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  • Geek Fun: Virtualized Old School Windows – Windows 95

    - by Matthew Guay
    Last week we enjoyed looking at Windows 3.1 running in VMware Player on Windows 7.  Today, let’s upgrade our 3.1 to 95, and get a look at how most of us remember Windows from the 90’s. In this demo, we’re running the first release of Windows 95 (version 4.00.950) in VMware Player 3.0 running on Windows 7 x64.  For fun, we ran the 95 upgrade on the 3.1 virtual machine we built last week. Windows 95 So let’s get started.  Here’s the first setup screen.  For the record, Windows 95 installed in about 15 minutes or less in VMware in our test. Strangely, Windows 95 offered several installation choices.  They actually let you choose what extra parts of Windows to install if you wished.  Oh, and who wants to run Windows 95 on your “Portable Computer”?  Most smartphones today are more powerful than the “portable computers” of 95. Your productivity may vastly increase if you run Windows 95.  Anyone want to switch? No, I don’t want to restart … I want to use my computer! Welcome to Windows 95!  Hey, did you know you can launch programs from the Start button? Our quick spin around Windows 95 reminded us why Windows got such a bad reputation in the ‘90’s for being unstable.  We didn’t even get our test copy fully booted after installation before we saw our first error screen.  Windows in space … was that the most popular screensaver in Windows 95, or was it just me? Hello Windows 3.1!  The UI was still outdated in some spots.   Ah, yes, Media Player before it got 101 features to compete with iTunes. But, you couldn’t even play CDs in Media Player.  Actually, CD player was one program I used almost daily in Windows 95 back in the day. Want some new programs?  This help file about new programs designed for Windows 95 lists a lot of outdated names in tech.    And, you really may want some programs.  The first edition of Windows 95 didn’t even ship with Internet Explorer.   We’ve still got Minesweeper, though! My Computer had really limited functionality, and by default opened everything in a new window.  Double click on C:, and it opens in a new window.  Ugh. But Explorer is a bit more like more modern versions. Hey, look, Start menu search!  If only it found the files you were looking for… Now I’m feeling old … this shutdown screen brought back so many memories … of shutdowns that wouldn’t shut down! But, you still have to turn off your computer.  I wonder how many old monitors had these words burned into them? So there’s yet another trip down Windows memory lane.  Most of us can remember using Windows 95, so let us know your favorite (or worst) memory of it!  At least we can all be thankful for our modern computers and operating systems today, right?  Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Geek Fun: Remember the Old-School SkiFree Game?Geek Fun: Virtualized old school Windows 3.11Stupid Geek Tricks: Tile or Cascade Multiple Windows in Windows 7Stupid Geek Tricks: Select Multiple Windows on the TaskbarHow to Delete a System File in Windows 7 or Vista 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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  • Play Your Favorite DOS Games in XP, Vista, and Windows 7

    - by Matthew Guay
    Want to take a trip down memory lane with old school DOS games?  D-Fend Reloaded makes it easy for you to play your favorite DOS games directly on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. D-Fend Reloaded is a great frontend for DOSBox, the popular DOS emulator.  It lets you install and run many DOS games and applications directly from its interface without ever touching a DOS prompt.  It works great on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 32 & 64-bit versions.   Getting Started Download D-Fend Reloaded (link below), and install with the default settings.  You don’t need to install DOSBox, as D-Fend Reloaded will automatically install all the components you need to run DOS games on Windows. D-Fend Reloaded can also be installed as a portable application, so you can run it from a flash drive on any Windows computer by selecting User defined installation. Then select Portable mode installation. Once D-Fend Reloaded is installed, you can go ahead and open the program. Then simply click “Accept all settings” to apply the default settings.   D-Fend is now ready to run all of your favorite DOS games. Installing DOS Games and Applications: To install a DOS game or application, simply drag-and-drop a zip file of the app into D-Fend Reloaded’s window.  D-Fend Reloaded will automatically extract the program… Then will ask you to name the application and choose where to store it — by default it uses the name of the DOS app. Now you’ll see a new entry for the app you just installed.  Simply double-click to run it.   D-Fend will remind you that you can switch out of fullscreen mode by pressing Alt+Enter, and can also close the DOS application by pressing Ctrl+F9.  Press Ok to run the program. Here we’re running Ms. PacPC, a remake of the classic game Ms. Pac-Man, in full-screen mode.  All features work automatically, including sound, and you never have to setup anything from DOS command line — it just works. Here it’s in windowed mode running on Windows 7. Please note that your color scheme may change to Windows Basic while running DOS applications. You can run DOS application just as easily.  Here’s Word 5.5 running in in DOSBox through D-Fend Reloaded… Game Packs: Want to quickly install many old DOS freeware and trial games?  D-Fend Reloaded offers several game packs that let you install dozens of DOS games with only four clicks…just download and run the game pack installer of your choice (link below). Now you’ve got a selection of DOS games to choose from. Here’s a group of poor lemmings walking around … in Windows 7. Conclusion D-Fend Reloaded gives you a great way to run your favorite DOS games and applications directly from XP, Vista, and Windows 7.  Give it a try, and relive your DOS days from the comfort of your Windows desktop. What were some of your favorite DOS games and applications? Leave a comment and let us know. Links Download D-Fend Reloaded Download DOS game packs for D-Fend Reloaded Download Ms. Pac-PC Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Friday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Go Retro with PacmanThursday’s Pre-Holiday Lazy Links RoundupFriday Fun: Five More Time Wasting Online GamesFriday Fun: Holiday Themed Games 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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  • SQLAuthority News – Meeting SQL Friends – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

    - by pinaldave
    One of the biggest reason I go to SQLPASS is that my friends are going there too. There are so many friends with whom I often talk on Facebook and Twitter but I rarely get time to meet them as well talk with them. One thing I am usually sure that many fo them will be for sure attend SQLPASS. This is one event which every SQL Server Enthusiast should attend. Just like everybody I had pleasant time to meet many of my SQL friends. There were so many friends that I met and I did not click photo. There were so many friends who clicked photo in their camera and I do not have them. Here are 1% of the photos which I have. If you are not in the photo, it does not mean I have less respect to our friendship. Please post link to our photo together :) I was very fortunate that I was able to snap a quick photograph with Pinal Dave with Dr. David DeWitt. I stood outside of the hall waiting for Dr. to show up and when he was heading down from convention center I requested him if I can have one photo for my memory lane and very politely he agreed to have one. It indeed made my day! Pinal Dave with Dr. David DeWitt Every single time I met Steve, I make sure I have one photo for my memory. Steve is so kind every single time. If you know SQL and do not know Steve Jones, you do not know SQL (IMHO). Following is the photograph with Michael McLean. More details about this photo in future blog post! Pinal Dave, Michael McLean, and Rick Morelan Arnie always shares his wisdom with me. I still remember when I very first time visited USA, I was standing alone in corner and Arnie walked to me and introduced to every single person he know. Talking to Arnie is always pleasure and inspiring. Arnie Rowland and Pinal Dave I am now published author and have written two books so far. I am fortunate to have Rick Morelan as Co-author of both of my books. He is great guy and very easy to become friends with. I am very much impressed by him and his kindness during book co-authoring. Here is very first of our photograph together at SQLPASS. Rick Morelan and Pinal Dave Diego Nogare and I have been talking for long time on twitter and on various social media channels. I finally got chance to meet my friend from Brazil. It was excellent experience to meet a friend whom one wants to meet for long time and had never got chance earlier. Buck Woody – who does not know Buck. He is funny, kind and most important friends of every one. Buck is so kind that he does not hesitate to approach people even though he is famous and most known in community. Every time I meet him I learn something. He is always smiling and approachable. Pinal Dave and Buck Woddy Rushabh Mehta is current SQL PASS president and personal friend. He has always smiling face and tremendous love for SQL community. I often wonder where he gets all the time for all the time and efforts he puts in for community. I never miss a chance to meet and greet him. Even though he is renowned SQL Guru and extremely busy person – every single time I meet him he always asks me – “How is Nupur and Shaivi?” He even remembers my wife and daughters name. I am touched. Rushabh Mehta and Pinal Dave Nigel Sammy has extremely well sense of humor and passion from community. We have excellent synergy while we are together. The attached photo is taken while I was talking to him on Seattle Shoreline about SQL. Pinal Dave and Nigel Sammy Rick Morelan wanted my this trip to be memorable. I am vegetarian and I told him that I do not like Seafood. Well, to prove the point, he took me to fantastic Seafood restaurant in Seattle and treated me with mouth watering vegetarian dishes. I think when I go to Seattle next time, I am going to make him to take me again to the same place. Rick, Rushabh, Pinal and Paras Well, this is a short summary of few of the friends I met at Seattle. What is the life without friends, eh? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • SQLAuthority News – #TechEdIn – TechEd India 2012 Memories and Photos

    - by pinaldave
    TechEd India 2012 was held in Bangalore last March 21 to 23, 2012. Just like every year, this event is bigger, grander and inspiring. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 Family Event Every single year, TechEd is a special affair for my entire family.  Four months before the start of TechEd, I usually start to build the mental image of the event. I start to think  about various things. For the most part, what excites me most is presenting a session and meeting friends. Seriously, I start thinking about presenting my session 4 months earlier than the event!  I work on my presentation day and night. I want to make sure that what I present is accurate and that I have experienced it firsthand. My wife and my daughter also contribute to my efforts. For us, TechEd is a family event, and the two of them feel equally responsible as well. They give up their family time so I can bring out the best content for the Community. Pinal, Shaivi and Nupur at TechEd India 2012 Guinea Pigs (My Experiment Victims) I do not rehearse my session, ever. However, I test my demo almost every single day till the last moment that I have to present it already. I sometimes go over the demo more than 2-3 times a day even though the event is more than a month away. I have two “guinea pigs”: 1) Nupur Dave and 2) Vinod Kumar. When I am at home, I present my demos to my wife Nupur. At times I feel that people often backup their demo, but in my case, I have backup demo presenters. In the office during lunch time, I present the demos to Vinod. I am sure he can walk my demos easily with eyes closed. Pinal and Vinod at TechEd India 2012 My Sessions I’ve been determined to present my sessions in a real and practical manner. I prefer to present the subject that I myself would be eager to attend to and sit through if I were an audience. Just keeping that principle in mind, I have created two sessions this year. SQL Server Misconception and Resolution Pinal and Vinod at TechEd India 2012 We believe all kinds of stuff – that the earth is flat, or that the forbidden fruit is apple, or that the big bang theory explains the origin of the universe, and so many other things. Just like these, we have plenty of misconceptions in SQL Server as well. I have had this dream of co-presenting a session with Vinod Kumar for the past 3 years. I have been asking him every year if we could present a session together, but we never got it to work out, until this year came. Fortunately, we got a chance to stand on the same stage and present a single subject.  I believe that Vinod Kumar and I have an excellent synergy when we are working together. We know each other’s strengths and weakness. We know when the other person will speak and when he will keep quiet. The reason behind this synergy is that we have worked on 2 Video Learning Courses (SQL Server Indexes and SQL Server Questions and Answers) and authored 1 book (SQL Server Questions and Answers) together. Crowd Outside Session Hall This session was inspired from the “Laurel and Hardy” show so we performed a role-playing of those famous characters. We had an excellent time at the stage and, for sure, the audience had a wonderful time, too. We had an extremely large audience for this session and had a great time interacting with them. Speed Up! – Parallel Processes and Unparalleled Performance Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 I wanted to approach this session at level 400 and I was very determined to do so. The biggest challenge I had was that this was a total of 60 minutes of session and the audience profile was very generic. I had to present at level 100 as well at 400. I worked hard to tune up these demos. I wanted to make sure that my messages would land perfectly to the minds of the attendees, and when they walk out of the session, they could use the knowledge I shared on their servers. After the session, I felt an extreme satisfaction as I received lots of positive feedback at the event. At one point, so many people rushed towards me that I was a bit scared that the stage might break and someone would get injured. Fortunately, nothing like that happened and I was able to shake hands with everybody. Pinal Dave at TechEd India 2012 Crowd rushing to Pinal at TechEd India 2012 Networking This is one of the primary reasons many of us visit the annual TechEd event. I had a fantastic time meeting SQL Server enthusiasts. Well, it was a terrific time meeting old friends, user group members, MVPs and SQL Enthusiasts. I have taken many photographs with lots of people, but I have received a very few back. If you are reading this blog and have a photo of us at the event, would you please send it to me so I could keep it in my memory lane? SQL Track Speaker: Jacob and Pinal at TechEd India 2012 SQL Community: Pinal, Tejas, Nakul, Jacob, Balmukund, Manas, Sudeepta, Sahal at TechEd India 2012 Star Speakers: Amit and Balmukund at TechEd India 2012 TechED Rockstars: Nakul, Tejas and Pinal at TechEd India 2012 I guess TechEd is a mix of family affair and culture for me! Hamara TechEd (Our TechEd) Please tell me which photo you like the most! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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  • BPM 11g - Dynamic Task Assignment with Multi-level Organization Units

    - by Mark Foster
    I've seen several requirements to have a more granular level of task assignment in BPM 11g based on some value in the data passed to the process. Parametric Roles is normally the first port of call to try to satisfy this requirement, but in this blog we will show how a lot of use-cases can be satisfied by the easier to implement and flexible Organization Unit. The Use-Case Task assignment is to an approval group containing several users. At runtime, a location value in the input data determines which of the particular users the task is ultimately assigned to. In this case we use the Demo Community referenced in the SOA Admin Guide, and specifically the "LoanAnalyticGroup" which contains three users; "szweig", "mmitch" & "fkafka". In our scenario we would like to assign a task to "szweig" if the input data specifies that the location is "JapanCentral", to "fkafka" if the location is "JapanNorth" and to "mmitch" if "JapanSouth", and to all of them if the location is "Japan" i.e....   The Process Simple one human task process.... In the output data association of the "Start" activity we need to set the value of the "Organization Unit" predefined variable based on the input data (note that the  predefined variables can only be set on output data associations)....  ...and in the output data association of the human activity we will reset the "Organization Unit" to empty, always good practice to ensure that the Organization Unit will not be used for any subsequent human activities for which we do not require it.... Set Up the Organization Unit  Log in to the BPM Workspace with an administrator user (weblogic/welcome1 in our case) and choose the "Administration" option. Within "Roles" assign the "ProcessOwner" swim-lane for our process to "LoanAnalyticGroup".... Within "Organization Units" we can model our organization.... "Root Organization Unit" as "Japan" and "Child Organization Unit" as "Central", "South" & "North" as shown. As described previously, add user "szweig" to "Central", "mmitch" to "South" and "fkafka" to "North"....   Test the Process Invalid Data  First let us test with invalid data in the input to see what the consequences are, here we use "X" as input.... ...and looking at the instance we can see it has errored.... Organization Unit Root Level Assignment  Now let us see what happens if we have "Japan" in the input data.... ...looking in the "flow trace" we can see that the task has been assigned....  ... but who has the task been assigned to ? Let us look in the BPM Workspace for user "szweig"....  ...and for "mmitch"....  ... and for "fkafka"....  ...so we can see that with an Organization Unit at "Root" level we have successfully assigned the task to all users. Organization Unit Child Level Assignment  Now let us test with "Japan/North" in the input data.... ...and looking in "fkafka" workspace we see the task has been assigned, remember, he was associated with "JapanNorth"....   ... but what about the workspace of "szweig"....  ...no tasks assigned, neither has "mmitch", just as we expected. Summary  We have seen in this blog how to easily implement multi-level dynamic task routing using Organization Units, a common use-case and a simpler solution than Parametric Roles. 

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  • How to Submit Form Given Specific Json Response

    - by dentalhero
    I'm new to Json, so please excuse the newb question. I have a form in which I'm conducting an Ajax post to submit address information to a backend script for validation. Here's the form: <form name="Form" id="Forms" method="post" action="WebCatPageServer.exe" class="uniForm"> <input name="Action" type="hidden" value="SHIPTOVALIDATE"/> <input name="IsAjax" type="hidden" value="Yes"/> <!-- <input name="Action" type="hidden" value="VerifyOrder"/>--> <fieldset class="inlineLabels top"> <h2>Order Details</h2> <div class="ctrlHolder first"> <label for="orderdesc">Order Description</label> <input name="Order Desc" id="OrderDesc" type="text" class="textInput small" tabindex="1" value=""/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="po">PO # <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="Cust Po" id="PoJobNo" type="text" class="textInput small required" maxlength="20" tabindex="2" value="dgnfg"/> </div> <!-- <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="jobname">Job Name</label> <input name="Job Name" id="CustJobName" type="text" class="textInput small" maxlength="15" tabindex="3" value=""/> </div> --> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="shipvia">Ship Via <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <select name="Ship Via" id="shipvia" class="selectInput small required" tabindex="4"/> <option value="" class="default">Select Ship Method</option> <option value="OT - Our Truck" class="del" selected>Our Truck</option> <option value="WC - Will Call" class="pick">Will Call</option> </select> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder" id="pickupdate"> <label for="datepickup">Requested Pickup Date <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="datepickup" id="datepickup" type="text" class="textInput small" tabindex="5" value="11/09/2012"> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder" id="shipdate"> <label for="dateship">Requested Delivery Date <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="dateship" id="dateship" type="text" class="textInput small" value="" tabindex="6"> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder" id="shipto"> <label for="ShipTo">Ship To <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <select name="ShipTos" id="ShipTos" class="selectInput auto required" tabindex="7"> <option value="">Select an Option</option> <option value="ShipToManual" class="manual">Manually Enter Address</option> <option value="0">A ACTION AIR*, 5241 YANCEYVILLE, COLUMBIA, SC 29214-0001</option> <option value="1">A ACTION AIR*, 649 spring lane, sanford, NC 27330</option> <option value="2">A ACTION AIR*, 1313 south briggs avenue, durham, NC 27703</option> <option value="3">A ACTION AIR*, 112 cricket hill lane, cary, NC 27513</option> <option value="4">A ACTION AIR*, 2911 duke homestead road, durham, NC 27705</option> <option value="5">A ACTION AIR*, chickem poop, atlanta, GA 60609</option> </select> <br /> </div> </fieldset> <fieldset class="inlineLabels" id="shipinfo"> <h2>Shipping Information</h2> <div class="ctrlHolder first"> <label for="YourName">Your Name <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="Your Name" id="Your_Name" type="text" class="textInput small required" tabindex="8" value="" /> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="CompanyName">Company Name <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="Company Name" id="CompanyName" type="text" class="textInput small required" tabindex="9" value="A ACTION AIR*"/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="Address1">Address 1 <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="Address_1" id="Address_1" type="text" maxlength="30" class="textInput small required" tabindex="10" value="5241 YANCEYVILLE"/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="Address2">Address 2</label> <input name="Address_2" id="Address_2" type="text" maxlength="30" class="textInput small" tabindex="11" value=""/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="City">City <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="City" id="City" type="text" maxlength="25" class="textInput small required" tabindex="12" value="COLUMBIA"/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="State">State <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <select name="State" id="State" class="selectInput small required" tabindex="13"> <option value="">Select State</option> <option value="AL">Alabama</option> <option value="AK">Alaska</option> <option value="AZ">Arizona</option> <option value="AR">Arkansas</option> <option value="CA">California</option> <option value="CO">Colorado</option> <option value="CT">Connecticut</option> <option value="DE">Delaware</option> <option value="FL">Florida</option> <option value="GA">Georgia</option> <option value="HI">Hawaii</option> <option value="ID">Idaho</option> <option value="IL">Illinois</option> <option value="IN">Indiana</option> <option value="IA">Iowa</option> <option value="KS">Kansas</option> <option value="KY">Kentucky</option> <option value="LA">Louisiana</option> <option value="ME">Maine</option> <option value="MD">Maryland</option> <option value="MA">Massachussetts</option> <option value="MI">Michigan</option> <option value="MN">Minnesota</option> <option value="MS">Mississippi</option> <option value="MO">Missouri</option> <option value="MT">Montana</option> <option value="NE">Nebraska</option> <option value="NV">Nevada</option> <option value="NH">New Hampshire</option> <option value="NJ">New Jersey</option> <option value="NM">New Mexico</option> <option value="NY">New York</option> <option value="NC">North Carolina</option> <option value="ND">North Dakota</option> <option value="OH">Ohio</option> <option value="OK">Oklahoma</option> <option value="OR">Oregon</option> <option value="PA">Pennsylvania</option> <option value="RI">Rhode Island</option> <option value="SC" selected>South Carolina</option> <option value="SD">South Dakota</option> <option value="TN">Tennessee</option> <option value="TX">Texas</option> <option value="UT">Utah</option> <option value="VT">Vermont</option> <option value="VA">Virginia</option> <option value="WA">Washington</option> <option value="WV">West Virginia</option> <option value="WI">Wisconsin</option> <option value="WY">Wyoming</option> </select> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="ZipCode">Zip Code <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="Zip" id="Zip" type="text" maxlength="10" class="textInput small required zipcode" tabindex="14" value=""/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="Phone">Phone <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="Phone Number" id="Phone" type="text" class="textInput small required phone" alt="phone-us" tabindex="15" value="(336)954-5009"/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="Fax">Fax</label> <input name="FaxNumber" id="Fax Number" type="text" class="textInput small fax" alt="phone-us" tabindex="16" value=""/> </div> <div class="ctrlHolder"> <label for="">E-mail <span class="redasterisk">*</span></label> <input name="Email" id="Email" type="text" class="textInput small required email" tabindex="17" value=""/> </div> </fieldset> <fieldset class="inlineLabels"> <h2>Order/Shipping Notes</h2> <div class="ctrlHolder first"> <label for="notes">Order Notes </label> <textarea name="OrderNotes" id="ta" cols="26" rows="7" tabindex="18"></textarea><br /> <p class="formHint"><b>(Maximum characters: 175) &nbsp; <span id="charLeft"></span> &nbsp; Characters left</b><br /> (Cross streets, special instructions, etc.)</p> <br /> </div> </fieldset> <fieldset class="inlineLabels"> <h2>Continue To Next Step</h2> <div class="buttonHolder"> <label for="freightmsg">**Applicable freight charges will be applied at the time of invoicing.**</label> <input name="continuetocheckout" type="submit" class="button red smallrounded" value="Continue &gt;" alt="Continue to Next Step" tabindex="20"/> </div> </fieldset> </form> AJAX Call Here's the AJAX call: $(function() { $("#Forms").submit(function() { $.ajax({ type: 'post', url: 'WebCatPageServer.exe', dataType : 'json', data: $("#Forms").serialize(), complete:function(data){ alert(data); } }); return false; }); }); JSON Response Here's the JSON response: {"DidValidate":true,"Company Name":"A ACTION AIR*","AddrLine1":"5241 YANCEYVILLE","AddrLine2":"","City":"COLUMBIA","State":"SC","Zip":"","Modified":false,"AddressError":false,"ZipError":false} Question: How do I submit the form programatically if both AddressError and ZipError return with a false?

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  • DUnit: How to run tests?

    - by Ian Boyd
    How do i run TestCase's from the IDE? i created a new project, with a single, simple, form: unit Unit1; interface uses Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms, Dialogs, StdCtrls; type TForm1 = class(TForm) private public end; var Form1: TForm1; implementation {$R *.DFM} end. Now i'll add a test case to check that pushing Button1 does what it should: unit Unit1; interface uses Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms, Dialogs, StdCtrls; type TForm1 = class(TForm) Button1: TButton; procedure Button1Click(Sender: TObject); private public end; var Form1: TForm1; implementation {$R *.DFM} uses TestFramework; type TForm1Tests = class(TTestCase) private f: TForm1; protected procedure SetUp; override; procedure TearDown; override; published procedure TestButton1Click; end; procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); begin //todo end; { TForm1Tests } procedure TForm1Tests.SetUp; begin inherited; f := TForm1.Create(nil); end; procedure TForm1Tests.TearDown; begin f.Free; inherited; end; procedure TForm1Tests.TestButton1Click; begin f.Button1Click(nil); Self.CheckEqualsString('Hello, world!', f.Caption); end; end. Given what i've done (test code in the GUI project), how do i now trigger a run of the tests? If i push F9 then the form simply appears: Ideally there would be a button, or menu option, in the IDE saying Run DUnit Tests: Am i living in a dream-world? A fantasy land, living in a gumdrop house on lollipop lane?

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  • How do I create a safe local development environment?

    - by docgnome
    I'm currently doing web development with another developer on a centralized development server. In the past this has worked alright, as we have two separate projects we are working on and rarely conflict. Now, however, we are adding a third (possible) developer into the mix. This is clearly going to create problems with other developers changes affecting my work and vice versa. To solve this problem, I'm thinking the best solution would be to create a virtual machine to distribute between the developers for local use. The problem I have is when it comes to the database. Given that we all develop on laptops, simply keeping a local copy of the live data is plain stupid. I've considered sanitizing the data, but I can't really figure out how to replace the real data, with data that would be representative of what people actually enter with out repeating the same information over and over again, e.g. everyone's address becomes 123 Testing Lane, Test Town, WA, 99999 or something. Is this really something to be concerned about? Are there tools to help with this sort of thing? I'm using MySQL. Ideally, if I sanitized the db it should be done from a script that I can run regularly. If I do this I'd also need a way to reduce the size of the db itself. (I figure I could select all the records created after x and whack them and all the records in corresponding tables out so that isn't really a big deal.) The second solution I've thought of is to encrypt the hard drive of the vm, but I'm unsure of how practical this is in terms of speed and also in the event of a lost/stolen laptop. If I do this, should the vm hard drive file itself be encrypted or should it be encrypted in the vm? (I'm assuming the latter as it would be portable and doesn't require the devs to have any sort of encryption capability on their OS of choice.) The third is to create a copy of the database for each developer on our development server that they are then responsible to keep the schema in sync with the canonical db by means of migration scripts or what have you. This solution seems to be the simplest but doesn't really scale as more developers are added. How do you deal with this problem?

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  • Line graph disappears after new line is added

    - by tonystinge
    I am having trouble uploading a large .csv file to my HIGHCHART graph. I've been able to graph an 85KB up to 1486 lines by 9 (I) columns. Here is an example: TimeStamp Temp_1_01 Temp_1_02 Temp_2_01 Temp_2_02 Temp_3_01 Temp_3_02 Temp_4_01 Temp_4_02 5/15/2014, 3:25 408 487 63 84 67 91 63 78 5/15/2014 3:30 408 487 63 84 67 91 63 78 5/15/2014 3:35 407 489 63 84 67 91 63 78 5/15/2014 3:40 408 488 63 84 67 91 63 78 5/15/2014 3:44 408 488 63 84 67 91 63 78 ... 5/22/2014 9:40 483 421 0 93 76 95 72 89 When I add a new line the line graph disappears. Any suggestions? Here is the javascript: $.get('Dropbox/geo/sites/GC_Room/loveland.csv', function(data) { // Split the lines var lines = data.split('\n'); var i = 0; var csvData = []; // Iterate over the lines and add categories or series $.each(lines, function(lineNo, line) { csvData[i] = line.split(','); i = i + 1; }); var columns = csvData[0]; var categories = [], series = []; for(var colIndex=0,len=columns.length; colIndex<len; colIndex++) { //first row data as series's name var seriesItem= { data:[], name:csvData[0][colIndex] }; for(var rowIndex=1,rowCnt=csvData.length; rowIndex<rowCnt; rowIndex++) { //first column data as categories, if (colIndex == 0) { categories.push(csvData[rowIndex][0]); } else if(parseFloat(csvData[rowIndex][colIndex])) // <-- here { seriesItem.data.push(parseFloat(csvData[rowIndex][colIndex])); } }; //except first column if(colIndex>0)series.push(seriesItem); } // Create the chart var chart = new Highcharts.Chart( { chart: { alignTick: false, renderTo: 'LANE_METALS', type: 'line' }, title: { text: 'Monthly Average Temperature', x: -20 //center }, subtitle: { text: 'Source: LANE METALS', x: -20 }, xAxis: { categories: categories, labels: { step: 200, text: 'Time', }, tickWidth: 0 }, yAxis: { title: { text: 'Temperature (\xB0C)' }, min: 0 }, tooltip: { formatter: function() { return '<b>'+ this.series.name +'</b><br/>'+ this.x +': '+ this.y +'\xB0C'; } }, legend: { layout: 'vertical', //backgroundColor: '#FFFFFF', //floating: true, align: 'left', //x: 100, verticalAlign: 'top', //y: 70, borderWidth: 0 }, plotOptions: { area: { turboThreshold: 0, stacking: 'normal', lineColor: '#666666', lineWidth: 1, marker: { lineWidth: 1, lineColor: '#666666' } } }, series: series }); });

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  • Week in Geek: US Govt E-card Scam Siphons Confidential Data Edition

    - by Asian Angel
    This week we learned how to “back up photos to Flickr, automate repetitive tasks, & normalize MP3 volume”, enable “stereo mix” in Windows 7 to record audio, create custom papercraft toys, read up on three alternatives to Apple’s flaky iOS alarm clock, decorated our desktops & app docks with Google icon packs, and more. Photo by alexschlegel. Random Geek Links It has been a busy week on the security & malware fronts and we have a roundup of the latest news to help keep you updated. Photo by TopTechWriter.US. US govt e-card scam hits confidential data A fake U.S. government Christmas e-card has managed to siphon off gigabytes of sensitive data from a number of law enforcement and military staff who work on cybersecurity matters, many of whom are involved in computer crime investigations. Security tool uncovers multiple bugs in every browser Michal Zalewski reports that he discovered the vulnerability in Internet Explorer a while ago using his cross_fuzz fuzzing tool and reported it to Microsoft in July 2010. Zalewski also used cross_fuzz to discover bugs in other browsers, which he also reported to the relevant organisations. Microsoft to fix Windows holes, but not ones in IE Microsoft said that it will release two security bulletins next week fixing three holes in Windows, but it is still investigating or working on fixing holes in Internet Explorer that have been reportedly exploited in attacks. Microsoft warns of Windows flaw affecting image rendering Microsoft has warned of a Windows vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer if the user is logged on with administrative rights. Windows 7 Not Affected by Critical 0-Day in the Windows Graphics Rendering Engine While confirming that details on a Critical zero-day vulnerability have made their way into the wild, Microsoft noted that customers running the latest iteration of Windows client and server platforms are not exposed to any risks. Microsoft warns of Office-related malware Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center issued a warning this week that it has spotted malicious code on the Internet that can take advantage of a flaw in Word and infect computers after a user does nothing more than read an e-mail. *Refers to a flaw that was addressed in the November security patch releases. Make sure you have all of the latest security updates installed. Unpatched hole in ImgBurn disk burning application According to security specialist Secunia, a highly critical vulnerability in ImgBurn, a lightweight disk burning application, can be used to remotely compromise a user’s system. Hole in VLC Media Player Virtual Security Research (VSR) has identified a vulnerability in VLC Media Player. In versions up to and including 1.1.5 of the VLC Media Player. Flash Player sandbox can be bypassed Flash applications run locally can read local files and send them to an online server – something which the sandbox is supposed to prevent. Chinese auction site touts hacked iTunes accounts Tens of thousands of reportedly hacked iTunes accounts have been found on Chinese auction site Taobao, but the company claims it is unable to take action unless there are direct complaints. What happened in the recent Hotmail outage Mike Schackwitz explains the cause of the recent Hotmail outage. DOJ sends order to Twitter for Wikileaks-related account info The U.S. Justice Department has obtained a court order directing Twitter to turn over information about the accounts of activists with ties to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic politician, a legendary Dutch hacker, and a U.S. computer programmer. Google gets court to block Microsoft Interior Department e-mail win The U.S. Federal Claims Court has temporarily blocked Microsoft from proceeding with the $49.3 million, five-year DOI contract that it won this past November. Google Apps customers get email lockdown Companies and organisations using Google Apps are now able to restrict the email access of selected users. LibreOffice Is the Default Office Suite for Ubuntu 11.04 Matthias Klose has announced some details regarding the replacement of the old OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 packages with the new LibreOffice 3.3 ones, starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Alpha 2 release. Sysadmin Geek Tips Photo by Filomena Scalise. How to Setup Software RAID for a Simple File Server on Ubuntu Do you need a file server that is cheap and easy to setup, “rock solid” reliable, and has Email Alerting? This tutorial shows you how to use Ubuntu, software RAID, and SaMBa to accomplish just that. How to Control the Order of Startup Programs in Windows While you can specify the applications you want to launch when Windows starts, the ability to control the order in which they start is not available. However, there are a couple of ways you can easily overcome this limitation and control the startup order of applications. Random TinyHacker Links Using Opera Unite to Send Large Files A tutorial on using Opera Unite to easily send huge files from your computer. WorkFlowy is a Useful To-do List Tool A cool to-do list tool that lets you integrate multiple tasks in one single list easily. Playing Flash Videos on iOS Devices Yes, you can play flash videos on jailbroken iPhones. Here’s a tutorial. Clear Safari History and Cookies On iPhone A tutorial on clearing your browser history on iPhone and other iOS devices. Monitor Your Internet Usage Here’s a cool, cross-platform tool to monitor your internet bandwidth. Super User Questions See what the community had to say on these popular questions from Super User this week. Why is my upload speed much less than my download speed? Where should I find drivers for my laptop if it didn’t come with a driver disk? OEM Office 2010 without media – how to reinstall? Is there a point to using theft tracking software like Prey on my laptop, if you have login security? Moving an “all-in-one” PC when turned on/off How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Get caught up on your HTG reading with our hottest articles from this past week. How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? Did You Know Facebook Has Built-In Shortcut Keys? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics One Year Ago on How-To Geek Enjoy looking through our latest gathering of retro article goodness. Learning Windows 7: Create a Homegroup & Join a New Computer To It How To Disconnect a Machine from a Homegroup Use Remote Desktop To Access Other Computers On a Small Office or Home Network How To Share Files and Printers Between Windows 7 and Vista Allow Users To Run Only Specified Programs in Windows 7 The Geek Note That is all we have for you this week and we hope your first week back at work or school has gone very well now that the holidays are over. Know a great tip? Send it in to us at [email protected]. Photo by Pamela Machado. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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  • Improving SAS multipath to JBOD performance on Linux

    - by user36825
    Hello all I'm trying to optimize a storage setup on some Sun hardware with Linux. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. We have the following hardware: Sun Blade X6270 2* LSISAS1068E SAS controllers 2* Sun J4400 JBODs with 1 TB disks (24 disks per JBOD) Fedora Core 12 2.6.33 release kernel from FC13 (also tried with latest 2.6.31 kernel from FC12, same results) Here's the datasheet for the SAS hardware: http://www.sun.com/storage/storage_networking/hba/sas/PCIe.pdf It's using PCI Express 1.0a, 8x lanes. With a bandwidth of 250 MB/sec per lane, we should be able to do 2000 MB/sec per SAS controller. Each controller can do 3 Gb/sec per port and has two 4 port PHYs. We connect both PHYs from a controller to a JBOD. So between the JBOD and the controller we have 2 PHYs * 4 SAS ports * 3 Gb/sec = 24 Gb/sec of bandwidth, which is more than the PCI Express bandwidth. With write caching enabled and when doing big writes, each disk can sustain about 80 MB/sec (near the start of the disk). With 24 disks, that means we should be able to do 1920 MB/sec per JBOD. multipath { rr_min_io 100 uid 0 path_grouping_policy multibus failback manual path_selector "round-robin 0" rr_weight priorities alias somealias no_path_retry queue mode 0644 gid 0 wwid somewwid } I tried values of 50, 100, 1000 for rr_min_io, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Along with varying rr_min_io I tried adding some delay between starting the dd's to prevent all of them writing over the same PHY at the same time, but this didn't make any difference, so I think the I/O's are getting properly spread out. According to /proc/interrupts, the SAS controllers are using a "IR-IO-APIC-fasteoi" interrupt scheme. For some reason only core #0 in the machine is handling these interrupts. I can improve performance slightly by assigning a separate core to handle the interrupts for each SAS controller: echo 2 /proc/irq/24/smp_affinity echo 4 /proc/irq/26/smp_affinity Using dd to write to the disk generates "Function call interrupts" (no idea what these are), which are handled by core #4, so I keep other processes off this core too. I run 48 dd's (one for each disk), assigning them to cores not dealing with interrupts like so: taskset -c somecore dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/mpathx oflag=direct bs=128M oflag=direct prevents any kind of buffer cache from getting involved. None of my cores seem maxed out. The cores dealing with interrupts are mostly idle and all the other cores are waiting on I/O as one would expect. Cpu0 : 0.0%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.2%id, 7.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st Cpu1 : 0.0%us, 0.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 93.0%id, 0.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 6.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu2 : 0.0%us, 0.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 94.4%id, 0.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 4.8%si, 0.0%st Cpu3 : 0.0%us, 7.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 56.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu4 : 0.0%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 85.7%id, 4.9%wa, 0.0%hi, 8.1%si, 0.0%st Cpu5 : 0.1%us, 5.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 58.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu6 : 0.0%us, 5.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 58.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu7 : 0.0%us, 5.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 58.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu8 : 0.1%us, 8.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 27.2%id, 64.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu9 : 0.1%us, 7.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 55.8%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu10 : 0.0%us, 7.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.2%id, 56.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu11 : 0.0%us, 7.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 56.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu12 : 0.0%us, 5.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 33.1%id, 61.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu13 : 0.1%us, 5.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.1%id, 58.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu14 : 0.0%us, 4.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.4%id, 58.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu15 : 0.1%us, 5.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.5%id, 58.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Given all this, the throughput reported by running "dstat 10" is in the range of 2200-2300 MB/sec. Given the math above I would expect something in the range of 2*1920 ~= 3600+ MB/sec. Does anybody have any idea where my missing bandwidth went? Thanks!

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  • How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project

    - by constant
    While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack. After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades? On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea. Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company. Engineering Systems is Hard Work! The backbone of Exalogic is its InfiniBand network: 4 times better bandwidth than even 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and only about a tenth of its latency. What a potential for increased scalability and throughput across the middleware and database layers! But InfiniBand is a beast that needs to be tamed: It is true that Exalogic uses a standard, open-source Open Fabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) InfiniBand driver stack. Unfortunately, this software has been developed by the HPC community with fastest speed in mind (which is good) but, despite the name, not many other enterprise-class requirements are included (which is less good). Here are some of the improvements that Oracle's InfiniBand development team had to add to the OFED stack to make it enterprise-ready, simply because typical HPC users didn't have the need to implement them: More than 100 bug fixes in the pieces that were not related to the Message Passing Interface Protocol (MPI), which is the protocol that HPC users use most of the time, but which is less useful in the enterprise. Performance optimizations and tuning across the whole IB stack: From Switches, Host Channel Adapters (HCAs) and drivers to low-level protocols, middleware and applications. Yes, even the standard HPC IB stack could be improved in terms of performance. Ethernet over IB (EoIB): Exalogic uses InfiniBand internally to reach high performance, but it needs to play nicely with datacenters around it. That's why Oracle added Ethernet over InfiniBand technology to it that allows for creating many virtual 10GBE adapters inside Exalogic's nodes that are aggregated and connected to Exalogic's IB gateway switches. While this is an open standard, it's up to the vendor to implement it. In this case, Oracle integrated the EoIB stack with Oracle's own IB to 10GBE gateway switches, and made it fully virtualized from the beginning. This means that Exalogic customers can completely rewire their server infrastructure inside the rack without having to physically pull or plug a single cable - a must-have for every cloud deployment. Anybody who wants to match this level of integration would need to add an InfiniBand switch development team to their project. Or just buy Oracle's gateway switches, which are conveniently shipped with a whole server infrastructure attached! IPv6 support for InfiniBand's Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP), Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS), TCP/IP over IB (IPoIB) and EoIB protocols. Because no IPv6 = not very enterprise-class. HA capability for SDP. High Availability is not a big requirement for HPC, but for enterprise-class application servers it is. Every node in Exalogic's InfiniBand network is connected twice for redundancy. If any cable or port or HCA fails, there's always a replacement link ready to take over. This requires extra magic at the protocol level to work. So in addition to Weblogic's failover capabilities, Oracle implemented IB automatic path migration at the SDP level to avoid unnecessary failover operations at the middleware level. Security, for example spoof-protection. Another feature that is less important for traditional users of InfiniBand, but very important for enterprise customers. InfiniBand Partitioning and Quality-of-Service (QoS): One of the first questions we get from customers about Exalogic is: “How can we implement multi-tenancy?” The answer is to partition your IB network, which effectively creates many networks that work independently and that are protected at the lowest networking layer possible. In addition to that, QoS allows administrators to prioritize traffic flow in multi-tenancy environments so they can keep their service levels where it matters most. Resilient IB Fabric Management: InfiniBand is a self-managing network, so a lot of the magic lies in coming up with the right topology and in teaching the subnet manager how to properly discover and manage the network. Oracle's Infiniband switches come with pre-integrated, highly available fabric management with seamless integration into Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center. In short: Oracle elevated the OFED InfiniBand stack into an enterprise-class networking infrastructure. Many years and multiple teams of manpower went into the above improvements - this is something you can only get from Oracle, because no other InfiniBand vendor can give you these features across the whole stack! Exabus: Because it's not About the Size of Your Network, it's How You Use it! So let's assume that you somehow were able to get your hands on an enterprise-class IB driver stack. Or maybe you don't care and are just happy with the standard OFED one? Anyway, the next step is to actually leverage that InfiniBand performance. Here are the choices: Use traditional TCP/IP on top of the InfiniBand stack, Develop your own integration between your middleware and the lower-level (but faster) InfiniBand protocols. While more bandwidth is always a good thing, it's actually the low latency that enables superior performance for your applications when running on any networking infrastructure: The lower the latency, the faster the response travels through the network and the more transactions you can close per second. The reason why InfiniBand is such a low latency technology is that it gets rid of most if not all of your traditional networking protocol stack: Data is literally beamed from one region of RAM in one server into another region of RAM in another server with no kernel/drivers/UDP/TCP or other networking stack overhead involved! Which makes option 1 a no-go: Adding TCP/IP on top of InfiniBand is like adding training wheels to your racing bike. It may be ok in the beginning and for development, but it's not quite the performance IB was meant to deliver. Which only leaves option 2: Integrating your middleware with fast, low-level InfiniBand protocols. And this is what Exalogic's "Exabus" technology is all about. Here are a few Exabus features that help applications leverage the performance of InfiniBand in Exalogic: RDMA and SDP integration at the JDBC driver level (SDP), for Oracle Weblogic (SDP), Oracle Coherence (RDMA), Oracle Tuxedo (RDMA) and the new Oracle Traffic Director (RDMA) on Exalogic. Using these protocols, middleware can communicate a lot faster with each other and the Oracle database than by using standard networking protocols, Seamless Integration of Ethernet over InfiniBand from Exalogic's Gateway switches into the OS, Oracle Weblogic optimizations for handling massive amounts of parallel transactions. Because if you have an 8-lane Autobahn, you also need to improve your ramps so you can feed it with many cars in parallel. Integration of Weblogic with Oracle Exadata for faster performance, optimized session management and failover. As you see, “Exabus” is Oracle's word for describing all the InfiniBand enhancements Oracle put into Exalogic: OFED stack enhancements, protocols for faster IB access, and InfiniBand support and optimizations at the virtualization and middleware level. All working together to deliver the full potential of InfiniBand performance. Who else has 100% control over their middleware so they can develop their own low-level protocol integration with InfiniBand? Even if you take an open source approach, you're looking at years of development work to create, test and support a whole new networking technology in your middleware! The Extras: Less Hassle, More Productivity, Faster Time to Market And then there are the other advantages of Engineered Systems that are true for Exalogic the same as they are for every other Engineered System: One simple purchasing process: No headaches due to endless RFPs and no “Will X work with Y?” uncertainties. Everything has been engineered together: All kinds of bugs and problems have been already fixed at the design level that would have only manifested themselves after you have built the system from scratch. Everything is built, tested and integrated at the factory level . Less integration pain for you, faster time to market. Every Exalogic machine world-wide is identical to Oracle's own machines in the lab: Instant replication of any problems you may encounter, faster time to resolution. Simplified patching, management and operations. One throat to choke: Imagine finger-pointing hell for systems that have been put together using several different vendors. Oracle's Engineered Systems have a single phone number that customers can call to get their problems solved. For more business-centric values, read The Business Value of Engineered Systems. Conclusion: Buy Exalogic, or get ready for a 6-12 Month Science Project And here's the reason why it's not easy to "build your own Exalogic": There's a lot of work required to make such a system fly. In fact, anybody who is starting to "just put together a bunch of servers and an InfiniBand network" is really looking at a 6-12 month science project. And the outcome is likely to not be very enterprise-class. And it won't have Exalogic's performance either. Because building an Engineered System is literally rocket science: It takes a lot of time, effort, resources and many iterations of design/test/analyze/fix to build such a system. That's why InfiniBand has been reserved for HPC scientists for such a long time. And only Oracle can bring the power of InfiniBand in an enterprise-class, ready-to use, pre-integrated version to customers, without the develop/integrate/support pain. For more details, check the new Exalogic overview white paper which was updated only recently. P.S.: Thanks to my colleagues Ola, Paul, Don and Andy for helping me put together this article! var flattr_uid = '26528'; var flattr_tle = 'How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project'; var flattr_dsc = 'While most customers immediately understand how the magic of Oracle's Hybrid Columnar Compression, intelligent storage servers and flash memory make Exadata uniquely powerful against home-grown database systems, some people think that Exalogic is nothing more than a bunch of x86 servers, a storage appliance and an InfiniBand (IB) network, built into a single rack.After all, isn't this exactly what the High Performance Computing (HPC) world has been doing for decades?On the surface, this may be true. And some people tried exactly that: They tried to put together their own version of Exalogic, but then they discover there's a lot more to building a system than buying hardware and assembling it together. IT is not Ikea.Why is that so? Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company.'; var flattr_tag = 'Engineered Systems,Engineered Systems,Infiniband,Integration,latency,Oracle,performance'; var flattr_cat = 'text'; var flattr_url = 'http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/04/how-avoid-your-next-12-month-science-project'; var flattr_lng = 'en_GB'

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 18, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 18, 2012Popular ReleasesRiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: RiP-Ripper 2.9.28: changes NEW: Added Support for "PixHub.eu" linksSmartNet: V1.0.0.0: DY SmartNet ?????? V1.0callisto: callisto 2.0.21: Added an option to disable local host detection.Javascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.6: Upgraded to the latest stable branch of v8 (/tags/3.9.18), and switched to using their scons build system. We no longer include v8 source code as part of this project's source code. Simultaneous multithreaded use of v8 now supported (v8 Isolates), although different contexts may not share objects or call each other. 64-bit .Net 4.0 DLL now included. (Download now includes x86 and x64 for both .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0.)MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.6: This release should be more stable there were a few bug fixes including the x64 issue as well as an error popping up when MyRouter started this was caused by a NULL valuePulse: Pulse Beta 4: This version is still in development but should include: Logging and error handling have been greatly improved. If you run into an error or Pulse crashes make sure to check the Log folder for a recently modified log file so you can report the details of the issue A bunch of new features for the Wallbase.cc provider. Cleaner separation between inputs, downloading and output. Input and downloading are fairly clean now but outputs are still mixed up in the mix which I'm trying to resolve ...Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader-2.0.0.0.: Google Books DownloaderFinestra Virtual Desktops: 2.5.4501: This is a very minor update release. Please see the information about the 2.5 and 2.5.4500 releases for more information on recent changes. This update did not even have an automatic update triggered for it. Adds error checking and reporting to all threads, not only those with message loopsAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.2: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????,????1M,????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????,???,???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??:????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? ??????????????,??????????: ??"AcDo...ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Release Candidate: Your feedback is welcome - and this is your last chance to get your fixes in for this version! Includes installer for both Feature Server extension and Desktop extension, enhanced functionality for the Desktop tools, and enhanced built-in Javascript Editor for the Feature Server component. This release candidate includes fixes to beta 4 that accommodate domain users for setting up the Server Component, and fixes for reporting/uploading references tracked in the revision table. See Code In-P...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.6: 20 Issue trackers are closed and a lot of bugs too Localize view is now MVVM and delete is working. Added the unused flag (take care that it goes to true only when displaying screen elements) Backstage - new input/output format choice control for the conversion Backstage - Add display, behaviour and register file type options in the extended options dialog Explorer list view has been transformed to a custom control. New group header, colunms order and size are saved Single insta...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Prv: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.1Minor updates to setup experience: Check for WebPI before install Dependency Check updated to support the following VS 11 and VS 2010 SKUs Ultimate, Premium, Professional and Express Certs Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include:...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 3.0: ships with JSON Toolkit v3.0, offering parse speed up to 10 times of last version supports Facebook's new auth dialog supports new extend access token endpoint new example Page Tab app filter Graph Api connections using dates fixed bugs in Page Tab appsCODE Framework: 4.0.20312.0: This version includes significant improvements in the WPF system (and the WPF MVVM/MVC system). This includes new styles for Metro controls and layouts. Improved color handling. It also includes an improved theme/style swapping engine down to active (open) views. There also are various other enhancements and small fixes throughout the entire framework.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.4: 3/12/2012 Jacob Slusser Added support for annotations. Issues Fixed with this Release Issue # Title 25012 25012 25018 25018 25023 25023 25014 25014 Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v3 - For Visual Studio 11: RELEASE README Welcome to the BETA release of the Quick Reference Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation ...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0345: Welcome to early alpha release of AvalonDock 2.0 I've completely rewritten AvalonDock in order to take full advantage of the MVVM pattern. New version also boost a lot of new features: 1) Deep separation between model and layout. 2) Full WPF binding support thanks to unified logical tree between main docking manager, auto-hide windows and floating windows. 3) Support for Aero semi-maximized windows feature. 4) Support for multiple panes in the same floating windows. For a short list of new f...Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets: Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets 2.2.2: Changes Added Start Menu Item for Easy Startup Added Link to Getting Started Document Added Ability to Persist Subscription Data to Disk Fixed Get-Deployment to not throw on empty slot Simplified numerous default values for cmdlets Breaking Changes: -SubscriptionName is now mandatory in Set-Subscription. -DefaultStorageAccountName and -DefaultStorageAccountKey parameters were removed from Set-Subscription. Instead, when adding multiple accounts to a subscription, each one needs to be added ...IronPython: 2.7.2.1: On behalf of the IronPython team, I'm happy to announce the final release IronPython 2.7.2. This release includes everything from IronPython 54498 and 62475 as well. Like all IronPython 2.7-series releases, .NET 4 is required to install it. Installing this release will replace any existing IronPython 2.7-series installation. Unlike previous releases, the assemblies for all supported platforms are included in the installer as well as the zip package, in the "Platforms" directory. IronPython 2...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.2.0.0: Breaking changes: When upgrade from previous versions, MUST reset the all the content type templates, otherwise the content manager might get a compile error. New features Integrate with Windows azure. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS on Azure Complete solution to deploy on load balance servers. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS load balance Update Jquery and Jquery ui to the lastest version(Jquery 1.71, Jquery UI 1.8.16). Tree style text content editing. See:h...New Projects4sr4ss1: Assignment 1 WDT Due date: 26 March 2012ADLN: Project to ADLNbook2guest: book2guestBundlingTweaks: BundlingTweaks makes it easier for developers to develop ASP.NET MVC 4 projects with Bundling/Minification support. You can now take advantage of Bundling, but still see non-minified JavaScript when debugging.COBOL SCREENSAVER: This project will show how to create a Windows screen saver using 1) an object-oriented isCOBOL GUI application, 2) an OpenCobol Windows native executable wrapper for the isCOBOL GUI, and 3) XML, XSLT, HTML5, and a Java FX 2.0 web browser component. Release 0.1 consists of a Java GUI application, the OpenCobol wrapper, and a README file detailing usage, system requirements, and installation of the recommended OpenCobol binaries for Windows.Colorado Time System Get CTS Results to Text File: This application will query a Colorado Time System 5, retrieve the lane results by event and heat. These can then be written to a text file.CommonEventLog: This project provides a simple means of logging messages and exceptions to a custom event log.ContainerTrack: Application for tracking container locationContent Widgets Orchard module: This Orchard module makes it possible to add arbitrary widgets to content types (with the option to disable per item).Cup of Badminton: This is a application for draw cup of badminton. You can insert, edit and delete player. You can choose many variant of draw.FSGREE: FSGREEKeepSafety: ??、??、?????????LibGrafx: LibGrafix is a C++ DLL that contains several classes useful when developing computer graphics applications, particularly OpenGL applications, in the Windows environment. It also includes a class that loads and displays the ModelX format exported by the XNA Model Viewer program. Linq to SQL code generator for Windows Phone: Linq to SQL code generator for Windows Phone is an add-in for Visual Studio 2010 or later to generate the Linq to SQL classes from a DBML diagram. Offline Navigation for Windows Phone 7: This is a simple implementation of offline navigation for windows phone 7 with map offset adjustment support.PayrollSystemRedux: Payroll case study book Robert Martin (Agile PPP in C#)PhoneFlipMenu Control for Windows Phone: A control that mimics the behaviour of the Email app's reply/reply all/forward menu.QTscenarist: QTscenarist makes it easier for Synfig animation to create Synfig movies. You can write scenaries and create your movie with it. It's developed in QT. recycle: This is a recycle web pageSharePoint 2010 Accordian Launch: SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation Quick Launch Accordian Solution.SharePoint 2010 JavaScript Registration Panel: The SharePoint 2010 JavaScript Registration Panel allows you to add JavaScript files to a site collection without SharePoint 2010 Designer intervention. This is helpful in scenarios where SharePoint Designer 2010 is disabled globally, but you have to add some JavaScript files (e.g. jQuery) to your site collection for every page load. The aim of this project is to provide following features: - load JavaScript files on every page load of your site collection - define the sequence for loadi...Sistema de Gestion Escolar: Projecto final monografico universidad dominicana O&MSmartNet: DYSmartNet????????????????????????。???TCP??,??????????,??????????... solution: solution team explorerTanmiaGrp: This is the tanmia base project library.VideoMobileSteraming: Will Update soonXNASter: XNASter is a short library that allows beginner developers to create simple XNA games. Right now it is in the very early stages of development. Included are the following parts: * 2D generic sprite-based object that supports movement, acceleration, etc. In the future, we are also planning to support: * KinectSkeleton controller Together with the project, there are also a few sample games that show how to use it.???WP: HateCoWP is Hatena Coco Client.???: ????????????????????。

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  • Why Are Minimized Programs Often Slow to Open Again?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    It seems particularly counterintuitive: you minimize an application because you plan on returning to it later and wish to skip shutting the application down and restarting it later, but sometimes maximizing it takes even longer than launching it fresh. What gives? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Bart wants to know why he’s not saving any time with application minimization: I’m working in Photoshop CS6 and multiple browsers a lot. I’m not using them all at once, so sometimes some applications are minimized to taskbar for hours or days. The problem is, when I try to maximize them from the taskbar – it sometimes takes longer than starting them! Especially Photoshop feels really weird for many seconds after finally showing up, it’s slow, unresponsive and even sometimes totally freezes for minute or two. It’s not a hardware problem as it’s been like that since always on all on my PCs. Would I also notice it after upgrading my HDD to SDD and adding RAM (my main PC holds 4 GB currently)? Could guys with powerful pcs / macs tell me – does it also happen to you? I guess OSes somehow “focus” on active software and move all the resources away from the ones that run, but are not used. Is it possible to somehow set RAM / CPU / HDD priorities or something, for let’s say, Photoshop, so it won’t slow down after long period of inactivity? So what is the deal? Why does he find himself waiting to maximize a minimized app? The Answer SuperUser contributor Allquixotic explains why: Summary The immediate problem is that the programs that you have minimized are being paged out to the “page file” on your hard disk. This symptom can be improved by installing a Solid State Disk (SSD), adding more RAM to your system, reducing the number of programs you have open, or upgrading to a newer system architecture (for instance, Ivy Bridge or Haswell). Out of these options, adding more RAM is generally the most effective solution. Explanation The default behavior of Windows is to give active applications priority over inactive applications for having a spot in RAM. When there’s significant memory pressure (meaning the system doesn’t have a lot of free RAM if it were to let every program have all the RAM it wants), it starts putting minimized programs into the page file, which means it writes out their contents from RAM to disk, and then makes that area of RAM free. That free RAM helps programs you’re actively using — say, your web browser — run faster, because if they need to claim a new segment of RAM (like when you open a new tab), they can do so. This “free” RAM is also used as page cache, which means that when active programs attempt to read data on your hard disk, that data might be cached in RAM, which prevents your hard disk from being accessed to get that data. By using the majority of your RAM for page cache, and swapping out unused programs to disk, Windows is trying to improve responsiveness of the program(s) you are actively using, by making RAM available to them, and caching the files they access in RAM instead of the hard disk. The downside of this behavior is that minimized programs can take a while to have their contents copied from the page file, on disk, back into RAM. The time increases the larger the program’s footprint in memory. This is why you experience that delay when maximizing Photoshop. RAM is many times faster than a hard disk (depending on the specific hardware, it can be up to several orders of magnitude). An SSD is considerably faster than a hard disk, but it is still slower than RAM by orders of magnitude. Having your page file on an SSD will help, but it will also wear out the SSD more quickly than usual if your page file is heavily utilized due to RAM pressure. Remedies Here is an explanation of the available remedies, and their general effectiveness: Installing more RAM: This is the recommended path. If your system does not support more RAM than you already have installed, you will need to upgrade more of your system: possibly your motherboard, CPU, chassis, power supply, etc. depending on how old it is. If it’s a laptop, chances are you’ll have to buy an entire new laptop that supports more installed RAM. When you install more RAM, you reduce memory pressure, which reduces use of the page file, which is a good thing all around. You also make available more RAM for page cache, which will make all programs that access the hard disk run faster. As of Q4 2013, my personal recommendation is that you have at least 8 GB of RAM for a desktop or laptop whose purpose is anything more complex than web browsing and email. That means photo editing, video editing/viewing, playing computer games, audio editing or recording, programming / development, etc. all should have at least 8 GB of RAM, if not more. Run fewer programs at a time: This will only work if the programs you are running do not use a lot of memory on their own. Unfortunately, Adobe Creative Suite products such as Photoshop CS6 are known for using an enormous amount of memory. This also limits your multitasking ability. It’s a temporary, free remedy, but it can be an inconvenience to close down your web browser or Word every time you start Photoshop, for instance. This also wouldn’t stop Photoshop from being swapped when minimizing it, so it really isn’t a very effective solution. It only helps in some specific situations. Install an SSD: If your page file is on an SSD, the SSD’s improved speed compared to a hard disk will result in generally improved performance when the page file has to be read from or written to. Be aware that SSDs are not designed to withstand a very frequent and constant random stream of writes; they can only be written over a limited number of times before they start to break down. Heavy use of a page file is not a particularly good workload for an SSD. You should install an SSD in combination with a large amount of RAM if you want maximum performance while preserving the longevity of the SSD. Use a newer system architecture: Depending on the age of your system, you may be using an out of date system architecture. The “system architecture” is generally defined as the “generation” (think generations like children, parents, grandparents, etc.) of the motherboard and CPU. Newer generations generally support faster I/O (input/output), better memory bandwidth, lower latency, and less contention over shared resources, instead providing dedicated links between components. For example, starting with the “Nehalem” generation (around 2009), the Front-Side Bus (FSB) was eliminated, which removed a common bottleneck, because almost all system components had to share the same FSB for transmitting data. This was replaced with a “point to point” architecture, meaning that each component gets its own dedicated “lane” to the CPU, which continues to be improved every few years with new generations. You will generally see a more significant improvement in overall system performance depending on the “gap” between your computer’s architecture and the latest one available. For example, a Pentium 4 architecture from 2004 is going to see a much more significant improvement upgrading to “Haswell” (the latest as of Q4 2013) than a “Sandy Bridge” architecture from ~2010. Links Related questions: How to reduce disk thrashing (paging)? Windows Swap (Page File): Enable or Disable? Also, just in case you’re considering it, you really shouldn’t disable the page file, as this will only make matters worse; see here. And, in case you needed extra convincing to leave the Windows Page File alone, see here and here. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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  • How to group using XSLT

    - by AdRock
    I'm having trouble grouping a set of nodes. I've found an article that does work with grouping and i have tested it and it works on a small test stylesheet i have I now need to use it in my stylesheet where I only want to select node sets that have a specific value. What I want to do in my stylesheet is select all users who have a userlevel of 2 then to group them by the volunteer region. What happens at the minute is that it gets the right amount of users with userlevel 2 but doesn't print them. It just repeats the first user in the xml file. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:key name="volunteers-by-region" match="volunteer" use="region" /> <xsl:template name="hoo" match="/"> <html> <head> <title>Registered Volunteers</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="volunteer.css" /> </head> <body> <h1>Registered Volunteers</h1> <h3>Ordered by the username ascending</h3> <xsl:for-each select="folktask/member[user/account/userlevel='2']"> <xsl:for-each select="volunteer[count(. | key('volunteers-by-region', region)[1]) = 1]"> <xsl:sort select="region" /> <xsl:for-each select="key('volunteers-by-region', region)"> <xsl:sort select="folktask/member/user/personal/name" /> <div class="userdiv"> <xsl:call-template name="member_userid"> <xsl:with-param name="myid" select="/folktask/member/user/@id" /> </xsl:call-template> <xsl:call-template name="volunteer_volid"> <xsl:with-param name="volid" select="/folktask/member/volunteer/@id" /> </xsl:call-template> <xsl:call-template name="volunteer_role"> <xsl:with-param name="volrole" select="/folktask/member/volunteer/roles" /> </xsl:call-template> <xsl:call-template name="volunteer_region"> <xsl:with-param name="volloc" select="/folktask/member/volunteer/region" /> </xsl:call-template> </div> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:for-each> <xsl:if test="position()=last()"> <div class="count"><h2>Total number of volunteers: <xsl:value-of select="count(/folktask/member/user/account/userlevel[text()=2])"/></h2></div> </xsl:if> </body> </html> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="member_userid"> <xsl:param name="myid" select="'Not Available'" /> <div class="heading bold"><h2>USER ID: <xsl:value-of select="$myid" /></h2></div> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="volunteer_volid"> <xsl:param name="volid" select="'Not Available'" /> <div class="heading2 bold"><h2>VOLUNTEER ID: <xsl:value-of select="$volid" /></h2></div> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="volunteer_role"> <xsl:param name="volrole" select="'Not Available'" /> <div class="small bold">ROLES:</div> <div class="large"> <xsl:choose> <xsl:when test="string-length($volrole)!=0"> <xsl:value-of select="$volrole" /> </xsl:when> <xsl:otherwise> <xsl:text> </xsl:text> </xsl:otherwise> </xsl:choose> </div> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="volunteer_region"> <xsl:param name="volloc" select="'Not Available'" /> <div class="small bold">REGION:</div> <div class="large"><xsl:value-of select="$volloc" /></div> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> here is my full xml file <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="volunteers.xsl"?> <folktask xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xs:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="folktask.xsd"> <member> <user id="1"> <personal> <name>Abbie Hunt</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>108 Access Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Wells</city> <county>Somerset</county> <postcode>BA5 8GH</postcode> <telephone>01528927616</telephone> <mobile>07085252492</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>AdRock</username> <password>269eb625e2f0cf6fae9a29434c12a89f</password> <userlevel>4</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="1"> <roles></roles> <region>South West</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="2"> <personal> <name>Aidan Harris</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>103 Aiken Street</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Chichester</city> <county>Sussex</county> <postcode>PO19 4DS</postcode> <telephone>01905149894</telephone> <mobile>07784467941</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>AmbientExpert</username> <password>8e64214160e9dd14ae2a6d9f700004a6</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="2"> <roles>Van Driver,gas Fitter</roles> <region>South Central</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="3"> <personal> <name>Skye Saunders</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>31 Anns Court</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Cirencester</city> <county>Gloucestershire</county> <postcode>GL7 1JG</postcode> <telephone>01958303514</telephone> <mobile>07260491667</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>BigUndecided</username> <password>ea297847f80e046ca24a8621f4068594</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="3"> <roles>Scaffold Erector</roles> <region>South West</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="4"> <personal> <name>Connor Lawson</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>12 Ash Way</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Swindon</city> <county>Wiltshire</county> <postcode>SN3 6GS</postcode> <telephone>01791928119</telephone> <mobile>07338695664</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>iTuneStinker</username> <password>3a1f5fda21a07bfff20c41272bae7192</password> <userlevel>3</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <festival id="1"> <event> <eventname>Oxford Folk Festival</eventname> <url>http://www.oxfordfolkfestival.com/</url> <datefrom>2010-04-07</datefrom> <dateto>2010-04-09</dateto> <location>Oxford</location> <eventpostcode>OX1 9BE</eventpostcode> <additional>Oxford Folk Festival is going into it's third year in 2006. As well as needing volunteers to steward for the event on the weekend itself, we would be delighted to hear from people willing to help in year round festival work such as stuffing envelopes for mailings, poster and leaflet distribution, and stewarding duties at festival pre-events.</additional> <coords> <lat>51.735640</lat> <lng>-1.276136</lng> </coords> </event> <contact> <conname>Stuart Vincent</conname> <conaddress1>P.O. Box 642</conaddress1> <conaddress2></conaddress2> <concity>Oxford</concity> <concounty>Bedfordshire</concounty> <conpostcode>OX1 3BY</conpostcode> <contelephone>01865 79073</contelephone> <conmobile></conmobile> <fax></fax> <conemail>[email protected]</conemail> </contact> </festival> </member> <member> <user id="5"> <personal> <name>Lewis King</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>67 Arbors Way</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Sherborne</city> <county>Dorset</county> <postcode>DT9 0GS</postcode> <telephone>01446139701</telephone> <mobile>07292614033</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>Runninglife</username> <password>98fab0a27c34ddb2b0618bc184d4331d</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="4"> <roles>Van Driver</roles> <region>South West</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="6"> <personal> <name>Cameron Lee</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>77 Arrington Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Solihull</city> <county>Warwickshire</county> <postcode>B90 6FG</postcode> <telephone>01435158624</telephone> <mobile>07789503179</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>love2Mixer</username> <password>1df752d54876928639cea07ce036a9c0</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="5"> <roles>Fire Warden</roles> <region>Midlands</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="7"> <personal> <name>Lexie Dean</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>38 Bloomfield Court</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Windermere</city> <county>Westmorland</county> <postcode>LA23 8BM</postcode> <telephone>01781207188</telephone> <mobile>07127461231</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>MailNetworker</username> <password>0e070701839e612bf46af4421db4f44b</password> <userlevel>3</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <festival id="2"> <event> <eventname>Middlewich Folk And Boat Festival</eventname> <url>http://midfest.org.uk/mfab/</url> <datefrom>2010-06-16</datefrom> <dateto>2010-06-18</dateto> <location>Middlewich</location> <eventpostcode>CW10 9BX</eventpostcode> <additional>We welcome stewards staying on campsite or boats.</additional> <coords> <lat>53.190562</lat> <lng>-2.444926</lng> </coords> </event> <contact> <conname>Festival Committee</conname> <conaddress1>PO Box 141</conaddress1> <conaddress2></conaddress2> <concity>Winsford</concity> <concounty>Cheshire</concounty> <conpostcode>CW10 9WB</conpostcode> <contelephone>07092 39050</contelephone> <conmobile>07092 39050</conmobile> <fax></fax> <conemail>[email protected]</conemail> </contact> </festival> </member> <member> <user id="8"> <personal> <name>Liam Chapman</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>99 Black Water Drive</address1> <address2></address2> <city>St.Austell</city> <county>Cornwall</county> <postcode>PL25 3GF</postcode> <telephone>01835629418</telephone> <mobile>07695179069</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>GreenWimp</username> <password>1fe3df99a841dc4f723d21af89e0990f</password> <userlevel>1</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> </member> <member> <user id="9"> <personal> <name>Brandon Harrison</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>41 Arlington Way</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Dorchester</city> <county>Dorset</county> <postcode>DT1 3JS</postcode> <telephone>01293626735</telephone> <mobile>07277145760</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>LovelyStar</username> <password>8b53b66f323aa5e6a083edb4fd44456b</password> <userlevel>1</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> </member> <member> <user id="10"> <personal> <name>Samuel Young</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>102 Bailey Hill Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Wolverhampton</city> <county>Staffordshire</county> <postcode>WV7 8HS</postcode> <telephone>01594531382</telephone> <mobile>07544663654</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>GuruSassy</username> <password>00da02da6c143c3d136bf60b8bfcf43e</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="6"> <roles>Fire Warden</roles> <region>Midlands</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="11"> <personal> <name>Alexander Harris</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>93 Beguine Drive</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Winchester</city> <county>Hampshire</county> <postcode>S23 2FD</postcode> <telephone>01452496582</telephone> <mobile>07353867291</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>GuitarExpert</username> <password>0102ad3740028e155925e9918ead3bde</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="7"> <roles>Scaffold Erector</roles> <region>North East</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="12"> <personal> <name>Tyler Mcdonald</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>44 Baker Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Bromley</city> <county>Kent</county> <postcode>BR1 2GD</postcode> <telephone>01918704546</telephone> <mobile>07314062451</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>WildWish</username> <password>073220bb5e9a12ad202bb7d94dcc86f7</password> <userlevel>1</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> </member> <member> <user id="13"> <personal> <name>Skye Mason</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>56 Cedar Creek Church Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Bracknell</city> <county>Berkshire</county> <postcode>RG12 1AQ</postcode> <telephone>01787607618</telephone> <mobile>07540218868</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>PizzaDork</username> <password>74c54937ee7051ee7f4ebc11296ed531</password> <userlevel>1</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> </member> <member> <user id="14"> <personal> <name>Maryam Rose</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>98 Baptist Circle</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Newbury</city> <county>Berkshire</county> <postcode>RG14 8DF</postcode> <telephone>01691317999</telephone> <mobile>07212477154</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>SexTech</username> <password>f1c21f9f1e999da97d7dc460bb876fcf</password> <userlevel>3</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <festival id="3"> <event> <eventname>Birdsedge Village Festival</eventname> <url>http://www.birdsedge.co.uk/</url> <datefrom>2010-07-08</datefrom> <dateto>2010-07-09</dateto> <location>Birdsedge</location> <eventpostcode>HD8 8XT</eventpostcode> <additional></additional> <coords> <lat>53.565644</lat> <lng>-1.696196</lng> </coords> </event> <contact> <conname>Jacey Bedford</conname> <conaddress1>Penistone Road</conaddress1> <conaddress2>Birdsedge</conaddress2> <concity>Huddersfield</concity> <concounty>West Yorkshire</concounty> <conpostcode>HD8 8XT</conpostcode> <contelephone>01484 60623</contelephone> <conmobile></conmobile> <fax></fax> <conemail>[email protected]</conemail> </contact> </festival> </member> <member> <user id="15"> <personal> <name>Lexie Rogers</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>38 Bishop Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Matlock</city> <county>Derbyshire</county> <postcode>DE4 1BX</postcode> <telephone>01961168823</telephone> <mobile>07170855351</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>ShipBurglar</username> <password>cc190488a95667cb117e20bc6c7c330e</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="8"> <roles>Gas Fitter</roles> <region>Midlands</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="16"> <personal> <name>Noah Parker</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>112 Canty Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Keswick</city> <county>Cumberland</county> <postcode>CA12 4TR</postcode> <telephone>01931272522</telephone> <mobile>07610026576</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>AwsomeMoon</username> <password>50b770539bdf08543f15778fc7a6f188</password> <userlevel>2</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <volunteer id="9"> <roles>Van Driver</roles> <region>North West</region> </volunteer> </member> <member> <user id="17"> <personal> <name>Elliot Mitchell</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>102 Brown Loop</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Grimsby</city> <county>Lincolnshire</county> <postcode>OX16 4QP</postcode> <telephone>01212971319</telephone> <mobile>07544663654</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>msBasher</username> <password>c38fad85badcdff6e3559ef38656305d</password> <userlevel>1</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> </member> <member> <user id="18"> <personal> <name>Scarlett Rose</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>93 Cedar Lane</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Stourbridge</city> <county>Warminster</county> <postcode>DY8 4NX</postcode> <telephone>01537477435</telephone> <mobile>07353867291</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>MakeupWimp</username> <password>16a9b7910fc34304c1d1a6a1b0c31502</password> <userlevel>1</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> </member> <member> <user id="19"> <personal> <name>Katie Butler</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>44 Boulder Crest Road</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Bungay</city> <county>Suffolk</county> <postcode>NR35 1LT</postcode> <telephone>01419124094</telephone> <mobile>07314062451</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>TomatoCrunch</username> <password>d7eba53443ec4ddcee69ed71b2023fc0</password> <userlevel>1</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> </member> <member> <user id="20"> <personal> <name>Jayden Richards</name> <sex>Male</sex> <address1>56 Corson Trail</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Sandy</city> <county>Bedfordshire</county> <postcode>SG19 6DF</postcode> <telephone>01882134438</telephone> <mobile>07540218868</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>nightmareTwig</username> <password>8a9c08c7b6473493e8a5da15dd541025</password> <userlevel>3</userlevel> <signupdate>2010-03-26T09:23:50</signupdate> </account> </user> <festival id="4"> <event> <eventname>East Barnet Festival</eventname> <url>http://www.eastbarnetfestival.org.uk</url> <datefrom>2010-07-01</datefrom> <dateto>2010-07-03</dateto> <location>East Barnet</location> <eventpostcode>EN4 8TB</eventpostcode> <additional></additional> <coords> <lat>51.641556</lat> <lng>-0.163018</lng> </coords> </event> <contact> <conname>East Barnet Festival Commitee</conname> <conaddress1>Oak Hill Park</conaddress1> <conaddress2>Church Hill Road</conaddress2> <concity>East Barnet</concity> <concounty>Hertfordshire</concounty> <conpostcode>EN4 8TB</conpostcode> <contelephone>07071781745</contelephone> <conmobile>07071781745</conmobile> <fax></fax> <conemail>[email protected]</conemail> </contact> </festival> </member> <member> <user id="21"> <personal> <name>Abbie Jackson</name> <sex>Female</sex> <address1>98 Briarwood Lane</address1> <address2></address2> <city>Weymouth</city> <county>Dorset</county> <postcode>DT3 6TS</postcode> <telephone>01575629969</telephone> <mobile>07212477154</mobile> <email>[email protected]</email> </personal> <account> <username>CrazyBlockhead</username> <password>4ce56fb13d043be605037ace4fbd9fa5</password> <userlevel>2</u

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  • An easy way to create Side by Side registrationless COM Manifests with Visual Studio

    - by Rick Strahl
    Here's something I didn't find out until today: You can use Visual Studio to easily create registrationless COM manifest files for you with just a couple of small steps. Registrationless COM lets you use COM component without them being registered in the registry. This means it's possible to deploy COM components along with another application using plain xcopy semantics. To be sure it's rarely quite that easy - you need to watch out for dependencies - but if you know you have COM components that are light weight and have no or known dependencies it's easy to get everything into a single folder and off you go. Registrationless COM works via manifest files which carry the same name as the executable plus a .manifest extension (ie. yourapp.exe.manifest) I'm going to use a Visual FoxPro COM object as an example and create a simple Windows Forms app that calls the component - without that component being registered. Let's take a walk down memory lane… Create a COM Component I start by creating a FoxPro COM component because that's what I know and am working with here in my legacy environment. You can use VB classic or C++ ATL object if that's more to your liking. Here's a real simple Fox one: DEFINE CLASS SimpleServer as Session OLEPUBLIC FUNCTION HelloWorld(lcName) RETURN "Hello " + lcName ENDDEFINE Compile it into a DLL COM component with: BUILD MTDLL simpleserver FROM simpleserver RECOMPILE And to make sure it works test it quickly from Visual FoxPro: server = CREATEOBJECT("simpleServer.simpleserver") MESSAGEBOX( server.HelloWorld("Rick") ) Using Visual Studio to create a Manifest File for a COM Component Next open Visual Studio and create a new executable project - a Console App or WinForms or WPF application will all do. Go to the References Node Select Add Reference Use the Browse tab and find your compiled DLL to import  Next you'll see your assembly in the project. Right click on the reference and select Properties Click on the Isolated DropDown and select True Compile and that's all there's to it. Visual Studio will create a App.exe.manifest file right alongside your application's EXE. The manifest file created looks like this: xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? assembly xsi:schemaLocation="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1 assembly.adaptive.xsd" manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:co.v1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:clickonce.v1" xmlns:co.v2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:clickonce.v2" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" asmv2:size="27293" hash xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" dsig:Transforms dsig:Transform Algorithm="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:HashTransforms.Identity" / dsig:Transforms dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1" / dsig:DigestValuepuq+ua20bbidGOWhPOxfquztBCU=dsig:DigestValue hash typelib tlbid="{f10346e2-c9d9-47f7-81d1-74059cc15c3c}" version="1.0" helpdir="" resourceid="0" flags="HASDISKIMAGE" / comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" tlbid="{f10346e2-c9d9-47f7-81d1-74059cc15c3c}" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file assembly Now let's finish our super complex console app to test with: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static voidMain(string[] args)         { Type type = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("simpleserver.simpleserver",true); dynamic server = Activator.CreateInstance(type); Console.WriteLine(server.HelloWorld("rick")); Console.ReadLine(); } } } Now run the Console Application… As expected that should work. And why not? The COM component is still registered, right? :-) Nothing tricky about that. Let's unregister the COM component and then re-run and see what happens. Go to the Command Prompt Change to the folder where the DLL is installed Unregister with: RegSvr32 -u simpleserver.dll      To be sure that the COM component no longer works, check it out with the same test you used earlier (ie. o = CREATEOBJECT("SimpleServer.SimpleServer") in your development environment or VBScript etc.). Make sure you run the EXE and you don't re-compile the application or else Visual Studio will complain that it can't find the COM component in the registry while compiling. In fact now that we have our .manifest file you can remove the COM object from the project. When you run run the EXE from Windows Explorer or a command prompt to avoid the recompile. Watch out for embedded Manifest Files Now recompile your .NET project and run it… and it will most likely fail! The problem is that .NET applications by default embeds a manifest file into the compiled EXE application which results in the externally created manifest file being completely ignored. Only one manifest can be applied at a time and the compiled manifest takes precedency. Uh, thanks Visual Studio - not very helpful… Note that if you use another development tool like Visual FoxPro to create your EXE this won't be an issue as long as the tool doesn't automatically add a manifest file. Creating a Visual FoxPro EXE for example will work immediately with the generated manifest file as is. If you are using .NET and Visual Studio you have a couple of options of getting around this: Remove the embedded manifest file Copy the contents of the generated manifest file into a project manifest file and compile that in To remove an embedded manifest in a Visual Studio project: Open the Project Properties (Alt-Enter on project node) Go down to Resources | Manifest and select | Create Application without a Manifest   You can now add use the external manifest file and it will actually be respected when the app runs. The other option is to let Visual Studio create the manifest file on disk and then explicitly add the manifest file into the project. Notice on the dialog above I did this for app.exe.manifest and the manifest actually shows up in the list. If I select this file it will be compiled into the EXE and be used in lieu of any external files and that works as well. Remove the simpleserver.dll reference so you can compile your code and run the application. Now it should work without COM registration of the component. Personally I prefer external manifests because they can be modified after the fact - compiled manifests are evil in my mind because they are immutable - once they are there they can't be overriden or changed. So I prefer an external manifest. However, if you are absolutely sure nothing needs to change and you don't want anybody messing with your manifest, you can also embed it. The option to either is there. Watch for Manifest Caching While working trying to get this to work I ran into some problems at first. Specifically when it wasn't working at first (due to the embedded schema) I played with various different manifest layouts in different files etc.. There are a number of different ways to actually represent manifest files including offloading to separate folder (more on that later). A few times I made deliberate errors in the schema file and I found that regardless of what I did once the app failed or worked no amount of changing of the manifest file would make it behave differently. It appears that Windows is caching the manifest data for a given EXE or DLL. It takes a restart or a recompile of either the EXE or the DLL to clear the caching. Recompile your servers in order to see manifest changes unless there's an outright failure of an invalid manifest file. If the app starts the manifest is being read and caches immediately. This can be very confusing especially if you don't know that it's happening. I found myself always recompiling the exe after each run and before making any changes to the manifest file. Don't forget about Runtimes of COM Objects In the example I used above I used a Visual FoxPro COM component. Visual FoxPro is a runtime based environment so if I'm going to distribute an application that uses a FoxPro COM object the runtimes need to be distributed as well. The same is true of classic Visual Basic applications. Assuming that you don't know whether the runtimes are installed on the target machines make sure to install all the additional files in the EXE's directory alongside the COM DLL. In the case of Visual FoxPro the target folder should contain: The EXE  App.exe The Manifest file (unless it's compiled in) App.exe.manifest The COM object DLL (simpleserver.dll) Visual FoxPro Runtimes: VFP9t.dll (or VFP9r.dll for non-multithreaded dlls), vfp9rENU.dll, msvcr71.dll All these files should be in the same folder. Debugging Manifest load Errors If you for some reason get your manifest loading wrong there are a couple of useful tools available - SxSTrace and SxSParse. These two tools can be a huge help in debugging manifest loading errors. Put the following into a batch file (SxS_Trace.bat for example): sxstrace Trace -logfile:sxs.bin sxstrace Parse -logfile:sxs.bin -outfile:sxs.txt Then start the batch file before running your EXE. Make sure there's no caching happening as described in the previous section. For example, if I go into the manifest file and explicitly break the CLSID and/or ProgID I get a detailed report on where the EXE is looking for the manifest and what it's reading. Eventually the trace gives me an error like this: INFO: Parsing Manifest File C:\wwapps\Conf\SideBySide\Code\app.EXE.     INFO: Manifest Definition Identity is App.exe,processorArchitecture="x86",type="win32",version="1.0.0.0".     ERROR: Line 13: The value {AAaf2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff} of attribute clsid in element comClass is invalid. ERROR: Activation Context generation failed. End Activation Context Generation. pinpointing nicely where the error lies. Pay special attention to the various attributes - they have to match exactly in the different sections of the manifest file(s). Multiple COM Objects The manifest file that Visual Studio creates is actually quite more complex than is required for basic registrationless COM object invokation. The manifest file can be simplified a lot actually by stripping off various namespaces and removing the type library references altogether. Here's an example of a simplified manifest file that actually includes references to 2 COM servers: xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file file name = "sidebysidedeploy.dll" comClass clsid="{EF82B819-7963-4C36-9443-3978CD94F57C}" progid="sidebysidedeploy.SidebysidedeployServer" description="SidebySideDeploy Server" threadingModel="apartment" / file assembly Simple enough right? Routing to separate Manifest Files and Folders In the examples above all files ended up in the application's root folder - all the DLLs, support files and runtimes. Sometimes that's not so desirable and you can actually create separate manifest files. The easiest way to do this is to create a manifest file that 'routes' to another manifest file in a separate folder. Basically you create a new 'assembly identity' via a named id. You can then create a folder and another manifest with the id plus .manifest that points at the actual file. In this example I create: App.exe.manifest A folder called App.deploy A manifest file in App.deploy All DLLs and runtimes in App.deploy Let's start with that master manifest file. This file only holds a reference to another manifest file: App.exe.manifest xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.exe" version="1.0.0.0" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32" / dependency dependentAssembly assemblyIdentity name="App.deploy" version="1.0.0.0" type="win32" / dependentAssembly dependency assembly   Note this file only contains a dependency to App.deploy which is another manifest id. I can then create App.deploy.manifest in the current folder or in an App.deploy folder. In this case I'll create App.deploy and in it copy the DLLs and support runtimes. I then create App.deploy.manifest. App.deploy.manifest xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"? assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0" assemblyIdentity name="App.deploy" type="win32" version="1.0.0.0" / file name="simpleserver.DLL" comClass clsid="{af2c2811-0657-4264-a1f5-06d033a969ff}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="simpleserver.SimpleServer" description="simpleserver.SimpleServer" / file file name="sidebysidedeploy.dll" comClass clsid="{EF82B819-7963-4C36-9443-3978CD94F57C}" threadingModel="Apartment" progid="sidebysidedeploy.SidebysidedeployServer" description="SidebySideDeploy Server" / file assembly   In this manifest file I then host my COM DLLs and any support runtimes. This is quite useful if you have lots of DLLs you are referencing or if you need to have separate configuration and application files that are associated with the COM object. This way the operation of your main application and the COM objects it interacts with is somewhat separated. You can see the two folders here:   Routing Manifests to different Folders In theory registrationless COM should be pretty easy in painless - you've seen the configuration manifest files and it certainly doesn't look very complicated, right? But the devil's in the details. The ActivationContext API (SxS - side by side activation) is very intolerant of small errors in the XML or formatting of the keys, so be really careful when setting up components, especially if you are manually editing these files. If you do run into trouble SxsTrace/SxsParse are a huge help to track down the problems. And remember that if you do have problems that you'll need to recompile your EXEs or DLLs for the SxS APIs to refresh themselves properly. All of this gets even more fun if you want to do registrationless COM inside of IIS :-) But I'll leave that for another blog post…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in COM  .NET  FoxPro   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • VS 2012 Code Review &ndash; Before Check In OR After Check In?

    - by Tarun Arora
    “Is Code Review Important and Effective?” There is a consensus across the industry that code review is an effective and practical way to collar code inconsistency and possible defects early in the software development life cycle. Among others some of the advantages of code reviews are, Bugs are found faster Forces developers to write readable code (code that can be read without explanation or introduction!) Optimization methods/tricks/productive programs spread faster Programmers as specialists "evolve" faster It's fun “Code review is systematic examination (often known as peer review) of computer source code. It is intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both the overall quality of software and the developers' skills. Reviews are done in various forms such as pair programming, informal walkthroughs, and formal inspections.” Wikipedia No where does the definition mention whether its better to review code before the code has been committed to version control or after the commit has been performed. No matter which side you favour, Visual Studio 2012 allows you to request for a code review both before check in and also request for a review after check in. Let’s weigh the pros and cons of the approaches independently. Code Review Before Check In or Code Review After Check In? Approach 1 – Code Review before Check in Developer completes the code and feels the code quality is appropriate for check in to TFS. The developer raises a code review request to have a second pair of eyes validate if the code abides to the recommended best practices, will not result in any defects due to common coding mistakes and whether any optimizations can be made to improve the code quality.                                             Image 1 – code review before check in Pros Everything that gets committed to source control is reviewed. Minimizes the chances of smelly code making its way into the code base. Decreases the cost of fixing bugs, remember, the earlier you find them, the lesser the pain in fixing them. Cons Development Code Freeze – Since the changes aren’t in the source control yet. Further development can only be done off-line. The changes have not been through a CI build, hard to say whether the code abides to all build quality standards. Inconsistent! Cumbersome to track the actual code review process.  Not every change to the code base is worth reviewing, a lot of effort is invested for very little gain. Approach 2 – Code Review after Check in Developer checks in, random code reviews are performed on the checked in code.                                                      Image 2 – Code review after check in Pros The code has already passed the CI build and run through any code analysis plug ins you may have running on the build server. Instruct the developer to ensure ZERO fx cop, style cop and static code analysis before check in. Code is cleaner and smell free even before the code review. No Offline development, developers can continue to develop against the source control. Cons Bad code can easily make its way into the code base. Since the review take place much later in the cycle, the cost of fixing issues can prove to be much higher. Approach 3 – Hybrid Approach The community advocates a more hybrid approach, a blend of tooling and human accountability quotient.                                                               Image 3 – Hybrid Approach 1. Code review high impact check ins. It is not possible to review everything, by setting up code review check in policies you can end up slowing your team. More over, the code that you are reviewing before check in hasn't even been through a green CI build either. 2. Tooling. Let the tooling work for you. By running static analysis, fx cop, style cop and other plug ins on the build agent, you can identify the real issues that in my opinion can't possibly be identified using human reviews. Configure the tooling to report back top 10 issues every day. Mandate the manual code review of individuals who keep making it to this list of shame more often. 3. During Merge. I would prefer eliminating some of the other code issues during merge from Main branch to the release branch. In a scrum project this is still easier because cheery picking the merges is a possibility and the size of code being reviewed is still limited. Let the tooling work for you, if some one breaks the CI build often, put them on a gated check in build course until you see improvement. If some one appears on the top 10 list of shame generated via the build then ensure that all their code is reviewed till you see improvement. At the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that the code being delivered is top quality. By enforcing a code review before any check in, you force the developer to work offline or stay put till the review is complete. What do the experts say? So I asked a few expects what they thought of “Code Review quality gate before Checking in code?" Terje Sandstrom | Microsoft ALM MVP You mean a review quality gate BEFORE checking in code????? That would mean a lot of code staying either local or in shelvesets, and not even been through a CI build, and a green CI build being the main criteria for going further, f.e. to the review state. I would not like code laying around with no checkin’s. Having a requirement that code is checked in small pieces, 4-8 hours work max, and AT LEAST daily checkins, a manual code review comes second down the lane. I would expect review quality gates to happen before merging back to main, or before merging to release.  But that would all be on checked-in code.  Branching is absolutely one way to ease the pain.   Another way we are using is automatic quality builds, running metrics, coverage, static code analysis.  Unfortunately it takes some time, would be great to be on CI’s – but…., so it’s done scheduled every night. Based on this we get, among other stuff,  top 10 lists of suspicious code, which is then subjected to reviews.  If a person seems to be very popular on these top 10 lists, we subject every check in from that person to a review for a period. That normally helps.   None of the clients I have can afford to have every checkin reviewed, so we need to find ways around it. I don’t disagree with the nicety of having all the code reviewed, but I find it hard to find those resources in today’s enterprises. David V. Corbin | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I tend to agree with both sides. I hate having code that is not checked in, but at the same time hate having “bad” code in the repository. I have found that branching is one approach to solving this dilemma. Code is checked into the private/feature branch before the review, but is not merged over to the “official” branch until after the review. I advocate both, depending on circumstance (especially team dynamics)   - The “pre-checkin” is usually for elements that may impact the project as a whole. Think of it as another “gate” along with passing unit tests. - The “post-checkin” may very well not be at the changeset level, but correlates to a review at the “user story” level.   Again, this depends on team dynamics in play…. Robert MacLean | Microsoft ALM MVP I do not think there is no right answer for the industry as a whole. In short the question is why do you do reviews? Your question implies risk mitigation, so in low risk areas you can get away with it after check in while in high risk you need to do it before check in. An example is those new to a team or juniors need it much earlier (maybe that is before checkin, maybe that is soon after) than seniors who have shipped twenty sprints on the team. Abhimanyu Singhal | Visual Studio ALM Ranger Depends on per scenario basis. We recommend post check-in reviews when: 1. We don't want to block other checks and processes on manual code reviews. Manual reviews take time, and some pieces may not require manual reviews at all. 2. We need to trace all changes and track history. 3. We have a code promotion strategy/process in place. For risk mitigation, post checkin code can be promoted to Accepted branches. Or can be rejected. Pre Checkin Reviews are used when 1. There is a high risk factor associated 2. Reviewers are generally (most of times) have immediate availability. 3. Team does not have strict tracking needs. Simply speaking, no single process fits all scenarios. You need to select what works best for your team/project. Thomas Schissler | Visual Studio ALM Ranger This is an interesting discussion, I’m right now discussing details about executing code reviews with my teams. I see and understand the aspects you brought in, but there is another side as well, I’d like to point out. 1.) If you do reviews per check in this is not very practical as a hard rule because this will disturb the flow of the team very often or it will lead to reduce the checkin frequency of the devs which I would not accept. 2.) If you do later reviews, for example if you review PBIs, it is not easy to find out which code you should review. Either you review all changesets associate with the PBI, but then you might review code which has been changed with a later checkin and the dev maybe has already fixed the issue. Or you review the diff of the latest changeset of the PBI with the first but then you might also review changes of other PBIs. Jakob Leander | Sr. Director, Avanade In my experience, manual code review: 1. Does not get done and at the very least does not get redone after changes (regardless of intentions at start of project) 2. When a project actually do it, they often do not do it right away = errors pile up 3. Requires a lot of time discussing/defining the standard and for the team to learn it However code review is very important since e.g. even small memory leaks in a high volume web solution have big consequences In the last years I have advocated following approach for code review - Architects up front do “at least one best practice example” of each type of component and tell the team. Copy from this one. This should include error handling, logging, security etc. - Dev lead on project continuously browse code to validate that the best practices are used. Especially that patterns etc. are not broken. You can do this formally after each sprint/iteration if you want. Once this is validated it is unlikely to “go bad” even during later code changes Agree with customer to rely on static code analysis from Visual Studio as the one and only coding standard. This has HUUGE benefits - You can easily tweak to reach the level you desire together with customer - It is easy to measure for both developers/management - It is 100% consistent across code base - It gets validated all the time so you never end up getting hammered by a customer review in the end - It is easy to tell the developer that you do not want code back unless it has zero errors = minimize communication You need to track this at least during nightly builds and make sure team sees total # issues. Do not allow #issues it to grow uncontrolled. On the project I run I require code analysis to have run on code before checkin (checkin rule). This means -  You have to have clean compile (or CA wont run) so this is extra benefit = very few broken builds - You can change a few of the rules to compile as errors instead of warnings. I often do this for “missing dispose” issues which you REALLY do not want in your app Tip: Place your custom CA rules files as part of solution. That  way it works when you do branching etc. (path to CA file is relative in VS) Some may argue that CA is not as good as manual inspection. But since manual inspection in reality suffers from the 3 issues in start it is IMO a MUCH better (and much cheaper) approach from helicopter perspective Tirthankar Dutta | Director, Avanade I think code review should be run both before and after check ins. There are some code metrics that are meant to be run on the entire codebase … Also, especially on multi-site projects, one should strive to architect in a way that lets men manage the framework while boys write the repetitive code… scales very well with the need to review less by containment and imposing architectural restrictions to emphasise the design. Bruno Capuano | Microsoft ALM MVP For code reviews (means peer reviews) in distributed team I use http://www.vsanywhere.com/default.aspx  David Jobling | Global Sr. Director, Avanade Peer review is the only way to scale and its a great practice for all in the team to learn to perform and accept. In my experience you soon learn who's code to watch more than others and tune the attention. Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen | Manager, Avanade If you have several branches in your code base, you will need to merge often. This requires manual merging, when a file has been changed in both branches. It offers a good opportunity to actually review to changed code. So my advice is: Merging between branches should be done as often as possible, it should be done by a senior developer, and he/she should perform a full code review of the code being merged. As for detecting architectural smells and code smells creeping into the code base, one really good third party tools exist: Ndepend (http://www.ndepend.com/, for static code analysis of the current state of the code base). You could also consider adding StyleCop to the solution. Jesse Houwing | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I gave a presentation on this subject on the TechDays conference in NL last year. See my presentation and slides here (talk in Dutch, but English presentation): http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2012/03/did-you-miss-my-techdaysnl-talk-on-code.html  I’d like to add a few more points: - Before/After checking is mostly a trust issue. If you have a team that does diligent peer reviews and regularly talk/sit together or peer review, there’s no need to enforce a before-checkin policy. The peer peer-programming and regular feedback during development can take care of most of the review requirements as long as the team isn’t under stress. - Under stress, enforce pre-checkin reviews, it might sound strange, if you’re already under time or budgetary constraints, but it is under such conditions most real issues start to be created or pile up. - Use tools to catch most common errors, Code Analysis/FxCop was already mentioned. HP Fortify, Resharper, Coderush etc can help you there. There are also a lot of 3rd party rules you can add to Code Analysis. I’ve written a few myself (http://fccopcontrib.codeplex.com) and various teams from Microsoft have added their own rules (MSOCAF for SharePoint, WSSF for WCF). For common errors that keep cropping up, see if you can define a rule. It’s much easier. But more importantly make sure you have a good help page explaining *WHY* it's wrong. If you have small feature or developer branches/shelvesets, you might want to review pre-merge. It’s still better to do peer reviews and peer programming, but the most important thing is that bad quality code doesn’t make it into the important branch. So my philosophy: - Use tooling as much as possible. - Make sure the team understands the tooling and the importance of the things it flags. It’s too easy to just click suppress all to ignore the warnings. - Under stress, tighten process, it’s under stress that the problems of late reviews will really surface - Most importantly if you do reviews do them as early as possible, but never later than needed. In other words, pre-checkin/post checking doesn’t really matter, as long as the review is done before the code is released. It’ll just be much more expensive to fix any review outcomes the later you find them. --- I would love to hear what you think!

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  • Oracle Data Integrator 11.1.1.5 Complex Files as Sources and Targets

    - by Alex Kotopoulis
    Overview ODI 11.1.1.5 adds the new Complex File technology for use with file sources and targets. The goal is to read or write file structures that are too complex to be parsed using the existing ODI File technology. This includes: Different record types in one list that use different parsing rules Hierarchical lists, for example customers with nested orders Parsing instructions in the file data, such as delimiter types, field lengths, type identifiers Complex headers such as multiple header lines or parseable information in header Skipping of lines  Conditional or choice fields Similar to the ODI File and XML File technologies, the complex file parsing is done through a JDBC driver that exposes the flat file as relational table structures. Complex files are mapped to one or more table structures, as opposed to the (simple) file technology, which always has a one-to-one relationship between file and table. The resulting set of tables follows the same concept as the ODI XML driver, table rows have additional PK-FK relationships to express hierarchy as well as order values to maintain the file order in the resulting table.   The parsing instruction format used for complex files is the nXSD (native XSD) format that is already in use with Oracle BPEL. This format extends the XML Schema standard by adding additional parsing instructions to each element. Using nXSD parsing technology, the native file is converted into an internal XML format. It is important to understand that the XML is streamed to improve performance; there is no size limitation of the native file based on memory size, the XML data is never fully materialized.  The internal XML is then converted to relational schema using the same mapping rules as the ODI XML driver. How to Create an nXSD file Complex file models depend on the nXSD schema for the given file. This nXSD file has to be created using a text editor or the Native Format Builder Wizard that is part of Oracle BPEL. BPEL is included in the ODI Suite, but not in standalone ODI Enterprise Edition. The nXSD format extends the standard XSD format through nxsd attributes. NXSD is a valid XML Schema, since the XSD standard allows extra attributes with their own namespaces. The following is a sample NXSD schema: <?xml version="1.0"?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:nxsd="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/nxsd" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns:tns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/demoSchema/csv" targetNamespace="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/demoSchema/csv" attributeFormDefault="unqualified" nxsd:encoding="US-ASCII" nxsd:stream="chars" nxsd:version="NXSD"> <xsd:element name="Root">         <xsd:complexType><xsd:sequence>       <xsd:element name="Header">                 <xsd:complexType><xsd:sequence>                         <xsd:element name="Branch" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy=","/>                         <xsd:element name="ListDate" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy="${eol}"/>                         </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType>                         </xsd:element>                 </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType>         <xsd:element name="Customer" maxOccurs="unbounded">                 <xsd:complexType><xsd:sequence>                 <xsd:element name="Name" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy=","/>                         <xsd:element name="Street" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy="," />                         <xsd:element name="City" type="xsd:string" nxsd:style="terminated" nxsd:terminatedBy="${eol}" />                         </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType>                         </xsd:element>                 </xsd:sequence></xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The nXSD schema annotates elements to describe their position and delimiters within the flat text file. The schema above uses almost exclusively the nxsd:terminatedBy instruction to look for the next terminator chars. There are various constructs in nXSD to parse fixed length fields, look ahead in the document for string occurences, perform conditional logic, use variables to remember state, and many more. nXSD files can either be written manually using an XML Schema Editor or created using the Native Format Builder Wizard. Both Native Format Builder Wizard as well as the nXSD language are described in the Application Server Adapter Users Guide. The way to start the Native Format Builder in BPEL is to create a new File Adapter; in step 8 of the Adapter Configuration Wizard a new Schema for Native Format can be created:   The Native Format Builder guides through a number of steps to generate the nXSD based on a sample native file. If the format is complex, it is often a good idea to “approximate” it with a similar simple format and then add the complex components manually.  The resulting *.xsd file can be copied and used as the format for ODI, other BPEL constructs such as the file adapter definition are not relevant for ODI. Using this technique it is also possible to parse the same file format in SOA Suite and ODI, for example using SOA for small real-time messages, and ODI for large batches. This nXSD schema in this example describes a file with a header row containing data and 3 string fields per row delimited by commas, for example: Redwood City Downtown Branch, 06/01/2011 Ebeneezer Scrooge, Sandy Lane, Atherton Tiny Tim, Winton Terrace, Menlo Park The ODI Complex File JDBC driver exposes the file structure through a set of relational tables with PK-FK relationships. The tables for this example are: Table ROOT (1 row): ROOTPK Primary Key for root element SNPSFILENAME Name of the file SNPSFILEPATH Path of the file SNPSLOADDATE Date of load Table HEADER (1 row): ROOTFK Foreign Key to ROOT record ROWORDER Order of row in native document BRANCH Data BRANCHORDER Order of Branch within row LISTDATE Data LISTDATEORDER Order of ListDate within row Table ADDRESS (2 rows): ROOTFK Foreign Key to ROOT record ROWORDER Order of row in native document NAME Data NAMEORDER Oder of Name within row STREET Data STREETORDER Order of Street within row CITY Data CITYORDER Order of City within row Every table has PK and/or FK fields to reflect the document hierarchy through relationships. In this example this is trivial since the HEADER and all CUSTOMER records point back to the PK of ROOT. Deeper nested documents require this to identify parent elements. All tables also have a ROWORDER field to define the order of rows, as well as order fields for each column, in case the order of columns varies in the original document and needs to be maintained. If order is not relevant, these fields can be ignored. How to Create an Complex File Data Server in ODI After creating the nXSD file and a test data file, and storing it on the local file system accessible to ODI, you can go to the ODI Topology Navigator to create a Data Server and Physical Schema under the Complex File technology. This technology follows the conventions of other ODI technologies and is very similar to the XML technology. The parsing settings such as the source native file, the nXSD schema file, the root element, as well as the external database can be set in the JDBC URL: The use of an external database defined by dbprops is optional, but is strongly recommended for production use. Ideally, the staging database should be used for this. Also, when using a complex file exclusively for read purposes, it is recommended to use the ro=true property to ensure the file is not unnecessarily synchronized back from the database when the connection is closed. A data file is always required to be present  at the filename path during design-time. Without this file, operations like testing the connection, reading the model data, or reverse engineering the model will fail.  All properties of the Complex File JDBC Driver are documented in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Connectivity and Knowledge Modules Guide for Oracle Data Integrator in Appendix C: Oracle Data Integrator Driver for Complex Files Reference. David Allan has created a great viewlet Complex File Processing - 0 to 60 which shows the creation of a Complex File data server as well as a model based on this server. How to Create Models based on an Complex File Schema Once physical schema and logical schema have been created, the Complex File can be used to create a Model as if it were based on a database. When reverse-engineering the Model, data stores(tables) for each XSD element of complex type will be created. Use of complex files as sources is straightforward; when using them as targets it has to be made sure that all dependent tables have matching PK-FK pairs; the same applies to the XML driver as well. Debugging and Error Handling There are different ways to test an nXSD file. The Native Format Builder Wizard can be used even if the nXSD wasn’t created in it; it will show issues related to the schema and/or test data. In ODI, the nXSD  will be parsed and run against the existing test XML file when testing a connection in the Dataserver. If either the nXSD has an error or the data is non-compliant to the schema, an error will be displayed. Sample error message: Error while reading native data. [Line=1, Col=5] Not enough data available in the input, when trying to read data of length "19" for "element with name D1" from the specified position, using "style" as "fixedLength" and "length" as "". Ensure that there is enough data from the specified position in the input. Complex File FAQ Is the size of the native file limited by available memory? No, since the native data is streamed through the driver, only the available space in the staging database limits the size of the data. There are limits on individual field sizes, though; a single large object field needs to fit in memory. Should I always use the complex file driver instead of the file driver in ODI now? No, use the file technology for all simple file parsing tasks, for example any fixed-length or delimited files that just have one row format and can be mapped into a simple table. Because of its narrow assumptions the ODI file driver is easy to configure within ODI and can stream file data without writing it into a database. The complex file driver should be used whenever the use case cannot be handled through the file driver. Are we generating XML out of flat files before we write it into a database? We don’t materialize any XML as part of parsing a flat file, either in memory or on disk. The data produced by the XML parser is streamed in Java objects that just use XSD-derived nXSD schema as its type system. We use the nXSD schema because is the standard for describing complex flat file metadata in Oracle Fusion Middleware, and enables users to share schemas across products. Is the nXSD file interchangeable with SOA Suite? Yes, ODI can use the same nXSD files as SOA Suite, allowing mixed use cases with the same data format. Can I start the Native Format Builder from the ODI Studio? No, the Native Format Builder has to be started from a JDeveloper with BPEL instance. You can get BPEL as part of the SOA Suite bundle. Users without SOA Suite can manually develop nXSD files using XSD editors. When is the database data written back to the native file? Data is synchronized using the SYNCHRONIZE and CREATE FILE commands, and when the JDBC connection is closed. It is recommended to set the ro or read_only property to true when a file is exclusively used for reading so that no unnecessary write-backs occur. Is the nXSD metadata part of the ODI Master or Work Repository? No, the data server definition in the master repository only contains the JDBC URL with file paths; the nXSD files have to be accessible on the file systems where the JDBC driver is executed during production, either by copying or by using a network file system. Where can I find sample nXSD files? The Application Server Adapter Users Guide contains nXSD samples for various different use cases.

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  • Creating a dynamic, extensible C# Expando Object

    - by Rick Strahl
    I love dynamic functionality in a strongly typed language because it offers us the best of both worlds. In C# (or any of the main .NET languages) we now have the dynamic type that provides a host of dynamic features for the static C# language. One place where I've found dynamic to be incredibly useful is in building extensible types or types that expose traditionally non-object data (like dictionaries) in easier to use and more readable syntax. I wrote about a couple of these for accessing old school ADO.NET DataRows and DataReaders more easily for example. These classes are dynamic wrappers that provide easier syntax and auto-type conversions which greatly simplifies code clutter and increases clarity in existing code. ExpandoObject in .NET 4.0 Another great use case for dynamic objects is the ability to create extensible objects - objects that start out with a set of static members and then can add additional properties and even methods dynamically. The .NET 4.0 framework actually includes an ExpandoObject class which provides a very dynamic object that allows you to add properties and methods on the fly and then access them again. For example with ExpandoObject you can do stuff like this:dynamic expand = new ExpandoObject(); expand.Name = "Rick"; expand.HelloWorld = (Func<string, string>) ((string name) => { return "Hello " + name; }); Console.WriteLine(expand.Name); Console.WriteLine(expand.HelloWorld("Dufus")); Internally ExpandoObject uses a Dictionary like structure and interface to store properties and methods and then allows you to add and access properties and methods easily. As cool as ExpandoObject is it has a few shortcomings too: It's a sealed type so you can't use it as a base class It only works off 'properties' in the internal Dictionary - you can't expose existing type data It doesn't serialize to XML or with DataContractSerializer/DataContractJsonSerializer Expando - A truly extensible Object ExpandoObject is nice if you just need a dynamic container for a dictionary like structure. However, if you want to build an extensible object that starts out with a set of strongly typed properties and then allows you to extend it, ExpandoObject does not work because it's a sealed class that can't be inherited. I started thinking about this very scenario for one of my applications I'm building for a customer. In this system we are connecting to various different user stores. Each user store has the same basic requirements for username, password, name etc. But then each store also has a number of extended properties that is available to each application. In the real world scenario the data is loaded from the database in a data reader and the known properties are assigned from the known fields in the database. All unknown fields are then 'added' to the expando object dynamically. In the past I've done this very thing with a separate property - Properties - just like I do for this class. But the property and dictionary syntax is not ideal and tedious to work with. I started thinking about how to represent these extra property structures. One way certainly would be to add a Dictionary, or an ExpandoObject to hold all those extra properties. But wouldn't it be nice if the application could actually extend an existing object that looks something like this as you can with the Expando object:public class User : Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic.Expando { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public bool Active { get; set; } public DateTime? ExpiresOn { get; set; } } and then simply start extending the properties of this object dynamically? Using the Expando object I describe later you can now do the following:[TestMethod] public void UserExampleTest() { var user = new User(); // Set strongly typed properties user.Email = "[email protected]"; user.Password = "nonya123"; user.Name = "Rickochet"; user.Active = true; // Now add dynamic properties dynamic duser = user; duser.Entered = DateTime.Now; duser.Accesses = 1; // you can also add dynamic props via indexer user["NickName"] = "AntiSocialX"; duser["WebSite"] = "http://www.west-wind.com/weblog"; // Access strong type through dynamic ref Assert.AreEqual(user.Name,duser.Name); // Access strong type through indexer Assert.AreEqual(user.Password,user["Password"]); // access dyanmically added value through indexer Assert.AreEqual(duser.Entered,user["Entered"]); // access index added value through dynamic Assert.AreEqual(user["NickName"],duser.NickName); // loop through all properties dynamic AND strong type properties (true) foreach (var prop in user.GetProperties(true)) { object val = prop.Value; if (val == null) val = "null"; Console.WriteLine(prop.Key + ": " + val.ToString()); } } As you can see this code somewhat blurs the line between a static and dynamic type. You start with a strongly typed object that has a fixed set of properties. You can then cast the object to dynamic (as I discussed in my last post) and add additional properties to the object. You can also use an indexer to add dynamic properties to the object. To access the strongly typed properties you can use either the strongly typed instance, the indexer or the dynamic cast of the object. Personally I think it's kinda cool to have an easy way to access strongly typed properties by string which can make some data scenarios much easier. To access the 'dynamically added' properties you can use either the indexer on the strongly typed object, or property syntax on the dynamic cast. Using the dynamic type allows all three modes to work on both strongly typed and dynamic properties. Finally you can iterate over all properties, both dynamic and strongly typed if you chose. Lots of flexibility. Note also that by default the Expando object works against the (this) instance meaning it extends the current object. You can also pass in a separate instance to the constructor in which case that object will be used to iterate over to find properties rather than this. Using this approach provides some really interesting functionality when use the dynamic type. To use this we have to add an explicit constructor to the Expando subclass:public class User : Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic.Expando { public string Email { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public bool Active { get; set; } public DateTime? ExpiresOn { get; set; } public User() : base() { } // only required if you want to mix in seperate instance public User(object instance) : base(instance) { } } to allow the instance to be passed. When you do you can now do:[TestMethod] public void ExpandoMixinTest() { // have Expando work on Addresses var user = new User( new Address() ); // cast to dynamicAccessToPropertyTest dynamic duser = user; // Set strongly typed properties duser.Email = "[email protected]"; user.Password = "nonya123"; // Set properties on address object duser.Address = "32 Kaiea"; //duser.Phone = "808-123-2131"; // set dynamic properties duser.NonExistantProperty = "This works too"; // shows default value Address.Phone value Console.WriteLine(duser.Phone); } Using the dynamic cast in this case allows you to access *three* different 'objects': The strong type properties, the dynamically added properties in the dictionary and the properties of the instance passed in! Effectively this gives you a way to simulate multiple inheritance (which is scary - so be very careful with this, but you can do it). How Expando works Behind the scenes Expando is a DynamicObject subclass as I discussed in my last post. By implementing a few of DynamicObject's methods you can basically create a type that can trap 'property missing' and 'method missing' operations. When you access a non-existant property a known method is fired that our code can intercept and provide a value for. Internally Expando uses a custom dictionary implementation to hold the dynamic properties you might add to your expandable object. Let's look at code first. The code for the Expando type is straight forward and given what it provides relatively short. Here it is.using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Dynamic; using System.Reflection; namespace Westwind.Utilities.Dynamic { /// <summary> /// Class that provides extensible properties and methods. This /// dynamic object stores 'extra' properties in a dictionary or /// checks the actual properties of the instance. /// /// This means you can subclass this expando and retrieve either /// native properties or properties from values in the dictionary. /// /// This type allows you three ways to access its properties: /// /// Directly: any explicitly declared properties are accessible /// Dynamic: dynamic cast allows access to dictionary and native properties/methods /// Dictionary: Any of the extended properties are accessible via IDictionary interface /// </summary> [Serializable] public class Expando : DynamicObject, IDynamicMetaObjectProvider { /// <summary> /// Instance of object passed in /// </summary> object Instance; /// <summary> /// Cached type of the instance /// </summary> Type InstanceType; PropertyInfo[] InstancePropertyInfo { get { if (_InstancePropertyInfo == null && Instance != null) _InstancePropertyInfo = Instance.GetType().GetProperties(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.DeclaredOnly); return _InstancePropertyInfo; } } PropertyInfo[] _InstancePropertyInfo; /// <summary> /// String Dictionary that contains the extra dynamic values /// stored on this object/instance /// </summary> /// <remarks>Using PropertyBag to support XML Serialization of the dictionary</remarks> public PropertyBag Properties = new PropertyBag(); //public Dictionary<string,object> Properties = new Dictionary<string, object>(); /// <summary> /// This constructor just works off the internal dictionary and any /// public properties of this object. /// /// Note you can subclass Expando. /// </summary> public Expando() { Initialize(this); } /// <summary> /// Allows passing in an existing instance variable to 'extend'. /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// You can pass in null here if you don't want to /// check native properties and only check the Dictionary! /// </remarks> /// <param name="instance"></param> public Expando(object instance) { Initialize(instance); } protected virtual void Initialize(object instance) { Instance = instance; if (instance != null) InstanceType = instance.GetType(); } /// <summary> /// Try to retrieve a member by name first from instance properties /// followed by the collection entries. /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result) { result = null; // first check the Properties collection for member if (Properties.Keys.Contains(binder.Name)) { result = Properties[binder.Name]; return true; } // Next check for Public properties via Reflection if (Instance != null) { try { return GetProperty(Instance, binder.Name, out result); } catch { } } // failed to retrieve a property result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Property setter implementation tries to retrieve value from instance /// first then into this object /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value) { // first check to see if there's a native property to set if (Instance != null) { try { bool result = SetProperty(Instance, binder.Name, value); if (result) return true; } catch { } } // no match - set or add to dictionary Properties[binder.Name] = value; return true; } /// <summary> /// Dynamic invocation method. Currently allows only for Reflection based /// operation (no ability to add methods dynamically). /// </summary> /// <param name="binder"></param> /// <param name="args"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> public override bool TryInvokeMember(InvokeMemberBinder binder, object[] args, out object result) { if (Instance != null) { try { // check instance passed in for methods to invoke if (InvokeMethod(Instance, binder.Name, args, out result)) return true; } catch { } } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection Helper method to retrieve a property /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool GetProperty(object instance, string name, out object result) { if (instance == null) instance = this; var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetProperty | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0]; if (mi.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property) { result = ((PropertyInfo)mi).GetValue(instance,null); return true; } } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection helper method to set a property value /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="value"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool SetProperty(object instance, string name, object value) { if (instance == null) instance = this; var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.SetProperty | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0]; if (mi.MemberType == MemberTypes.Property) { ((PropertyInfo)mi).SetValue(Instance, value, null); return true; } } return false; } /// <summary> /// Reflection helper method to invoke a method /// </summary> /// <param name="instance"></param> /// <param name="name"></param> /// <param name="args"></param> /// <param name="result"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected bool InvokeMethod(object instance, string name, object[] args, out object result) { if (instance == null) instance = this; // Look at the instanceType var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(name, BindingFlags.InvokeMethod | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) { var mi = miArray[0] as MethodInfo; result = mi.Invoke(Instance, args); return true; } result = null; return false; } /// <summary> /// Convenience method that provides a string Indexer /// to the Properties collection AND the strongly typed /// properties of the object by name. /// /// // dynamic /// exp["Address"] = "112 nowhere lane"; /// // strong /// var name = exp["StronglyTypedProperty"] as string; /// </summary> /// <remarks> /// The getter checks the Properties dictionary first /// then looks in PropertyInfo for properties. /// The setter checks the instance properties before /// checking the Properties dictionary. /// </remarks> /// <param name="key"></param> /// /// <returns></returns> public object this[string key] { get { try { // try to get from properties collection first return Properties[key]; } catch (KeyNotFoundException ex) { // try reflection on instanceType object result = null; if (GetProperty(Instance, key, out result)) return result; // nope doesn't exist throw; } } set { if (Properties.ContainsKey(key)) { Properties[key] = value; return; } // check instance for existance of type first var miArray = InstanceType.GetMember(key, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.GetProperty); if (miArray != null && miArray.Length > 0) SetProperty(Instance, key, value); else Properties[key] = value; } } /// <summary> /// Returns and the properties of /// </summary> /// <param name="includeProperties"></param> /// <returns></returns> public IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string,object>> GetProperties(bool includeInstanceProperties = false) { if (includeInstanceProperties && Instance != null) { foreach (var prop in this.InstancePropertyInfo) yield return new KeyValuePair<string, object>(prop.Name, prop.GetValue(Instance, null)); } foreach (var key in this.Properties.Keys) yield return new KeyValuePair<string, object>(key, this.Properties[key]); } /// <summary> /// Checks whether a property exists in the Property collection /// or as a property on the instance /// </summary> /// <param name="item"></param> /// <returns></returns> public bool Contains(KeyValuePair<string, object> item, bool includeInstanceProperties = false) { bool res = Properties.ContainsKey(item.Key); if (res) return true; if (includeInstanceProperties && Instance != null) { foreach (var prop in this.InstancePropertyInfo) { if (prop.Name == item.Key) return true; } } return false; } } } Although the Expando class supports an indexer, it doesn't actually implement IDictionary or even IEnumerable. It only provides the indexer and Contains() and GetProperties() methods, that work against the Properties dictionary AND the internal instance. The reason for not implementing IDictionary is that a) it doesn't add much value since you can access the Properties dictionary directly and that b) I wanted to keep the interface to class very lean so that it can serve as an entity type if desired. Implementing these IDictionary (or even IEnumerable) causes LINQ extension methods to pop up on the type which obscures the property interface and would only confuse the purpose of the type. IDictionary and IEnumerable are also problematic for XML and JSON Serialization - the XML Serializer doesn't serialize IDictionary<string,object>, nor does the DataContractSerializer. The JavaScriptSerializer does serialize, but it treats the entire object like a dictionary and doesn't serialize the strongly typed properties of the type, only the dictionary values which is also not desirable. Hence the decision to stick with only implementing the indexer to support the user["CustomProperty"] functionality and leaving iteration functions to the publicly exposed Properties dictionary. Note that the Dictionary used here is a custom PropertyBag class I created to allow for serialization to work. One important aspect for my apps is that whatever custom properties get added they have to be accessible to AJAX clients since the particular app I'm working on is a SIngle Page Web app where most of the Web access is through JSON AJAX calls. PropertyBag can serialize to XML and one way serialize to JSON using the JavaScript serializer (not the DCS serializers though). The key components that make Expando work in this code are the Properties Dictionary and the TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() methods. The Properties collection is public so if you choose you can explicitly access the collection to get better performance or to manipulate the members in internal code (like loading up dynamic values form a database). Notice that TryGetMember() and TrySetMember() both work against the dictionary AND the internal instance to retrieve and set properties. This means that user["Name"] works against native properties of the object as does user["Name"] = "RogaDugDog". What's your Use Case? This is still an early prototype but I've plugged it into one of my customer's applications and so far it's working very well. The key features for me were the ability to easily extend the type with values coming from a database and exposing those values in a nice and easy to use manner. I'm also finding that using this type of object for ViewModels works very well to add custom properties to view models. I suspect there will be lots of uses for this - I've been using the extra dictionary approach to extensibility for years - using a dynamic type to make the syntax cleaner is just a bonus here. What can you think of to use this for? Resources Source Code and Tests (GitHub) Also integrated in Westwind.Utilities of the West Wind Web Toolkit West Wind Utilities NuGet© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp  .NET  Dynamic Types   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Nested property binding

    - by EtherealMonkey
    Recently, I have been trying to wrap my mind around the BindingList<T> and INotifyPropertChanged. More specifically - How do I make a collection of objects (having objects as properties) which will allow me to subscribe to events throughout the tree? To that end, I have examined the code offered as examples by others. One such project that I downloaded was Nested Property Binding - CodeProject by "seesharper". Now, the article explains the implementation, but there was a question by "Someone@AnotherWorld" about "INotifyPropertyChanged in nested objects". His question was: Hi, nice stuff! But after a couple of time using your solution I realize the ObjectBindingSource ignores the PropertyChanged event of nested objects. E.g. I've got a class 'Foo' with two properties named 'Name' and 'Bar'. 'Name' is a string an 'Bar' reference an instance of class 'Bar', which has a 'Name' property of type string too and both classes implements INotifyPropertyChanged. With your binding source reading and writing with both properties ('Name' and 'Bar_Name') works fine but the PropertyChanged event works only for the 'Name' property, because the binding source listen only for events of 'Foo'. One workaround is to retrigger the PropertyChanged event in the appropriate class (here 'Foo'). What's very unclean! The other approach would be to extend ObjectBindingSource so that all owner of nested property which implements INotifyPropertyChanged get used for receive changes, but how? Thanks! I had asked about BindingList<T> yesterday and received a good answer from Aaronaught. In my question, I had a similar point as "Someone@AnotherWorld": if Keywords were to implement INotifyPropertyChanged, would changes be accessible to the BindingList through the ScannedImage object? To which Aaronaught's response was: No, they will not. BindingList only looks at the specific object in the list, it has no ability to scan all dependencies and monitor everything in the graph (nor would that always be a good idea, if it were possible). I understand Aaronaught's comment regarding this behavior not necessarily being a good idea. Additionally, his suggestion to have my bound object "relay" events on behalf of it's member objects works fine and is perfectly acceptable. For me, "re-triggering" the PropertyChanged event does not seem so unclean as "Someone@AnotherWorld" laments. I do understand why he protests - in the interest of loosely coupled objects. However, I believe that coupling between objects that are part of a composition is logical and not so undesirable as this may be in other scenarios. (I am a newb, so I could be waaayyy off base.) Anyway, in the interest of exploring an answer to the question by "Someone@AnotherWorld", I altered the MainForm.cs file of the example project from Nested Property Binding - CodeProject by "seesharper" to the following: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Core.ComponentModel; using System.Windows.Forms; namespace ObjectBindingSourceDemo { public partial class MainForm : Form { private readonly List<Customer> _customers = new List<Customer>(); private readonly List<Product> _products = new List<Product>(); private List<Order> orders; public MainForm() { InitializeComponent(); dataGridView1.AutoGenerateColumns = false; dataGridView2.AutoGenerateColumns = false; CreateData(); } private void CreateData() { _customers.Add( new Customer(1, "Jane Wilson", new Address("98104", "6657 Sand Pointe Lane", "Seattle", "USA"))); _customers.Add( new Customer(1, "Bill Smith", new Address("94109", "5725 Glaze Drive", "San Francisco", "USA"))); _customers.Add( new Customer(1, "Samantha Brown", null)); _products.Add(new Product(1, "Keyboard", 49.99)); _products.Add(new Product(2, "Mouse", 10.99)); _products.Add(new Product(3, "PC", 599.99)); _products.Add(new Product(4, "Monitor", 299.99)); _products.Add(new Product(5, "LapTop", 799.99)); _products.Add(new Product(6, "Harddisc", 89.99)); customerBindingSource.DataSource = _customers; productBindingSource.DataSource = _products; orders = new List<Order>(); orders.Add(new Order(1, DateTime.Now, _customers[0])); orders.Add(new Order(2, DateTime.Now, _customers[1])); orders.Add(new Order(3, DateTime.Now, _customers[2])); #region Added by me OrderLine orderLine1 = new OrderLine(_products[0], 1); OrderLine orderLine2 = new OrderLine(_products[1], 3); orderLine1.PropertyChanged += new PropertyChangedEventHandler(OrderLineChanged); orderLine2.PropertyChanged += new PropertyChangedEventHandler(OrderLineChanged); orders[0].OrderLines.Add(orderLine1); orders[0].OrderLines.Add(orderLine2); #endregion // Removed by me in lieu of region above. //orders[0].OrderLines.Add(new OrderLine(_products[0], 1)); //orders[0].OrderLines.Add(new OrderLine(_products[1], 3)); ordersBindingSource.DataSource = orders; } #region Added by me // Have to wait until the form is Shown to wire up the events // for orderDetailsBindingSource. Otherwise, they are triggered // during MainForm().InitializeComponent(). private void MainForm_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e) { orderDetailsBindingSource.AddingNew += new AddingNewEventHandler(orderDetailsBindSrc_AddingNew); orderDetailsBindingSource.CurrentItemChanged += new EventHandler(orderDetailsBindSrc_CurrentItemChanged); orderDetailsBindingSource.ListChanged += new ListChangedEventHandler(orderDetailsBindSrc_ListChanged); } private void orderDetailsBindSrc_AddingNew( object sender, AddingNewEventArgs e) { } private void orderDetailsBindSrc_CurrentItemChanged( object sender, EventArgs e) { } private void orderDetailsBindSrc_ListChanged( object sender, ListChangedEventArgs e) { ObjectBindingSource bindingSource = (ObjectBindingSource)sender; if (!(bindingSource.Current == null)) { // Unsure if GetType().ToString() is required b/c ToString() // *seems* // to return the same value. if (bindingSource.Current.GetType().ToString() == "ObjectBindingSourceDemo.OrderLine") { if (e.ListChangedType == ListChangedType.ItemAdded) { // I wish that I knew of a way to determine // if the 'PropertyChanged' delegate assignment is null. // I don't like the current test, but it seems to work. if (orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].Product == null) { orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].PropertyChanged += new PropertyChangedEventHandler( OrderLineChanged); } } if (e.ListChangedType == ListChangedType.ItemDeleted) { // Will throw exception when leaving // an OrderLine row with unitialized properties. // // I presume this is because the item // has already been 'disposed' of at this point. // *but* // Will it be actually be released from memory // if the delegate assignment for PropertyChanged // was never removed??? if (orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].Product != null) { orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].PropertyChanged -= new PropertyChangedEventHandler( OrderLineChanged); } } } } } private void OrderLineChanged(object sender, PropertyChangedEventArgs e) { MessageBox.Show(e.PropertyName, "Property Changed:"); } #endregion } } In the method private void orderDetailsBindSrc_ListChanged(object sender, ListChangedEventArgs e) I am able to hook up the PropertyChangedEventHandler to the OrderLine object as it is being created. However, I cannot seem to find a way to unhook the PropertyChangedEventHandler from the OrderLine object before it is being removed from the orders[i].OrderLines list. So, my questions are: Am I simply trying to do something that is very, very wrong here? Will the OrderLines object that I add the delegate assignments to ever be released from memory if the assignment is not removed? Is there a "sane" method of achieving this scenario? Also, note that this question is not specifically related to my prior. I have actually solved the issue which had prompted me to inquire before. However, I have reached a point with this particular topic of discovery where my curiosity has exceeded my patience - hopefully someone here can shed some light on this?

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  • nested for-each loops in xml

    - by user1748443
    I'm new to XML. I'm trying to create table containing item details and another table to contain customer details for each order on a picklist. It seems like it should be straightforward but I just get a list of all items on all orders repeated by the number of orders. What am I doing wrong? (XSL code below...) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl = "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="html" doctype-system="about:legacy-compat"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <html xmlns = "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"/> <link rel="stylesheet" type="css/text" href="style.css"/> <title>Orders</title> </head> <body> <xsl:for-each select="//order"> <table> <caption><h3>Order Information</h3></caption> <thead> <th align="left">Item Id</th> <th align="left">Item Description</th> <th align="left">Quantity</th> <th align="left">Price</th> </thead> <xsl:for-each select="//item"> <tr> <td align="left"><xsl:value-of select="itemId"/></td> <td align="left"><xsl:value-of select="itemName"/></td> <td align="left"><xsl:value-of select="quantity"/></td> <td align="left"><xsl:value-of select="price"/></td> </tr> </xsl:for-each> </table> <table> <caption><h3>Customer Information</h3></caption> <thead> <th align="left">Customer Name</th> <th align="left">Street</th> <th align="left">City</th> </thead> <xsl:for-each select="//item"> <tr> <td align="left"><xsl:value-of select="customerName"/></td> <td align="left"><xsl:value-of select="street"/></td> <td align="left"><xsl:value-of select="city"/></td> </tr> </xsl:for-each> </table> </xsl:for-each> </body> </html> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> This is the XML: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="Orders.xsl"?> <orders xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="Orders.xsd"> <order> <orderId>123</orderId> <items> <item> <itemId>001</itemId> <itemName>Nylon Rope</itemName> <quantity>1</quantity> <price>3.50</price> </item> <item> <itemId>002</itemId> <itemName>Shovel</itemName> <quantity>1</quantity> <price>24.95</price> </item> </items> <customerAddress> <customerName>Larry Murphy</customerName> <street>Shallowgrave Lane</street> <city>Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare</city> </customerAddress> </order> <order> <orderId>124</orderId> <items> <item> <itemId>001</itemId> <itemName>Whiskey</itemName> <quantity>1</quantity> <price>18.50</price> </item> <item> <itemId>002</itemId> <itemName>Shotgun</itemName> <quantity>1</quantity> <price>225</price> </item> <item> <itemId>003</itemId> <itemName>Cartridge</itemName> <quantity>1</quantity> <price>1.85</price> </item> </items> <customerAddress> <customerName>Enda Kenny</customerName> <street>A Avenue</street> <city>Castlebar, Co. Mayo</city> </customerAddress> </order> </orders>

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