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  • Templated Razor Delegates – Phil Haack

    - by nmarun
    This post is largely based off of Phil Haack’s article titled Templated Razor Delegates. I strongly recommend reading this article first. Here’s a sample code for the same, so you can have a look at. I also have a custom type being rendered as a table. 1: // my custom type 2: public class Device 3: { 4: public int Id { get; set; } 5: public string Name { get; set; } 6: public DateTime MfgDate { get; set; } 7: } Now I can write an extension method just for this type. 1: public static class RazorExtensions 2: { 3: public static HelperResult List(this IList<Models.Device> devices, Func<Models.Device, HelperResult> template) 4: { 5: return new HelperResult(writer => 6: { 7: foreach (var device in devices) 8: { 9: template(device).WriteTo(writer); 10: } 11: }); 12: } 13: // ... 14: } Modified my view to make it a strongly typed one and included html to render my custom type collection in a table. 1: @using TemplatedRazorDelegates 2: @model System.Collections.Generic.IList<TemplatedRazorDelegates.Models.Device> 3:  4: @{ 5: ViewBag.Title = "Home Page"; 6: } 7:  8: <h2>@ViewBag.Message</h2> 9:  10: @{ 11: var items = new[] { "one", "two", "three" }; 12: IList<int> ints = new List<int> { 1, 2, 3 }; 13: } 14:  15: <ul> 16: @items.List(@<li>@item</li>) 17: </ul> 18: <ul> 19: @ints.List(@<li>@item</li>) 20: </ul> 21:  22: <table> 23: <tr><th>Id</th><th>Name</th><th>Mfg Date</th></tr> 24: @Model.List(@<tr><td>@item.Id</td><td>@item.Name</td><td>@item.MfgDate.ToShortDateString()</td></tr>) 25: </table> We get intellisense as well! Just added some items in the action method of the controller: 1: public ActionResult Index() 2: { 3: ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!"; 4: IList<Device> devices = new List<Device> 5: { 6: new Device {Id = 1, Name = "abc", MfgDate = new DateTime(2001, 10, 19)}, 7: new Device {Id = 2, Name = "def", MfgDate = new DateTime(2011, 1, 1)}, 8: new Device {Id = 3, Name = "ghi", MfgDate = new DateTime(2003, 3, 15)}, 9: new Device {Id = 4, Name = "jkl", MfgDate = new DateTime(2007, 6, 6)} 10: }; 11: return View(devices); 12: } Running this I get the output as: Absolutely brilliant! Thanks to both Phil Haack and to David Fowler for bringing this out to us. Download the code for this from here. Verdict: RazorViewEngine.Points += 1;

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  • How can I use the Fisher-Yates shuffle while ensuring my permutation is even?

    - by Mithrax
    I'm interested making an implementation of the 14-15 puzzle: I'm creating an array with the values 0 - 15 in increasing order: S = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 } Now, what I want to do is shuffle them to create a new instance of the puzzle. However, I know that if I create a board with an "odd permutation" than it is unsolvable. Wikipedia says I need to create the puzzle with an even permutation. I believe this means that I simply have to do ensure I do an even number of swaps? How would I modify Fisher-Yates so I ensure I end up with an even permutation at the end? If I do a swap for every element in the array that would be 16 swaps which I believe would be an even permutation. However, do I need to be concerned about swapping with itself? Is there any other way to ensure I have a valid puzzle?

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  • How can I ensure that when I shuffle my puzzle I still end up with an even permutation?

    - by Mithrax
    I'm interested making an implementation of the 14-15 puzzle: I'm creating an array with the values 0 - 15 in increasing order: S = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 } Now, what I want to do is shuffle them to create a new instance of the puzzle. However, I know that if I create a board with an "odd permutation" than it is unsolvable. Wikipedia says I need to create the puzzle with an even permutation. I believe this means that I simply have to do ensure I do an even number of swaps? How would I modify Fisher-Yates so I ensure I end up with an even permutation at the end? If I do a swap for every element in the array that would be 16 swaps which I believe would be an even permutation. However, do I need to be concerned about swapping with itself? Is there any other way to ensure I have a valid puzzle?

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  • SQL SERVER – Quiz and Video – Introduction to SQL Server Security

    - by pinaldave
    This blog post is inspired from Beginning SQL Joes 2 Pros: The SQL Hands-On Guide for Beginners – SQL Exam Prep Series 70-433 – Volume 1. [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] | [IndiaPlaza] This is follow up blog post of my earlier blog post on the same subject - SQL SERVER – Introduction to SQL Server Security – A Primer. In the article we discussed various basics terminology of the security. The article further covers following important concepts of security. Granting Permissions Denying Permissions Revoking Permissions Above three are the most important concepts related to security and SQL Server.  There are many more things one has to learn but without beginners fundamentals one can’t learn the advanced  concepts. Let us have small quiz and check how many of you get the fundamentals right. Quiz 1) If you granted Phil control to the server, but denied his ability to create databases, what would his effective permissions be? Phil can do everything. Phil can do nothing. Phil can do everything except create databases. 2) If you granted Phil control to the server and revoked his ability to create databases, what would his effective permissions be? Phil can do everything. Phil can do nothing. Phil can do everything except create databases. 3) You have a login named James who has Control Server permission. You want to elimintate his ability to create databases without affecting any other permissions. What SQL statement would you use? ALTER LOGIN James DISABLE DROP LOGIN James DENY CREATE DATABASE To James REVOKE CREATE DATABASE To James GRANT CREATE DATABASE To James Now make sure that you write down all the answers on the piece of paper. Watch following video and read earlier article over here. If you want to change the answer you still have chance. Solution 1) 3 2) 1 3) 3 Now compare let us check the answers and compare your answers to following answers. I am very confident you will get them correct. Available at USA: Amazon India: Flipkart | IndiaPlaza Volume: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Please leave your feedback in the comment area for the quiz and video. Did you know all the answers of the quiz? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 05, 2010 -- #807

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Phil Middlemiss(-2-, -3-), Pencho Popadiyn, John Papa(-2-, -3-), Jim Lynn, and SilverLaw(-2-). Shoutouts: Walt Ritscher has added more shaders and features: Shazzam 1.2 – Feature Overview I hope you're getting as excited as I am about MIX10. You should be reading MIX10 News and checking out the sessions and the directory of attendees. From SilverlightCream.com: Watermarked TextBox Part I Phil Middlemiss's Orb Radio Button hit number two in the Silverlight Cream Skim page, in 2 days... now Phil has a very nice 3-part tutorial up on creating a Watermarked TextBox with lots of cool features. This is part 1 and starts the series off. Watermarked TextBox Part II In Phil Middlemiss's Part II of the Watermarked TextBox tutorial, he's concentrating on visual elements of the control began in the last episode... you're paying attention, right? ... this is a cool control :) Watermarked Textbox Part III In the final part of Phil Middlemiss's tutorial series, he's wiring all the pieces together in the UserControl. Go grab the control, then leave Phil some love on his blog! Using Reactive Extensions in Silverlight Pencho Popadiyn has a great tutorial up on SilverlightShow about Rx ... if you want to get your arms around this... this tutorial is a good place to begin. Silverlight TV 10: Silverlight Hyper Video Platform with Jesse Liberty Running a little behind here, but check out John Papa and THE Silverlight GeekTM Jesse Liberty discussing Jesse's Hyper Video Platform on Silverlight TV Silverlight TV 11: Dynamically Loading XAPs with MEF In Silverlight TV episode 11, John Papa talks to Glenn Block about MEF and partitioning and dynamically loading XAPs ... good stuff. Silverlight TV 12: The Best Blend 3 Video Ever! And the latest Silverlight TV episode, number 12, has John Papa and Adam Kinney giving "The Best Blend 3 Video ever (or at least on Silverlight TV)"... check out the list of topics and you'll want to watch :) InvalidOperation_EnumFailedVersion when binding data to a Silverlight Chart Read Jim Lynn's post about a problem found while deploying his app, the very confusing (long) error, and the workaround. Leather Stamped Style Series For Silverlight Controls - Part 1 SilverLaw contued after his 'leather stamped' textbox and has added TextBlock, Button and some template bindings... check it out then get it at the Expression Gallery Circular Accordion Style Silverlight 3 SilverLaw also built a Circualar Accordian style... interesting idea and once again it, in the Expression Gallery. He's also looking for feedback. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    MIX10

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  • Ripping MP3s in Rhythmbox Ubuntu 12.10 (64 bit)?

    - by James Fellows Yates
    I installed a couple of days ago Ubuntu 12.10 (64 bit). I today tried ripping a CD in the MP3 format. However, whenever I try to rip, it says it is missing an extra multimedia plugin "Gstreamer extra plug-ins (i386)". I then try to install the :i386 version of the gstreamer-ugly plugins, but then I get the same problem but with the id3-demuxer (or something similar) The Terminal output I get from both problems (but replace the "MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) encoder" with the "ID3-demuxer" name) is: james@clefairy:~$ rhythmbox (rhythmbox:24122): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed Rhythmbox-Message: Missing plugin: gstreamer|0.10|rhythmbox|MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) encoder|encoder-audio/mpeg, mpegversion=(int)1, layer=(int)3 /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gobject/constants.py:24: Warning: g_boxed_type_register_static: assertion `g_type_from_name (name) == 0' failed import gobject._gobject It doesn't help that each time I have to install/remove the entire Gstreamer-ugly collection each time - I can't find that specific file. The CD plays fine, it's the ripping plugin that doesn't seem to work. I didn't have this problem previously on 12.04 (64 bit).

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  • Help using left outer joins in SQL...

    - by Waffles
    I'm trying to create a list of people, their friends, and their friends of friends. My table of people is this: People: NAME Jow Smith Sandy Phil Friends LIKER LIKEE jow smith smith jow sandy phil Now, what I want is a table like this: User Friend FriendofFriend Jow smith jow Smith jow smith sandy phil phil I'm trying to create a table using the following: SELECT P.NAME, F.LIKEE, F2.LIKEE FROM PEOPLE P LEFT OUTER JOIN FRIENDS F ON P.NAME = F.LIKER LEFT OUTER JOIN FRIENDS F2 ON F.LIKEE = F2.LIKER But the above isn't working. How can I get a table of people and their friends, regardless of whether or not they actually HAVE any friends?

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  • javascript summary function

    - by Phil Jackson
    Hello, im trying to make a small name summary function depending on the size of the elements container, here's what I have; function shorten_text(str, size){ size = size.match( /[0-9]*/ ); var endValue = Math.floor( Number(size) / 10 ); var number; var newStr; for ( number = 0; number <= endValue; number++ ) { if( str[number].length != 0 ) { newStr += str[number]; } } return newStr + '...'; } shorten_text('Phil Jackson', '94px'); // output should be 'Phil Jack...' What I seem to get is undefinedundef... can anyone see where I am going wrong?

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 05, 2011 -- #1041

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Peter Kuhn, Mike Ormond(-2-, -3-), WindowsPhoneGeek, Daniel N. Egan, Phil Middlemiss(-2-), Max Paulousky, Michael Washington. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Designing for Browser-Zoom: Part 2" Phil Middlemiss WP7: "Talking about Converters in WP7 | Coding4fun toolkit converters in depth" WindowsPhoneGeek Lightswitch: "LightSwitch: Can We Handle The Truth?" Michael Washington Shoutouts: András Velvárt has a video up of some awesome changes he has planned for SurfCube, check it out: SurfCube V2 - 3D Web Browser for Windows Phone 7, now with tabs! From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight for keyboard junkies Peter Kuhn has a post up talking about the issues surrounding trying to use the tab key to navigate between controls... and follows it up with a behavior that resolves it. Windows Phone 7 Content On Demand Mike Ormond has a batch of WP7 Videos up... this first is "Windows Phone 7: A Different Kind of Phone" with Andrej Radinger. Windows Phone 7 Content on Demand Pt 2 Mike Ormond's 2nd WP7 video is "Understanding the Windows Phone 7 Development Tools and Getting Started" with Maarten Struys Windows Phone 7 Content on Demand Pt 3 Mike Ormond's 3rd WP7 Content on Demand is "Games Programming on Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight and XNA" with Rob Miles Talking about Converters in WP7 | Coding4fun toolkit converters in depth WindowsPhoneGeek is discussing value converters in his latest post... value converters for WP7... and the ones in the Coding4Fun toolkit to be exact... everything you wanted to know about them but didn't know to ask :) WP7 Developer Tools–Jan Update Daniel N. Egan has information up about the new WP7 Developer Tools release. Designing for Browser-Zoom: Part 1 Phil Middlemiss has both parts of a series on Browser Zoom up... this first part covers the zoom and different pieces involved. Designing for Browser-Zoom: Part 2 Phil Middlemiss's part 2 shows us some design considerations and visual states, including an attached behavior you can use in Blend to respond to the zoom event. Windows Phone Copy-Paste: How It Looks and Works Max Paulousky has the first post I've seen on WP7 Copy/Paste up... of course it's still in the emulator, but hey... that's better than nothing, right? LightSwitch: Can We Handle The Truth? Have you been playing with Lightswitch? Well... Michael Washington has, and it's got his interest up far enough that he's waving the flags trying to attract everyone else over there as well... see if you agree. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Ubuntu 11.10 won't boot on Dell XPS 8300

    - by Phil Gorman
    I have a brand new Dell Studio XPS 8300 desktop with 17-2600 cpu, H67 chipset, 8GB DDR3, 2 1TB HDDs in mirrored RAID, and AMD Radeon 6770. Dell doesn't support Ubuntu here in Australia so it came with Windows 7 and Windows software. Yes I had to pay for an O.S. and software I didn't want to get hardware I did want, all at a greatly inflated price. It's not all beer and skittles in the land of Oz. I changed boot priorities in the BIOS to DVD and ran Ubuntu 11.10 64bit from the ISO with NOMODESET. The installation reformatted all partitions to rid me of the dreaded Windows. All was well until until reboot. The BIOS does its thing, then its "The Black Screen of Death" with a blinking cursor; no boot screen, no Grub, no keyboard, no mouse. I've searched Dell and Ubuntu forums in vain. Can you help? I would be really grateful for any advice which can help turn my big expensive paperweight into a really useful machine. Thank you in anticipation kind people. Phil

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  • creating email forwarding accounts on the fly using

    - by Phil Jackson
    I've recently asked a question on Stack Overflow; http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2637137/creating-email-forwarding-accounts-on-the-fly-using-php and was I would find the solution here. first instruction was: Ask on the serverfault what operations you have have to perform. what config file to edit or something. Any help would be much appreciated. regards, phil

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  • Wild Card DNS setup problems

    - by Phil Jackson
    Hi, this is my firast time with dedicated servers and im having problem setting up a wildcard sub-domain. I previously tried * /-----/ 14400 /-----/ IN /-----/ A /-----/ (serverip) waited 30 hours and nothing. so i then tried * /-----/ 14400 /-----/ IN /-----/ CNAME /-----/ actvbiv.co.uk. waited another 30 hours, nothing Im now trying; *.actvbiz.co.uk /-----/ 14400 /-----/ IN /-----/ CNAME /-----/ actvbiv.co.uk. Am i doing this correctly? using WHM. Regards, Phil Jackson

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  • Standards Corner: OAuth WG Client Registration Problem

    - by Tanu Sood
    Phil Hunt is an active member of multiple industry standards groups and committees (see brief bio at the end of the post) and has spearheaded discussions, creation and ratifications of  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} industry standards including the Kantara Identity Governance Framework, among others. Being an active voice in the industry standards development world, we have invited him to share his discussions, thoughts, news & updates, and discuss use cases, implementation success stories (and even failures) around industry standards on this monthly column. Author: Phil Hunt This afternoon, the OAuth Working Group will meet at IETF88 in Vancouver to discuss some important topics important to the maturation of OAuth. One of them is the OAuth client registration problem.OAuth (RFC6749) was initially developed with a simple deployment model where there is only monopoly or singleton cloud instance of a web API (e.g. there is one Facebook, one Google, on LinkedIn, and so on). When the API publisher and API deployer are the same monolithic entity, it easy for developers to contact the provider and register their app to obtain a client_id and credential.But what happens when the API is for an open source project where there may be 1000s of deployed copies of the API (e.g. such as wordpress). In these cases, the authors of the API are not the people running the API. In these scenarios, how does the developer obtain a client_id? An example of an "open deployed" API is OpenID Connect. Connect defines an OAuth protected resource API that can provide personal information about an authenticated user -- in effect creating a potentially common API for potential identity providers like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, or Oracle. In Oracle's case, Fusion applications will soon have RESTful APIs that are deployed in many different ways in many different environments. How will developers write apps that can work against an openly deployed API with whom the developer can have no prior relationship?At present, the OAuth Working Group has two proposals two consider: Dynamic RegistrationDynamic Registration was originally developed for OpenID Connect and UMA. It defines a RESTful API in which a prospective client application with no client_id creates a new client registration record with a service provider and is issued a client_id and credential along with a registration token that can be used to update registration over time.As proof of success, the OIDC community has done substantial implementation of this spec and feels committed to its use. Why not approve?Well, the answer is that some of us had some concerns, namely: Recognizing instances of software - dynamic registration treats all clients as unique. It has no defined way to recognize that multiple copies of the same client are being registered other then assuming if the registration parameters are similar it might be the same client. Versioning and Policy Approval of open APIs and clients - many service providers have to worry about change management. They expect to have approval cycles that approve versions of server and client software for use in their environment. In some cases approval might be wide open, but in many cases, approval might be down to the specific class of software and version. Registration updates - when does a client actually need to update its registration? Shouldn't it be never? Is there some characteristic of deployed code that would cause it to change? Options lead to complexity - because each client is treated as unique, it becomes unclear how the clients and servers will agree on what credentials forms are acceptable and what OAuth features are allowed and disallowed. Yet the reality is, developers will write their application to work in a limited number of ways. They can't implement all the permutations and combinations that potential service providers might choose. Stateful registration - if the primary motivation for registration is to obtain a client_id and credential, why can't this be done in a stateless fashion using assertions? Denial of service - With so much stateful registration and the need for multiple tokens to be issued, will this not lead to a denial of service attack / risk of resource depletion? At the very least, because of the information gathered, it would difficult for service providers to clean up "failed" registrations and determine active from inactive or false clients. There has yet to be much wide-scale "production" use of dynamic registration other than in small closed communities. Client Association A second proposal, Client Association, has been put forward by Tony Nadalin of Microsoft and myself. We took at look at existing use patterns to come up with a new proposal. At the Berlin meeting, we considered how WS-STS systems work. More recently, I took a review of how mobile messaging clients work. I looked at how Apple, Google, and Microsoft each handle registration with APNS, GCM, and WNS, and a similar pattern emerges. This pattern is to use an existing credential (mutual TLS auth), or client bearer assertion and swap for a device specific bearer assertion.In the client association proposal, the developer's registration with the API publisher is handled by having the developer register with an API publisher (as opposed to the party deploying the API) and obtaining a software "statement". Or, if there is no "publisher" that can sign a statement, the developer may include their own self-asserted software statement.A software statement is a special type of assertion that serves to lock application registration profile information in a signed assertion. The statement is included with the client application and can then be used by the client to swap for an instance specific client assertion as defined by section 4.2 of the OAuth Assertion draft and profiled in the Client Association draft. The software statement provides a way for service provider to recognize and configure policy to approve classes of software clients, and simplifies the actual registration to a simple assertion swap. Because the registration is an assertion swap, registration is no longer "stateful" - meaning the service provider does not need to store any information to support the client (unless it wants to). Has this been implemented yet? Not directly. We've only delivered draft 00 as an alternate way of solving the problem using well-known patterns whose security characteristics and scale characteristics are well understood. Dynamic Take II At roughly the same time that Client Association and Software Statement were published, the authors of Dynamic Registration published a "split" version of the Dynamic Registration (draft-richer-oauth-dyn-reg-core and draft-richer-oauth-dyn-reg-management). While some of the concerns above are addressed, some differences remain. Registration is now a simple POST request. However it defines a new method for issuing client tokens where as Client Association uses RFC6749's existing extension point. The concern here is whether future client access token formats would be addressed properly. Finally, Dyn-reg-core does not yet support software statements. Conclusion The WG has some interesting discussion to bring this back to a single set of specifications. Dynamic Registration has significant implementation, but Client Association could be a much improved way to simplify implementation of the overall OpenID Connect specification and improve adoption. In fairness, the existing editors have already come a long way. Yet there are those with significant investment in the current draft. There are many that have expressed they don't care. They just want a standard. There is lots of pressure on the working group to reach consensus quickly.And that folks is how the sausage is made.Note: John Bradley and Justin Richer recently published draft-bradley-stateless-oauth-client-00 which on first look are getting closer. Some of the details seem less well defined, but the same could be said of client-assoc and software-statement. I hope we can merge these specs this week. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} About the Writer: Phil Hunt joined Oracle as part of the November 2005 acquisition of OctetString Inc. where he headed software development for what is now Oracle Virtual Directory. Since joining Oracle, Phil works as CMTS in the Identity Standards group at Oracle where he developed the Kantara Identity Governance Framework and provided significant input to JSR 351. Phil participates in several standards development organizations such as IETF and OASIS working on federation, authorization (OAuth), and provisioning (SCIM) standards.  Phil blogs at www.independentid.com and a Twitter handle of @independentid.

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  • Using Live Data in Database Development Work

    - by Phil Factor
    Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk Newsletter... in which Phil Factor reacts with some exasperation when coming across a report that a majority of companies were still using financial and personal data for both developing and testing database applications. If you routinely test your development work using real production data that contains personal or financial information, you are probably being irresponsible, and at worst, risking a heavy financial penalty for your company. Surprisingly, over 80% of financial companies still do this. Plenty of data breaches and fraud have happened from the use of real data for testing, and a data breach is a nightmare for any organisation that suffers one. The cost of each data breach averages out at around $7.2 million in the US in notification, escalation, credit monitoring, fines, litigation, legal costs, and lost business due to customer churn, £1.9 million in the UK. 70% of data breaches are done from within the organisation. Real data can be exploited in a number of ways for malicious or criminal purposes. It isn't just the obvious use of items such as name and address, date of birth, social security number, and credit card and bank account numbers: Data can be exploited in many subtle ways, so there are excellent reasons to ensure that a high priority is given to the detection and prevention of any data breaches. You'll never successfully guess all the ways that real data can be exploited maliciously, or the ease with which it can be accessed. It would be silly to argue that developers never need access to a copy of the database containing live data. Developers sometimes need to track a bug that can only be replicated on the data from the live database. However, it has to be done in a very restrictive harness. The law makes no distinction between development and production databases when a data breach occurs, so the data has to be held with all appropriate security measures in place. In Europe, the use of personal data for testing requires the explicit consent of the people whose data is being held. There are federal standards such as GLBA, PCI DSS and HIPAA, and most US States have privacy legislation. The task of ensuring compliance and tight security in such circumstances is an expensive and time-consuming overhead. The developer is likely to suffer investigation if a data breach occurs, even if the company manages to stay in business. Ironically, the use of copies of live data isn't usually the most effective way to develop or test your data. Data is usually time-specific and isn't usually current by the time it is used for testing, Existing data doesn't help much for new functionality, and every time the data is refreshed from production, any test data is likely to be overwritten. Also, it is not always going to test all the 'edge' conditions that are likely to flush out bugs. You still have the task of simulating the dynamics of actual usage of the database, and here you have no alternative to creating 'spoofed' data. Because of the complexities of relational data, It used to be that there was no realistic alternative to developing and testing with live data. However, this is no longer the case. Real data can be obfuscated, or it can be created entirely from scratch. The latter process used to be impractical, now that there are plenty of third-party tools to choose from. The process of obfuscation isn't risk free. The process must access the live data, and the success of the obfuscation process has to be carefully monitored. Database data security isn't an exciting topic to you or I, but to a hacker it can be an all-consuming obsession, especially if there is financial or political gain involved. This is not the sort of adversary one would wish for and it is far better to accept, and work with, security restrictions that exist for using live data in database development work, especially when the tools exist to create large realistic database test data that can be better for several aspects of testing.

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  • Some Original Expressions

    - by Phil Factor
    Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk newsletterIn a guest editorial for the Simple-Talk Newsletter, Phil Factor wonders if we are still likely to find some more novel and unexpected ways of using the newer features of Transact SQL: or maybe in some features that have always been there! There can be a great deal of fun to be had in trying out recent features of SQL Expressions to see if  they provide new functionality.  It is surprisingly rare to find things that couldn’t be done before, but in a different   and more cumbersome way; but it is great to experiment or to read of someone else making that discovery.  One such recent feature is the ‘table value constructor’, or ‘VALUES constructor’, that managed to get into SQL Server 2008 from Standard SQL.  This allows you to create derived tables of up to 1000 rows neatly within select statements that consist of  lists of row values.  E.g. SELECT Old_Welsh, number FROM (VALUES ('Un',1),('Dou',2),('Tri',3),('Petuar',4),('Pimp',5),('Chwech',6),('Seith',7),('Wyth',8),('Nau',9),('Dec',10)) AS WelshWordsToTen (Old_Welsh, number) These values can be expressions that return single values, including, surprisingly, subqueries. You can use this device to create views, or in the USING clause of a MERGE statement. Joe Celko covered  this here and here.  It can become extraordinarily handy to use once one gets into the way of thinking in these terms, and I’ve rewritten a lot of routines to use the constructor, but the old way of using UNION can be used the same way, but is a little slower and more long-winded. The use of scalar SQL subqueries as an expression in a VALUES constructor, and then applied to a MERGE, has got me thinking. It looks very clever, but what use could one put it to? I haven’t seen anything yet that couldn’t be done almost as  simply in SQL Server 2000, but I’m hopeful that someone will come up with a way of solving a tricky problem, just in the same way that a freak of the XML syntax forever made the in-line  production of delimited lists from an expression easy, or that a weird XML pirouette could do an elegant  pivot-table rotation. It is in this sort of experimentation where the community of users can make a real contribution. The dissemination of techniques such as the Number, or Tally table, or the unconventional ways that the UPDATE statement can be used, has been rapid due to articles and blogs. However, there is plenty to be done to explore some of the less obvious features of Transact SQL. Even some of the features introduced into SQL Server 2000 are hardly well-known. Certain operations on data are still awkward to perform in Transact SQL, but we mustn’t, I think, be too ready to state that certain things can only be done in the application layer, or using a CLR routine. With the vast array of features in the product, and with the tools that surround it, I feel that there is generally a way of getting tricky things done. Or should we just stick to our lasts and push anything difficult out into procedural code? I’d love to know your views.

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  • How do I boot [embedded] linux from sd card?

    - by Brandon Yates
    I am hacking together a quick embedded linux system on a DM816x evm board. Previously I have been using TFTP and NFS to load my kernel and root filesystem to the board. I am now trying to switch over to loading everything from an SD card. I have my card partitioned such that uBoot and my kernel image are in one partition, and my rootFS in another partition. At power-on, Uboot starts correctly and successfully launches the kernel. However, the kernel is unable to mount the root file system. It appears that it doesn't recognize any SD (mmc) cards. It gives this error message. VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p2" or unknown-block(2,0) Please append a correct "root=" boot option; here are the available partitions: 1f00 256 mtdblock0 (driver?) 1f01 8 mtdblock1 (driver?) 1f02 2560 mtdblock2 (driver?) 1f03 1272 mtdblock3 (driver?) 1f04 2432 mtdblock4 (driver?) 1f05 128 mtdblock5 (driver?) 1f06 4352 mtdblock6 (driver?) 1f07 204928 mtdblock7 (driver?) 1f08 50304 mtdblock8 (driver?) Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(2,0) I feel like I'm missing something fundamental here. Why does it not recognize the root device I am trying to load from? Here is my uBoot boot script that is running: setenv bootargs console=ttyO2,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rw mem=124M earlyprink vram=50M ti816xfb.vram=0:16M,1:16M,2:6M ip=off noinitrd;mmc init;fatload mmc 1 0x80009000 uImage;bootm 0x80009000

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  • Is it still cheaper to build your own PC?

    - by Jeff Yates
    With many companies offering build-to-order PCs, where they can source components at bulk purchase prices, is there any value in building your own PC. Is it still a good option for everyone or is it only cost-effective for those building fringe equipment like high spec gaming platforms? Don't forget to factor in the time and effort you spend building and configuring the machine. I know that it is often worthwhile as it builds understanding of your machine, gets you exactly what you want, etc., but is it still good for your wallet or would you be better off paying someone else to do it and spend more time doing something else?

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  • Why does my computer slow down so much when attaching Bluetooth dongle?

    - by Jeff Yates
    I have a Bluetooth dongle and I plugged it into my work laptop (a Dell Latitude D830). Windows detects the Generic Bluetooth USB or similar and then proceeds to go incredibly slow with a process, avp.exe¹, taking 50% CPU. The System Idle process is getting most of the other 50% CPU and the avp.exe process is only at Normal priority. The machine doesn't seem to recover, so I had to turn the power off and reboot. Now, I haven't installed the drivers yet for the device, which I am doing now and I expect it to resolve the problem, so I am not asking how to fix this. I would rather know why Windows goes so slow in the first place. What is it trying to do and failing at so badly that it barely crawls? ¹ Part of Kaspersky Internet Security suite

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  • Justifiable Perks.

    - by Phil Factor
        I was once the director of a start-up IT Company, and had the task of recruiting a proportion of the management team. As my background was in IT management, I was rather more familiar with recruiting Geeks for technology jobs, but here, one of my early tasks was interviewing a Marketing Director.  The small group of financiers had suggested a rather strange Irishman called  Halleran.  From my background in City of London dealing-rooms, I was slightly unprepared for the experience of interviewing anyone wearing a pink suit. Many of my older City colleagues would have required resuscitation after seeing his white leather shoes. However, nobody will accuse me of prejudging an interviewee. After all, many Linux experts who I’ve come to rely on have appeared for interview dressed as hobbits. In fact, the interview went well, and we had even settled his salary.  I was somewhat unprepared for the coda.    ‘And I will need to be provided with a Ferrari  by the company.’    ‘Hmm. That seems reasonable.’    Initially, he looked startled, and then a slow smile of victory spread across his face.    ‘What colour would you like?’ I asked genially.    ‘It has to be red.’ He looked very earnest on this point.    ‘Fine. I have to go past Hamleys on the way home this evening, so I’ll pick one up then for you.’    ‘Er.. Hamley’s is a toyshop, not a Ferrari Dealership.’    I stared at him in bafflement for a few seconds. ‘You’re not seriously asking for a real Ferrari are you?’     ‘Well, yes. Not for my own sake, you understand. I’d much prefer a simple run-about, but my position demands it. How could I maintain the necessary status in the office without one? How could I do my job in marketing when my grey Datsun was all too visible in the car Park? It is a tool of the job.’    ‘Excuse me a moment, but I must confer with the MD’    I popped out to see Chris, the MD. ‘Chris, I’m interviewing a lunatic in a pink suit who is trying to demand that a Ferrari is a precondition of his employment. I tried the ‘misunderstanding trick’ but it didn’t faze him.’     ‘Sorry, Phil, but we’ve got to hire him. The VCs insist on it. You’ve got to think of something that doesn’t involve committing to the purchase of a Ferrari. Current funding barely covers the rent for the building.’    ‘OK boss. Leave it to me.’    On return, I slapped O’Halleran’s file on the table with a genial, paternalistic smile. ‘Of course you should have a Ferrari. The only trouble is that it will require a justification document that can be presented to the board. I’m sure you’ll have no problem in preparing this document in the required format.’ The initial look of despair was quickly followed by a bland look of acquiescence. He had, earlier in the interview, argued with great eloquence his skill in preparing the tiresome documents that underpin the essential corporate and government deals that were vital to the success of this new enterprise. The justification of a Ferrari should be a doddle.     After the interview, Chris nervously asked how I’d fared.     ‘I think it is all solved.’    ‘… without promising a Ferrari, I hope.’    ‘Well, I did actually; on condition he justified it in writing.’    Chris issued a stream of invective. The strain of juggling the resources in an underfunded startup was beginning to show.    ‘Don’t worry. In the unlikely event of him coming back with the required document, I’ll give him mine.’    ‘Yours?’ He strode over to the window to stare down at the car park.    He needn’t have worried: I knew that his breed of marketing man could more easily lay an ostrich egg than to prepare a decent justification document. My Ferrari is still there at the back of my garage. Few know of the Ferrari cultivator, a simple inexpensive motorized device designed for the subsistence farmers of southern Italy. It is the very devil to start, but it creates a perfect tilth for the seedbed.

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