class. For example, you can’t call CompareTo() in our first C# generic without constraints, but if we constrain T to IComparable<T>, we can: 1: public class ReverseComparer<T> 2: where T : IComparable<T> 3: { 4: public int Compare(T lhs, T rhs) 5: { 6: return lhs.CompareTo(rhs); 7: } 8: } Now that we’ve constrained T to an implementation of IComparable<T>, this means that our variables of generic type T may now call any members specified in IComparable<T> as well.  This means that the call to CompareTo() is now legal. If you constrain your type, also, you will get compiler warnings if you attempt to use a type that doesn’t meet the constraint.  This is much better than the syntax error you would get within C++ template code itself when you used a type not supported by a C++ template. Constraining Generic Type to Only Reference Types Sometimes, you want to assign an instance of a generic type to null, but you can’t do this without constraints, because you have no guarantee that the type used to realize the generic is not a value type, where null is meaningless. Well, we can fix this by specifying the class constraint in the where clause.  By declaring that a generic type must be a class, we are saying that it is a reference type, and this allows us to assign null to instances of that type: 1: public static class ObjectExtensions 2: { 3: public static TOut Maybe<TIn, TOut>(this TIn value, Func<TIn, TOut> accessor) 4: where TOut : class 5: where TIn : class 6: { 7: return (value != null) ? accessor(value) : null; 8: } 9: } In the example above, we want to be able to access a property off of a reference, and if that reference is null, pass the null on down the line.  To do this, both the input type and the output type must be reference types (yes, nullable value types could also be considered applicable at a logical level, but there’s not a direct constraint for those). Constraining Generic Type to only Value Types Similarly to constraining a generic type to be a reference type, you can also constrain a generic type to be a value type.  To do this you use the struct constraint which specifies that the generic type must be a value type (primitive, struct, enum, etc). Consider the following method, that will convert anything that is IConvertible (int, double, string, etc) to the value type you specify, or null if the instance is null. 1: public static T? ConvertToNullable<T>(IConvertible value) 2: where T : struct 3: { 4: T? result = null; 5:  6: if (value != null) 7: { 8: result = (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T)); 9: } 10:  11: return result; 12: } Because T was constrained to be a value type, we can use T? (System.Nullable<T>) where we could not do this if T was a reference type. Constraining Generic Type to Require Default Constructor You can also constrain a type to require existence of a default constructor.  Because by default C# doesn’t know what constructors a generic type placeholder does or does not have available, it can’t typically allow you to call one.  That said, if you give it the new() constraint, it will mean that the type used to realize the generic type must have a default (no argument) constructor. Let’s assume you have a generic adapter class that, given some mappings, will adapt an item from type TFrom to type TTo.  Because it must create a new instance of type TTo in the process, we need to specify that TTo has a default constructor: 1: // Given a set of Action<TFrom,TTo> mappings will map TFrom to TTo 2: public class Adapter<TFrom, TTo> : IEnumerable<Action<TFrom, TTo>> 3: where TTo : class, new() 4: { 5: // The list of translations from TFrom to TTo 6: public List<Action<TFrom, TTo>> Translations { get; private set; } 7:  8: // Construct with empty translation and reverse translation sets. 9: public Adapter() 10: { 11: // did this instead of auto-properties to allow simple use of initializers 12: Translations = new List<Action<TFrom, TTo>>(); 13: } 14:  15: // Add a translator to the collection, useful for initializer list 16: public void Add(Action<TFrom, TTo> translation) 17: { 18: Translations.Add(translation); 19: } 20:  21: // Add a translator that first checks a predicate to determine if the translation 22: // should be performed, then translates if the predicate returns true 23: public void Add(Predicate<TFrom> conditional, Action<TFrom, TTo> translation) 24: { 25: Translations.Add((from, to) => 26: { 27: if (conditional(from)) 28: { 29: translation(from, to); 30: } 31: }); 32: } 33:  34: // Translates an object forward from TFrom object to TTo object. 35: public TTo Adapt(TFrom sourceObject) 36: { 37: var resultObject = new TTo(); 38:  39: // Process each translation 40: Translations.ForEach(t => t(sourceObject, resultObject)); 41:  42: return resultObject; 43: } 44:  45: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through the collection. 46: public IEnumerator<Action<TFrom, TTo>> GetEnumerator() 47: { 48: return Translations.GetEnumerator(); 49: } 50:  51: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through a collection. 52: IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() 53: { 54: return GetEnumerator(); 55: } 56: } Notice, however, you can’t specify any other constructor, you can only specify that the type has a default (no argument) constructor. Summary The where clause is an excellent tool that gives your .NET generics even more power to perform tasks higher than just the base "object level" behavior.  There are a few things you cannot specify with constraints (currently) though: Cannot specify the generic type must be an enum. Cannot specify the generic type must have a certain property or method without specifying a base class or interface – that is, you can’t say that the generic must have a Start() method. Cannot specify that the generic type allows arithmetic operations. Cannot specify that the generic type requires a specific non-default constructor. In addition, you cannot overload a template definition with different, opposing constraints.  For example you can’t define a Adapter<T> where T : struct and Adapter<T> where T : class.  Hopefully, in the future we will get some of these things to make the where clause even more useful, but until then what we have is extremely valuable in making our generics more user friendly and more powerful!   Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Little Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,where,generics

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• MapRedux - PowerShell and Big Data

  - by Dittenhafer Solutions

  MapRedux – #PowerShell and #Big Data Have you been hearing about “big data”, “map reduce” and other large scale computing terms over the past couple of years and been curious to dig into more detail? Have you read some of the Apache Hadoop online documentation and unfortunately concluded that it wasn't feasible to setup a “test” hadoop environment on your machine? More recently, I have read about some of Microsoft’s work to enable Hadoop on the Azure cloud. Being a "Microsoft"-leaning technologist, I am more inclinded to be successful with experimentation when on the Windows platform. Of course, it is not that I am "religious" about one set of technologies other another, but rather more experienced. Anyway, within the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about PowerShell a bit more as the 2012 PowerShell Scripting Games approach and it occured to me that PowerShell's support for Windows Remote Management (WinRM), and some other inherent features of PowerShell might lend themselves particularly well to a simple implementation of the MapReduce framework. I fired up my PowerShell ISE and started writing just to see where it would take me. Quite simply, the ScriptBlock feature combined with the ability of Invoke-Command to create remote jobs on networked servers provides much of the plumbing of a distributed computing environment. There are some limiting factors of course. Microsoft provided some default settings which prevent PowerShell from taking over a network without administrative approval first. But even with just one adjustment, a given Windows-based machine can become a node in a MapReduce-style distributed computing environment. Ok, so enough introduction. Let's talk about the code. First, any machine that will participate as a remote "node" will need WinRM enabled for remote access, as shown below. This is not exactly practical for hundreds of intended nodes, but for one (or five) machines in a test environment it does just fine. C:> winrm quickconfig WinRM is not set up to receive requests on this machine. The following changes must be made: Set the WinRM service type to auto start. Start the WinRM service. Make these changes [y/n]? y Alternatively, you could take the approach described in the Remotely enable PSRemoting post from the TechNet forum and use PowerShell to create remote scheduled tasks that will call Enable-PSRemoting on each intended node. Invoke-MapRedux Moving on, now that you have one or more remote "nodes" enabled, you can consider the actual Map and Reduce algorithms. Consider the following snippet: $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose Invoke-MapRedux takes an instance of a MapReduceItem which references the Map and Reduce scriptblocks, an array of computer names which are the remote nodes, and the initial data set to be processed. As simple as that, you can start working with concepts of big data and the MapReduce paradigm. Now, how did we get there? I have published the initial version of my PsMapRedux PowerShell Module on GitHub. The PsMapRedux module provides the Invoke-MapRedux function described above. Feel free to browse the underlying code and even contribute to the project! In a later post, I plan to show some of the inner workings of the module, but for now let's move on to how the Map and Reduce functions are defined. Map Both the Map and Reduce functions need to follow a prescribed prototype. The prototype for a Map function in the MapRedux module is as follows. A simple scriptblock that takes one PsObject parameter and returns a hashtable. It is important to note that the PsObject $dataset parameter is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property which offers an array of data to be processed by the Map function. $aMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) # Indicate the job is running on the remote node. Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); # The hashtable to return $list = @{}; # ... Perform the mapping work and prepare the $list hashtable result with your custom PSObject... # ... The $dataset has a single 'Data' property which contains an array of data rows # which is a subset of the originally submitted data set. # Return the hashtable (Key, PSObject) Write-Output $list; } Reduce Likewise, with the Reduce function a simple prototype must be followed which takes a $key and a result $dataset from the MapRedux's partitioning function (which joins the Map results by key). Again, the $dataset is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property as described in the Map section. $aReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) # The hashtable to return $redux = @{}; # Return Write-Output $redux; } All Together Now When everything is put together in a short example script, you implement your Map and Reduce functions, query for some starting data, build the MapReduxItem via New-MapReduxItem and call Invoke-MapRedux to get the process started: # Import the MapRedux and SQL Server providers Import-Module "MapRedux" Import-Module “sqlps” -DisableNameChecking # Query the database for a dataset Set-Location SQLSERVER:\sql\dbserver1\default\databases\myDb $query = "SELECT MyKey, Date, Value1 FROM BigData ORDER BY MyKey"; Write-Host "Query: $query" $dataset = Invoke-SqlCmd -query $query # Build the Map function $MyMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); $list = @{}; foreach($row in $dataset.Data) { # Write-Host ("Key: " + $row.MyKey.ToString()); if($list.ContainsKey($row.MyKey) -eq $true) { $s = $list.Item($row.MyKey); $s.Sum += $row.Value1; $s.Count++; } else { $s = New-Object PSObject; $s | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name MyKey -Value $row.MyKey; $s | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name Sum -Value $row.Value1; $list.Add($row.MyKey, $s); } } Write-Output $list; } $MyReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) $redux = @{}; $count = 0; foreach($s in $dataset.Data) { $sum += $s.Sum; $count += 1; } # Reduce $redux.Add($s.MyKey, $sum / $count); # Return Write-Output $redux; } # Create the item data $Mr = New-MapReduxItem "My Test MapReduce Job" $MyMap $MyReduce # Array of processing nodes... $MyNodes = ("node1", "node2", "node3", "node4", "localhost") # Run the Map Reduce routine... $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose # Show the results Set-Location C:\ $MyMrResults | Out-GridView Conclusion I hope you have seen through this article that PowerShell has a significant infrastructure available for distributed computing. While it does take some code to expose a MapReduce-style framework, much of the work is already done and PowerShell could prove to be the the easiest platform to develop and run big data jobs in your corporate data center, potentially in the Azure cloud, or certainly as an academic excerise at home or school. Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date on the continuing progress of my Powershell MapRedux module, and thanks for reading! Daniel

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, August 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCoevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0: This is the first alpha release of Coevery.ExpressProfiler: Initial release of ExpressProfiler v1.2: This is initial release of ExpressProfilerNabu Library: 2012-08-29, 14: .Net Framework 4.0, .Net Framework 4.5 Debug and Release builds.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...ImageServer: v1.1: This is the first version releasedChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...Home Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0828.1800 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install di...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3406 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants DateTime::modify(), DateTime::getOffset() TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode DateTime methods (WordPress posting fix) Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging ...NougakuDoCompanion: v1.1.0: Add temp folder of local resource, Resize local resource. Change launch ruby commnadline args from rack to bundle. 1.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0 cspkg.zip - cspkg and ServiceConfiguration.xml (small , medium, large, extra large vm) - include NougakudoSetupTool.exe and readme.txt 2.NougakuDoCompanion v1.1.0.zip - Source code. include NougakudoSetupTool.exe - include activerecord-sqlserver-adapter patch in paches folder. 3.Depends tools. - Windows Azure SDK for .NET June 2012(1.7SP1) - Windows ...WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke®: CKEditor Provider 1.14.06: Whats New Added CKEditor 3.6.4 oEmbed Plugin can now handle short urls changes The Template File can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Style Sets can now parsed from an xml file instead of js (More Info...) Fixed Showing wrong Pages in Child Portal in the Link Dialog Fixed Urls in dnnpages Plugin Fixed Issue #6969 WordCount Plugin Fixed Issue #6973 File-Browser: Fixed Deleting of Files File-Browser: Improved loading time File-Browser: Improved the loa...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.VFPX: Data Explorer 3: This release is the first alpha release for DX3. Even though great care has been taken, the project manager highly recommends you work with test data and you regularly back up the DataExplorer.DBF found in your HOME(7) folder. New features are documented on the project home page. IMPORTANT Once installed, make sure to go to the Data Explorer Options page, click the Restore to Default button. This brings up a dialog asking if you want to maintain connections and customizations that were done...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....Facebook Web Parts for SharePoint 2010: Version 1.0.1 - WSP: SharePoint 2010 solution (WSP) Resolved a bug from Version 1.0 - WSP where user profile names would not properly update.Contactor: GSMContactorProgram V1.0 - Source Code: This is the source code for the program, For Visual Studio 2012 RCTouchInjector: TouchInjector 1.1: Version 1.1: fixed a bug with the autorun optionWinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.0: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - Visual Studio 2012: Welcome to the Branching and Merging Guide Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording team All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issues / Bugs Spelling, grammar and content revisions are in progress. Hotfix will be published.New ProjectsAd Specific Redirect Generator: Ad Specific Redirect Generatorargsv, command line argument processors: Two libraries to process command line options, one(argsvCPython) is written for Python applications and other one(the argsvCPP) is for C++ applications.AutomationML Export Import Mapper: This Tool supports the mapping between SystemUnitClass-Libraries, used to exchange data in the AutomationML Format between Exporters and Importers.BioPathSearch: Tool for probibalistic biochemical networks construction from input substrete to required product based on information from KEGG databasebuidingapp: i am buiding app but i not sure public because i don't code finish. then i upload code and pulish my application,. thank you for reading mynote. see you next tiCatalogo de Empresas y Productos: Este es el catalogo de empresas y productos asociadas a la produccion agricola en CRclarktestcodeplex: test codeplexDatabase Clean-up Engine - DataWashroom: Database Clean-up Rules EngineEdEx: edexExpense Management System: Expense Management SystemFinger Tracking with Kinect SDK for XBOX: This project explained step by step how to perform finger and hand tracking with the Kinect for XBOX with the official Kinect SDK.Flower - Workflow Engine: Flower is a simple yet powerful workflow engine allowing to develop workflows in C#.Grid: Copyright 2011 Badkid development. All rights reserved. Play Grid the the retro style arcade puzzle game. Join lines between the gids to create boxes to get pHeadSprings Assignment: A program to create custom tokens using class FizzBuzz programming. Ice Scream: IcescreamiD Commerce + Logistics: iD Commerce + Logistics is a company based outside of Chicago, Illinois specializing in fulfillment solutions and custom development.Mido: Mido is a simple utility that adds text or images watermarks to your photos, images and pictures.MLSTest: MLSTest is a Windows based software for the analysis of Multilocus Sequence Data for euckaryotic organisms My Project Foundation Library: A foundation library for asp.net web project, including easy-to-use data access layer and other utility code.MyTestProject001: ?????codeplex，??????????。MyTestProject2: My Test projectNEF - Native Extensibility Framework: NEF is an open source IoC extensibility framework targetting C++. It is modeled after the more useful features of MEF in C#.RazorSpy: A simple toy/tool for exploring the output of the Razor Parser for a particular document.Relay Command for WinRT: A simple RelayCommand for WinRT (sans and entire MVVM framework).Rocca. Store: Document storage with email capabilitiesScrabble Nights: Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 gridSlFrame: SlFrameSmart Data Access layer: WE ARE USING SMART DATA ACCESS LAYER MEANS ITS TIME TO FORGET ABOUT SYSTEM.DATA.SQLCLIENT NAMESPACE.SportSlot: This project allows you to search for available sport venuesSwitcher 2012: Allows for fast switching between source and header file in Visual Studio 2012testddtfs2908201201: satime tracking: coming soonTradePlatform.NET: TradePlatform.NET is addition to MetaTrader 4 client terminal which extends trading experience, MQL language and provides .NET world communication bridge.WaMa-SkyDriveClient: Project Description WaMa-SkyDriveClient is a Windows Skydrive-client, with Live authentication.Web Optimization: The ASP.NET Web optimization framework provides services to improve the performance of your ASP.NET Web applications.Web Pocket: Web tool for rapid application development of mobile software WinRT Toolkit: The purpose of WinRT Toolkit is to provide efficient and developer friendly instruments (API / Components...).Xcel Directory Service: Xcel Directory Service is an Excel 2010 add-in used to retrieve data from Active Directory using an import utility and user defined functions.zhangfacai: this project is based on ASP.NET MVC 4 and HTML5. It's a website to integrate public web services like amazon, live, facebook, etc. By using these services, mak

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 28, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 28, 2012Popular ReleasesScreenShot: InstallScreenShot: This is the current stable release..Net Code Samples: Code Samples: Code samples (SLNs).LINQ_Koans: LinqKoans v.02: Cleaned up a bitKeelKit: KeelKit 3.0.7600.638: ?、??MySQL?Model?? Mysql ????? ? http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/ ??? mysql-connector-net-6.5.4.msi ???， VS???KeelKit ???????MySQL , ????????? ?? DemoMySQL.rar ???， ???????????MySqL??Model. ?????? C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Config\machine.config ??? ??????。 <system.data> <DbProviderFactories> <add name="MySQL Data Provider" invariant="MySql.Data.MySqlClient" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for MySQL" type="MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlC...TwitterOAuth: TwitterOauth 0.25.16.0116: Beta releasetesttom05242012git02: d1: d1testdd05242012git001: zxczxc: zxczxczxcCODE Framework: 4.0.20524.0: This release has quite a few enhancements for WPF applications and SOA features. See change logs for more details.CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 - Final Release: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. FluentscriptCommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 contains a scripting language called FluentScript. Application: FluentScript Version: 0.9.8 Build: 0.9.8.4 Changeset: 75050 ( CommonLibrary.NET ) Release date: May 24, 2012 Binaries: CommonLibrary.dll Namespace: ComLib.Lang Project site: http://fluentscript.codeplex.com...System Center Orchestrator Integration Packs: Active Directory 3.2: An integration pack enabling AD Automation 3.2 Updates LDAP Pathing updated to support cross forest scenarios Get Object Property Value Filtering efficiency enhancementsBunch of Small Tools: Mélangeur de vocabulaire japonais: Permet de générer des exercices de vocabulaire aléatoire à partir de listes de vocabulaire japonais. 22 listes sont fournies avec le programme.Expression Tree Visualizer for VS 2010: Expression Tree Visualizer Beta: This is a beta release, in this release some expression types are not handled and use a default visualization behavior. The first release will be published soon. Wait for it...Ulfi: Ulfi source: Build with Visual Studio 2010 Express C# or betterJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript developers to query and update data from different sources like webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook or YQL. See it in action in this 6 minutes video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJHgj1y0CU RC1 R2 Release highlights Knockout.js integrationUsing the Knockout.js module, your UI can be automatically refreshed when the data model changes, so you can develop the front-end of your data manager app even faster. Querying 1:N relations in W...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: 00.00.08 for DNN6: BEFORE USE YOU need to install the MSBuild Community Tasks available from http://msbuildtasks.tigris.org For best results you should configure your development environment as described in this blog post Then read this latest blog post about customizing and using these custom templates. Installation is simple To use this template place the ZIP (not extracted) file in your My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\Web OR for VB My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Te...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.53: fix issue #18106, where member operators on numeric literals caused the member part to be duplicated when not minifying numeric literals ADD NEW FEATURE: ability to create source map files! The first mapfile format to be supported is the Script# format. Use the new -map filename switch to create map files when building your sources.CreditAnalytics: CreditAnalytics Release 1.5: 22 May 2012 (v1.5) (Build 449) Regressor Framework: Implementation of the regressor set, tolerance check, curve scenario regressors, regression framework suite, and the eventual regression output. Discount Curve Regression: Regressing Base Curve Creation, scenario Curve creation, and calculation of spot/effective implied rates and discount factors. Credit Curve Regression: Regressing Base Curve Creation, scenario Curve creation, and calculation of spot/effective implied hazard rates, reco...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.3: 2012.05.22 Ver5.6.3 　(1) HTTP????????、ftp://??????????????????????LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.5.22: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionThis release is fixing start up issue.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4.2: This is a service release to address 1.4 and 1.4.1 bugs. Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4.2: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesNew Projects.Net Code Samples: Various .Net code samples. AFSAspnetPusherV1: my new wns project lolAFSAspnetPusherV2: renewed version ofAFSAspnetPusherV4: renewed one v4AgileDesign Utilities Library: This library provides common functionality usable for most software projects: Logger - Asynchronous logging on top of new Microsoft logging class TraceSource with simplified API NameOf - Avoid using string names using static reflection Various reflection helpersAssociate Many to Many Relationship Entities Tool for Dynamics CRM 2011: Associate Many to many relationship tool is used for Dynamics CRM 2011 to associate or disassociate N:N relationship entities. This tool is dynamics crm 2011 solution, which consist of one entity and one plugin. Entity "Many to Many Relationship" record is used by Many to many relationship plugin to associate or disassociate entities. If many to many relationship entity record is created then plugin associate/disassociate entities from record data.Boxhead Multiplayer Server: A PHP dedicated server for my multiplayer version of Boxhead.CodedUITraceFiletoCSV: Console Application to parse the result file generated by Coded UI Test execution ".trx" into a comma separated file for more readable and detailed result.FlipExt: FlipExt is an easy to use image converter. It converts any image to .png .bmp .jpg .gif .tif .jpeg .tiff .ico. More extensions will be added soon.Foo Values Maker: Foo creates values for your test class variables so that you can write tests faster.FoodFree: Projeto de monitoramento de enchentesHouodeProject: ????ITLand of Dreams, Codename: Waterloo: We want to create a classical Live-MMORPG you can play on your smartphone (in the first step only “Windows Phone” will be supported) with the basic idea of Ultima Online or similiar games in our mind. You can create one or more characters, choose some name, gender, basic attributes (skin and hair color, …) a race (e.g. ‘Human’) and a profession (e.g. ‘fighter’ or ‘craftsman’). Now he can freely travel through the whole world, meeting other players, fighting monsters, absolving quests, tra...Makecert UI: Makecert UI is a shell layer application on top of the Microsoft makecert.exe utility. Makecert UI makes it easy for you to create self signed certificates, even from your own CA.MS CRM Rich Text box: Rich text box plug-in for MS CRM 2011. Hope it will be helpful for many of you. Thank you for using it and let me know if any further help needed.Nivo Slider Web Part SharePoint 2010: SharePoint 2010 implementation of Nivo Slider. Easy way to put Nivo slider on any page!!Office365 Weather WebPart: Office 365 WebPart that displays a 5 day weather forecast for a given location. The weather data is retrieved from the Met Office feed hosted on the Windows Azure Data Market. This is a free data feed that provides weather data for the UK only.Private Cloud Solution Design: This project is named “Training Cloud”. It provides an appropriate solution which can be used for technical audiences self learning with a hands-on-lab experience using Microsoft technology hosted in a virtualized environment built on System Center 2012. Since it depends on hardware, such as RAM, Sotrage, Network , etc. At last, the end user could have all labs ready which deloyed on private cloud. And it can be easily matain , setup labs with cloud’s function. pyUpdater: pyupdater provides a platform for updating python based applications.SharePoint Document Navigator: SP Document Navigator is a front-end solution for navigating a document library using jQuery and jQuery Mobile Trimetable: Train schedule for WP7Upload Master Pages & Page Layouts to Master Page Gallery using PowerShell: This document details the steps to upload Master pages and Page Layouts to Master Page Gallery using the “Upload Master Pages” Utility. 1- Download the .zip file 2- Edit the “UploadMasterPages.bat” file and Change the <<site collection url>> in the text below with respect to the environment. e.g. http://sitecollectionurl 3- Save the “UploadMasterPages.bat” file and close it. 4- Put all of your master pages and page layouts to Doc folder. 5- Run “UploadMasterPages.bat” file as Administrat...vivo: vivo Vietnamese Voice Vietnamese Voice recognition project thaihung.bkhn@gmail.com http://eking.vnvnv: VNV Vietnamese Voice Vietnamese Voice recognition project thaihung.bkhn@gmail.com http://eking.vnWindows Phone 7 User Guide Page: Take your app's users through a guided tour! Make your app's hidden gems shine, make users understand your app's logic and UX better.WP-FTS: This plugin for Wordpress replaces the default search engine, implemented using a simple "LIKE" operator, with the usage of the more powerful Full-Text Engine that comes with SQL Server.

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• Building an Infrastructure Cloud with Oracle VM for x86 + Enterprise Manager 12c

  - by Richard Rotter

  Cloud Computing? Everyone is talking about Cloud these days. Everyone is explaining how the cloud will help you to bring your service up and running very fast, secure and with little effort. You can find these kinds of presentations at almost every event around the globe. But what is really behind all this stuff? Is it really so simple? And the answer is: Yes it is! With the Oracle SW Stack it is! In this post, I will try to bring this down to earth, demonstrating how easy it could be to build a cloud infrastructure with Oracle's solution for cloud computing.But let me cover some basics first: How fast can you build a cloud?How elastic is your cloud so you can provide new services on demand? How much effort does it take to monitor and operate your Cloud Infrastructure in order to meet your SLAs?How easy is it to chargeback for your services provided? These are the critical success factors of Cloud Computing. And Oracle has an answer to all those questions. By using Oracle VM for X86 in combination with Enterprise Manager 12c you can build and control your cloud environment very fast and easy. What are the fundamental building blocks for your cloud? Oracle Cloud Building Blocks #1 Hardware Surprise, surprise. Even the cloud needs to run somewhere, hence you will need hardware. This HW normally consists of servers, storage and networking. But Oracles goes beyond that. There are Optimized Solutions available for your cloud infrastructure. This is a cookbook to build your HW cloud platform. For example, building your cloud infrastructure with blades and our network infrastructure will reduce complexity in your datacenter (Blades with switch network modules, splitter cables to reduce the amount of cables, TOR (Top Of the Rack) switches which are building the interface to your infrastructure environment. Reducing complexity even in the cabling will help you to manage your environment more efficient and with less risk. Of course, our engineered systems fit into the cloud perfectly too. Although they are considered as a PaaS themselves, having the database SW (for Exadata) and the application development environment (for Exalogic) already deployed on them, in general they are ideal systems to enable you building your own cloud and PaaS infrastructure. #2 Virtualization The next missing link in the cloud setup is virtualization. For me personally, it's one of the most hidden "secret", that oracle can provide you with a complete virtualization stack in terms of a hypervisor on both architectures: X86 and Sparc CPUs. There is Oracle VM for X86 and Oracle VM for Sparc available at no additional  license costs if your are running this virtualization stack on top of Oracle HW (and with Oracle Premier Support for HW). This completes the virtualization portfolio together with Solaris Zones introduced already with Solaris 10 a few years ago. Let me explain how Oracle VM for X86 works: Oracle VM for x86 consists of two main parts: - The Oracle VM Server: Oracle VM Server is installed on bare metal and it is the hypervisor which is able to run virtual machines. It has a very small footprint. The ISO-Image of Oracle VM Server is only 200MB large. It is very small but efficient. You can install a OVM-Server in less than 5 mins by booting the Server with the ISO-Image assigned and providing the necessary configuration parameters (like installing an Linux distribution). After the installation, the OVM-Server is ready to use. That's all. - The Oracle VM-Manager: OVM-Manager is the central management tool where you can control your OVM-Servers. OVM-Manager provides the graphical user interface, which is an Application Development Framework (ADF) application, with a familiar web-browser based interface, to manage Oracle VM Servers, virtual machines, and resources. The Oracle VM Manager has the following capabilities: Create virtual machines Create server pools Power on and off virtual machines Manage networks and storage Import virtual machines, ISO files, and templates Manage high availability of Oracle VM Servers, server pools, and virtual machines Perform live migration of virtual machines I want to highlight one of the goodies which you can use if you are running Oracle VM for X86: Preconfigured, downloadable Virtual Machine Templates form edelivery With these templates, you can download completely preconfigured Virtual Machines in your environment, boot them up, configure them at first time boot and use it. There are templates for almost all Oracle SW and Applications (like Fusion Middleware, Database, Siebel, etc.) available. #3) Cloud Management The management of your cloud infrastructure is key. This is a day-to-day job. Acquiring HW, installing a virtualization layer on top of it is done just at the beginning and if you want to expand your infrastructure. But managing your cloud, keeping it up and running, deploying new services, changing your chargeback model, etc, these are the daily jobs. These jobs must be simple, secure and easy to manage. The Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud provides this functionality from one management cockpit. Enterprise Manager 12c uses Oracle VM Manager to control OVM Serverpools. Once you registered your OVM-Managers in Enterprise Manager, then you are able to setup your cloud infrastructure and manage everything from Enterprise Manager. What you need to do in EM12c is: ">Register your OVM Manager in Enterprise ManagerAfter Registering your OVM Manager, all the functionality of Oracle VM for X86 is also available in Enterprise Manager. Enterprise Manager works as a "Manger" of the Manager. You can register as many OVM-Managers you want and control your complete virtualization environment Create Roles and Users for your Self Service Portal in Enterprise ManagerWith this step you allow users to logon on the Enterprise Manager Self Service Portal. Users can request Virtual Machines in this portal. Setup the Cloud InfrastructureSetup the Quotas for your self service users. How many VMs can they request? How much of your resources ( cpu, memory, storage, network, etc. etc.)? Which SW components (templates, assemblys) can your self service users request? In this step, you basically set up the complete cloud infrastructure. Setup ChargebackOnce your cloud is set up, you need to configure your chargeback mechanism. The Enterprise Manager collects the resources metrics, which are used in a very deep level. Almost all collected Metrics could be used in the chargeback module. You can define chargeback plans based on configurations (charge for the amount of cpu, memory, storage is assigned to a machine, or for a specific OS which is installed) or chargeback on resource consumption (% of cpu used, storage used, etc). Or you can also define a combination of configuration and consumption chargeback plans. The chargeback module is very flexible. Here is a overview of the workflow how to handle infrastructure cloud in EM: Summary As you can see, setting up an Infrastructure Cloud Service with Oracle VM for X86 and Enterprise Manager 12c is really simple. I personally configured a complete cloud environment with three X86 servers and a small JBOD san box in less than 3 hours. There is no magic in it, it is all straightforward. Of course, you have to have some experience with Oracle VM and Enterprise Manager. Experience in setting up Linux environments helps as well. I plan to publish a technical cookbook in the next few weeks. I hope you found this post useful and will see you again here on our blog. Any hints, comments are welcome!

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• Source-control 'wet-work'?

  - by Phil Factor

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

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• Slow boot on Ubuntu 12.04, probable cause the network connection

  - by Ravi S Ghosh

  I have been having rather slow boot on Ubuntu 12.04. Lately, I tried to figure out the reason and it seems to be the network connection which does not get connected and requires multiple attempts. Here is part of dmesg [ 2.174349] EXT4-fs (sda2): INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem [ 2.174352] EXT4-fs (sda2): write access will be enabled during recovery [ 2.308172] firewire_core: created device fw0: GUID 384fc00005198d58, S400 [ 2.333457] usb 7-1.2: new low-speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd [ 2.465896] EXT4-fs (sda2): recovery complete [ 2.466406] EXT4-fs (sda2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) [ 2.589440] usb 7-1.3: new low-speed USB device number 4 using uhci_hcd **[ 18.292029] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready** [ 18.458958] udevd[377]: starting version 175 [ 18.639482] Adding 4200960k swap on /dev/sda5. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:4200960k [ 19.314127] wmi: Mapper loaded [ 19.426602] r592 0000:09:01.2: PCI INT B -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 19.426739] r592: driver successfully loaded [ 19.460105] input: Dell WMI hotkeys as /devices/virtual/input/input5 [ 19.493629] lp: driver loaded but no devices found [ 19.497012] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain [ 19.535523] ACPI Warning: _BQC returned an invalid level (20110623/video-480) [ 19.539457] acpi device:03: registered as cooling_device2 [ 19.539520] input: Video Bus as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:01/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input6 [ 19.539568] ACPI: Video Device [M86] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no) [ 19.578060] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [ 19.667708] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell Systems Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2) [ 19.763171] r852 0000:09:01.3: PCI INT B -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 [ 19.763258] r852: driver loaded successfully [ 19.854769] input: Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb7/7-1/7-1.2/7-1.2:1.0/input/input7 [ 19.854864] generic-usb 0003:045E:00DD.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-1.2/input0 [ 19.878605] input: Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb7/7-1/7-1.2/7-1.2:1.1/input/input8 [ 19.878698] generic-usb 0003:045E:00DD.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Device [Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-1.2/input1 [ 19.902779] input: DELL DELL USB Laser Mouse as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.1/usb7/7-1/7-1.3/7-1.3:1.0/input/input9 [ 19.925034] generic-usb 0003:046D:C063.0003: input,hidraw2: USB HID v1.10 Mouse [DELL DELL USB Laser Mouse] on usb-0000:00:1d.1-1.3/input0 [ 19.925057] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid [ 19.925059] usbhid: USB HID core driver [ 19.942362] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M (0c45:63ea) [ 19.947004] input: Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/input/input10 [ 19.947075] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo [ 19.947077] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1) [ 20.145232] Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, in-tree: [ 20.145235] Copyright(c) 2003-2011 Intel Corporation [ 20.145327] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 20.145357] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.145402] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: pci_resource_len = 0x00002000 [ 20.145404] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: pci_resource_base = ffffc90000674000 [ 20.145407] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: HW Revision ID = 0x0 [ 20.145531] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: irq 46 for MSI/MSI-X [ 20.145613] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Detected Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN, REV=0x54 [ 20.145720] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: L1 Enabled; Disabling L0S [ 20.167535] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: device EEPROM VER=0x11f, CALIB=0x4 [ 20.167538] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Device SKU: 0Xf0 [ 20.167567] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 24 802.11a channels [ 20.172779] fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel. [ 20.172783] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint [ 20.250115] [fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 3759 MBytes. [ 20.250567] [fglrx] vendor: 1002 device: 9553 count: 1 [ 20.251256] [fglrx] ioport: bar 1, base 0x2000, size: 0x100 [ 20.251271] pci 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 20.251277] pci 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.251559] [fglrx] Kernel PAT support is enabled [ 20.251578] [fglrx] module loaded - fglrx 8.96.4 [Mar 12 2012] with 1 minors [ 20.310385] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.83.5.1 build 33692 [ 20.310598] Registered led device: phy0-led [ 20.310628] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain [ 20.372306] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs' [ 20.411015] psmouse serio1: synaptics: Touchpad model: 1, fw: 7.2, id: 0x1c0b1, caps: 0xd04733/0xa40000/0xa0000 [ 20.454232] input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input11 [ 20.545636] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain [ 20.545640] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated: [ 20.545642] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) [ 20.545644] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545647] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545649] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545652] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.545654] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm) [ 20.609484] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:2): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=693 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.609494] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:3): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=642 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.609843] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:4): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=693 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.609852] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=642 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610047] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=693 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610060] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=642 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610476] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:8): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=814 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.610829] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:9): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=814 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.611035] type=1400 audit(1340502633.160:10): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=814 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 20.661912] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22 [ 20.661982] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X [ 20.662013] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.770289] input: HDA Intel Mic as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input12 [ 20.770689] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17 [ 20.770786] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: irq 48 for MSI/MSI-X [ 20.770815] snd_hda_intel 0000:01:00.1: setting latency timer to 64 [ 20.994040] HDMI status: Codec=0 Pin=3 Presence_Detect=0 ELD_Valid=0 [ 20.994189] input: HDA ATI HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=3 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.1/sound/card1/input13 [ 21.554799] vesafb: mode is 1024x768x32, linelength=4096, pages=0 [ 21.554802] vesafb: scrolling: redraw [ 21.554804] vesafb: Truecolor: size=0:8:8:8, shift=0:16:8:0 [ 21.557342] vesafb: framebuffer at 0xd0000000, mapped to 0xffffc90011800000, using 3072k, total 3072k [ 21.557498] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48 [ 21.557516] fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device [ 21.987338] EXT4-fs (sda2): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro [ 22.184693] EXT4-fs (sda6): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null) [ 27.362440] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: RF_KILL bit toggled to disable radio. [ 27.436988] init: failsafe main process (986) killed by TERM signal [ 27.970112] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver [ 28.198917] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16 [ 28.198935] NET: Registered protocol family 31 [ 28.198937] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 28.198940] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 28.198941] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 28.198947] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 28.226135] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 28.226141] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 28.226143] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 28.445620] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 28.445623] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast [ 28.524578] type=1400 audit(1340502641.076:11): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1052 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.525018] type=1400 audit(1340502641.076:12): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1052 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.629957] type=1400 audit(1340502641.180:13): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/sbin/dhclient" pid=1105 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.630325] type=1400 audit(1340502641.180:14): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=1105 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.630535] type=1400 audit(1340502641.180:15): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=1105 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.645266] type=1400 audit(1340502641.196:16): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/lightdm-guest-session-wrapper" pid=1104 comm="apparmor_parser" **[ 28.751922] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready** [ 28.753653] tg3 0000:08:00.0: irq 49 for MSI/MSI-X **[ 28.856127] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 28.857034] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready** [ 28.871080] type=1400 audit(1340502641.420:17): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/mission-control-5" pid=1108 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.871519] type=1400 audit(1340502641.420:18): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/telepathy/telepathy-*" pid=1108 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.874905] type=1400 audit(1340502641.424:19): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=1113 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 28.875354] type=1400 audit(1340502641.424:20): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1113 comm="apparmor_parser" [ 30.477976] tg3 0000:08:00.0: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex [ 30.477979] tg3 0000:08:00.0: eth0: Flow control is on for TX and on for RX **[ 30.478390] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready** [ 31.110269] fglrx_pci 0000:01:00.0: irq 50 for MSI/MSI-X [ 31.110859] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1327 [ 31.111021] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1329 [ 31.111408] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 1330 [ 31.111543] [fglrx] IRQ 50 Enabled [ 31.712938] [fglrx] Gart USWC size:1224 M. [ 31.712941] [fglrx] Gart cacheable size:486 M. [ 31.712945] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:1000000 [ 31.712948] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:fc2b000, size:3d5000 [ 31.712950] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:1fffb000, size:5000 [ 41.312020] eth0: no IPv6 routers present As you can see I get multiple instances of [ 28.856127] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready and then finally it becomes read and I get the message [ 30.478390] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready. I searched askubuntun, ubuntuforum, and the web but couldn't find a solution. Any help would be very much appreciated. Here is the bootchart

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• Resolve Wrong IP from Domain Name only on certain networks

  - by Godric Seer

  I host a personal website on an old desktop that is LAMP based. There are several strange things about this problem so I will break it down into steps. Since I have a dynamic IP, I use no-ip to make sure I have a working domain name at all times. I use the automatic update client, but logged in and checked and my no-ip domain has the proper IP tied to it. Here is a link to the homepage through the no-ip domain for reference. Also, I do a ping and a traceroute on the no-ip domain and get: [eckertzs@localhost ~]$ ping -c 1 endradil.noip.me PING endradil.noip.me (65.24.215.99) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from endradil.noip.me (65.24.215.99): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.23 ms --- endradil.noip.me ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 104ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.233/2.233/2.233/0.000 ms [eckertzs@localhost ~]$ traceroute endradil.noip.me traceroute to endradil.noip.me (65.24.215.99), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 . (192.168.2.1) 1.755 ms 5.409 ms 5.380 ms 2 endradil.noip.me (65.24.215.99) 6.297 ms 9.543 ms 10.324 ms Using this domain, I can connect to my webserver without issue or interruption(the https is required to avoid a redirect serverside, but it works). I also have a domain I have bought on GoDaddy where I have a CNAME record forwarding the www subdomain to my no-ip domain. CNAME Record Host: www Points to: endradil.noip.me TTL: 1 hour For the past several weeks, I never had an issue using the GoDaddy domain to connect (ssh or https). As of the past few days, however, the GoDaddy domain has only worked intermittently, for a few minutes at a time and then will go down for hours at a time. I get server not found errors most of the time. Also, if I happen to be using the GoDaddy domain for an ssh connection, the connection will freeze. I have run online tests of the DNS and have seen that the website is visible by external servers and resolved to the correct IP. I also contacted GoDaddy support but they had no issues connecting to the website, and therefore did not see any issues. My personal computers (Windows desktop, linux laptop, android phone) all fail to connect when on my personal wifi. If I disconnect my phone from the wifi and use my AT&T wireless data, it can connect with both domains without issue. When I attempt to use Google webmaster tools to crawl the site using the GoDaddy domain, Google can not find the site. From my linux laptop, I have found some interesting results when I ping or traceroute the domain. The results from these: [eckertzs@localhost ~]$ ping -c 1 www.endradil.com PING www.endradil.com.Belkin (198.105.244.228) 56(84) bytes of data. --- www.endradil.com.Belkin ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 10000ms [eckertzs@localhost ~]$ traceroute www.endradil.com traceroute to www.endradil.com (198.105.244.228), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 . (192.168.2.1) 1.918 ms 2.806 ms 2.772 ms 2 cpe-65-24-208-1.insight.res.rr.com (65.24.208.1) 29.247 ms 29.654 ms 30.094 ms 3 cpe-69-23-24-117.new.res.rr.com (69.23.24.117) 15.597 ms 23.218 ms 23.581 ms 4 agg24.clmcohib01r.midwest.rr.com (65.29.1.52) 30.581 ms 30.556 ms 31.192 ms 5 be27.clevohek01r.midwest.rr.com (65.29.1.38) 30.580 ms 31.062 ms 31.038 ms 6 bu-ether25.atlngamq47w-bcr01.tbone.rr.com (107.14.19.38) 37.863 ms 68.844 ms 43.773 ms 7 107.14.17.178 (107.14.17.178) 51.866 ms 51.019 ms 50.989 ms 8 ae0.pr1.dca10.tbone.rr.com (107.14.17.200) 48.467 ms ae-4-0.a0.lax91.tbone.rr.com (66.109.1.113) 49.912 ms * 9 v413.core1.ash1.he.net (209.51.175.33) 60.270 ms 50.842 ms 50.819 ms 10 100ge5-1.core1.nyc4.he.net (184.105.223.166) 55.597 ms 56.045 ms 56.020 ms 11 xerocole-inc.10gigabitethernet12-4.core1.nyc4.he.net (216.66.41.242) 56.001 ms 55.969 ms 55.992 ms 12 * * * both show the incorrect IP. Also, the traceroute timesout on hops 12 through 255 (output truncated above). The traceroute using site24x7 works and shows reasonable results when run from their california server. From another linux box on a different network but in the same city as me (10 miles away), I still get timeout for traceroute, however the IP resolves correctly for the domain. From this I believe that the DNS result is incorrectly cached in either my router/modem or perhaps even at my ISP level. My question is, first, how do I find out exactly what is wrong, and second, how do I resolve it.

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• Christmas in the Clouds

  - by andrewbrust

  I have been spending the last 2 weeks immersing myself in a number of Windows Azure and SQL Azure technologies.  And in setting up a new business (I’ll speak more about that in the future), I have also become a customer of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services).  In short, it has been a fortnight of Microsoft cloud computing. On the Azure side, I’ve looked, of course, at Web Roles and Worker Roles.  But I’ve also looked at Azure Storage’s REST API (including coding to it directly), I’ve looked at Azure Drive and the new VM Role; I’ve looked quite a bit at SQL Azure (including the project “Houston” Silverlight UI) and I’ve looked at SQL Azure labs’ OData service too. I’ve also looked at DataMarket and its integration with both PowerPivot and native Excel.  Then there’s AppFabric Caching, SQL Azure Reporting (what I could learn of it) and the Visual Studio tooling for Azure, including the storage of certificate-based credentials.  And to round it out with some user stuff, on the BPOS side, I’ve been working with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and LiveMeeting. I have to say I like a lot of what I’ve been seeing.  Azure’s not perfect, and BPOS certainly isn’t either.  But there’s good stuff in all these products, and there’s a lot of value. Azure Goes Deep Most people know that Web and Worker roles put the platform in charge of spinning virtual machines up and down, and keeping them up to date. But you can go way beyond that now.  The still-in-beta VM Role gives you the power to craft the machine (much as does Amazon’s EC2), though it takes away the platform’s self-managing attributes.  It still spins instances up and down, making drive storage non-durable, but Azure Drive gives you the ability to store VHD files as blobs and mount them as virtual hard drives that are readable and writeable.  Whether with Azure Storage or SQL Azure, Azure does data.  And OData is everywhere.  Azure Table Storage supports an OData Interface.  So does SQL Azure and so does DataMarket (the former project “Dallas”).  That means that Azure data repositories aren’t just straightforward to provision and configure…they’re also easy to program against, from just about any programming environment, in a RESTful manner.  And for more .NET-centric implementations, Azure AppFabric caching takes the technology formerly known as “Velocity” and throws it up into the cloud, speeding data access even more. Snapping in Place Once you get the hang of it, this stuff just starts to work in a way that becomes natural to understand.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I was really happy to discover it. In retrospect, I am not surprised, because I think the various Azure teams are the center of gravity for Redmond’s innovation right now.  The products belie this and so do my observations of the product teams’ motivation and high morale.  It is really good to see this; Microsoft needs to lead somewhere, and they need to be seen as the underdog while doing so.  With Azure, both requirements are in place.   BPOS: Bad Acronym, Easy Setup BPOS is about products you already know; Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting and Office Communications Server.  As such, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by BPOS.  Until you realize how easy it makes it to get all that stuff set up.  I would say that from sign-up to productive use took me about 45 minutes…and that included the time necessary to wrestle with my DNS provider, set up Outlook and my SmartPhone up to talk to the Exchange account, create my SharePoint site collection, and configure the Outlook Conferencing add-in to talk to the provisioned Live Meeting account. Never before did I think setting up my own Exchange mail could come anywhere close to the simplicity of setting up an SMTP/POP account, and yet BPOS actually made it faster.   What I want from my Azure Christmas Next Year Not everything about Microsoft’s cloud is good.  I close this post with a list of things I’d like to see addressed: BPOS offerings are still based on the 2007 Wave of Microsoft server technologies.  We need to get to 2010, and fast.  Arguably, the 2010 products should have been released to the off-premises channel before the on-premise sone.  Office 365 can’t come fast enough. Azure’s Internet tooling and domain naming, is scattered and confusing.  Deployed ASP.NET applications go to cloudapp.net; SQL Azure and Azure storage work off windows.net.  The Azure portal and Project Houston are at azure.com.  Then there’s appfabriclabs.com and sqlazurelabs.com.  There is a new Silverlight portal that replaces most, but not all of the HTML ones.  And Project Houston is Silvelright-based too, though separate from the Silverlight portal tooling. Microsoft is the king off tooling.  They should not make me keep an entire OneNote notebook full of portal links, account names, access keys, assemblies and namespaces and do so much CTRL-C/CTRL-V work.  I’d like to see more project templates, have them automatically reference the appropriate assemblies, generate the right using/Imports statements and prime my config files with the right markup.  Then I want a UI that lets me log in with my Live ID and pick the appropriate project, database, namespace and key string to get set up fast. Beta programs, if they’re open, should onboard me quickly.  I know the process is difficult and everyone’s going as fast as they can.  But I don’t know why it’s so difficult or why it takes so long.  Getting developers up to speed on new features quickly helps popularize the platform.  Make this a priority. Make Azure accessible from the simplicity platforms, i.e. ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor) and LightSwitch.  Support .NET 4 now.  Make WebMatrix, IIS Express and SQL Compact work with the Azure development fabric. Have HTML helpers make Azure programming easier.  Have LightSwitch work with SQL Azure and not require SQL Express.  LightSwitch has some promising Azure integration now.  But we need more.  WebMatrix has none and that’s just silly, now that the Extra Small Instance is being introduced. The Windows Azure Platform Training Kit is great.  But I want Microsoft to make it even better and I want them to evangelize it much more aggressively.  There’s a lot of good material on Azure development out there, but it’s scattered in the same way that the platform is.   The Training Kit ties a lot of disparate stuff together nicely.  Make it known. Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot All in all, diving deep into Azure was a good way to end the year.  Diving deeper into Azure should a great way to spend next year, not just for me, but for Microsoft too.

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• Augmenting your Social Efforts via Data as a Service (DaaS)

  - by Mike Stiles

  The following is the 3rd in a series of posts on the value of leveraging social data across your enterprise by Oracle VP Product Development Don Springer and Oracle Cloud Data and Insight Service Sr. Director Product Management Niraj Deo. In this post, we will discuss the approach and value of integrating additional “public” data via a cloud-based Data-as-as-Service platform (or DaaS) to augment your Socially Enabled Big Data Analytics and CX Management. Let’s assume you have a functional Social-CRM platform in place. You are now successfully and continuously listening and learning from your customers and key constituents in Social Media, you are identifying relevant posts and following up with direct engagement where warranted (both 1:1, 1:community, 1:all), and you are starting to integrate signals for communication into your appropriate Customer Experience (CX) Management systems as well as insights for analysis in your business intelligence application. What is the next step? Augmenting Social Data with other Public Data for More Advanced Analytics When we say advanced analytics, we are talking about understanding causality and correlation from a wide variety, volume and velocity of data to Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to achieve and optimize business value. And in some cases, to predict future performance to make appropriate course corrections and change the outcome to your advantage while you can. The data to acquire, process and analyze this is very nuanced: It can vary across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data It can span across content, profile, and communities of profiles data It is increasingly public, curated and user generated The key is not just getting the data, but making it value-added data and using it to help discover the insights to connect to and improve your KPIs. As we spend time working with our larger customers on advanced analytics, we have seen a need arise for more business applications to have the ability to ingest and use “quality” curated, social, transactional reference data and corresponding insights. The challenge for the enterprise has been getting this data inline into an easily accessible system and providing the contextual integration of the underlying data enriched with insights to be exported into the enterprise’s business applications. The following diagram shows the requirements for this next generation data and insights service or (DaaS): Some quick points on these requirements: Public Data, which in this context is about Common Business Entities, such as - Customers, Suppliers, Partners, Competitors (all are organizations) Contacts, Consumers, Employees (all are people) Products, Brands This data can be broadly categorized incrementally as - Base Utility data (address, industry classification) Public Master Reference data (trade style, hierarchy) Social/Web data (News, Feeds, Graph) Transactional Data generated by enterprise process, workflows etc. This Data has traits of high-volume, variety, velocity etc., and the technology needed to efficiently integrate this data for your needs includes - Change management of Public Reference Data across all categories Applied Big Data to extract statics as well as real-time insights Knowledge Diagnostics and Data Mining As you consider how to deploy this solution, many of our customers will be using an online “cloud” service that provides quality data and insights uniformly to all their necessary applications. In addition, they are requesting a service that is: Agile and Easy to Use: Applications integrated with the service can obtain data on-demand, quickly and simply Cost-effective: Pre-integrated into applications so customers don’t have to Has High Data Quality: Single point access to reference data for data quality and linkages to transactional, curated and social data Supports Data Governance: Becomes more manageable and cost-effective since control of data privacy and compliance can be enforced in a centralized place Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) Just as the cloud has transformed and now offers a better path for how an enterprise manages its IT from their infrastructure, platform, and software (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), the next step is data (DaaS). Over the last 3 years, we have seen the market begin to offer a cloud-based data service and gain initial traction. On one side of the DaaS continuum, we see an “appliance” type of service that provides a single, reliable source of accurate business data plus social information about accounts, leads, contacts, etc. On the other side of the continuum we see more of an online market “exchange” approach where ISVs and Data Publishers can publish and sell premium datasets within the exchange, with the exchange providing a rich set of web interfaces to improve the ease of data integration. Why the difference? It depends on the provider’s philosophy on how fast the rate of commoditization of certain data types will occur. How do you decide the best approach? Our perspective, as shown in the diagram below, is that the enterprise should develop an elastic schema to support multi-domain applicability. This allows the enterprise to take the most flexible approach to harness the speed and breadth of public data to achieve value. The key tenet of the proposed approach is that an enterprise carefully federates common utility, master reference data end points, mobility considerations and content processing, so that they are pervasively available. One way you may already be familiar with this approach is in how you do Address Verification treatments for accounts, contacts etc. If you design and revise this service in such a way that it is also easily available to social analytic needs, you could extend this to launch geo-location based social use cases (marketing, sales etc.). Our fundamental belief is that value-added data achieved through enrichment with specialized algorithms, as well as applying business “know-how” to weight-factor KPIs based on innovative combinations across an ever-increasing variety, volume and velocity of data, will be where real value is achieved. Essentially, Data-as-a-Service becomes a single entry point for the ever-increasing richness and volume of public data, with enrichment and combined capabilities to extract and integrate the right data from the right sources with the right factoring at the right time for faster decision-making and action within your core business applications. As more data becomes available (and in many cases commoditized), this value-added data processing approach will provide you with ongoing competitive advantage. Let’s look at a quick example of creating a master reference relationship that could be used as an input for a variety of your already existing business applications. In phase 1, a simple master relationship is achieved between a company (e.g. General Motors) and a variety of car brands’ social insights. The reference data allows for easy sort, export and integration into a set of CRM use cases for analytics, sales and marketing CRM. In phase 2, as you create more data relationships (e.g. competitors, contacts, other brands) to have broader and deeper references (social profiles, social meta-data) for more use cases across CRM, HCM, SRM, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as the amount of master reference relationships is constrained only by your imagination and the availability of quality curated data you have to work with. DaaS is just now emerging onto the marketplace as the next step in cloud transformation. For some of you, this may be the first you have heard about it. Let us know if you have questions, or perspectives. In the meantime, we will continue to share insights as we can.Photo: Erik Araujo, stock.xchng

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• FFMPEG Segfault Solutions

  - by Brentley_11

  I'm trying to convert a bunch of movies into h.264 mp4's using FFMPEG. These movies are sourced from various portable camcorders such as the Flip Mino HD and the Kodak ZI8. One issue I'm having with video from the ZI8 is it seems to be causing FFMPEG to segfault. Here is my command: ffmpeg -i 'XmasSailor720p60fps.MOV' -threads 2 -acodec libfaac -ab 96kb -vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -b 500kb -s 484x272 XmasSailor.mp4 Here is the output: FFmpeg version SVN-r20668, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al. built on Dec 2 2009 18:37:34 with gcc 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu4) configuration: --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libx264 --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-pthreads --enable-shared libavutil 50. 5. 1 / 50. 5. 1 libavcodec 52.42. 0 / 52.42. 0 libavformat 52.39. 2 / 52.39. 2 libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0 libswscale 0. 7. 2 / 0. 7. 2 libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0 Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate: 59.94 (60000/1001) -> 29.97 (30000/1001) Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'XmasSailor720p60fps.MOV': Duration: 00:00:05.37, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12021 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Video: h264, yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 11994 kb/s, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 59.94 tbc Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s Metadata major_brand : qt minor_version : 0 compatible_brands: qt comment : KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera comment-eng : KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]using SAR=1/1 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast SSSE3 FastShuffle SSE4.1 Cache64 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]profile High, level 2.1 Output #0, mp4, to 'XmasSailor.mp4': Stream #0.0(eng): Video: libx264, yuv420p, 484x272 [PAR 1:1 DAR 121:68], q=10-51, 500 kb/s, 30k tbn, 29.97 tbc Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 96 kb/s Metadata comment : Encoded with the Statusfirm Video Transcoder Stream mapping: Stream #0.0 -> #0.0 Stream #0.1 -> #0.1 Press [q] to stop encoding [h264 @ 0x99de950]B picture before any references, skipping [h264 @ 0x99de950]decode_slice_header error [h264 @ 0x99de950]no frame! Error while decoding stream #0.0 [h264 @ 0x99de950]B picture before any references, skipping [h264 @ 0x99de950]decode_slice_header error [h264 @ 0x99de950]no frame! Error while decoding stream #0.0 frame= 20 fps= 0 q=13797729.0 size= 0kB time=0.66 bitrate= 0.6kbits/s frame= 39 fps= 37 q=13797729.0 size= 0kB time=1.30 bitrate= 0.3kbits/s frame= 48 fps= 30 q=33.0 size= 11kB time=0.10 bitrate= 903.0kbits/s frame= 58 fps= 27 q=31.0 size= 22kB time=0.43 bitrate= 421.0kbits/s frame= 67 fps= 25 q=29.0 size= 41kB time=0.73 bitrate= 462.6kbits/s frame= 75 fps= 23 q=29.0 size= 59kB time=1.00 bitrate= 486.7kbits/s frame= 83 fps= 22 q=29.0 size= 81kB time=1.27 bitrate= 521.9kbits/s frame= 90 fps= 21 q=29.0 size= 97kB time=1.50 bitrate= 530.1kbits/s frame= 98 fps= 20 q=29.0 size= 114kB time=1.77 bitrate= 526.9kbits/s frame= 106 fps= 20 q=29.0 size= 134kB time=2.04 bitrate= 537.7kbits/s frame= 114 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 150kB time=2.30 bitrate= 533.7kbits/s frame= 122 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 172kB time=2.57 bitrate= 547.8kbits/s frame= 130 fps= 19 q=29.0 size= 193kB time=2.84 bitrate= 557.5kbits/s frame= 136 fps= 18 q=29.0 size= 211kB time=3.04 bitrate= 570.0kbits/s frame= 144 fps= 18 q=29.0 size= 242kB time=3.30 bitrate= 599.5kbits/s frame= 152 fps= 17 q=30.0 size= 261kB time=3.57 bitrate= 598.6kbits/s frame= 157 fps= 15 q=-1.0 Lsize= 368kB time=5.21 bitrate= 579.3kbits/s video:302kB audio:61kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 1.416371% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame I:1 Avg QP:27.22 size: 8720 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame P:48 Avg QP:25.15 size: 3759 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]frame B:108 Avg QP:30.10 size: 1105 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]consecutive B-frames: 0.6% 11.5% 28.8% 59.0% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb I I16..4: 28.5% 47.6% 23.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb P I16..4: 0.8% 1.3% 0.5% P16..4: 50.6% 17.7% 13.1% 0.0% 0.0% skip:15.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]mb B I16..4: 0.2% 0.3% 0.1% B16..8: 44.0% 1.2% 2.6% direct: 5.1% skip:46.5% L0:45.5% L1:51.0% BI: 3.5% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]final ratefactor: 23.51 [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]8x8 transform intra:49.9% inter:67.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]direct mvs spatial:98.1% temporal:1.9% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]coded y,uvDC,uvAC intra: 54.7% 76.1% 41.4% inter: 17.1% 24.4% 7.8% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i16 v,h,dc,p: 18% 52% 5% 25% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i8 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 12% 22% 9% 7% 10% 10% 9% 8% 13% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]i4 v,h,dc,ddl,ddr,vr,hd,vl,hu: 13% 18% 8% 8% 10% 13% 10% 9% 12% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]Weighted P-Frames: Y:10.4% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]ref P L0: 60.2% 15.3% 11.0% 7.6% 5.2% 0.7% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]ref B L0: 72.6% 15.6% 11.8% [libx264 @ 0x99e1020]kb/s:471.17 Segmentation fault I'm wondering if anyone else has ran into similar issues. I wasn't able to find anything helpful via Google. Another question I have is if anyone knows of a company that offers paid support for FFMPEG. Thank you for your time.

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• To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 3

  - by AshishRay

  I can't believe it has been almost a year since my last blog post. I know, that's an absolute no-no in the blogosphere. And I know that "I have been busy" is not a good excuse. So - without trying to come up with an excuse - let me state this - my apologies for taking such a long time to write the next Part. Without further ado, here goes. This is Part 3 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In this article, I will talk in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing. I will also talk about distance implications for setting up such a configuration. So, Why Good? Why is Data Guard SYNC a good thing? Because, at the end of the day, this gives you the assurance of zero data loss - it doesn’t matter what outage may befall your primary system. Befall! Boy, that sounds theatrical. But seriously - think about this - it minimizes your data risks. That’s a big deal. Whether you have an outage due to bad disks, faulty hardware components, hardware / software bugs, physical data corruptions, power failures, lightning that takes out significant part of your data center, fire that melts your assets, water leakage from the cooling system, human errors such as accidental deletion of online redo log files - it doesn’t matter - you can have that “Om - peace” look on your face and then you can failover to the standby system, without losing a single bit of data in your Oracle database. You will be a hero, as shown in this not so imaginary conversation: IT Manager: Well, what’s the status? You: John is doing the trace analysis on the storage array. IT Manager: So? How long is that gonna take? You: Well, he is stuck, waiting for a response from <insert your not-so-favorite storage vendor here>. IT Manager: So, no root cause yet? You: I told you, he is stuck. We have escalated with their Support, but you know how long these things take. IT Manager: Darn it - the site is down! You: Not really … IT Manager: What do you mean? You: John is stuck, but Sreeni has already done a failover to the Data Guard standby. IT Manager: Whoa, whoa - wait! Failover means we lost some data, why did you do this without letting the Business group know? You: We didn’t lose any data. Remember, we had set up Data Guard with SYNC? So now, any problems on the production – we just failover. No data loss, and we are up and running in minutes. The Business guys don’t need to know. IT Manager: Wow! Are we great or what!! You: I guess … Ok, so you get it - SYNC is good. But as my dear friend Larry Carpenter says, “TANSTAAFL”, or "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". Yes, of course - investing in Data Guard SYNC means that you have to invest in a low-latency network, you have to monitor your applications and database especially in peak load conditions, and you cannot under-provision your standby systems. But all these are good and necessary things, if you are supporting mission-critical apps that are supposed to be running 24x7. The peace of mind that this investment will give you is priceless, especially if you are serious about HA. How Far Can We Go? Someone may say at this point - well, I can’t use Data Guard SYNC over my coast-to-coast deployment. Most likely - true. So how far can you go? Well, we have customers who have deployed Data Guard SYNC over 300+ miles! Does this mean that you can also deploy over similar distances? Duh - no! I am going to say something here that most IT managers don’t like to hear - “It depends!” It depends on your application design, application response time / throughput requirements, network topology, etc. However, because of the optimal way we do SYNC, customers have been able to stretch Data Guard SYNC deployments over longer distances compared to traditional, storage-centric ways of doing this. The MAA Database 10.2 best practices paper Data Guard Redo Transport & Network Configuration, and Oracle Database 11.2 High Availability Best Practices Manual talk about some of these SYNC-related metrics. For example, a test deployment of Data Guard SYNC over 330 miles with 10ms latency showed an impact less than 5% for a busy OLTP application. Even if you can’t deploy Data Guard SYNC over your WAN distance, or if you already have an ASYNC standby located 1000-s of miles away, here’s another nifty way to boost your HA. Have a local standby, configured SYNC. How local is “local”? Again - it depends. One customer runs a local SYNC standby across the campus. Another customer runs it across 15 miles in another data center. Both of these customers are running Data Guard SYNC as their HA standard. If a localized outage affects their primary system, no problem! They have all the data available on the standby, to which they can failover. Very fast. In seconds. Wait - did I say “seconds”? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But you have to wait till the next blog article to find out more. I assure you tho’ that this time you won’t have to wait for another year for this.

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