security testing - Page 798

DotNetNuke 7.0 Only Weeks Away!

- by sbwalker

The software industry moves at a lightning pace, and it is only through constant focus and continuous investment that a software product can remain both stable and relevant over the long term. As we approach the 10 Year Anniversary of the DotNetNuke platform, it seems only fitting that we are on the verge of announcing yet another significant product milestone. DotNetNuke 7.0 is just around the corner and represents a bold step forward for our Content Management Platform, including substantial business productivity enhancements, investments in web platform relevance, and a significant overhaul and modernization of the user interface and user experience. It has been five months since I posted the announcement that the next major version of the platform was going to be DotNetNuke 7.0. This announcement created tremendous excitement and anticipation in the DotNetNuke community, as major version increments have always been utilized as an opportunity to introduce revolutionary new product features and capabilities. After months of intense product development, the finish line is finally in sight. With that, I am pleased to announce that we released a Release Candidate (RC) of DotNetNuke 7.0 yesterday. You can download the RC from our project page on Codeplex. A Release Candidate represents a software version which is very near to “release” quality. So although we will not be officially endorsing the RC for production use, or providing an official upgrade path, it does represent a significant milestone in our software development efforts ( if you are looking for a more detailed explanation of our software release terminology, I would encourage you to read the blog written by Co-Founder, Joe Brinkman titled "What's In A Name?" ). Modernizing a software platform does have its share of challenges from a backward compatibility perspective and, as usual, we are taking great care in ensuring a seamless upgrade path for our customers. In order to remain relevant and progressive, you need to be aware that DotNetNuke 7.0 has adopted a new set of baseline infrastructure requirements including ASP.NET 4.0. As a result we are encouraging all major stakeholders in the ecosystem ( module developers, designers, partners, customers, etc... ) to take the opportunity to install the RC in their own local environments. This is the last opportunity to let us know about any final issues which may need to be addressed prior to final release. Mark your calendars now… the expected public release date (RTM) for DotNetNuke 7.0 will be Wednesday, November 28th. On a side note, we expect to release a 6.2.5 Maintenance version today. This release contains some high priority product quality improvements as well as security patches for some vulnerabilities reported through our standard ecosystem channels. As a result we will be encouraging all of our customers to upgrade to the 6.2.5 release as soon as it is available. I hope everyone is as excited as I am about the upcoming DotNetNuke 7.0 release. Please take the opportunity over the next week to put the new platform through its paces. Remember, only through our collective efforts can we ensure that this release has the greatest market impact of any DotNetNuke release to date.

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When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes. This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes. This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced. Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison. There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model. Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget. The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location. The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location. There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns. To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

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Access Denied

- by Tony Davis

When Microsoft executives wake up in the night screaming, I suspect they are having a nightmare about their own version of Frankenstein's monster. Created with the best of intentions, without thinking too hard of the long-term strategy, and having long outlived its usefulness, the monster still lives on, occasionally wreaking vengeance on the innocent. Its name is Access; a living synthesis of disparate body parts that is resistant to all attempts at a mercy-killing. In 1986, Microsoft had no database products, and needed one for their new OS/2 operating system, the successor to MSDOS. In 1986, they bought exclusive rights to Sybase DataServer, and were also intent on developing a desktop database to capture Ashton-Tate's dominance of that market, with dbase. This project, first called 'Omega' and later 'Cirrus', eventually spawned two products: Visual Basic in 1991 and Access in late 1992. Whereas Visual Basic battled with PowerBuilder for dominance in the client-server market, Access easily won the desktop database battle, with Dbase III and DataEase falling away. Access did an excellent job of abstracting and simplifying the task of building small database applications in a short amount of time, for a small number of departmental users, and often for a transient requirement. There is an excellent front end and forms generator. We not only see it in Access but parts of it also reappear in SSMS. It's good. A business user can pull together useful reports, without relying on extensive technical support. A skilled Access programmer can deliver a fairly sophisticated application, whilst the traditional client-server programmer is still sharpening his pencil. Even for the SQL Server programmer, the forms generator of Access is useful for sketching out application designs. So far, so good, but here's where the problems start; Access ties together two different products and the backend of Access is the bugbear. The limitations of Jet/ACE are well-known and documented. They range from MDB files that are prone to corruption, especially as they grow in size, pathetic security, and "copy and paste" Backups. The biggest problem though, was an infamous lack of scalability. Because Microsoft never realized how long the product would last, they put little energy into improving the beast. Microsoft 'ate their own dog food' by using Access for Microsoft Exchange and Outlook. They choked on it. For years, scalability and performance problems with Exchange Server have been laid at the door of the Jet Blue engine on which it relies. Substantial development work in Exchange 2010 was required, just in order to improve the engine and storage schema so that it more efficiently handled the reading and writing of mails. The alternative of using SQL Server just never panned out. The Jet engine was designed to limit concurrent users to a small number (10-20). When Access applications outgrew this, bitter experience proved that there really is no easy upgrade path from Access to SQL Server, beyond rewriting the whole lot from scratch. The various initiatives to do this never quite bridged the cultural gulf between Access and a true relational database So, what are the obvious alternatives for small, strategic database applications? I know many users who, for simple 'list maintenance' requirements are very happy using Excel databases. Surely, now that PowerPivot has led the way, it is time for Microsoft to offer a new RAD package for database application development; namely an Excel-based front end for SQL Server Express. In that way, we'll have a powerful and familiar front end, to a scalable database, and a clear upgrade path when an app takes off and needs to go enterprise. Cheers, Tony.

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Automated Error Reporting = More Robust Software

- by Laila

I would like to tell you how to revolutionize your software development process </marketing hyperbole> On a more serious note, we (Red Gate's .NET Development team) recently rolled a new tool into our development process which has made our lives dramatically easier AND improved the quality of our software, and I (& one of our developers, Alex Davies) just wanted to take a quick moment to share the love. I work with a development team that takes pride in what they ship, so we take software testing rather seriously. For every development project we run, we allocate at least one software tester for every two developers, and we never ship software without first shipping early access releases and betas to get user feedback. And therein lies the challenge -encouraging users to provide consistent, useful feedback is a headache, but without that feedback, improving the software is. tricky. Until fairly recently, we used the standard (if long-winded) approach of receiving bug reports of variable quality via email or through our support forums. If that didn't give us enough information to reproduce the problem - which was most of the time - we had to enter into a time-consuming to-and-fro conversation with the end-user, to get scrape together the data we needed to work out where the problem lay. As I'm sure you're aware, this is painfully slow. To the delight of the team, we recently got to work with SmartAssembly, which lets us embed automated exception and error reporting into our software with very little pain, and we decided to do a little dogfooding. As a result, we've have made a really handy (if perhaps slightly obvious) discovery: As soon as we release a beta, or indeed any release of software, we now get tonnes of customer feedback through automated error reports. Making this process easier for our users has dramatically increased the amount (and quality) of feedback we get. From their point of view, they get an experience similar to Microsoft's error reporting, and process is essentially idiot-proof. From our side of things, we can now react much faster to the information we get, fixing the bugs and shipping a new-and-improved release, which our users rather appreciate. Smiles and hugs all round. Even more so because, as we're use SmartAssembly's Automated Error Reporting, we get to avoid having to spend weeks building an exception reporting mechanism. It takes just a few minutes to add reporting to a project, and we get a bunch of useful information back, like a stack trace and the values of all the local variables, which we can use to fix bugs. Happily, "Automated Error Reporting = More Robust Software" can actually be read two ways: we've found that we not only ship higher quality software, but we also release within a shorter time. We can ship stable software that our users are happy to upgrade to, and we then bask in the glory of lots of positive customer feedback. Once we'd starting working with SmartAssembly, we were curious to know how widespread error reporting was as a practice. Our product manager ran a survey in autumn last year, and found that 40% of software developers never really considered deploying error reporting. Considering how we've now got plenty of experience on the subject, one of our dev guys, Alex Davies, thought we should share what we've learnt, and he's kindly offered to host a webinar on delivering robust software with Automated Error Reporting. Drawing on our own in-house development experiences, he'll cover how to add error reporting to your program, how to actually use the error reports to fix bugs (don't snigger, not everyone's as bright as you), how to customize the error report dialog that your users see, and how to automatically get log files from your users' machine. The webinar will take place on Jan 25th (that's next week). It's free to attend, but you'll still need to register to hear Alex's dulcet tones.

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SSIS - Connect to Oracle on a 64-bit machine (Updated for SSIS 2008 R2)

- by jorg

We recently had a few customers where a connection to Oracle on a 64 bit machine was necessary. A quick search on the internet showed that this could be a big problem. I found all kind of blog and forum posts of developers complaining about this. A lot of developers will recognize the following error message: Test connection failed because of an error in initializing provider. Oracle client and networking components were not found. These components are supplied by Oracle Corporation and are part of the Oracle Version 7.3.3 or later client software installation. Provider is unable to function until these components are installed. After a lot of searching, trying and debugging I think I found the right way to do it! Problems Because BIDS is a 32 bit application, as well on 32 as on 64 bit machines, it cannot see the 64 bit driver for Oracle. Because of this, connecting to Oracle from BIDS on a 64 bit machine will never work when you install the 64 bit Oracle client. Another problem is the "Microsoft Provider for Oracle", this driver only exists in a 32 bit version and Microsoft has no plans to create a 64 bit one in the near future. The last problem I know of is in the Oracle client itself, it seems that a connection will never work with the instant client, so always use the full client. There are also a lot of problems with the 10G client, one of it is the fact that this driver can't handle the "(x86)" in the path of SQL Server. So using the 10G client is no option! Solution Download the Oracle 11G full client. Install the 32 AND the 64 bit version of the 11G full client (Installation Type: Administrator) and reboot the server afterwards. The 32 bit version is needed for development from BIDS with is 32 bit, the 64 bit version is needed for production with the SQLAgent, which is 64 bit. Configure the Oracle clients (both 32 and 64 bits) by editing the files tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora. Try to do this with an Oracle DBA or, even better, let him/her do this. Use the "Oracle provider for OLE DB" from SSIS, don't use the "Microsoft Provider for Oracle" because a 64 bit version of it does not exist. Schedule your packages with the SQLAgent. Background information Visual Studio (BI Dev Studio)is a 32bit application. SQL Server Management Studio is a 32bit application. dtexecui.exe is a 32bit application. dtexec.exe has both 32bit and 64bit versions. There are x64 and x86 versions of the Oracle provider available. SQLAgent is a 64bit process. My advice to BI consultants is to get an Oracle DBA or professional for the installation and configuration of the 2 full clients (32 and 64 bit). Tell the DBA to download the biggest client available, this way you are sure that they pick the right one ;-) Testing if the clients have been installed and configured in the right way can be done with Windows ODBC Data Source Administrator: Start... Programs... Administrative tools... Data Sources (ODBC) ADITIONAL STEPS FOR SSIS 2008 R2 It seems that, unfortunately, some additional steps are necessary for SQL Server 2008 R2 installations: 1. Open REGEDIT (Start… Run… REGEDIT) on the server and search for the following entry (for the 32 bits driver): HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MSDTC\MTxOCI Make sure the following values are entered: 2. Next, search for (for the 64 bits driver): HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\MSDTC\MTxOCI Make sure the same values as above are entered. 3. Reboot your server.

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.Net Reflector 6.5 EAP now available

- by CliveT

With the release of CLR 4 being so close, we’ve been working hard on getting the new C# and VB language features implemented inside Reflector. The work isn’t complete yet, but we have some of the features working. Most importantly, there are going to be changes to the Reflector object model, and we though it would be useful for people to see the changes and have an opportunity to comment on them. Before going any further, we should tell you what the EAP contains that’s different from the released version. A number of bugs have been fixed, mainly bugs that were raised via the forum. This is slightly offset by the fact that this EAP hasn’t had a whole lot of testing and there may have been new bugs introduced during the development work we’ve been doing. The C# language writer has been changed to display in and out co- and contra-variance markers on interfaces and delegates, and to display default values for optional parameters in method definitions. We also concisely display values passed by reference into COM calls. However, we do not change callsites to display calls using named parameters; this looks like hard work to get right. The forthcoming version of the C# language introduces dynamic types and dynamic calls. The new version of Reflector should display a dynamic call rather than the generated C#: dynamic target = MyTestObject(); target.Hello("Mum"); We have a few bugs in this area where we are not casting to dynamic when necessary. These have been fixed on a branch and should make their way into the next EAP. To support the dynamic features, we’ve added the types IDynamicMethodReferenceExpression, IDynamicPropertyIndexerExpression, and IDynamicPropertyReferenceExpression to the object model. These types, based on the versions without “Dynamic” in the name, reflect the fact that we don’t have full information about the method that is going to be called, but only have its name (as a string). These interfaces are going to change – in an internal version, they have been extended to include information about which parameter positions use runtime types and which use compile time types. There’s also the interface, IDynamicVariableDeclaration, that can be used to determine if a particular variable is used at dynamic call sites as a target. A couple of these language changes have also been added to the Visual Basic language writer. The new features are exposed only when the optimization level is set to .NET 4. When the level is set this high, the other standard language writers will simply display a message to say that they do not handle such an optimization level. Reflector Pro now has 4.0 as an optional compilation target and we have done some work to get the pdb generation right for these new features. The EAP version of Reflector no longer installs the add-in on startup. The first time you run the EAP, it displays the integration options dialog. You can use the checkboxes to select the versions of Visual Studio into which you want to install the EAP version. Note that you can only have one version of Reflector Pro installed in Visual Studio; if you install into a Visual Studio that has another version installed, the previous version will be removed. Please try it out and send your feedback to the EAP forum.

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How-to enable user session time out warning (JDev 11.1.1.4)

- by frank.nimphius

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE 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-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle JDeveloper 11.1.1.4 contains a new session time-out warning functionality. Quoting the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework11g Release 1 (11.1.1.4.0) documentatiom http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/web.1111/b31973/ap_config.htm#BABFIGBA "When a request is sent to the server, a session timeout value is written to the page and the session timeout warning interval is defined by the context parameter oracle.adf.view.rich.sessionHandling.WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT. The user is given the opportunity to extend the session in a warning dialog, and a notification is sent when the session has expired and the page is refreshed. Depending on the application security configuration, the user may be redirected to the log in page when the session expires. Use the oracle.adf.view.rich.sessionHandling.WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT context parameter to set the number of seconds prior to the session time out when a warning dialog is displayed. If the value of WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT is less than 120 seconds, if client state saving is used for the page, or if the session has been invalidated, the feature is disabled. The session time-out value it taken directly from the session. Example A-3 shows configuration of the warning dialog to display at 120 seconds before the time-out of the session. Example A-3 Configuration of Session Time-out Warning <context-param> <param-name> oracle.adf.view.rich.sessionHandling.WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT </param-name> <param-value>120</param-value> </context-param> The default value of this parameter is 120 seconds. To prevent notification of the user too frequently when the session time-out is set too short, the actual value of WARNING_BEFORE_TIMEOUT is determined dynamically, where the session time-out must be more than 2 minutes or the feature is disabled.

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Enjoy How-To Geek User Style Script Goodness

- by Asian Angel

Most people may not be aware of it but there are two user style scripts that have been created just for use with the How-To Geek website. If you are curious then join us as we look at these two scripts at work. Note: User Style Scripts & User Scripts can be added to most browsers but we are using Firefox for our examples here. The How-to Geek Wide User Style Script The first of the two scripts affects the viewing width of the website’s news content. Here you can see everything set at the normal width. When you visit the UserStyles website you will be able to view basic information about the script and see the code itself if desired. On the right side of the page is the good part though. Since we are using Firefox with Greasemonkey installed we chose the the “install as a user script option”. Notice that the script is available for other browsers as well (very nice!) Within a few moments of clicking on the “install as a user script button” you will see the following window asking confirmation for installing the script. After installing the user style script and refreshing the page it has now stretched out to fill 90% of the browser window’s area. Definitely nice! The How-To Geek – News and Comments (600px) User Style Script The second script can be very useful for anyone with the limited screen real-estate of a netbook. You can see another of the articles from here at the site viewed in a “normal mode”. Once again you can view basic information about this particular user style script and view the code if desired. As above we have the Firefox/Greasemonkey combination at work so we installed as a user script. This is one of the great things about using Greasemonkey…it always checks with you to make certain that no unauthorized scripts are added. Once the script was installed and we refreshed the page things looked very very different. All the focus has been placed on the article itself and any comments attached to the article. For those who may be curious this is what the homepage looks like using this script. Conclusion If you have been wanting to add a little bit of “viewing spice” to your browser for the How-To Geek website then definitely pop over to the User Styles website and give these two scripts a try. Using Opera Browser? See our how-to for adding user scripts to Opera here. Links Install the How-to Geek Wide User Style Script Install the How-To Geek – News and Comments (600px) User Style Script Download the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons) Download the Stylish extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set Up User Scripts in Opera BrowserSet Gmail as Default Mail Client in UbuntuHide Flash Animations in Google ChromeShell Script to Upload a File to the Same Subdirectory on a Remote ServerAutomate Adding Bookmarks to del.icio.us TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition

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SOA Community Newsletter May 2014

- by JuergenKress

Registration for the Fusion Middleware Summer Camps 2014 is open – Register asap for one of our bootcamps August 4th – 8th 2014 in Lisbon. Please read details and pre-requisitions careful before you register. We expect that like in the past, the conference will be booked out soon! If you can’t make it to Lisbon attend our SOA Suite 11c free on-demand Bootcamp or Managing the Complexity of IoT online trainings. With more than 5000 customers, SOA Suite Achieves Significant Customer Adoption and Industry Recognition.Thanks to all our SOA Specialized partners for making our joins SOA customers successful! As a summary of the Industrial SOA series we published the Podcast Show Notes: SOA and Cloud - Where's This Relationship Going? Make sure you use the Oracle Demo Systems for your customer presentations. The demo systems are hosted by Oracle and include complete scenarios based on the latest Middleware version like the new B2B SOA Suite Demo System! For local presentations without fast internet use the SOA/BPM 11.1.1.7.1 Virtual Machine and Case Management Sample. At our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required) you can get new IoT presentations for Location Based Offers for Banking & Whitepaper and online Webcast & Utility presentation. In this newsletter you will find many articles about OSB: OSB 11g – A Hands-on Tutorial & Using Split-Joins in OSB Services for parallel processing of messages & OSB, Service Callouts and OQL & Working with Oracle Security Token Service. Thanks for sharing all the additional SOA articles within the community: How to configure Oracle SOA/BPM task auto release & Controlling BPEL process flow at runtime & Upgrading to Oracle SOA Suite 11g PS6 (11.1.1.7)? Do this. & BPEL and BPM's performance monitoring using DMS & SOA 11g - Create RESTful Service In Oracle SOA & Wrong timezone causes TopLink warning in SOA suite. Highlight of the BPM and ACM section is the IDC BPM vendor report. The new bundle Patch including the ACM UI is now available. If you want to learn more about ACM, get the ACM training material at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). A great demo for your next BPM presentation is the BPM iPad app. It’s simpleMobile BPM is Not An Option. It’s a Necessity. Thanks for sharing all the additional BPM articles within the community: BPM update adds Case Management Web Interface and REST APIs & Implementing deadline functionality with Oracle Adaptive Case Management & BPM 11g Timeout Heuristics & Humantask Assignment: Names and Expressions Assignment via Rules. In our last section Architecture, it is all about design. Usability is a key factor for customer satisfaction, worth to spend some time and read the Simplified User Experience Design Patterns eBook. Great blueprint for your project! See you in Lisbon! To read the newsletter please visit www.tinyurl.com/soaNewsMay2014 (OPN Account required) To become a member of the SOA Partner Community please register at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: newsletter,SOA Community newsletter,SOA Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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DAC pack up all your troubles

- by Tony Davis

Visual Studio 2010, or perhaps its apparently-forthcoming sister, "SQL Studio", is being geared up to become the natural way for developers to create databases. Central to this drive is the introduction of 'data-tier application components', or DACs. Applications are developed as normal but when it comes to deployment, instead of supplying the DBA with a bunch of scripts to create the required database objects, the developer creates a single DAC Package ("DAC Pack"); a zipped XML file containing all the database objects needed by the application, along with versioning information, policies for deployment, and so on. It's an intriguing prospect. Developers can work on their development database using their existing tools and source control, and then package up the changes into a single DACPAC for deployment and management. DBAs get an "application level view" of how their instances are being used and the ability to collectively, rather than individually, manage the objects. The DBA needing to manage a large number of relatively small databases can use "DAC snapshots" to get a quick overview of what has changed across all the databases they manage. The reason that DAC packs haven't caused more excitement is that they can only be pushed to SQL Server 2008 R2, and they must be developed or inspected using Visual Studio 2010. Furthermore, what we see right now in VS2010 is more of a 'work-in-progress' or 'vision of the future', with serious shortcomings and restrictions that render it unsuitable for anything but small 'non-critical' departmental databases. The first problem is that DAC packs support a limited set of schema objects (corresponding closely to the features available on 'Azure'). This means that Service Broker queues, CLR Objects, and perhaps most critically security (permissions, certificates etc.), are off-limits. Applications that require these objects will need to add them via a post-deployment TSQL script, rather defeating the whole idea. More worrying still is the process for altering a database with a DAC pack. The grand 'collective' philosophy, whereby a single XML file can be used for deploying and managing builds and changes, extends, unfortunately, to database upgrades. Any change to a database object will result in the creation of a new database, copying the data from the old version, nuking the previous one, and then renaming the new one. Simple eh? The problem is that even something as trivial as adding a comment to a stored procedure in a 5GB database will require the server to find at least twice as much space, as well sufficient elbow-room in the transaction log for copying the largest table. Of course, you'll need to take the database offline for the full course of the deployment, which is likely to take a long time if there is a lot of data. This upgrade/rename process breaks the log chain, makes any subsequent full restore operation highly complicated, and will also break log shipping. As with any grand vision, the devil is always in the detail. It's hard to fathom why Microsoft hasn't used a SQL Compare-style approach to the upgrade process, altering a database with a change script, and this will surely be adopted in the near future. Something had to be in place for VS2010, but right now DAC packs only make sense for Azure. For this, they're cute, but hardly compelling. Nevertheless, DBAs would do well to get familiar with VS 2010 and DAC packs. Like it or not, they're both coming. Cheers, Tony.

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Using the latest (stable release) of Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio 11.1.0.7.20.

- by mbcrump

+ = Simple and safe Data connections. This guide is for someone wanting to use the latest ODP.NET quickly without reading the official documentation. This guide will get you up and running in about 15 minutes. I have reviewed my referral link to my simple Setting up ODP.net with Win7 x64 and noticed most people were searching for one of the following terms: “how to use odp.net with vs” “setup connection odp.net” “query db using odp and vs” While my article provided links and a sample tnsnames.ora file, it really didn’t tell you how to use it. I’m hoping that this brief tutorial will help. So before we get started, you will need the following: Download the following: www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/dotnet/utilsoft.html from oracle and install it. It is the first one on the page. Visual Studio 2008 or 2010. It should be noted that The System.Data.OracleClient namespace is the OLD .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle. It should not be used anymore as it has been depreciated. The latest version which is what we are using is Oracle.DataAccess.Client. First things first, Add a reference to the Oracle.DataAccess.Client after you install ODP.NET Copy and paste the following C# code into your project and replace the relevant info including the query string and you should be able to return data. I have commented several lines of code to assist in understanding what it is doing. Lambda Expression. using System; using System.Data; using Oracle.DataAccess.Client; namespace ConsoleApplication1 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { try { //Setup DataSource string oradb = "Data Source=(DESCRIPTION =" + "(ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hostname)(PORT = 1521)))" + "(CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = SERVICENAME))) ;" + "Persist Security Info=True;User ID=USER;Password=PASSWORD;"; //Open Connection to Oracle - this could be moved outside the try. OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection(oradb); conn.Open(); //Create cmd and use parameters to prevent SQL injection attacks. OracleCommand cmd = new OracleCommand(); cmd.Connection = conn; cmd.CommandText = "select username from table where username = :username"; OracleParameter p1 = new OracleParameter("username", OracleDbType.Varchar2); p1.Value = username; cmd.Parameters.Add(p1); cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; OracleDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader(); dr.Read(); //Contains the value of the datarow Console.WriteLine(dr["username"].ToString()); //Disposes of objects. dr.Dispose(); cmd.Dispose(); conn.Dispose(); } catch (OracleException ex) // Catches only Oracle errors { switch (ex.Number) { case 1: Console.WriteLine("Error attempting to insert duplicate data."); break; case 12545: Console.WriteLine("The database is unavailable."); break; default: Console.WriteLine(ex.Message.ToString()); break; } } catch (Exception ex) // Catches any error not previously caught { Console.WriteLine("Unidentified Error: " + ex.Message.ToString()); } } } } At this point, you should have a working Program that returns data from an oracle database. If you are still having trouble then drop me a line and I will be happy to assist. As of this writing, oracle has announced the latest beta release of ODP.NET 11.2.0.1.1 Beta. This release includes .NET Framework 4 and .NET Framework 4 Client Profile support. You may want to hold off on this version for a while as its BETA, and I wouldn’t want any production code using any BETA software.

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Windows Azure Recipe: Consumer Portal

- by Clint Edmonson

Nearly every company on the internet has a web presence. Many are merely using theirs for informational purposes. More sophisticated portals allow customers to register their contact information and provide some level of interaction or customer support. But as our understanding of how consumers use the web increases, the more progressive companies are taking advantage of social web and rich media delivery to connect at a deeper level with the consumers of their goods and services. Drivers Cost reduction Scalability Global distribution Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of how a Windows Azure Consumer Portal might be built out: Ingredients Web Role – this will host the core of the solution. Each web role is a virtual machine hosting an application written in ASP.NET (or optionally php, or node.js). The number of web roles can be scaled up or down as needed to handle peak and non-peak traffic loads. Database – every modern web application needs to store data. SQL Azure databases look and act exactly like their on-premise siblings but are fault tolerant and have data redundancy built in. Access Control (optional) – if identity needs to be tracked within the solution, the access control service combined with the Windows Identity Foundation framework provides out-of-the-box support for several social media platforms including Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook. It also has a provider model to allow integration with other platforms as well. Caching (optional) – for sites with high traffic with lots of read-only data and lists, the distributed in-memory caching service can be used to cache and serve up static data at higher scale and speed than direct database requests. It can also be used to manage user session state. Blob Storage (optional) – for sites that serve up unstructured data such as documents, video, audio, device drivers, and more. The data is highly available and stored redundantly across data centers. Each entry in blob storage is provided with it’s own unique URL for direct access by the browser. Content Delivery Network (CDN) (optional) – for sites that service users around the globe, the CDN is an extension to blob storage that, when enabled, will automatically cache frequently accessed blobs and static site content at edge data centers around the world. The data can be delivered statically or streamed in the case of rich media content. Training Labs These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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CacheAdapter 2.4 – Bug fixes and minor functional update

- by Glav

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the CacheAdapter library and what it does, you can read all about its awesome ability to utilise memory, Asp.Net Web, Windows Azure AppFabric and memcached caching implementations via a single unified, simple to use API from here and here.. The CacheAdapter library is receiving an update to version 2.4 and is currently available on Nuget here. Update: The CacheAdapter has actualy just had a minor revision to 2.4.1. This significantly increases the performance and reliability in memcached scenario under more extreme loads. General to moderate usage wont see any noticeable difference though. Bugs This latest version fixes a big that is only present in the memcached implementation and is only seen in rare, intermittent times (making i particularly hard to find). The bug is where a cache node would be removed from the farm when errors in deserialization of cached objects would occur due to serialised data not being read from the stream in entirety. The code also contains enhancements to better surface serialization exceptions to aid in the debugging process. This is also specifically targeted at the memcached implementation. This is important when moving from something like memory or Asp.Web caching mechanisms to memcached where the serialization rules are not as lenient. There are a few other minor bug fixes, code cleanup and a little refactoring. Minor feature addition In addition to this bug fix, many people have asked for a single setting to either enable or disable the cache.In this version, you can disable the cache by setting the IsCacheEnabled flag to false in the application configuration file. Something like the example below: <Glav.CacheAdapter.MainConfig> <setting name="CacheToUse" serializeAs="String"> <value>memcached</value> </setting> <setting name="DistributedCacheServers" serializeAs="String"> <value>localhost:11211</value> </setting> <setting name="IsCacheEnabled" serializeAs="String"> <value>False</value> </setting> </Glav.CacheAdapter.MainConfig> Your reasons to use this feature may vary (perhaps some performance testing or problem diagnosis). At any rate, disabling the cache will cause every attempt to retrieve data from the cache, resulting in a cache miss and returning null. If you are using the ICacheProvider with the delegate/Func<T> syntax to populate the cache, this delegate method will get executed every single time. For example, when the cache is disabled, the following delegate/Func<T> code will be executed every time: var data1 = cacheProvider.Get<SomeData>("cache-key", DateTime.Now.AddHours(1), () => { // With the cache disabled, this data access code is executed every attempt to // get this data via the CacheProvider. var someData = new SomeData() { SomeText = "cache example1", SomeNumber = 1 }; return someData; }); One final note: If you access the cache directly via the ICache instance, instead of the higher level ICacheProvider API, you bypass this setting and still access the underlying cache implementation. Only the ICacheProvider instance observes the IsCacheEnabled setting. Thanks to those individuals who have used this library and provided feedback. Ifyou have any suggestions or ideas, please submit them to the issue register on bitbucket (which is where you can grab all the source code from too)

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Resolve SRs Faster Using RDA - Find the Right Profile

- by Daniel Mortimer

Introduction Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) is an excellent command-line data collection tool that can aid troubleshooting / problem solving. The tool covers the majority of Oracle's vast product range, and its data collection capability is comprehensive. RDA collects data about the operating system and environment, including environment variable, kernel settings network o/s performance o/s patches and much more the Oracle Products installed, including patches logs and debug metrics configuration and much more In effect, RDA can obtain a snapshot of an Oracle Product and its environment. Oracle Support encourages the use of RDA because it greatly reduces service request resolution time by minimizing the number of requests from Oracle Support for more information. RDA is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible; it does not modify systems in any way. It collects useful data for Oracle Support only and a security filter is provided if required. Find and Use the Right RDA Profile One problem of any tool / utility, which covers a large range of products, is knowing how to target it against only the products you wish to troubleshoot. RDA does not have a GUI. Nor does RDA have an intelligent mechanism for detecting and automatically collecting data only for those Oracle products installed. Instead, you have to tell RDA what to do. There is a mind boggling large number of RDA data collection modules which you can configure RDA to use. It is easier, however, to setup RDA to use a "Profile". A profile consists of a list of data collection modules and predefined settings. As such profiles can be used to diagnose a problem with a particular product or combination of products. How to run RDA with a profile? ( <rda> represents the command you selected to run RDA (for example, rda.pl, rda.cmd, rda.sh, and perl rda.pl).) 1. Use the embedded spreadsheet to find the RDA profile which is appropriate for your problem / chosen Oracle Fusion Middleware products. 2. Use the following command to perform the setup <rda> -S -p <profile_name> 3. Run the data collection <rda> Run the data collection. If you want to perform setup and run in one go, then use a command such as the following: <rda> -vnSCRP -p <profile name> For more information, refer to: Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) 4 - Profile Manual Pages [ID 391983.1] Additional Hints / Tips: 1. Be careful! Profile names are case sensitive.2. When profiles are not used, RDA considers all existing modules by default. For example, if you have downloaded RDA for the first time and run the command <rda> -S you will see prompts for every RDA collection module many of which will be of no interest to you. Also, you may, in your haste to work through all the questions, forget to say "Yes" to the collection of data that is pertinent to your particular problem or product. Profiles avoid such tedium and help ensure the right data is collected at the first time of asking.

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How can I best manage making open source code releases from my company's confidential research code?

- by DeveloperDon

My company (let's call them Acme Technology) has a library of approximately one thousand source files that originally came from its Acme Labs research group, incubated in a development group for a couple years, and has more recently been provided to a handful of customers under non-disclosure. Acme is getting ready to release perhaps 75% of the code to the open source community. The other 25% would be released later, but for now, is either not ready for customer use or contains code related to future innovations they need to keep out of the hands of competitors. The code is presently formatted with #ifdefs that permit the same code base to work with the pre-production platforms that will be available to university researchers and a much wider range of commercial customers once it goes to open source, while at the same time being available for experimentation and prototyping and forward compatibility testing with the future platform. Keeping a single code base is considered essential for the economics (and sanity) of my group who would have a tough time maintaining two copies in parallel. Files in our current base look something like this: > // Copyright 2012 (C) Acme Technology, All Rights Reserved. > // Very large, often varied and restrictive copyright license in English and French, > // sometimes also embedded in make files and shell scripts with varied > // comment styles. > > > ... Usual header stuff... > > void initTechnologyLibrary() { > nuiInterface(on); > #ifdef UNDER_RESEARCH > holographicVisualization(on); > #endif > } And we would like to convert them to something like: > // GPL Copyright (C) Acme Technology Labs 2012, Some rights reserved. > // Acme appreciates your interest in its technology, please contact [email protected] > // for technical support, and www.acme.com/emergingTech for updates and RSS feed. > > ... Usual header stuff... > > void initTechnologyLibrary() { > nuiInterface(on); > } Is there a tool, parse library, or popular script that can replace the copyright and strip out not just #ifdefs, but variations like #if defined(UNDER_RESEARCH), etc.? The code is presently in Git and would likely be hosted somewhere that uses Git. Would there be a way to safely link repositories together so we can efficiently reintegrate our improvements with the open source versions? Advice about other pitfalls is welcome.

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SQL Constraints – CHECK and NOCHECK

- by David Turner

One performance issue i faced at a recent project was with the way that our constraints were being managed, we were using Subsonic as our ORM, and it has a useful tool for generating your ORM code called SubStage – once configured, you can regenerate your DAL code easily based on your database schema, and it can even be integrated into your build as a pre-build event if you want to do this. SubStage also offers the useful feature of being able to generate DDL scripts for your entire database, and can script your data for you too. The problem came when we decided to use the generate scripts feature to migrate the database onto a test database instance – it turns out that the DDL scripts that it generates include the WITH NOCHECK option, so when we executed them on the test instance, and performed some testing, we found that performance wasn’t as expected. A constraint can be disabled, enabled but not trusted, or enabled and trusted. When it is disabled, data can be inserted that violates the constraint because it is not being enforced, this is useful for bulk load scenarios where performance is important. So what does it mean to say that a constraint is trusted or not trusted? Well this refers to the SQL Server Query Optimizer, and whether it trusts that the constraint is valid. If it trusts the constraint then it doesn’t check it is valid when executing a query, so the query can be executed much faster. Here is an example base in this article on TechNet, here we create two tables with a Foreign Key constraint between them, and add a single row to each. We then query the tables: 1 DROP TABLE t2 2 DROP TABLE t1 3 GO 4 5 CREATE TABLE t1(col1 int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY) 6 CREATE TABLE t2(col1 int NOT NULL) 7 8 ALTER TABLE t2 WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 FOREIGN KEY(col1) 9 REFERENCES t1(col1) 10 11 INSERT INTO t1 VALUES(1) 12 INSERT INTO t2 VALUES(1) 13 GO14 15 SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t2 16 WHERE EXISTS17 (SELECT *18 FROM t1 19 WHERE t1.col1 = t2.col1) This all works fine, and in this scenario the constraint is enabled and trusted. We can verify this by executing the following SQL to query the ‘is_disabled’ and ‘is_not_trusted’ properties: 1 select name, is_disabled, is_not_trusted from sys.foreign_keys This gives the following result: We can disable the constraint using this SQL: 1 alter table t2 NOCHECK CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 And when we query the constraints again, we see that the constraint is disabled and not trusted: So the constraint won’t be enforced and we can insert data into the table t2 that doesn’t match the data in t1, but we don’t want to do this, so we can enable the constraint again using this SQL: 1 alter table t2 CHECK CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 But when we query the constraints again, we see that the constraint is enabled, but it is still not trusted: This means that the optimizer will check the constraint each time a query is executed over it, which will impact the performance of the query, and this is definitely not what we want, so we need to make the constraint trusted by the optimizer again. First we should check that our constraints haven’t been violated, which we can do by running DBCC: 1 DBCC CHECKCONSTRAINTS (t2) Hopefully you see the following message indicating that DBCC completed without finding any violations of your constraint: Having verified that the constraint was not violated while it was disabled, we can simply execute the following SQL: 1 alter table t2 WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 At first glance this looks like it must be a typo to have the keyword CHECK repeated twice in succession, but it is the correct syntax and when we query the constraints properties, we find that it is now trusted again: To fix our specific problem, we created a script that checked all constraints on our tables, using the following syntax: 1 ALTER TABLE t2 WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL

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Tyrus 1.8

- by Pavel Bucek

Another version of Tyrus, the reference implementation of JSR 356 – Java API for WebSocket is out! Complete list of fixes and features is below, but let me describe some of the new features in more detail. All information presented here is also available in Tyrusdocumentation. What’s new? First to mention is that JSR 356 Maintenance review Ballot is over and the change proposed for 1.1 release was accepted. More details about changes in the API can be found in this article. Important part is that Tyrus 1.8 implements this API, meaning you can use Lambda expressions and some features of Nashorn without the need for any workarounds. Almost all other features are related to client side support, which was significantly improved in this release. Firstly – I have to admit, that Tyrus client contained security issue – SSL Hostname verification was not performed when connecting to “wss” endpoints. This was fixed as part of TYRUS-339 and resulted in some changes in the client configuration API. Now you can control whether HostnameVerification should be performed (SslEngineConfigurator#setHostnameVerificationEnabled(boolean)) or even set your own HostnameVerifier (please use carefully): #setHostnameVerifier(…). Detailed description can be found in Host verification chapter. Another related enhancement is support for Http Basic and Digest authentication schemes. Tyrus client now enables users to provide credentials and underlying implementation will take care of everything else. Our implementation is strictly non pre-emptive, so the login information is sent always as a response to 401 Http Status Code. If the Basic and Digest are not good enough and there is a need to use some custom scheme or something which is not yet supported in Tyrus, custom Authenticator can be registered and the authentication part of the handshake process will be handled by it. Please seeClient HTTP Authentication chapter in the user guide for more details. There are other features, like fine-grain threadpool configuration for JDK client container, build-in Http redirect support and some reshuffling related to unifying the location of client configuration classes and properties definition – every property should be now part of ClientProperties class. All new features are described in the user guide – in chapterTyrus proprietary configuration. Update – Tyrus 1.8.1 There was another slightly late reported issue related to running in environments with SecurityManager enabled, so this version fixes that. Another noteworthy fixes are TYRUS-355 and TYRUS-361; the first one is about incorrect thread factory used for shared container timeout, which resulted in JVM waiting for that thread and not exiting as it should. The other issue enables relative URIs in Location header when using redirect feature. Links Tyrus homepage mailing list JIRA Complete list of changes: Bug [TYRUS-333] – Multiple endpoints on one client [TYRUS-334] – When connection is closed by a peer, periodic heartbeat pong is not stopped [TYRUS-336] – ReaderBuffer.getNextChars() keeps blocking a server thread after client has closed the session [TYRUS-338] – JDK client SSL filter needs better synchronization during handshake phase [TYRUS-339] – SSL hostname verification is missing [TYRUS-340] – Test PathParamTest are not stable with JDK client [TYRUS-341] – A control frame inside a stream of continuation frames is treated as the part of the stream [TYRUS-343] – ControlFrameInDataStreamTest does not pass on GF [TYRUS-345] – NPE is thrown, when shared container timeout property in JDK client is not set [TYRUS-346] – IllegalStateException is thrown, when using proxy in JDK client [TYRUS-347] – Introduce better synchronization in JDK client thread pool [TYRUS-348] – When a client and server close connection simultaneously, JDK client throws NPE [TYRUS-356] – Tyrus cannot determine the connection port for a wss URL [TYRUS-357] – Exception thrown in MessageHandler#OnMessage is not caught in @OnError method [TYRUS-359] – Client based on Java 7 Asynchronous IO makes application unexitable Improvement [TYRUS-328] – JDK 1.7 AIO Client container – threads – (setting threadpool, limits, …) [TYRUS-332] – Consolidate shared client properties into one file. [TYRUS-337] – Create an SSL version of Basic Servlet test New Feature [TYRUS-228] – Add client support for HTTP Basic/Digest Task [TYRUS-330] – create/run tests/servlet/basic via wss [TYRUS-335] – [clustering] – introduce RemoteSession and expose them via separate method (not include remote sessions in the getOpenSessions()) [TYRUS-344] – Introduce Client support for HTTP Redirect

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What is the SharePoint Action Framework and Why do I need it ?

- by SAF

For those out there that are a little curious as to whether SAF is any use to your organisation, please read this FAQ. What is SAF ? SAF is free to use. SAF is the "SharePoint Action Framework", it was built by myself and Hugo (plus a few others along the way). SAF is written entirely in C# code available from : http://saf.codeplex.com. SAF is a way to automate SharePoint configuration changes. An Action is a command/class/task/script written in C# that performs a unit of execution against SharePoint such as "CreateWeb" or "AddLookupColumn". A SAF Macro is collection of one or more Actions. SAF Macro can be run from Msbuild, a Feature, StsAdm or common plain old .Net code. Parameters can be passed to a Macro at run-time from a variety of sources such as "Environment Variable", "*.config", "Msbuild Properties", Feature Properties, command line args, .net code. SAF emits lots of trace statements at run-time, these can be viewed using "DebugView". One Action can pass parameters to another Action. Parameters can be set using Expression Syntax such as "DateTime.Now". You should consider SAF is you suffer from one of the following symptoms... "Our developers write lots of code to deploy changes at release time - it's always rushed" "I don't want my developers shelling out to Powershell or Stsadm from a Feature". "We have loads of Console applications now, I have lost track of where they are, or what they do" "We seem to be writing similar scripts against SharePoint in lots of ways, testing is hard". "My scripts often have lots of errors - they are done at the last minute". "When something goes wrong - I have no idea what went wrong or how to solve it". "Our Features get stuck and bomb out half way through - there no way to roll them back". "We have tons of Features now - I can't keep track". "We deploy Features to run one-off tasks" "We have a library of reusable scripts, but, we can only run it in one way, sometimes we want to run it from MSbuild and a Feature". "I want to automate the deployment of changes to our development environment". "I would like to run a housekeeping task on a scheduled basis" So I like the sound of SAF - what's the problems ? Realistically, there are few things that need to be considered: Someone on your team will need to spend a day or 2 understanding SAF and deciding exactly how you want to use it. I would suggest a Tech Lead, SysAdm or SP Architect will need to download it, try out the examples, look through the unit tests. Ask us questions. Although, SAF can be downloaded and set to go in a few minutes, you will still need to address issues such as - "Do you want to execute your Macros in MsBuild or from a Feature ?" You will need to decide who is going to do your deployments - is it each developer to themself, or do you require a dedicated Build Manager ? As most environments (Dev, QA, Live etc) require different settings (e.g. Urls, Database names, accounts etc), you will more than likely want to define these and set a properties file up for each environment. (These can then be injected into Saf at run-time). There may be no Action to solve your particular problem. If this is the case, suggest it to us - we can try and write it, or write it yourself. It's very easy to write a new Action - we have an approach to easily unit test it, document it and author it. For example, I wrote one to deploy a WSP in 2 hours the other day. Alternatively, Saf can also call Stsadm commands and Powershell scripts. Anyway, I do hope this helps! If you still need help, or a quick start, we can also offer consultancy around SAF. If you want to know more give us a call or drop an email to [email protected]

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Authenticating your windows domain users in the cloud

- by cibrax

Moving to the cloud can represent a big challenge for many organizations when it comes to reusing existing infrastructure. For applications that drive existing business processes in the organization, reusing IT assets like active directory represent good part of that challenge. For example, a new web mobile application that sales representatives can use for interacting with an existing CRM system in the organization. In the case of Windows Azure, the Access Control Service (ACS) already provides some integration with ADFS through WS-Federation. That means any organization can create a new trust relationship between the STS running in the ACS and the STS running in ADFS. As the following image illustrates, the ADFS running in the organization should be somehow exposed out of network boundaries to talk to the ACS. This is usually accomplish through an ADFS proxy running in a DMZ. This is the official story for authenticating existing domain users with the ACS. Getting an ADFS up and running in the organization, which talks to a proxy and also trust the ACS could represent a painful experience. It basically requires advance knowledge of ADSF and exhaustive testing to get everything right. However, if you want to get an infrastructure ready for authenticating your domain users in the cloud in a matter of minutes, you will probably want to take a look at the sample I wrote for talking to an existing Active Directory using a regular WCF service through the Service Bus Relay Binding. You can use the WCF ability for self hosting the authentication service within a any program running in the domain (a Windows service typically). The service will not require opening any port as it is opening an outbound connection to the cloud through the Relay Service. In addition, the service will be protected from being invoked by any unauthorized party with the ACS, which will act as a firewall between any client and the service. In that way, we can get a very safe solution up and running almost immediately. To make the solution even more convenient, I implemented an STS in the cloud that internally invokes the service running on premises for authenticating the users. Any existing web application in the cloud can just establish a trust relationship with this STS, and authenticate the users via WS-Federation passive profile with regular http calls, which makes this very attractive for web mobile for example. This is how the WCF service running on premises looks like, [ServiceBehavior(Namespace = "http://agilesight.com/active_directory/agent")] public class ProxyService : IAuthenticationService { IUserFinder userFinder; IUserAuthenticator userAuthenticator; public ProxyService() : this(new UserFinder(), new UserAuthenticator()) { } public ProxyService(IUserFinder userFinder, IUserAuthenticator userAuthenticator) { this.userFinder = userFinder; this.userAuthenticator = userAuthenticator; } public AuthenticationResponse Authenticate(AuthenticationRequest request) { if (userAuthenticator.Authenticate(request.Username, request.Password)) { return new AuthenticationResponse { Result = true, Attributes = this.userFinder.GetAttributes(request.Username) }; } return new AuthenticationResponse { Result = false }; } } Two external dependencies are used by this service for authenticating users (IUserAuthenticator) and for retrieving user attributes from the user’s directory (IUserFinder). The UserAuthenticator implementation is just a wrapper around the LogonUser Win Api. The UserFinder implementation relies on Directory Services in .NET for searching the user attributes in an existing directory service like Active Directory or the local user store. public UserAttribute[] GetAttributes(string username) { var attributes = new List<UserAttribute>(); var identity = UserPrincipal.FindByIdentity(new PrincipalContext(this.contextType, this.server, this.container), IdentityType.SamAccountName, username); if (identity != null) { var groups = identity.GetGroups(); foreach(var group in groups) { attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "Group", Value = group.Name }); } if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(identity.DisplayName)) attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "DisplayName", Value = identity.DisplayName }); if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(identity.EmailAddress)) attributes.Add(new UserAttribute { Name = "EmailAddress", Value = identity.EmailAddress }); } return attributes.ToArray(); } As you can see, the code is simple and uses all the existing infrastructure in Azure to simplify a problem that looks very complex at first glance with ADFS. All the source code for this sample is available to download (or change) in this GitHub repository, https://github.com/AgileSight/ActiveDirectoryForCloud

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How to Create SharePoint List and Insert List Item programmatically from a Windows Forms Application.

- by Michael M. Bangoy

In this post I’m going to demonstrate how to create SharePoint List and also Insert Items on the List from a Windows Forms Application. 1. Open Visual Studio and create a new project. On the project template select Windows Form Application under C#. 2. In order to communicate with Sharepoint from a Windows Forms Application we need to add the 2 Sharepoint Client DLL located in c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI. 3. Select the Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.Sharepoint.Client.Runtime.dll. (Your solution should look like the one below) 4. Open the Form1 in design view and from the Toolbox menu add a button on the form surface. Your form should look like the one below. 5. Double click the button to open the code view. Add Using statement to reference the Sharepoint Client Library then create method for the Create List. Your code should like the codes below. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Windows.Forms; using SP = Microsoft.SharePoint.Client; namespace ClientObjectModel { public partial class Form1 : Form { // url of the Sharepoint site const string _context = "urlofthesharepointsite"; public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { } private void cmdcreate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { try { // declare the ClientContext Object SP.ClientContext _clientcontext = new SP.ClientContext(_context); SP.Web _site = _clientcontext.Web; // declare a ListCreationInfo SP.ListCreationInformation _listcreationinfo = new SP.ListCreationInformation(); // set the Title and the Template of the List to be created _listcreationinfo.Title = "NewListFromCOM"; _listcreationinfo.TemplateType = (int)SP.ListTemplateType.GenericList; // Call the add method to the ListCreatedInfo SP.List _list = _site.Lists.Add(_listcreationinfo); // Add Description field to the List SP.Field _Description = _list.Fields.AddFieldAsXml(@" <Field Type='Text' DisplayName='Description'> </Field>", true, SP.AddFieldOptions.AddToDefaultContentType); // declare the List item Creation object for creating List Item SP.ListItemCreationInformation _itemcreationinfo = new SP.ListItemCreationInformation(); // call the additem method of the list to insert a new List Item SP.ListItem _item = _list.AddItem(_itemcreationinfo); _item["Title"] = "New Item from Client Object Model"; _item["Description"] = "This item was added by a Windows Forms Application"; // call the update method _item.Update(); // execute the query of the clientcontext _clientcontext.ExecuteQuery(); // dispose the clientcontext _clientcontext.Dispose(); MessageBox.Show("List Creation Successfull"); } catch(Exception ex) { MessageBox.Show("Error creating list" + ex.ToString()); } } } } 6. Hit F5 to run the application. A message will be displayed on the screen if the operation is successful and also if it fails. 7. To make that the operation of our Windows Form Application has really created the List and Inserted an item on it. Let’s open our SharePoint site. Once the SharePoint is open click on the Site Actions then View All Site Content. 7. Click the List to open it and check if an Item is inserted. That’s it. Hope this helps.

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View AccuWeather Forecasts in Google Chrome

- by Asian Angel

Being able to keep an eye on the weather while at work or browsing the Internet is definitely helpful. If you like detailed forecasts then join us as we take a look at the Forecastfox Weather extension for Google Chrome. Getting Started As soon as the Forecastfox Weather extension has finished installing you will automatically be presented with the “Customize Forecastfox Page”. The default setting is for New York with English measurement units. Enter your location into the blank and hit “Enter” to display the listing for your city/area. If you are presented multiple options to choose from simply click on the appropriate listing. Once you have your city/area displayed you will notice that it is possible to have access to weather forecasts for multiple locations. You can easily remove any unneeded listings with the “Remove Link”. For our example we removed the New York listing. Note: Click on desired locations and measurement units to automatically set them as defaults (no save button required). Forecastfox Weather in Action You can hover your mouse over the “Toolbar Button” to see the current weather conditions. Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” opens a popup window with the current conditions, 7 day forecast, and a static satellite image. If desired you can access additional details for the current weather conditions. Clicking on “details” opens a new tab with a nice bit of information such as UV Index, Moon Phases, Cloud Ceiling, etc. Note: AccuWeather.com webpages will have some ads displayed. Perhaps you need the Hourly Forecast… Once again a new tab will be opened with the predicted hourly weather conditions for the current day. Going back to the popup window you may also select a specific day from the 7 day forecast. You will be presented with a “Day & Night” forecast for the chosen day with links to view “Additional Details & Hourly” information. Interested in the satellite image instead? You can click on either of the available links for larger images. Once the new tab is open you can choose from a variety of different satellite images. Conclusion If you have been wanting a solid weather forecast extension for your Chrome browser then Forecastfox Weather is definitely a recommended install. Links Download the Forecastfox Weather extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Weather Forecasts to Google ChromeView Weather Underground Forecasts in Google ChromeView the Time & Date in Chrome When Hiding Your TaskbarView Maps and Get Directions in Google ChromeGoogle Image Search Quick Fix TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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Windows Phone 7 Silverlight / XNA development talk

- by subodhnpushpak

Hi, I presented on Windows Phone 7 app development using Silverlight. Here are few pics from the event Windows Phone 7 development VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL I demonstrated the Visual studio, emulator capabilities/ features. An demo on Wp7 app communication with an OData Service, along with a demo on XNA app. There was lot of curious questions; I am listing them here because these keep on popping up again and again: 1. What tools does it takes to develop Wp7 app? Are they free? A typical WP7 app can be developed either using Silverlight or XNA. For developers, Visual Studio 2010 is a good choice as it provides an integrated development environment with lots of useful project templates; which makes the task really easy. For designers, Blend may be used to develop the UI in XAML. Both the tools are FREE (express version) to download and very intuitive to use. 2. What about the learning curve? If you know C#, (or any other programming language), learning curve is really flat. XAML (used for UI) may be new for you, but trust me; its very intuitive. Also you can use Microsoft Blend to generate the UI (XAML) for you. 3. How can I develop /test app without using actual device? How can I be sure my app runs as expected on actual device? The WP7 SDK comes along with an excellent emulator; which you can use for development/ testing on a computer. Later you can just change a setting and deploy the application on WP7. You will require Zune software for deploying the application on phone along with Developers key from WP7 marketplace. You can obtain key from marketplace by filling a form. The whole process for registering is easy; just follow the steps on the site. 4. Which one should I use? Silverlight or XNA? Use Silverlight for enterprise/ business / utility apps. Use XNA for Games app. While each platform is capable / strong and may be used in conjunction as well; The methodologies used for development in these platforms are very different. XNA works on typical Do..While loop where as Silverlight works on event based methodology. 5. Where are the learning resources? Are they free? There is lots of stuff on WP7. Most of them are free. There is a excellent free book by Charles Petzold to download and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone is full of demos /todos / vidoes. All the exciting stuff was captured live and you can view it here; in case you were not able to catch it live!! @ http://livestre.am/AUfx. My talk starts from 3:19:00 timeline in the video!! Is there an app you miss on WP7? Do let me know about it and I may work on it for free !!! Keep discovering. Keep is Simple. WP7. Subodh

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Oracle EMEA News Digest - May 2014

- by Steve Walker

Systems Oracle introduced a technology preview of an OpenStack® distribution that allows Oracle Linux and Oracle VM users to work with the open source cloud software. This provides customers with additional choices and interoperability while taking advantage of the efficiency, performance, scalability, and security of Oracle Linux and Oracle VM. The distribution is delivered as part of the Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Premier Support offerings, at no additional cost. Oracle plans to work further with the OpenStack community to develop and enhance its enterprise-class capabilities to meet customer demands. Also in the Open Source arena, Oracle announced the general availability of MySQL Fabric. MySQL Fabric provides an integrated system that makes it simpler to manage groups of MySQL databases. It delivers both high availability - via failure detection and failover - and scalability through automated data sharding. Oracle Database, Middleware and Technology The company made two announcements for Oracle Tuxedo, the #1 application server for C, C++, COBOL and Java deployments in private cloud or traditional data center environments. With enhanced management and monitoring features and tighter integration with Oracle technologies, the latest release of Oracle Tuxedo 12c enables organizations to dramatically increase application throughput, while reducing total cost of ownership and time to market for new application development and deployment. Oracle also introduced the latest release of its mainframe application rehosting platform, Oracle Tuxedo ART 12c, to help organizations speed up migration projects and accelerate the adoption of the new environment by current IT staff. It enables organizations to accelerate the rehosting of IBM mainframe applications and greatly enhance management and supportability of the rehosted applications while reducing costs and risk. Applications According to new Oracle studies, B2B and B2C commerce professionals find integrated, omni-channel customer experiences increasingly valuable to their organizations, and are continuing to invest in technologies and digital content strategies to facilitate them. The studies—one for B2B and one for B2C—surveyed e-commerce professionals in business and technology departments from around the world. Although the priorities, success metrics, and technology investments differed between the two groups, customer acquisition and retention emerged as common themes across B2B and B2C. Growing market share and enhancing customer experience are cited as top investment areas for all e-commerce professionals. In product news, Oracle announced the latest release of Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications (version 11.1.1.8.1, in case anyone asks). It includes prebuilt connectors between Oracle Procurement and Spend Analytics and Oracle’s JD Edwards. Additionally, a new Oracle Human Resources Analytics module for developing and maintaining a skilled workforce has been introduced. In use at more than 4,000 companies worldwide, Oracle BI Applications support leading enterprise applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle’s PeopleSoft, Oracle's Siebel CRM, Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offering high-performing analytics at a lower cost. Industries For the Communications Industry, Oracle has launched a new release of the Oracle Communications Core Session Manager. This gives CSPs a new way to design, deploy and manage complex networking services and embrace next-generation technology, It provides them with an immediate entry point for network function virtualization (NFV) efforts, allowing them to realize immediate benefits associated with network virtualization – including increased service agility and improved network resource sharing. And for the Utilities Industry, Oracle is releasing solutions with new business features and enhanced technical architecture that help position utilities for success now and into the future. Oracle has provided new releases for its customer information system, meter data management system, customer self-service solution and mobile workforce management solution.

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Abstraction, Politics, and Software Architecture

Abstraction can be defined as a general concept and/or idea that lack any concrete details. Throughout history this type of thinking has led to an array of new ideas and innovations as well as increased confusion and conspiracy. If one was to look back at our history they will see that abstraction has been used in various forms throughout our past. When I was growing up I do not know how many times I heard politicians say “Leave no child left behind” or “No child left behind” as a major part of their campaign rhetoric in regards to a stance on education. As you can see their slogan is a perfect example of abstraction because it only offers a very general concept about improving our education system but they do not mention how they would like to do it. If they did then they would be adding concrete details to their abstraction thus turning it in to an actual working plan as to how we as a society can help children succeed in school and in life, but then they would not be using abstraction. By now I sure you are thinking what does abstraction have to do with software architecture. You are valid in thinking this way, but abstraction is a wonderful tool used in information technology especially in the world of software architecture. Abstraction is one method of extracting the concepts of an idea so that it can be understood and discussed by others of varying technical abilities and backgrounds. One ways in which I tend to extract my architectural design thoughts is through the use of basic diagrams to convey an idea for a system or a new feature for an existing application. This allows me to generically model an architectural design through the use of views and Unified Markup Language (UML). UML is a standard method for creating a 4+1 Architectural View Models. The 4+1 Architectural View Model consists of 4 views typically created with UML as well as a general description of the concept that is being expressed by a model. The 4+1 Architectural View Model: Logical View: Models a system’s end-user functionality. Development View: Models a system as a collection of components and connectors to illustrate how it is intended to be developed. Process View: Models the interaction between system components and connectors as to indicate the activities of a system. Physical View: Models the placement of the collection of components and connectors of a system within a physical environment. Recently I had to use the concept of abstraction to express an idea for implementing a new security framework on an existing website. My concept would add session based management in order to properly secure and allow page access based on valid user credentials and last user activity. I created a basic Process View by using UML diagrams to communicate the basic process flow of my changes in the application so that all of the projects stakeholders would be able to understand my idea. Additionally I created a Logical View on a whiteboard while conveying the process workflow with a few stakeholders to show how end-user will be affected by the new framework and gaining additional input about the design. After my Logical and Process Views were accepted I then started on creating a more detailed Development View in order to map how the system will be built based on the concept of components and connections based on the previously defined interactions. I really did not need to create a Physical view for this idea because we were updating an existing system that was already deployed based on an existing Physical View. What do you think about the use of abstraction in the development of software architecture? Please let me know.

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How To Customize Wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition

- by Asian Angel

If you have the Starter Edition of Windows 7 installed on your netbook you may be sick of looking at the default wallpaper. With Starter Background Changer you can access other customization options with ease. Before There is not a lot that you can say about the singular default wallpaper included with the Starter Edition…it just kind of sits there all boring like. Installing Starter Background Changer Since the installer part of the program is in French we have the entire set of install windows shown here with the appropriate buttons highlighted to get you through the whole process without any problems. Using Starter Background Changer Once the installation process has finished you will simply see a quiet screen with no desktop icons or Start Menu entries visible. Now if you are wondering at this point “Did the program finish installing or did it install at all?” the answer is yes. Right click on your desktop and you will notice a new entry on the Context Menu…the same one that is included in the other editions but not Starter. Time to have some fun… The Personalization Window will open maximized but we have reduced it here for our screenshots. You have four regular categories to choose from in the lower part of the window: Wallpaper, Colors, Sounds, & Screensavers. The first category that we chose for our example was Wallpaper. As you can see here the main display area (My Collection) has no wallpapers showing at the moment. You can use the drop-down menu to access your My Pictures Folder or browse for a different location. Notice that you can choose how the image fills the screen and set up a timed wallpaper slideshow at the bottom. Any picture (or pictures) selected will be added to the My Collection display for easy access the next time you open the window. Once you choose a picture click on Validate the modification to set the wallpaper for your desktop and return to the main window. When you return to the main window you will see a preview for your selection. At this point you can simply close the window or make further adjustments in the other categories. Starter Background Changer provides easy one-stop access to other customization areas. We started off with Colors… Followed by Sounds… And finally Screensavers. Before you do close the main window you can take a quick look at the Options if desired. We did set Optimization of the images to High on our system. Quick and easy wallpaper satisfaction. We did pin the Program Window to our Taskbar…nice if you prefer this method as opposed to the Desktop Context Menu. Conclusion If you have been longing for a way to change the wallpaper in Windows 7 Starter Edition then you will definitely want to give this program a try. Goodbye boring default wallpaper! For more wonderful ways to customize your Windows 7 Started Edition be sure to read our article here. Links Download Starter Background Changer Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 EditionWindows 7 Welcome Screen Taking Forever? Here’s the Fix (Maybe)Desktop Fun: Starship Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Starscape Theme WallpapersDesktop Fun: Fantasy Theme Wallpapers TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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