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• Windows Azure – Write, Run or Use Software

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure is a platform that has you covered, whether you need to write software, run software that is already written, or Install and use “canned” software whether you or someone else wrote it. Like any platform, it’s a set of tools you can use where it makes sense to solve a problem. The primary location for Windows Azure information is located at http://windowsazure.com. You can find everything there from the development kits for writing software to pricing, licensing and tutorials on all of that. I have a few links here for learning to use Windows Azure – although it’s best if you focus not on the tools, but what you want to solve. I’ve got it broken down here into various sections, so you can quickly locate things you want to know. I’ll include resources here from Microsoft and elsewhere – I use these same resources in the Architectural Design Sessions (ADS) I do with my clients worldwide. Write Software Also called “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), Windows Azure has lots of components you can use together or separately that allow you to write software in .NET or various Open Source languages to work completely online, or in partnership with code you have on-premises or both – even if you’re using other cloud providers. Keep in mind that all of the features you see here can be used together, or independently. For instance, you might only use a Web Site, or use Storage, but you can use both together. You can access all of these components through standard REST API calls, or using our Software Development Kit’s API’s, which are a lot easier. In any case, you simply use Visual Studio, Eclipse, Cloud9 IDE, or even a text editor to write your code from a Mac, PC or Linux.  Components you can use: Azure Web Sites: Windows Azure Web Sites allow you to quickly write an deploy websites, without setting a Virtual Machine, installing a web server or configuring complex settings. They work alone, with other Windows Azure Web Sites, or with other parts of Windows Azure. Web and Worker Roles: Windows Azure Web Roles give you a full stateless computing instance with Internet Information Services (IIS) installed and configured. Windows Azure Worker Roles give you a full stateless computing instance without Information Services (IIS) installed, often used in a "Services" mode. Scale-out is achieved either manually or programmatically under your control. Storage: Windows Azure Storage types include Blobs to store raw binary data, Tables to use key/value pair data (like NoSQL data structures), Queues that allow interaction between stateless roles, and a relational SQL Server database. Other Services: Windows Azure has many other services such as a security mechanism, a Cache (memcacheD compliant), a Service Bus, a Traffic Manager and more. Once again, these features can be used with a Windows Azure project, or alone based on your needs. Various Languages: Windows Azure supports the .NET stack of languages, as well as many Open-Source languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, C++ and more.   Use Software Also called “Software as a Service” (SaaS) this often means consumer or business-level software like Hotmail or Office 365. In other words, you simply log on, use the software, and log off – there’s nothing to install, and little to even configure. For the Information Technology professional, however, It’s not quite the same. We want software that provides services, but in a platform. That means we want things like Hadoop or other software we don’t want to have to install and configure.  Components you can use: Kits: Various software “kits” or packages are supported with just a few clicks, such as Umbraco, Wordpress, and others. Windows Azure Media Services: Windows Azure Media Services is a suite of services that allows you to upload media for encoding, processing and even streaming – or even one or more of those functions. We can add DRM and even commercials to your media if you like. Windows Azure Media Services is used to stream large events all the way down to small training videos. High Performance Computing and “Big Data”: Windows Azure allows you to scale to huge workloads using a few clicks to deploy Hadoop Clusters or the High Performance Computing (HPC) nodes, accepting HPC Jobs, Pig and Hive Jobs, and even interfacing with Microsoft Excel. Windows Azure Marketplace: Windows Azure Marketplace offers data and programs you can quickly implement and use – some free, some for-fee.   Run Software Also known as “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS), this offering allows you to build or simply choose a Virtual Machine to run server-based software.  Components you can use: Persistent Virtual Machines: You can choose to install Windows Server, Windows Server with Active Directory, with SQL Server, or even SharePoint from a pre-configured gallery. You can configure your own server images with standard Hyper-V technology and load them yourselves – and even bring them back when you’re done. As a new offering, we also even allow you to select various distributions of Linux – a first for Microsoft. Windows Azure Connect: You can connect your on-premises networks to Windows Azure Instances. Storage: Windows Azure Storage can be used as a remote backup, a hybrid storage location and more using software or even hardware appliances.   Decision Matrix With all of these options, you can use Windows Azure to solve just about any computing problem. It’s often hard to know when to use something on-premises, in the cloud, and what kind of service to use. I’ve used a decision matrix in the last couple of years to take a particular problem and choose the proper technology to solve it. It’s all about options – there is no “silver bullet”, whether that’s Windows Azure or any other set of functions. I take the problem, decide which particular component I want to own and control – and choose the column that has that box darkened. For instance, if I have to control the wiring for a solution (a requirement in some military and government installations), that means the “Networking” component needs to be dark, and so I select the “On Premises” column for that particular solution. If I just need the solution provided and I want no control at all, I can look as “Software as a Service” solutions. Security, Pricing, and Other Info  Security: Security is one of the first questions you should ask in any distributed computing environment. We have certification info, coding guidelines and more, even a general “Request for Information” RFI Response already created for you.   Pricing: Are there licenses? How much does this cost? Is there a way to estimate the costs in this new environment? New Features: Many new features were added to Windows Azure - a good roundup of those changes can be found here. Support: Software Support on Virtual Machines, general support.    

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• Benchmarking MySQL Replication with Multi-Threaded Slaves

  - by Mat Keep

  0 0 1 1145 6530 Homework 54 15 7660 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;} The objective of this benchmark is to measure the performance improvement achieved when enabling the Multi-Threaded Slave enhancement delivered as a part MySQL 5.6. As the results demonstrate, Multi-Threaded Slaves delivers 5x higher replication performance based on a configuration with 10 databases/schemas. For real-world deployments, higher replication performance directly translates to: · Improved consistency of reads from slaves (i.e. reduced risk of reading "stale" data) · Reduced risk of data loss should the master fail before replicating all events in its binary log (binlog) The multi-threaded slave splits processing between worker threads based on schema, allowing updates to be applied in parallel, rather than sequentially. This delivers benefits to those workloads that isolate application data using databases - e.g. multi-tenant systems deployed in cloud environments. Multi-Threaded Slaves are just one of many enhancements to replication previewed as part of the MySQL 5.6 Development Release, which include: · Global Transaction Identifiers coupled with MySQL utilities for automatic failover / switchover and slave promotion · Crash Safe Slaves and Binlog · Optimized Row Based Replication · Replication Event Checksums · Time Delayed Replication These and many more are discussed in the “MySQL 5.6 Replication: Enabling the Next Generation of Web & Cloud Services” Developer Zone article  Back to the benchmark - details are as follows. Environment The test environment consisted of two Linux servers: · one running the replication master · one running the replication slave. Only the slave was involved in the actual measurements, and was based on the following configuration: - Hardware: Oracle Sun Fire X4170 M2 Server - CPU: 2 sockets, 6 cores with hyper-threading, 2930 MHz. - OS: 64-bit Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.1 - Memory: 48 GB Test Procedure Initial Setup: Two MySQL servers were started on two different hosts, configured as replication master and slave. 10 sysbench schemas were created, each with a single table: CREATE TABLE `sbtest` (    `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,    `k` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',    `c` char(120) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',    `pad` char(60) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',    PRIMARY KEY (`id`),    KEY `k` (`k`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 10,000 rows were inserted in each of the 10 tables, for a total of 100,000 rows. When the inserts had replicated to the slave, the slave threads were stopped. The slave data directory was copied to a backup location and the slave threads position in the master binlog noted. 10 sysbench clients, each configured with 10 threads, were spawned at the same time to generate a random schema load against each of the 10 schemas on the master. Each sysbench client executed 10,000 "update key" statements: UPDATE sbtest set k=k+1 WHERE id = <random row> In total, this generated 100,000 update statements to later replicate during the test itself. Test Methodology: The number of slave workers to test with was configured using: SET GLOBAL slave_parallel_workers=<workers> Then the slave IO thread was started and the test waited for all the update queries to be copied over to the relay log on the slave. The benchmark clock was started and then the slave SQL thread was started. The test waited for the slave SQL thread to finish executing the 100k update queries, doing "select master_pos_wait()". When master_pos_wait() returned, the benchmark clock was stopped and the duration calculated. The calculated duration from the benchmark clock should be close to the time it took for the SQL thread to execute the 100,000 update queries. The 100k queries divided by this duration gave the benchmark metric, reported as Queries Per Second (QPS). Test Reset: The test-reset cycle was implemented as follows: · the slave was stopped · the slave data directory replaced with the previous backup · the slave restarted with the slave threads replication pointer repositioned to the point before the update queries in the binlog. The test could then be repeated with identical set of queries but a different number of slave worker threads, enabling a fair comparison. The Test-Reset cycle was repeated 3 times for 0-24 number of workers and the QPS metric calculated and averaged for each worker count. MySQL Configuration The relevant configuration settings used for MySQL are as follows: binlog-format=STATEMENT relay-log-info-repository=TABLE master-info-repository=TABLE As described in the test procedure, the slave_parallel_workers setting was modified as part of the test logic. The consequence of changing this setting is: 0 worker threads:    - current (i.e. single threaded) sequential mode    - 1 x IO thread and 1 x SQL thread    - SQL thread both reads and executes the events 1 worker thread:    - sequential mode    - 1 x IO thread, 1 x Coordinator SQL thread and 1 x Worker thread    - coordinator reads the event and hands it to the worker who executes 2+ worker threads:    - parallel execution    - 1 x IO thread, 1 x Coordinator SQL thread and 2+ Worker threads    - coordinator reads events and hands them to the workers who execute them Results Figure 1 below shows that Multi-Threaded Slaves deliver ~5x higher replication performance when configured with 10 worker threads, with the load evenly distributed across our 10 x schemas. This result is compared to the current replication implementation which is based on a single SQL thread only (i.e. zero worker threads). Figure 1: 5x Higher Performance with Multi-Threaded Slaves The following figure shows more detailed results, with QPS sampled and reported as the worker threads are incremented. The raw numbers behind this graph are reported in the Appendix section of this post. Figure 2: Detailed Results As the results above show, the configuration does not scale noticably from 5 to 9 worker threads. When configured with 10 worker threads however, scalability increases significantly. The conclusion therefore is that it is desirable to configure the same number of worker threads as schemas. Other conclusions from the results: · Running with 1 worker compared to zero workers just introduces overhead without the benefit of parallel execution. · As expected, having more workers than schemas adds no visible benefit. Aside from what is shown in the results above, testing also demonstrated that the following settings had a very positive effect on slave performance: relay-log-info-repository=TABLE master-info-repository=TABLE For 5+ workers, it was up to 2.3 times as fast to run with TABLE compared to FILE. Conclusion As the results demonstrate, Multi-Threaded Slaves deliver significant performance increases to MySQL replication when handling multiple schemas. This, and the other replication enhancements introduced in MySQL 5.6 are fully available for you to download and evaluate now from the MySQL Developer site (select Development Release tab). You can learn more about MySQL 5.6 from the documentation  Please don’t hesitate to comment on this or other replication blogs with feedback and questions. Appendix – Detailed Results

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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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• 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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• 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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• Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

  - by Wes McClure

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

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• Translating Your Customizations

  - by Richard Bingham

  This blog post explains the basics of translating the customizations you can make to Fusion Applications products, with the inclusion of information for both composer-based customizations and the generic design-time customizations done via JDeveloper. Introduction Like most Oracle Applications, Fusion Applications installs on-premise with a US-English base language that is, in Release 7, supported by the option to add up to a total of 22 additional language packs (In Oracle Cloud production environments languages are pre-installed already). As such many organizations offer their users the option of working with their local language, and logically that should also apply for any customizations as well. Composer-based UI Customizations Customizations made in Page Composer take into consideration the session LOCALE, as set in the user preferences screen, during all customization work, and stores the customization in the MDS repository accordingly. As such the actual new or changed values used will only apply for the same language under which the customization was made, and text for any other languages requires a separate upload. See the Resource Bundles section below, which incidentally also applies to custom UI changes done in JDeveloper. You may have noticed this when you select the “Select Text Resource” menu option when editing the text on a page. Using this ensures that the resource bundles are used, whereas if you define a static value in Expression Builder it will never be available for translation. Notice in the screenshot below the “What’s New” custom value I have already defined using the ‘Select Text Resource’ feature is internally using the adfBundle groovy function to pull the custom value for my key (RT_S_1) from the ComposerOverrideBundle. Figure 1 – Page Composer showing the override bundle being used. Business Objects Customizing the Business Objects available in the Applications Composer tool for the CRM products, such as adding additional fields, also operates using the session language. Translating these additional values for these fields into other installed languages requires loading additional resource bundles, again as described below. Reports and Analytics Most customizations to Reports and BI Analytics are just essentially reorganizations and visualizations of existing number and text data from the system, and as such will use the appropriate values based on the users session language. Where a translated value or string exists for that session language, it will be used without the need for additional work. Extending through the addition of brand new reports and analytics requires another method of loading the translated strings, as part of what is known as ‘Localizing’ the BI Catalog and Metadata. This time it is via an export/import of XML data through the BI Administrators console, and is described in the OBIEE Admin Guide. Fusion Applications reports based on BI Publisher are already defined in template-per-locale, and in addition provide an extra process for getting the data for translation and reloading. This again uses the standard resource bundle format. Loading a custom report is illustrated in this video from our YouTube channel which shows the screen for both setting the template local and running an export for translation. Fusion Applications Menus Whilst the seeded Navigator and Global Menu values are fully translated when the additional language is installed, if they are customized then the change or new menu item will apply universally, not currently per language. This is set to change in a future release with the new UI Text Editor feature described below. More on Resource Bundles As mentioned above, to provide translations for most of your customizations you need to add values to a resource bundle. This is an industry open standard (OASIS) format XML file with the extension .xliff, and store translated values for the strings used by ADF at run-time. The general process is that these values are exported from the MDS repository, manually edited, and then imported back in again.This needs to be done by an administrator, via either WLST commands or through Enterprise Manager as per the screenshot below. This is detailed out in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. For SaaS environments the Cloud Operations team can assist. Figure 2 – Enterprise Manager’s MDS export used getting resource bundles for manual translation and re-imported on the same screen. All customized strings are stored in an override bundle (xliff file) for each locale, suffixed with the language initials, with English ones being saved to the default. As such each language bundle can be easily identified and updated. Similarly if you used JDeveloper to create your own applications as extensions to Fusion Applications you would use the native support for resource bundles, and add them into the faces-config.xml file for inclusion in your application. An example is this ADF customization video from our YouTube channel. JDeveloper also supports automatic synchronization between your underlying resource bundles and any translatable strings you add – very handy. For more information see chapters on “Using Automatic Resource Bundle Integration in JDeveloper” and “Manually Defining Resource Bundles and Locales” in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework. FND Messages and Look-ups FND Messages, as defined here, are not used for UI labels (they are known as ‘strings’), but are the responses back to users as a result of an action, such as from a page submit. Each ‘message’ is defined and stored in the related database table (FND_MESSAGES_B), with another (FND_MESSAGES_TL) holding any language-specific values. These come seeded with the additional language installs, however if you customize the messages via the “Manage Messages” task in Functional Setup Manager, or add new ones, then currently (in Release 7) you’ll need to repeat it for each language. Figure 3 – An FND Message defined in an English user session. Similarly Look-ups are stored in a translation table (FND_LOOKUP_VALUES_TL) where appropriate, and can be customized by setting the users session language and making the change  in the Setup and Maintenance task entitled “Manage [Standard|Common] Look-ups”. Online Help Yes, in fact all the seeded help is applied as part of each language pack install as part of the post-install provisioning process. If you are editing or adding custom online help then the Create Help screen provides a drop-down of which language your help customization will apply to. This is shown in the video below from our YouTube channel, and obviously you’ll need to it for each language in use. What is Coming for Translations? Currently planned for Release 8 is something called the User Interface (UI) Text Editor. This tool will allow the editing of all the text shown on the pages and forms of Fusion Application. This will provide a search based on a particular term or word, say “Worker”, and will allow it to be adjusted, say to “Employee”, which then updates all the Resource Bundles that contain it. In the case of multi-language environments, it will use the users session language (locale) to know which Resource Bundles to apply the change to. This capability will also support customization sandboxes, to help ensure changes can be tested and approved.  It is also interesting to note that the design currently allows any page-specific customizations done using Page Composer or Application Composer to over-write the global changes done via the UI Text Editor, allowing for special context-sensitive values to still be used. Further Reading and Resources The following short list provides the mains resources for digging into more detail on translation support for both Composer and JDeveloper customization projects. There is a dedicated chapter entitled “Translating Custom Text” in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. This has good examples and steps for many tasks, especially administering resource bundles. Using localization formatting (numbers, dates etc) for design-time changes is well documented in the Fusion Applications Developer Guide. For more guidelines on general design-time globalization, see either the ‘Internationalizing and Localizing Pages’ chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle Fusion Applications Edition) or the general Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide. The Oracle Architecture ‘A-Team’ provided a recent post on customizing the user session timeout popup, using design-time changes to resource bundles. It has detailed step-by-step examples which can be a useful illustration.

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• Projected Results

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Monica Mehta Yasser Mahmud has seen a revolution in project management over the past decade. During that time, the former Primavera product strategist (who joined Oracle when his company was acquired in 2008) has not only observed a transformation in the way IT systems support corporate projects but the role project portfolio management (PPM) plays in the enterprise. “15 years ago project management was the domain of project management office (PMO),” Mahmud recalls of earlier days. “But over the course of the past decade, we've seen it transform into a mission critical enterprise discipline, that has made Primavera indispensable in the board room. Now, as a senior manager, a board member, or a C-level executive you have direct and complete visibility into what’s kind of going on in the organization—at a level of detail that you're going to consume that information.” Now serving as Oracle’s vice president of product strategy and industry marketing, Mahmud shares his thoughts on how Oracle’s Primavera solutions have evolved and how best-in-class project portfolio management systems can help businesses stay competitive. Profit: What do you feel are the market dynamics that are changing project management today? Mahmud: First, the data explosion. We're generating data at twice the rate at which we can actually store it. The same concept applies for project-intensive organizations. A lot of data is gathered, but what are we really doing with it? Are we turning data into insight? Are we using that insight and turning it into foresight with analytics tools? This is a key driver that will separate the very good companies—the very competitive companies—from those that are not as competitive. Another trend is centered on the explosion of mobile computing. By the year 2013, an estimated 35 percent of the world’s workforce is going to be mobile. That’s one billion people. So the question is not if you're going to go mobile, it’s how fast you are going to go mobile. What kind of impact does that have on how the workforce participates in projects? What worked ten to fifteen years ago is not going to work today. It requires a real rethink around the interfaces and how data is actually presented. Profit: What is the role of project management in this new landscape? Mahmud: We recently conducted a PPM study with the Economist Intelligence Unit centered to determine how important project management is considered within organizations. Our target was primarily CFOs, CIOs, and senior managers and we discovered that while 95 percent of participants believed it critical to their business, only six percent were confident that projects were delivered on time and on budget. That’s a huge gap. Most organizations are looking for efficiency, especially in these volatile financial times. But senior management can’t keep track of every project in a large organization. As a result, executives are attempting to inventory the work being conducted under their watch. What is often needed is a very high-level assessment conducted at the board level to say, “Here are the 50 initiatives that we have underway. How do they line up with our strategic drivers?” This line of questioning can provide early warning that work and strategy are out of alignment; finding the gap between what the business needs to do and the actual performance scorecard. That’s low-hanging fruit for any executive looking to increase efficiency and save money. But it can only be obtained through proper assessment of existing projects—and you need a project system of record to get that done. Over the next decade or so, project management is going to transform into holistic work management. Business leaders will want make sure key projects align with corporate strategy, but also the ability to drill down into daily activity and smaller projects to make sure they line up as well. Keeping employees from working on tasks—even for a few hours—that don’t line up with corporate goals will, in many ways, become a competitive differentiator. Profit: How do all of these market challenges and shifting trends impact Oracle’s Primavera solutions and meeting customers’ needs? Mahmud: For Primavera, it’s a transformation from being a project management application to a PPM system in the enterprise. Also making that system a mission-critical application by connecting to other key applications within the ecosystem, such as the enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain, and CRM systems. Analytics have also become a huge component. Business analytics have made Oracle’s Primavera applications pertinent in the boardroom. Now, as a senior manager, a board member, a CXO, CIO, or CEO, you have direct visibility into what’s going on in the organization at a level that you're able to consume that information. In addition, all of this information pairs up really well with your financials and other data. Certainly, when you're an Oracle shop, you have that visibility that you didn’t have before from a project execution perspective. Profit: What new strategies and tools are being implemented to create a more efficient workplace for users? Mahmud: We believe very strongly that just because you call something an enterprise project portfolio management system doesn’t make it so—you have to get people to want to participate in the system. This can’t be mandated down from the top. It simply doesn’t work that way. A truly adoptable solution is one that makes it super easy for all types users to participate, by providing them interfaces where they live. Keeping that in mind, a major area of development has been alternative user interfaces. This is increasingly resulting in the creation of lighter weight, targeted interfaces such as iOS applications, and smartphones interfaces such as for iPhone and Android platform. Profit: How does this translate into the development of Oracle’s Primavera solutions? Mahmud: Let me give you a few examples. We recently announced the launch of our Primavera P6 Team Member application, which is a native iOS application for the iPhone. This interface makes it easier for team members to do their jobs quickly and effectively. Similarly, we introduced the Primavera analytics application, which can be consumed via mobile devices, and when married with Oracle Spatial capabilities, users can get a geographical view of what’s going on and which projects are occurring in various locations around the world. Lastly, we introduced advanced email integration that allows project team members to status work via E-mail. This functionality leverages the fact that users are in E-mail system throughout the day and allows them to status their work without the need to launch the Primavera application. It comes back to a mantra: provide as many alternative user interfaces as possible, so you can give people the ability to work, to participate, to raise issues, to create projects, in the places where they live. Do it in such a way that it’s non-intrusive, do it in such a way that it’s easy and intuitive and they can get it done in a short amount of time. If you do that, workers can get back to doing what they're actually getting paid for.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 03, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, September 03, 2012Popular ReleasesMetodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.01.03: Cambios Aury: Ajuste del margen del reporte. Visualización de la columna de Supuestos en la parte del módulo de Decisión. Cambios John: Integración de código con cambios enviados por Aury Niño. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico y telefónico.Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...Thisismyusername's codeplex page.: HTML5 Mulititouch Fruit Ninja Proof of Concept: This is an example of how you could create a game such as Fruit Ninja using HTML5's multitouch capabilities. Sorry this example doesn't have great graphics. If I had my own webpage, I could store some graphics and upload the game there and it might look halfway decent, but since I'm only using a Codeplex page and most mobile devices can't open .zip files, the fruits are just circles. I hope you enjoy reading the source code anyway.GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.TSQL Code Smells Finder: POC 1.01: Proof of concept 1.01 TSQLDomTest.ps1 and Errors.Txt are requiredConfuser: Confuser build 76542: This is a build of changeset 76542.Reactive State Machine: ReactiveStateMachine-beta: TouchStateMachine now supports Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK. The TouchStateMachine is an extension to the Reactive State Machine. Reactive State Machine uses NuGet for dependency managementSharePoint Column & View Permission: SharePoint Column and View Permission v1.2: Version 1.2 of this project. If you will find any bugs please let me know at enti@zoznam.sk or post your findings in Issue TrackerMihmojsos OS: Mihmojsos OS 3 (Smart Rabbit): !Mihmojsos OS 3 Smart Rabbit Mihmojsos Smart Rabbit is now availableDotNetNuke Translator: 01.00.00 Beta: First release of the project.YNA: YNA 0.2 alpha: Wath's new since 0.1 alpha ? A lot of changes but there are the most interresting : StateManager is now better and faster Mouse events for all YnObjects (Sprites, Images, texts) A really big improvement for YnGroup Gamepad support And the news : Tiled Map support (need refactoring) Isometric tiled map support (need refactoring) Transition effect like "FadeIn" and "FadeOut" (YnTransition) Timers (YnTimer) Path management (YnPath, need more refactoring) Downloads All downloads...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 5.1.0.2: fixed several issues with streaming modeUrlPager: UrlPager 1.2: Fixed bug in which url parameters will lost after paging; ????????url???bug；Sofire Suite: Sofire v1.5.0.0: Sofire v1.5.0.0 ?? ???????? ?????： 1、?? 2、????EntLib.com????????: EntLib.com???????? v3.0: EntLib eCommerce Solution ???Microsoft .Net Framework?????????????????????。Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.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 ...Christoc'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...New ProjectsBPVote4PPT: BPVote For PowerPointCosmo OS: La semplicità in un OSFinancial Analytic Tools: C#.Net Financial Analytic ToolsGeminiMVC: An Open Source CMS written in ASP.net MVC 4 with speed, extensibility, and ease-of-us in mind.JQuery SharePoint Autocomplete People Picker: This JQUery bundle provides an autocomplete people picker based on SharePoint profiles. It can be hosted on the SharePoint itself or on remote applications.Kerbal Space Program PartModule Library: This project is designed to add various functionalities to custom parts for the space program simulation game Kerbal Space Program.KeyboardRemapper: This tool to remaps keys in the keyboard. If you have more than one keyboard or an additional keypad, you can remap the keys of the each keyboard independentlyKHStudent: ??????Localized DataAnnotations with T4 templates: Simplified DataAnnotations localization using T4 templates.MfcLightToolkit: Supports development for small and simple MFC application. Provides asynchronous programming model like .NET, file download, easy control resizing, and so on.Müslüm ÖZTÜRK Code Lib: Test amaçli olusturulan projemdirPolska: Testproject in how a polish grammerprogram can look like.QueueLessApp: Here is the codeRusIS.CMS: aaaSGPS: Projeto de controle de produtos e serviçosStemmersNet: Stemmers pack for .Net FrameworkTrabajo Final de Ingenieria - Javier Vallejos: Tesis Final de la carrera de Ingenieria - Universidad Abierta Interamericana.TSQL Code Smells Finder: TSQL 'smells' findersXNA and Data Driven Design: This project includes links for XNA and Data Driven DesignXNA and System Testing: This project includes code for XNA and System TestingYUGI-AR Project: an open source project for yugioh based augmented reality???????? ? ?????????????: ???? ??????? ??????? ?????????????? ??????????? ?????????? ??? ? ????? ?????? ? ? ??? ??? ????? ? ??? ?????????? ????????????.

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• Blogging locally and globally–my experience

  - by DigiMortal

  In Baltic MVP Summit 2011 there was discussion about having two blogs - one for local and another for global audience – and how to publish once written information in these blogs. There are many ways how to optimize your blogging activities if you have more than one audience and here you can find my experiences, best practices and advices about this topic. My two blogs I have to working blogs: this one here technology and programming blog for local market My local blog is almost five years old and it makes it one of the oldest company blogs in Estonia. It is still active and I write there as much as I have time for it. This blog here is active since September 2007, so it is about 3.5 years old right now. Both of these blogs are  my major hits in my MVP carrier and they have very good web statistics too. My local blog My local blog is about programming, web and technology. It has way wider target audience then this blog here has. By example, in my local blog I blog also about local events, cool new concept phones, different webs providing some interesting services etc. But local guys can find there also my postings about how to solve one or another programming problem and postings about Microsoft technologies I am playing with. This far my local blog has a lot of readers for such a small country that Estonia is. This blog has made me a lot of cool contacts and I have had there a lot of interesting discussions about different technical topics. Why I started this blog? Living in small country is different than living in big country. In small country you have less people and therefore smaller audience so you have to target more than one technical topic to find enough readers. In a same time you are still interested in your main topics and you want to reach to more people who are sharing same interests with you. Practically one day y will grow out from local market and you go global. This is how this blog was born. Was it worth to create, promote and mess with it? Every second I have put on my time to this blog has been worth of it. Thanks to this blog I have found new good friends and without them I think it is more boring to work on different problems and solutions. Defining target audiences One thing you should always do when having more than one blog is defining target audiences. If you are just technomaniac interested in sharing your stuff and make some new friends and have something to write to your MVP nomination form then you don’t have to go through complex targeting process. You can do it simple way and same effectively. Here is how I defined target audiences to my blogs: local blog – reader of my local blog is IT professional, software developer, technology innovator or just some guy who is interested in technology,   this blog – reader of this blog is experienced professional software developer who works on Microsoft technologies or software developer who is open minded and open to new technologies and interesting solutions to development problems. You can see how local blog – due to small market with less people – has wider definition for audience while this blog is heavily targeted to Microsoft technologies and specially to software development. On practical side these decisions are also made well I think because it is very hard to build up popular common IT blog. On global level it is better to target some specific niche and find readers who are professionals on your favorite topics. Thanks to this blog I have found new friends who are professional developers and I am very happy about all the discussions I have had with them. Publishing content to different blogs My local blog and this blog have some overlapping topics like .NET, databases and SEO. Due to this overlapping there is question: when I write posting to my local blog then should I have to publish same thing in my global blog? And if I write something to my global blog then should I publish same thing also in my local blog? Well, it really depends on the definition of your target audiences. If they match then of course it is good idea to translate you post and publish it also to another blog. But if you have different audiences then you may need to modify your posting before publishing it. The questions you have to answer are: is target audience interested in this topic? is target audience expecting more specific and deeper handling of this topic or are they expecting more general handling of topic? is the problem you are discussing actual for target audience or not? You have to answer these questions and after that make your decision. If you need to modify your original posting then take some time and do it. Provide quality to all your readers because they will respect you if you respect them. Cross-posting and referencing It is tempting to save time that preparing some blog post takes and if you have are done with posting in one blog it may seem like good idea to make short posting to another blog and add reference to first one where topic is discussed longer. Well, don’t do it – all your readers expect good quality content from you and jumping from one blog post to another is disturbing for them. Of course, there is problem with differences between target audiences. You may have wider target audience and some people may be interested in more specific handling of topic. In this case feel free to refer your blog you are writing in english. This is not working very well in opposite direction because almost all my global blog readers understand english but not estonian. By example, estonian language is complex one and online translating tools make very poor translations from estonian language. This is why I don’t even plan to publish postings here that refer to my local blog for more information. I am keeping these two blogs as two different worlds and if there is posting that fits well to both blogs I will write my posting to one blog and then answer previous three questions before posting same thing to another blog. Conclusion Growing out of your local market is not anything mysterious if you are living in small country. As it is harder to find people there who are interested in same topics with you then sooner or later you will start finding these new contacts from global audience. Global audience is bigger and to be visible there you must provide high quality content to your audience. It is something you will learn over time and you will learn every day something new when you are posting to your global blog. You may ask: if global blog is much more complex thing to do then is it worth to do at all? My answer is: yes, do it for sure. It is not easy thing to do when you start but if you work on your global blog and improve it over time you will get over all obstacles pretty soon. Just don’t forget one thing – content is king and your readers expect high quality from you.

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• Super constructor must be a first statement in Java constructor [closed]

  - by Val

  I know the answer: "we need rules to prevent shooting into your own foot". Ok, I make millions of programming mistakes every day. To be prevented, we need one simple rule: prohibit all JLS and do not use Java. If we explain everything by "not shooting your foot", this is reasonable. But there is not much reason is such reason. When I programmed in Delphy, I always wanted the compiler to check me if I read uninitializable. I have discovered myself that is is stupid to read uncertain variable because it leads unpredictable result and is errorenous obviously. By just looking at the code I could see if there is an error. I wished if compiler could do this job. It is also a reliable signal of programming error if function does not return any value. But I never wanted it do enforce me the super constructor first. Why? You say that constructors just initialize fields. Super fields are derived; extra fields are introduced. From the goal point of view, it does not matter in which order you initialize the variables. I have studied parallel architectures and can say that all the fields can even be assigned in parallel... What? Do you want to use the unitialized fields? Stupid people always want to take away our freedoms and break the JLS rules the God gives to us! Please, policeman, take away that person! Where do I say so? I'm just saying only about initializing/assigning, not using the fields. Java compiler already defends me from the mistake of accessing notinitialized. Some cases sneak but this example shows how this stupid rule does not save us from the read-accessing incompletely initialized in construction: public class BadSuper { String field; public String toString() { return "field = " + field; } public BadSuper(String val) { field = val; // yea, superfirst does not protect from accessing // inconstructed subclass fields. Subclass constr // must be called before super()! System.err.println(this); } } public class BadPost extends BadSuper { Object o; public BadPost(Object o) { super("str"); this. o = o; } public String toString() { // superconstructor will boom here, because o is not initialized! return super.toString() + ", obj = " + o.toString(); } public static void main(String[] args) { new BadSuper("test 1"); new BadPost(new Object()); } } It shows that actually, subfields have to be inilialized before the supreclass! Meantime, java requirement "saves" us from writing specializing the class by specializing what the super constructor argument is, public class MyKryo extends Kryo { class MyClassResolver extends DefaultClassResolver { public Registration register(Registration registration) { System.out.println(MyKryo.this.getDepth()); return super.register(registration); } } MyKryo() { // cannot instantiate MyClassResolver in super super(new MyClassResolver(), new MapReferenceResolver()); } } Try to make it compilable. It is always pain. Especially, when you cannot assign the argument later. Initialization order is not important for initialization in general. I could understand that you should not use super methods before initializing super. But, the requirement for super to be the first statement is different. It only saves you from the code that does useful things simply. I do not see how this adds safety. Actually, safety is degraded because we need to use ugly workarounds. Doing post-initialization, outside the constructors also degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and defeats the java final safety reenforcer. To conclude Reading not initialized is a bug. Initialization order is not important from the computer science point of view. Doing initalization or computations in different order is not a bug. Reenforcing read-access to not initialized is good but compilers fail to detect all such bugs Making super the first does not solve the problem as it "Prevents" shooting into right things but not into the foot It requires to invent workarounds, where, because of complexity of analysis, it is easier to shoot into the foot doing post-initialization outside the constructors degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and that degrade safety by defeating final access modifier When there was java forum alive, java bigots attecked me for these thoughts. Particularly, they dislaked that fields can be initialized in parallel, saying that natural development ensures correctness. When I replied that you could use an advanced engineering to create a human right away, without "developing" any ape first, and it still be an ape, they stopped to listen me. Cos modern technology cannot afford it. Ok, Take something simpler. How do you produce a Renault? Should you construct an Automobile first? No, you start by producing a Renault and, once completed, you'll see that this is an automobile. So, the requirement to produce fields in "natural order" is unnatural. In case of alarmclock or armchair, which are still chair and clock, you may need first develop the base (clock and chair) and then add extra. So, I can have examples where superfields must be initialized first and, oppositely, when they need to be initialized later. The order does not exist in advance. So, the compiler cannot be aware of the proper order. Only programmer/constructor knows is. Compiler should not take more responsibility and enforce the wrong order onto programmer. Saying that I cannot initialize some fields because I did not ininialized the others is like "you cannot initialize the thing because it is not initialized". This is a kind of argument we have. So, to conclude once more, the feature that "protects" me from doing things in simple and right way in order to enforce something that does not add noticeably to the bug elimination at that is a strongly negative thing and it pisses me off, altogether with the all the arguments to support it I've seen so far. It is "a conceptual question about software development" Should there be the requirement to call super() first or not. I do not know. If you do or have an idea, you have place to answer. I think that I have provided enough arguments against this feature. Lets appreciate the ones who benefit form it. Let it just be something more than simple abstract and stupid "write your own language" or "protection" kind of argument. Why do we need it in the language that I am going to develop?

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• I'm a contract developer and I think I'm about to get screwed [closed]

  - by kagaku

  I do contract development on the side. You could say that I'm a contract developer? Considering I've only ever had one client I'd say that's not exactly the truth - more like I took a side job and needed some extra cash. It started out as a "rebuild our website and we'll pay you $10k" type project. Once that was complete (a bit over schedule, but certainly not over budget), the company hired me on as a "long term support" contractor. The contract is to go from March of this year, expiring on December 31st of this year - 10 months. Over which a payment is to be paid on the 30th of each month for a set amount. I've been fulfilling my end of the contract on all points - doing server maintenence, application and database changes, doing huge rush changes and pretty much just going above and beyond. Currently I'm in the middle of development of an iPhone mobile application (PhoneGap based) which is nearing completion (probably 3-4 weeks from submission). It has not been all peaches and flowers though. Each and every month when my paycheck comes due, there always seems to be an issue of sorts. These issues did not occur during the initial project, only during the support contract. The actual contract states that my check should be mailed out on the 30th of the month. I have received my check on time approximately once (on time being about 2-3 days within the 30th). I've received my paycheck as late as the 15th of the next month - over two weeks late. I've put up with it because I need the paycheck. There have been promises and promises of "we'll send it out on time next time! I promise" - only to receive it just as late the next month. When I ask about payment they give me a vibe like "why are you only worried about money?" - unfortunately I don't have the luxury of not worrying about money. The last straw was with my August payment, which should have been mailed on August 30th. I received it on September 12th. The reason for the delay? "USPS is delaying it man! we sent it out on the 1st!" is the reason I got. When I finally got the check in the mail, the postage on the envelope was marked September 10th - the date it was run through the postage machine. I've been outright lied to, at this point. I carry on working, because again - I need a paycheck. I orchestrated the move of our application to a new server, developed a bunch of new changes and continued work on the iPhone app. All told I probably went over my hourly allotment (I'm paid for 40 hours a month, I probably put in at least 50). On Saturday, the 1st, I gave the main contact at the company (a company of 3, by the way - this is not some big corporation) a ring and filled him in on the status of my work for the past two weeks. Unusually I hadn't heard from him since the middle of September. His response was "oh... well, that is nice and uh.. good job. well, we've been talking within the company about things and we've certainly got some decisions ahead of us..." - not verbatim but you get the idea (I hope?). I got out of this conversation that the site is not doing very well (which it's not) and they're considering pulling the plug. Crap, this contract is going to end early - there goes Christmas! Fine, that's alright, no problem. I'll get paid for the last months work and call it a day. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten last months check, and I'm getting dicked around now. "Oh.. we had problems transferring funds, we'll try and mail it out tomorrow" and "I left a VM with the finance guy, but I can't get ahold of him". So I'm getting the feeling I'm not getting paid for all the work I put in for September. This is obviously breach of contract, and I am pissed. Thinking irrationally, I considered changing all their passwords and holding their stuff hostage. Before I think it through (by the way, I am NOT going to do this, realized it would probably get me in trouble), I go and try some passwords for our various accounts. Google Apps? Oh, I'm no longer administrator here. Godaddy? Whoops, invalid password. Disqus? Nope, invalid password here too. Google Adsense / Analytics? Invalid password. Dedicated server account manager? Invalid password. Now, I have the servers root password - I just built the box last week and haven't had a chance to send the guy the root password. Wasn't in a rush, I manage the server and they never touch it. Now all of a sudden all the passwords except this one are changed; the writing is on the wall - I am out. Here's the conundrum. I have the root password, they do not. If I give them this password all the leverage I have is gone, out the door and out of my hands. During this argument of why am I not getting paid the guy sends me an email saying "oh by the way, what's the root username and password to the server?". Considering he knows absolutely nothing, I gave him an "admin" account which really has almost no rights. I still have exclusive access to the server, I just don't know where to go. I can hold their data hostage, but I'm almost positive this is the wrong thing to do. I'd consider it blackmail, regardless of whether or not I have gotten paid yet. I can "break" something on the server and give them the whole "well, if you were paying me I could fix it!" spiel. This works from a "well he's not holding their stuff hostage" point of view, but what stops them from hiring some one else to just fix the issue at hand? For all I know the guys nephew is a "l33t hax0r" and can figure it out for free. I can give in, document as much as I can and take him to small claims court. This is breach of contract, I'm not getting paid. I have a case, right? ???? Does anyone have any experience in this? What can I do? What are my options? I'm broke, I can't afford a lawyer and I can barely afford not getting this paycheck. My wife doesn't work (I work two jobs so she doesn't have to work - we have a 1 year old) and is already looking at getting a part time job to cover the bills. Long term we'll be fine, but this has pissed me off beyond belief! Help me out, I'm about to get screwed.

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• What other tool is using my hotkey?

  - by Sammy

  I use Greenshot for screenshots, and it's been nagging about some other software tool using the same hotkey. I started receiving this warning message about two days ago. It shows up each time I reboot and log on to Windows. The hotkey(s) "Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen" could not be registered. This problem is probably caused by another tool claiming usage of the same hotkey(s)! You could either change your hotkey settings or deactivate/change the software making use of the hotkey(s). What's this all about? The only software I recently installed is CPU-Z Core Temp Speed Fan HD Tune Epson Print CD NetStress What I would like to know is how to find out what other tool is causing this conflict? Do I really have to uninstall each program, one by one, until there is no conflict anymore? I see no option for customizing any hotkeys in CPU-Z, and according to docs there are only a few keyboard shortcuts. These are F5 through F9, but they are no hotkeys. There is nothing in Core Temp, and from what I can see... nothing in Speed Fan. Is any of these programs known to use Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen hotkey for screenshots? I am actually suspecting the Dropbox client. I think I saw a warning recently coming from Dropbox program, something to do with hotkeys or keyboard shortcuts. I see that it has an option for sharing screenshots under Preferences menu, but I see no option for hotkeys. Core Temp actually also has an option for taking screenshots (F9) but it's just that - a keyboard shortcut, not a hotkey. And again, there's no option actually for changing this setting in Options/Settings menu. How do you resolve this type of conflicts? Are there any general methods you can use to pinpoint the second conflicting software? Like... is there some Windows registry key that holds the hotkeys? Or is it just down to mere luck and trial and error? Addendum I forgot to mention, when I do use the Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen hotkey, what happens is that the Greenshot context menu shows up, asking me where I want to save the screenshot. So it appears to be working. But I am still getting the darn warning every time I reboot and log on to Windows?! I actually tried changing the key bindings in Greenshot preferences, but after a reboot it seems to have returned back to the settings I had previously. Update I can't see any hotkey conflicts in the Widnows Hotkey Explorer. The aforementioned hotkey is reserved by Greenshot, and I don't see any other program using the same hotkey binding. But when I went into Greenshot preferences, this is what I discovered. As you can see it's the Greenshot itself that uses the same hotkey twice! I guess that's why no other program was listed above as using this hotkey. But how can Greenshot be so stupid to use the same hotkey more than once? I didn't do this! It's not my fault... I'm not that stupid. This is what it's set to right now: Capture full screen: Ctrl + Skift + Prntscrn Capture window: Alt + Prntscrn Capture region: Ctrl + Prntscrn Capture last region: Skift + Prntscrn Capture Internet Explorer: Ctrl + Skift + Prntscrn And this is my preferred setting: Capture full screen: Prntscrn Capture window: Alt + Prntscrn Capture region: Ctrl + Prntscrn Capture last region: Capture Internet Explorer: I don't use any hotkey for "last region" and IE. But when I set this to my liking, as listed here, Greenshot gives me the same warning message, even as I tab through the hotkey entry fields. Sometimes it even gives me the warning when I just click Cancel button. This is really crazy! On the side note... You might have noticed that I have "update check" set to 0 (zero). This is because, in my experience, Greenshot changes all or only some of my preferences back to default settings whenever it automatically updates to a new version. So I opted to stay off updates to get rid of the problem. It has done so for the past three updates or so. I hoped to receive a new update that would fix the issue, but I think it still reverts back to default settings after each update to a new version, including setting default hotkeys. Update 2 I'll give you just one example of how Greenshot behaves. This is the dialog I have in front of me right now. As you can see, I have removed the last two hotkeys and changed the first one to my own liking. While I was clicking in the fields and removing the two hotkeys I was getting the warning message. So let's say I click in the "capture last region" field. Then I get this: Note that none of the entries include "Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen" that it's warning about. Now I will change all the hotkeys so I get something like this: So now I'm using QWERTY letters for binding, like Ctrl+Alt+Q, Ctrl+Alt+W and so on. As far as I know no Windows program is using these. While I was clicking through the different fields it was giving me the warning. Now when I try to click OK to save the changes, it once again gives me a warning about "ctrl + shift + printscreen". Update 3 After setting the above key bindings (QWERTY) and saving changes, and then rebooting, the conflict seems to have been resolved. I was then able to set following key bindings. Capture full screen: Prntscrn Capture window: Alt + Prntscrn Capture region: Ctrl + Prntscrn I was not prompted with the warning message this time. Perhaps changing key binding required a system reboot? Sounds far fetched but that appears to be the case. I'm still not sure what caused this conflict, but I know for sure that it started after installing aforementioned programs. It might just have to do with Greenshot itself, and not some other program. Like I said, I know from experience that Greenshot likes to mess with users' settings after each update. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually silently updated, even though I have specified not to check for updates, then it changed the key bindings back to defaults and caused a conflict with the hotkeys that were registered with the operating system previously. I rarely reboot the system, so that could have added to the conflict. Next time if I see this I will run Hotkey Explorer immediately and see if there is another program causing the conflict.

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• TextField breaking MOUSE_OVER in as3: only after moving it!

  - by Franz

  I'm having a really weird problem with the MOUSE_OVER event. I'm building dynamic tabs representing mp3 songs containing textfields with info and a dynamic image for the cover art. I am trying to get a simple MOUSE_OVER working over the whole tab, such that you can select the next song to play. I am using a Sprite with alpha 0 that overlays my whole tab (incl. the textFields) as a Listener for MOUSE_OVER and _OUT... I've checked by setting the alpha to something visible and it indeed covers my tab and follows it around as I move it (just making sure I'm not moving the tab without moving the hotspot). Also, I only create it once my cover art is loaded, ensuring that it will cover that too. Now, when the tab is in the top position, everything is dandy. As soon as I move the tab to make space for the next tab, the textFields break my roll behaviour... just like that noob mistake of overlaying a sprite over the one that you're listening for MouseEvents on. But... the roll area is still on top of the field, I've set selectable and mouseEnabled to false on the textFields... nothing. It is as if the mere fact of moving the whole tab now puts the textField on top of everything in my tab (whereas visually, it's still in its expected layer). I'm using pixel fonts but tried it with system fonts, same thing... at my wits end here. public function Tab(tune:Tune) { _tune = tune; mainSprite = new Sprite(); addChild(mainSprite); drawBorder(); createFormat(); placeArtist(); placeTitle(); placeAlbum(); coverArt(); } private function placeButton():void { _button = new Sprite(); _button.graphics.beginFill(0xFF000,0); _button.graphics.drawRect(0,0,229,40); _button.graphics.endFill(); _button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, mouseListener); _button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, mouseListener); _button.buttonMode = true; mainSprite.addChild(_button); } private function mouseListener(event:MouseEvent):void { switch(event.type){ case MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER : hilite(true); break; case MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT : hilite(false); break; } } private function createFormat():void { _format = new TextFormat(); _format.font = "FFF Neostandard"; _format.size = 8; _format.color = 0xFFFFFF; } private function placeArtist():void { var artist : TextField = new TextField(); artist.selectable = false; artist.defaultTextFormat = _format; artist.x = 41; artist.y = 3; artist.width = 135; artist.text = _tune.artist; artist.mouseEnabled = false; mainSprite.addChild(artist); } private function placeTitle():void { var title : TextField = new TextField(); title.selectable = false; title.defaultTextFormat = _format; title.x = 41; title.y = 14; title.width = 135; title.text = _tune.title; title.mouseEnabled = false; mainSprite.addChild(title); } private function placeAlbum():void { var album : TextField = new TextField(); album.selectable = false; album.defaultTextFormat = _format; album.x = 41; album.y = 25; album.width = 135; album.text = _tune.album; album.mouseEnabled = false; mainSprite.addChild(album); } private function drawBorder():void { _border = new Sprite(); _border.graphics.lineStyle(1, 0x545454); _border.graphics.drawRect (0,0,229,40); mainSprite.addChild(_border); } private function coverArt():void { _image = new Sprite(); var imageLoader : Loader = new Loader(); _loaderInfo = imageLoader.contentLoaderInfo; _loaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, coverLoaded) var image:URLRequest = new URLRequest(_tune.coverArt); imageLoader.load(image); _image.x = 1.5; _image.y = 2; _image.addChild(imageLoader); } private function coverLoaded(event:Event):void { _loaderInfo.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, coverLoaded); var scaling : Number = IMAGE_SIZE / _image.width; _image.scaleX = scaling; _image.scaleY = scaling; mainSprite.addChild (_image); placeButton(); } public function hilite(state:Boolean):void{ var col : ColorTransform = new ColorTransform(); if(state){ col.color = 0xFFFFFF; } else { col.color = 0x545454; } _border.transform.colorTransform = col; }

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• SQL Navigator startup error: Unhandled Exception at startup - Cannot find OCI DLL: oci.dll

  - by Imageree

  I am using 64 bits Windows 7. Oracle Development Tool: SQL Navigator 5.5 was installed on my computer. When I try to start the program I get this error: "Unhandled Exception at startup - Cannot find OCI DLL: oci.dll" Then I get this error: "Access violation at address 0101916B in module 'SQLNav5.exe'. Read of address 00000000" and then the program is terminatied. Any ideas what is the problem? Update: I am trying to install Oracle client - sql navigator - not sure if the server is 64 bits or not.

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• ODBC in SSIS 2012

  - by jamiet

  In August 2011 the SQL Server client team published a blog post entitled Microsoft is Aligning with ODBC for Native Relational Data Access in which they basically said "OLE DB is the past, ODBC is the future. Deal with it.". From that blog post:We encourage you to adopt ODBC in the development of your new and future versions of your application. You don’t need to change your existing applications using OLE DB, as they will continue to be supported on Denali throughout its lifecycle. While this gives you a large window of opportunity for changing your applications before the deprecation goes into effect, you may want to consider migrating those applications to ODBC as a part of your future roadmap.I recently undertook a project using SSIS2012 and heeded that advice by opting to use ODBC Connection Managers rather than OLE DB Connection Managers. Unfortunately my finding was that the ODBC Connection Manager is not yet ready for primetime use in SSIS 2012. The main issue I found was that you can't populate an Object variable with a recordset when using an Execute SQL Task connecting to an ODBC data source; any attempt to do so will result in an error:"Disconnected recordsets are not available from ODBC connections." I have filed a bug on Connect at ODBC Connection Manager does not have same funcitonality as OLE DB. For this reason I strongly recommend that you don't make the move to ODBC Connection Managers in SSIS just yet - best to wait for the next version of SSIS before doing that.I found another couple of issues with the ODBC Connection Manager that are worth keeping in mind:It doesn't recognise System Data Source Names (DSNs), only User DSNs (bug filed at ODBC System DSNs are not available in the ODBC Connection Manager)  UPDATE: According to a comment on that Connect item this may only be a problem on 64bit.In the OLE DB Connection Manager parameter ordinals are 0-based, in the ODBC Connection Manager they are 1-based (oh I just can't wait for the upgrade mess that ensues from this one!!!)You have been warned!@jamiet

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• KBXXXXX does not apply, or is blocked by another condition on your computer

  - by Jason Banico

  I have uninstalled VS 2010 and many other apps that I don't use anymore, and reinstalled it after. I have also reinstalled VS 2010 SP1. I'm now down to 3 updates, of which I am getting the error: "KB2522890 does not apply, or is blocked by another condition on your computer." I have already disabled my antivirus and Windows Defender. It also happens to the other updates: VS10SP1-KB2529927-v2-x86 VS10SP1-KB2548139-x86 VS10SP1-KB2549864-x86 It is possible that Microsoft Update is right that they do not apply, as I only installed VS 2010 C# and Web development. Why is it recommending that I install them then?

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• KBXXXXX does not apply, or is blocked by another condition on your computer

  - by Jason Banico

  I have uninstalled VS 2010 and many other apps that I don't use anymore, and reinstalled it after. I have also reinstalled VS 2010 SP1. I'm now down to 3 updates, of which I am getting the error: "KB2522890 does not apply, or is blocked by another condition on your computer." I have already disabled my antivirus and Windows Defender. It also happens to the other updates: VS10SP1-KB2529927-v2-x86 VS10SP1-KB2548139-x86 VS10SP1-KB2549864-x86 It is possible that Microsoft Update is right that they do not apply, as I only installed VS 2010 C# and Web development. Why is it recommending that I install them then?

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• ssl_error_rx_record_too_long error on IIS - site was working, suddenly stopped

  - by JK01

  I am suddenly getting this error connecting to localhost IIS on my development machine. It has been working fine for ages, and now suddenly has this error in Firefox: Secure Connection Failed An error occurred during a connection to localhost. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. (Error code: ssl_error_rx_record_too_long) I have googled and found no clear explanation. In IE it says: Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage\ In Chrome it says: Oops! This link appears to be broken.

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• Entity Framework Code-First to Provide Replacement for ASP.NET Profile Provider

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  A while back, I coordinated a project to add support for the SQL Table Profile Provider in ASP.NET 4 Web Applications.  We urged Microsoft to improve ASP.NET’s built-in Profile support so our workaround wouldn’t be necessary. Instead, Microsoft plans to provide a replacement for ASP.NET Profile in a forthcoming release. In response to my feature suggestion on Connect, Microsoft says we should look for something even better using Entity Framework: “When code-first is officially released the final piece of a full replacement of the ASP.NET Profile will have arrived. Once code-first for EF4 is released, developers will have a really easy and very approachable way to create any arbitrary class, and automatically have the .NET Framework create a table to provide storage for that class. Furthermore developer will also have full LINQ-query capabilities against code-first classes. “ The downside is that there won’t be a way to retrofit this Profile replacement to pre- ASP.NET 4 Web applications. At least there’ll still be the MVP workaround code. It looks like it’s time for me to dig into a CTP of EF Code-First to see what’s available.   Scott Guthrie has been blogging about Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4. It’s not clear when the EF Code-First is coming, but my guess is that it’ll be part of the VS 2010/.NET 4 service pack.

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• SQL SERVER – 2011 – Wait Type – Day 25 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Since the beginning of the series, I have been getting the following question again and again: “What are the changes in SQL Server 2011 – Denali with respect to Wait Types?” SQL Server 2011 – Denali is yet to be released, and making statements on the subject will be inappropriate. Denali CTP1 has been released so I suggest that all of you download the same and experiment on it. I quickly compared the wait stats of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Denali (CTP1) and found the following changes: Wait Types Exists in SQL Server 2008 R2 and Not Exists in SQL Server 2011 “Denali” SOS_RESERVEDMEMBLOCKLIST SOS_LOCALALLOCATORLIST QUERY_WAIT_ERRHDL_SERVICE QUERY_ERRHDL_SERVICE_DONE XE_PACKAGE_LOCK_BACKOFF Wait Types Exists in SQL Server 2011 and Not Exists in SQL Server 2008 SLEEP_MASTERMDREADY SOS_MEMORY_TOPLEVELBLOCKALLOCATOR SOS_PHYS_PAGE_CACHE FILESTREAM_WORKITEM_QUEUE FILESTREAM_FILE_OBJECT FILESTREAM_FCB FILESTREAM_CACHE XE_CALLBACK_LIST PWAIT_MD_RELATION_CACHE PWAIT_MD_SERVER_CACHE PWAIT_MD_LOGIN_STATS DISPATCHER_PRIORITY_QUEUE_SEMAPHORE FT_PROPERTYLIST_CACHE SECURITY_KEYRING_RWLOCK BROKER_TRANSMISSION_WORK BROKER_TRANSMISSION_OBJECT BROKER_TRANSMISSION_TABLE BROKER_DISPATCHER BROKER_FORWARDER UCS_MANAGER UCS_TRANSPORT UCS_MEMORY_NOTIFICATION UCS_ENDPOINT_CHANGE UCS_TRANSPORT_STREAM_CHANGE QUERY_TASK_ENQUEUE_MUTEX DBCC_SCALE_OUT_EXPR_CACHE PWAIT_ALL_COMPONENTS_INITIALIZED PREEMPTIVE_SP_SERVER_DIAGNOSTICS SP_SERVER_DIAGNOSTICS_SLEEP SP_SERVER_DIAGNOSTICS_INIT_MUTEX AM_INDBUILD_ALLOCATION QRY_PARALLEL_THREAD_MUTEX FT_MASTER_MERGE_COORDINATOR PWAIT_RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE_FT_PARALLEL_QUERY_SYNC REDO_THREAD_PENDING_WORK REDO_THREAD_SYNC COUNTRECOVERYMGR HADR_DB_COMMAND HADR_TRANSPORT_SESSION HADR_CLUSAPI_CALL PWAIT_HADR_CHANGE_NOTIFIER_TERMINATION_SYNC PWAIT_HADR_ACTION_COMPLETED PWAIT_HADR_OFFLINE_COMPLETED PWAIT_HADR_ONLINE_COMPLETED PWAIT_HADR_FORCEFAILOVER_COMPLETED PWAIT_HADR_WORKITEM_COMPLETED HADR_WORK_POOL HADR_WORK_QUEUE HADR_LOGCAPTURE_SYNC LOGPOOL_CACHESIZE LOGPOOL_FREEPOOLS LOGPOOL_REPLACEMENTSET LOGPOOL_CONSUMERSET LOGPOOL_MGRSET LOGPOOL_CONSUMER LOGPOOLREFCOUNTEDOBJECT_REFDONE HADR_SYNC_COMMIT HADR_AG_MUTEX PWAIT_SECURITY_CACHE_INVALIDATION PWAIT_HADR_SERVER_READY_CONNECTIONS HADR_FILESTREAM_MANAGER HADR_FILESTREAM_BLOCK_FLUSH HADR_FILESTREAM_IOMGR XDES_HISTORY XDES_SNAPSHOT HADR_FILESTREAM_IOMGR_IOCOMPLETION UCS_SESSION_REGISTRATION ENABLE_EMPTY_VERSIONING HADR_DB_OP_START_SYNC HADR_DB_OP_COMPLETION_SYNC HADR_LOGPROGRESS_SYNC HADR_TRANSPORT_DBRLIST HADR_FAILOVER_PARTNER XDESTSVERMGR GHOSTCLEANUPSYNCMGR HADR_AR_UNLOAD_COMPLETED HADR_PARTNER_SYNC HADR_DBSTATECHANGE_SYNC We already know that Wait Types and Wait Stats are going to be the next big thing in the next version of SQL Server. So now I am eagerly waiting to dig deeper in the wait stats. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• apache2: Could not open configuration file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Permission denied

  - by AntonChanning

  I recently upgraded Ubuntu to the latest LTS edition on my work laptop, which I use as a LAMP development platform. The upgrade was from 12.4 to 14.4. Now I'm having trouble getting apache up and running again. Here is the output from an attempt: antonc@antonc-laptop:/etc/apache2$ sudo service apache2 restart * Restarting web server apache2 * The apache2 configtest failed. Output of config test was: apache2: Could not open configuration file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf: Permission denied Action 'configtest' failed. The Apache error log may have more information. Here is a list of permissions and ownership in /etc/apache, showing that apache2.conf is currently owned by root with permissions 644. I changed this temporarily to 777, but this made no difference, so I changed it back to 644. antonc@antonc-laptop:/etc/apache2$ ls -l total 80 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7115 Jan 7 2014 apache2.conf ... What do I need to do to get apache running again? Is the problem really with apache2.conf or some other setting? Should the conf file be owned by a user other than root?

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• Installing UCMA 3.0 and Creating a Communications Server "14"Trusted Application Pool

  A lot of setup and administration tasks have gotten a lot easier in Communications Server 14; one of them is building an application server to develop and run your UCMA 3.0 applications on. In this post, Ill walk you through installing the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and creating a Trusted Application Pool on the server, thus adding it to the Communications Server 14 topology and allowing you to host and run UCMA 3.0 applications on it. Note: These instructions will change slightly as the bits get updated for the eventual Beta release I will update this post as soon as I get a chance to run this setup on a more recent build. Im doing the install on a simple Communications Server 14 topology consisting of the following Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V images: DC Domain Controller ExchangeUM Exchange Server 2010 CS-SE Microsoft Communications Server 2010 Standard Edition TS Development machine Ill walk through setting up UCMA 3.0 on the TS VM, which is a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine that is joined to the Fabrikam domain.   Im also running Visual Studio 2010 on this VM because I intend to use it as a development machine.  In a future post, Ill walk through installing just the UCMA 3.0 run time to build a true production UCMA application server. Im making a couple of assumptions here: You have an existing CS 2010 site and cluster configured(well look at this in a future post) Youre starting with a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 machine The machine is joined to your domain This walkthrough was done in my Fabrikam VM environment but can easily be modified for your own environment. Installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK Lets start by installing the UCMA 3.0 SDK.  Run UcmaSdkWebDownload.msi to kick off the SDK installer package extract process. The installed package is extracted to C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft UCMA 3.0 >> SDK Installer Package.  Browse there and run setup.exe. Click Install to install the UCMA 3.0 Core SDK and Workflow SDK. Install Communications Server Core Components UCMA 3.0 introduces a new concept called Auto-provisioning, which is most easily explained from the developer point of view.  Remember what your app.config looked it in UCMA 2.0?  You had to store the application GRUU, the trusted contact SIP Uri, the port for your application, and the name of the certificate authority. Thats all gone with auto-provisioning all you need in your app.config is your ApplicationId, e.g.: urn:application:MyApplication. How does CS 2010 do this? All of the applications configuration data is associated with the applications id.  UCMA also queries a replicated copy of the Central Management Database to retrieve the applications configuration data and also the configuration data for any endpoints. In this step, well run Bootstrapper.exe to install the CS Core components, this checked for the following components and installs them if they are not already present: VcRedist Sqlexpress Sqlnativeclient Sqlbackcompat Ucmaredist OcsCore.msi Open a command window at C: >> Program Files >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Deployment and run the following command: Bootstrapper.exe /BootstrapReplica /MinCache /SourceDirectory:"%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft UCMA 3.0\SDK Installer Package\Prereq\BootstrapperCache" Create a New Trusted Application Pool The next step is to create a new trusted application pool for the new server.  Fire up the Communications Server Management Shell from Start >> Microsoft Communications Server 2010 >> Communications Server Management Shell and enter the following PowerShell command: New-CsTrustedApplicationPool -Identity <FQDN of Server> -Registrar <FQDN of CS Server> -Site <CS Site Name> Verify that the new server was added to the CS topology by running the following PowerShell command: (Get-CsTopology -AsXml).ToString() > Topology.xml This created a file called Topology.xml in the directory that you ran the command from.  Open the file and find the Clusters section and look for a node for the new server. The Cluster Fqdn is the name of your server, and note the name of the Site that this Cluster is a part of. <Cluster Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com" RequiresReplication="true" RequiresSetup="true"> <ClusterId SiteId="UcMarketing2" Number="5" /> <Machine OrdinalInCluster="1" Fqdn="appsrv.fabrikam.com"> <NetInterface InterfaceSide="Primary" InterfaceNumber="1" IPAddress="0.0.0.0" /> </Machine> </Cluster> Configure CS Management Store Replication At this point, we have the CS Core components installed and the server configured as a trusted application pool.  We now need to set up replication so that the Central Management Store replicates down to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to enable the Replica service on the new server: Enable-CSReplica The Replica service is enabled, but hasn't done anything yet. This can be verified by running the following PowerShell command to check the replication status for the various servers in the topology: Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus You can see in the screenshot below that the UpToDate property of the new server is still False Run the following PowerShell command to force the replication to run: Invoke-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus Run Get-CSManagementStoreReplicationStatus again to verify that the new service is now up to date Request and Set a New Certificate The last step in the process is to request a new certificate from the certificate authority on the domain and assign it to the new server. From the Communications Server Management Shell, run the following PowerShell command to request a new certificate: Request-CSCertificate -Action new -Type default -CA <Domain Controller FQDN>\<Certificate Authority> Setting the -Verbose switch on the cmdlet creates an Xml file with its output. Open the Xml file and copy the thumbprint of the generated certificate. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Action Name="Request-CsCertificate" Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Connection" Time="20100512T212258">Data Source=(local)\rtclocal;Initial Catalog=xds;Integrated Security=True</Info> <Action Time="20100512T212258"> <Info Title="Certificate use" Time="20100512T212258">urn:certref:default</Info> <Info Title="Subject distinguished name" Time="20100512T212258">CN="appsrv2.fabrikam.com"</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate request is submitted to the Certification Authority dc.fabrikam.com\FabrikamCA.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was issued.</Info> <Info Time="20100512T212259">The certificate was imported with thumbprint AFC3C46E459C1A39AD06247676F3555826DBF705.</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command execution processing completed</Info> <Action Name="DeploymentXdsCmdlet.SaveCachedItems" Time="20100512T212259"> <Info Time="20100512T212259">0 updates</Info> <Complete Time="20100512T212259" /> </Action> <Info Title="command status" Time="20100512T212259">Command has completed</Info> </Action> </Action> Run the following PowerShell command to set the certificate: Set-CsCertificate -Type Default -Thumbprint <Thumbprint> Wrapping Up You now have a new UCMA 3.0 application server in your Communications Server 2010 server topology.  You can provision trusted applications and trusted application endpoints on the new server using the Communications Server 2010 Management Shell.  Well take a look at how to do that in another post. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Employee Info Starter Kit - Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Version (4.0.0) Available

  - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

  Employee Info Starter Kit is a ASP.NET based web application, which includes very simple user requirements, where we can create, read, update and delete (crud) the employee info of a company. Based on just a database table, it explores and solves most of the major problems in web development architectural space.  This open source starter kit extensively uses major features available in latest Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Sql Server to make robust, scalable, secured and maintanable web applications quickly and easily. Since it's first release, this starter kit achieved a huge popularity in web developer community and includes 1,40,000+ download from project web site. Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 came up with lots of exciting features to make software developers life easier.  A new version (v4.0.0) of Employee Info Starter Kit is now available in both MSDN Code Gallery and CodePlex. Chckout the latest version of this starter kit to enjoy cool features available in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. [ Release Notes ] Architectural Overview Simple 2 layer architecture (user interface and data access layer) with 1 optional cache layer ASP.NET Web Form based user interface Custom Entity Data Container implemented (with primitive C# types for data fields) Active Record Design Pattern based Data Access Layer, implemented in C# and Entity Framework 4.0 Sql Server Stored Procedure to perform actual CRUD operation Standard infrastructure (architecture, helper utility) for automated integration (bottom up manner) and unit testing Technology UtilizedProgramming Languages/Scripts Browser side: JavaScript Web server side: C# 4.0 Database server side: T-SQL .NET Framework Components .NET 4.0 Entity Framework .NET 4.0 Optional/Named Parameters .NET 4.0 Tuple .NET 3.0+ Extension Method .NET 3.0+ Lambda Expressions .NET 3.0+ Aanonymous Type .NET 3.0+ Query Expressions .NET 3.0+ Automatically Implemented Properties .NET 3.0+ LINQ .NET 2.0 + Partial Classes .NET 2.0 + Generic Type .NET 2.0 + Nullable Type   ASP.NET 3.5+ List View (TBD) ASP.NET 3.5+ Data Pager (TBD) ASP.NET 2.0+ Grid View ASP.NET 2.0+ Form View ASP.NET 2.0+ Skin ASP.NET 2.0+ Theme ASP.NET 2.0+ Master Page ASP.NET 2.0+ Object Data Source ASP.NET 1.0+ Role Based Security Visual Studio Features Visual Studio 2010 CodedUI Test Visual Studio 2010 Layer Diagram Visual Studio 2010 Sequence Diagram Visual Studio 2010 Directed Graph Visual Studio 2005+ Database Unit Test Visual Studio 2005+ Unit Test Visual Studio 2005+ Web Test Visual Studio 2005+ Load Test Sql Server Features Sql Server 2005 Stored Procedure Sql Server 2005 Xml type Sql Server 2005 Paging support

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• Employee Info Starter Kit - Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Version (4.0.0) Available

  - by joycsharp

  Employee Info Starter Kit is a ASP.NET based web application, which includes very simple user requirements, where we can create, read, update and delete (crud) the employee info of a company. Based on just a database table, it explores and solves all major problems in web development architectural space.  This open source starter kit extensively uses major features available in latest Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Sql Server to make robust, scalable, secured and maintanable web applications quickly and easily. Since it's first release, this starter kit achieved a huge popularity in web developer community and includes 1,40,000+ download from project web site. Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 came up with lots of exciting features to make software developers life easier.  A new version (v4.0.0) of Employee Info Starter Kit is now available in both MSDN Code Gallery and CodePlex. Chckout the latest version of this starter kit to enjoy cool features available in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. [ Release Notes ] Architectural Overview Simple 2 layer architecture (user interface and data access layer) with 1 optional cache layer ASP.NET Web Form based user interface Custom Entity Data Container implemented (with primitive C# types for data fields) Active Record Design Pattern based Data Access Layer, implemented in C# and Entity Framework 4.0 Sql Server Stored Procedure to perform actual CRUD operation Standard infrastructure (architecture, helper utility) for automated integration (bottom up manner) and unit testing Technology UtilizedProgramming Languages/Scripts Browser side: JavaScript Web server side: C# 4.0 Database server side: T-SQL .NET Framework Components .NET 4.0 Entity Framework .NET 4.0 Optional/Named Parameters .NET 4.0 Tuple .NET 3.0+ Extension Method .NET 3.0+ Lambda Expressions .NET 3.0+ Aanonymous Type .NET 3.0+ Query Expressions .NET 3.0+ Automatically Implemented Properties .NET 3.0+ LINQ .NET 2.0 + Partial Classes .NET 2.0 + Generic Type .NET 2.0 + Nullable Type   ASP.NET 3.5+ List View (TBD) ASP.NET 3.5+ Data Pager (TBD) ASP.NET 2.0+ Grid View ASP.NET 2.0+ Form View ASP.NET 2.0+ Skin ASP.NET 2.0+ Theme ASP.NET 2.0+ Master Page ASP.NET 2.0+ Object Data Source ASP.NET 1.0+ Role Based Security Visual Studio Features Visual Studio 2010 CodedUI Test Visual Studio 2010 Layer Diagram Visual Studio 2010 Sequence Diagram Visual Studio 2010 Directed Graph Visual Studio 2005+ Database Unit Test Visual Studio 2005+ Unit Test Visual Studio 2005+ Web Test Visual Studio 2005+ Load Test Sql Server Features Sql Server 2005 Stored Procedure Sql Server 2005 Xml type Sql Server 2005 Paging support

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